CHRISTIANITY AND HOMOSEXUALITY

CHRISTIANITY AND GAYS

And he said to them, "Go into all the world and preach and publish openly the good news (the Gospel) to every creature [of the whole human race]. He who believes [who adheres to and trusts in and relies on the Gospel and Him Whom it sets forth] and is baptized will be saved [from the penalty of eternal death]; but he who does not believe [who does not adhere to and trust in and rely on the Gospel and Him Whom it sets forth] will be condemned. And these attesting signs will accompany those who believe: in My name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new languages; They will pick up serpents; and [even] if they drink anything deadly, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will get well. ".

(Mark Chapter 16 v 15-18 Amplified Bible)

I don't know if you have experienced any Christian Churches but I grew up going to a Presbyterian come Uniting Church until I was 12 and I'd never seen, least of all heard about, any signs or miracles that are supposed to follow those who believe in Jesus. In fact when I was 12 I thought that I might try to talk with the local pastor about being gay. I was friends with both of his son's and they lived in the same street. One day I was at the Minister's home and his younger son asked "Dad, can I go to Vivian's place to play tomorrow?" "No!" his Dad snapped back. I don't want you to have anything to do with that boy. He's a poofter! Just keep away from him." Well Vivian was all of about 9 years of age. Unfortunately the kid had a really high voice and sounded quite girly. "Amazing!" I thought. The Minister was so convinced that this nine year old pre-pubescent boy was homosexual. How on earth could he really know? The Minister's language and countinence were peppered with fear and hatred. Immediately and with fearful relief I thought, "Thank God I never spoke to this pastor about being gay." I don't think I went back to his house to play with his sons again, expecially as I already had a crush on his oldest boy. I certainly never went back to his church!

Eight years later my Dad was sitting in his office at work looking very depressed. An electrician named Frank came in to change a light globe. "You look terrible," Frank said to my Dad. "What's the matter?" My Dad confided that he has a son who is a homosexual. Frank just happened to be a born-again Christian and told my Dad about a Pentecostal Evangelist he knew who had set many homosexual men and women free. Frank said, "When he prays for people you can't stand up, you fall over backwards". Dad went to one of the evangelical meetings to check it out and while he was there a man walked up and witnessed how Jesus had delivered him from homosexuality. The next time I was visiting my parents Dad told me about this Pastor who could pray for you and when he touched you on your forehead you couldn't stand up and you'd fall back onto the ground. I had been spiritually searching having attended a gay church, a Buddhist ashram, a spiritualist church, mediums etc. and this sounded like an interesting one to check out. I proudly walked into the healing meeting, of about 300 people, holding another man's hand who was about 40 years my senior. I was after all young, gay and proud and no-one was going to make me ashamed of who or what I was. Anyone who judged me could get stuffed as I was Born this Way!

The evangelist gave his sermon and I'd never heard anyone speak about Jesus the way that he did.  He explained what real Christians could and should be doing and read Jesus' Great Commission which I've also quoted above. At one stage during the sermon he said "if you are addicted to gambling, alcohol, drugs, lust, perversions, homosexuality", I don't remember what he said after homosexuality - it was all somewhat confronting," then you are bound by the devil and you are being controlled by demons. And Jesus can deliver you. You can be completely set free. If you are sick you can be healed. Jesus didn't say that you might get well. He said 'You will get well' ". I looked at the man I was with whose hand I was still holding. He looked as shocked as I felt. However, when the alter call started I was keen to be prayed over to find out whether or not I would fall over and what it would feel like.

As I stood in line at the front of the church alter waiting my turn, I planned what I was going to say to Ed. However, when he came up to me he looked straight into my eyes and suddenly I couldn't speak. Ed's eyes were incredibly clear and shiny, full of the intense love, compassion and strength of Jesus.  However, at the same time I tangibly felt like a pair of hands was literally strangling my neck and preventing me from talking. It was extremely hard to say anything at all. Also, as Ed was looking into my eyes, I had this overwhelming feeling of my need for Jesus and of my sinfulness and my wretchedness. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably only 5 to 10 seconds I finally managed to stammer out, "Please help me". Ed touched my forehead. I fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes and for the first time in my life I felt a peace which I had never known before or could not remember. Boy! Was I glad I'd wanted to see what being prayed over and falling to the ground felt like because this peace felt really good! Often when Ed first started ministering to me I would end up lying on the floor for one to two hours. Years later Ed's wife told me that when people lie down on the floor for that long it is usually because they need, and are receiving, very deep ministry. I know that was true for me!

At my apartment that night I prayed to Jesus and asked him to show me if what Ed preaches is true. "Is being a homosexual demonic and if so can I be delivered from it and completely set free?" There's no way I wanted to get mixed up in some crazy religious cult. I had gone through a lot in the process of accepting my homosexuality. Dare I even contemplate, least of all try this? I didn't want to try something that wasn't going to work! If this is true it would be such a quantum shift of my whole identity. What if I allowed there to be hope, tried and it didn't work, could I cope with that? There was no way that I wanted to be a latent or celibate homosexual; my homoexual attractions and sex drive were way too strong to do that. It was hard to fathom the possibility of becoming straight because I had no sexual attraction to women at all.

Jesus started to answer my prayer the next day. I was at another boyfriend's place and I told him briefly about the meeting I'd been to. "Oh I've got a really old church Bible," he said. He brought out the biggest gold leaf Bible I'd ever seen. I had to have a look and I sat down and opened it. The very first phrase I read on the very first page I opened was Leviticus 18:22  'You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination' (King James, 1983, p115).  I was dumbfounded and there was definitely no clause there saying 'unless you love each other'.  Previously I'd read my own Good News bible from cover to cover just to find such verses but never saw any; the devil had somehow completely blinded me but suddenly I could see. Over the next fortnight every time I opened up my own Good News Bible the first page I would open to and the first thing I would read were more verses about homosexuality. This occurred about 12 times over the next 2 weeks with passages in both the old and new testaments. This was no coincidence. It got to the point where I was so convicted I started to hesitate to open my bible. Out of all the scriptures about homosexuality that the Holy Spirit showed me, the one that gave me real hope was 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. It clearly shows that not only is homosexuality against God's will but also that Jesus had set people free from its bondage back 2000 years ago.
 

Surely you know that the wicked will not possess God's Kingdom. Do not fool yourselves; people who are immoral or who worship idols or are adulterers or homosexual perverts or who steal or are greedy or are drunkards or who slander others or are thieves - none of these will possess God's Kingdom. Some of you were like that. But you have been purified from sin; you have been dedicated to God; you have been put right with God by the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

(1 Corinthians 6:9-12 Good News Bible, American Bible Society 1976)

This gave me much faith and conviction that Jesus really could set me free from homosexuality. I was now convicted that homosexuality is a sin which is completely different from being accused of being evil and made to feel guilty about being gay. When being accused, I felt self loathing and hopelessness at being cruelly judged, which was accentuated by my own impotence of being unable to change myself. However, under the conviction that came through the Holy Spirit, I saw my sin for what it is and at the same time the Holy Spirit also gave me hope and faith that Jesus really could deliver me; get this demon right out of me so that I could start again, free from the sin of homosexuality to the point as if I had not been gay and have the freedom from then on to say no to homosexuality whilst entering the heterosexuality that God had always intended for me.

It was not me that Jesus hated it was what I was doing! For the first time in my life I felt like I had a CHOICE because I could now actually choose not to be a homosexual. I had no idea how my deliverance was going to happen and the next time I started to have sex with my boyfriend I unexpectedly said to him, 'I'm sorry I can't do this any more. I've become a born-again Christian and I believe that what we are doing is wrong in God's eyes." He cried so I tried to reassure him that it had nothing to do with himself personally but that I had made up my mind to follow Jesus. Ed never said you'll have to stop having sex with men, this just happened under the prompting of the Holy Spirit. The situation of my repentance was so different from the many I've seen since in the churches where people come walking out to the front of the church alter to repeat the sinners' prayer and receive Jesus; yet I knew that even though it was different, it was still very very real and I had come to receive Jesus in my heart.  Salvation was God's 21st birthday present to me.

The next time I went to the weekly evangelical meetings I said to Ed, "I believe that homosexuality is a sin and I want to fight the devil and not be a homosexual anymore"'. Ed replied, "When the homosexual demon is completely out of you, you will be as repulsed by homosexuality as you currently are by heterosexuality". I can now testify that when the demon is 100% gone this is true. Ed once said to me, "The homosexual spirit in you makes you see all women as big bottomed and big booby, blubbery walking masses of flesh. And if a woman's not fat then the demon tells you that's what she'll end up like." It was as though he could read my mind! He also explained that there is no such thing as a bisexual demon. It just means that the demon hasn't got as strong a grip on the person.

It is common for teenagers to experience homosexual feelings. Today's western culture encourages them to be open to these feelings and to explore this as a possibility for their own sexual identity. Society now teaches that same sex attraction is normal. However, spiritually what is happening is that the devil is bombarding their minds with homosexual temptation through their own sinful flesh. They can be easily delivered. Some of them will give in to the temptation, have one or a number of homosexual experiences then decide it's not for them. Others give in to the tempatation and begin practicing homosexuality to varying degrees for the rest of their lives becoming bisexual or homosexual, mostly the former.

Many people debate the cause of homosexuality. Many claim that there are certain men and women who are just Born this Way. Others claim that homoxexual behaviour is a result of conditioning circumstances. Others argue that it is a combination of both. God (that is - the only true God, the God of Israel) says that homosexuality is a sin. His word says that because of Adam and Eve's fall we are all born into sin because we are all their offspring regardless of what race we come from. No-one is Born This Way. But through this inherent sin principle combined with conditioning circumstances, in some people there is the propensity for homosexual behaviour, or even exclusive homosexuality as I had experienced myself. The devil knows who's a good candidate to target. God's word says that he's been here since Adam and Eve and that he is currently the prince of the power of the air. So the Devil knows the nature of people well and through people's sin he has enough control in this world to manifest circumstances to help ensure that the propensity for homosexuality in many is realised.

Throughout my primary school years I was branded a poofter. During my 6 year exposure to and longing for a paedophile librarian/sports primary school teacher, I had not yet connected my feelings as homosexual. But when I started puberty at 11 the only sexual arousal that I felt, or could ever remember feeling, was homosexual. At high school I repeatedly had crushes on other boys and some of my male teachers. Walking home from high school when I was 12, it suddenly dawned on me that I was a homosexual. I laughed and spoke aloud, "I know what the problem is...I'm a homosexual!"

In 1976, many medical professionals in western countries like Australia still personally believed that homosexuality is a sexual deviancy. Before 1968 homosexuality had been claissified by at least one dominant Western Pschyciatric Association as a Sociopath Personality Disturbance under their pathology of mental disorders. When I was a teenager homosexuals were braodly thought of as deviants/perverts and there was considerable fear and hatred expressed towards them. This resulted in homsexuals suffering considerable physical and verbal abuse from most sectors of society. They also suffered considerable social, cultural and legal discrimination and isolation.

Consequently when I first realised that I was a homosexual these factors contributed to me wanting to be heterosexual. However, a naked woman revolted me. To me all women just looked the same. This 'sameness' was like how people from a different race which you are not familiar with all seem to look identical even though they're not at all. I honestly couldn't tell which women looked beautiful and which didn't. I spent a lot of time wondering how on earth did this happen to me? I thought that if I knew the answer then maybe I could reverse the outcome. I wrongly concluded that I was just Born this Way as that was all I could remember.

I became a practicing homosexual at the age of 13. I wagged school and was sodomised and molested by a paedophile down at the local beach. It was really just the next step on from my experiences of the paedophile I had been exposed to at Primary School. When I was 14 I had a school friend regularly sleep over on weekends and I would molest him. At 15 - 17 I travelled to high school on a train and frequently male ephebophiles would sit opposite staring at me lustfully while making discreet lewd gestures. I would have to close my eyes and think of a naked women so that I could stand up and exit the carriage without having an embarrassing bulge in my pants.

I told my parents and brothers and sister that I was a homosexual when I was fifteen. My Dad told me that it was evil and that I was demonic. I argued that if two men loved each other then there could be nothing wrong and hey I HAVE NO CHOICE in the matter anyway, so how can God hold it against me if I'm Born this Way. He left me crying in my bedroom as his judgement of me stung having shown no compassion and possible path to redemption. He left me feeling like I was the demon! In contrast my Mum came up to me afterwards and said, "I can never accept homosexuality because of what I believe but you are my son and regardless of what you do throughout your life, you will always be my son and I will always love you!" She then gave me the biggest bear hug and I will never foreget what she said and did. It meant so much! To my family being a homosexual gave inference that you were a paedophile; at the time they understood little difference between the two. When I told my older sister that I was gay one of the first things she said to me was, 'I don't mind that you're gay but don't you ever try anything out on one of my kids'. I couldn't believe that she'd think that I'd want to!

It was very frustrating that no-one seemed to understand that, as far as I was concerned, I had no choice!  I was told by many heterosexuals, however, that I did have a choice yet none of them could tell me how that choice was possible. It was as though they just thought that I could suddenly wake up one day and say, "Oh I've had enough of being gay, I'll just be straignt from now on". People just couldn't fathom that I felt zero sexual attraction for the opposite sex. Initially I felt so guilty and condemned about being a homosexual.

Consequently at fifteen and suffering depression, I attempted suicide several times. After the third unsuccessful attempt I was persuaded by my parents and the family doctor to see a psychiatrist who loaded me with anti-deviant/homosexual texts. She told me that I had to make 'the choice' and was trying to persuade me towards heterosexuality by presenting homosexuality as a pathology. I became fed up with other people telling me I had a choice when clearly with all of the options so far available, I did not! And I still could not fathom that if two men or two women loved each other and were committed to each other which included a sexual relationship that it could be classified as 'wrong'.

My older brother got me on to smoking dope thinking that it would do my nerves some good. I deliberately saw my psychiatrist for the last time stoned. "Ok I've made my choice", I lied to the psychiatrist. "I want to be a homosexual," I said definitively. You should have seen the horrified look on her face. She quickly retorted, "So you want to end up as one of those old men wearing tight leather pants, wiggling their bottoms and walking their poodles down the city's main fashion strip?" I smiled at her in contempt. Her homophobia was so glaringly obvious. I just said goodbye and advised that I wouldn't be coming again, stood up and walked out of her office. She called out after me as I walked away down the corridor, "You'll be back just wait and see, you'll be back!" I promised myself that I would never again allow homophobic heterosexual people make me hate myself so much that I would want to kill myself ever again. If society can't handle me being gay, something I did not ask to be and could not stop being, then that was society's problem, not mine. I was going to be young, gay and proud. I was going to find a loving relationship with another man and everyone else can get stuffed!

Drugs had a considerable influence in my life. I started chroming (sniffing glue, paint and petrol) and binge drinking at 12, smoking dope, hashish and oil at 15 and then heavily snorting speed and crank, popping barbiturates, and sniffing amyl nitrate during sex.  By the age of 18 I was an alcoholic and again felt suicidal because life just seemed so meaningless. Fortunately I never tried straight heroin. I had unintentionally overdosed several times on speed and crank and my older brother would often warn me, 'don't you touch heroin because you'll never know when to stop and that'll be the end of you.'  I knew he was right!

Between the ages of 13 to 21 I had many homosexual encounters and relationships; mostly with men 10 to 40 years older than myself. The longest relationship I had where we lived together lasted six months. My boyfriend wanted an open relationship so I gave him an ultimatum of me or sleeping around and he chose to sleep around. I was quite shattered as my dream of finding a loving and life time relationship with another man was quickly beginning to fade. After my boyfriend left me an older homosexual friend who I considered to be reasonably intelligent, as he had a Doctorate degree, said to me, 'Look here Geoff, many male homosexual relationships only last about 6 months. If you get two years then that's good. If you get five years then that's fantastic. Just appreciate what you do get and enjoy it while it lasts'. He then continued, 'Very few homosexual men have relationships that last more than 5 years and the few that do will pretty much always have an open relationship where at least one of them will be sleeping round'.

After this I began to abandon my idea of trying to find a monogamous heterosexual type of gay relationship and mostly frequented the beats (homosexual pick up places) where it was not uncommon for me to have several sexual liaisons within a few hours. By 20 I maintained several casual homosexual relationships at the same time. I had an insatiable sexual appetite. Older homosexual friends advised me that any apprehensive feelings I may have about promiscuity were a legacy of having been brought up in a homophobic family. I was naive enough to believe them not even considering that their encouragement was loaded with vested interest.

I started a hairdressing apprenticeship at 17 and after a few months I was kicked out of home. My parents would never completely turn their backs on me but neither did they want me in their home...now that I was a hairdresser I looked pretty gay and I was somewhat of an embarrassment. I worked in one of Australia's top salons. Everyone at work wanted to know if I was gay or not, but no one would just ask; so I kept them guessing for a few weeks. When I finally admitted that I was gay the boss' boyfriend said to me, 'Well you made the right choice you know! I can tell you men are much better than women.' I was somewhat confused by his words of supposed wisdom as they reminisced the concept of CHOICE again and I was amazed to find out that there were homosexuals who could actually choose. I was perhaps more amazed at discovering just how many men were bisexual and not exclusively homosexual like I was.

I was glad that I had no choice. I had grown up believing that Jesus is the son of God and therefore if I could choose, I might have felt compelled to choose heterosexuality in practice but burn with homosexual lust in thought; secretly being consumed by homosexual pornography and have clandestine homosexual flings only to afterwards be consumed by guilt. To me that would be like living a tormenting type of hell and one big lie and was something I would never be prepared, to do. I have met men who have done just this; at least until they were in their late 30s or early 40s when they would finally leave their wife and children to be with their gay partner(s). I just reassured myself that Jesus would not hold my homosexuality against me because I had no choice and generally I was a nice, caring person, I would say the Lord's prayer, read the Bible, I had become a voluntary telephone counsellor for a gay counselling service and would try to help others whenever possible.

I was completely delivered from my addictions to alcohol and drugs after attending Ed's meetings for the first few times. I just no longer had any need for them. I had no withdrawal symptoms. I also completely lost my sex drive for about three to four months. During this period, although I experienced no heterosexual feelings, I was free from the lust of homosexuality. It was a wonderful respite which strengthened my faith. After this time, however, my sex drive returned and I again had homosexual feelings, although I did not act on these feelings with other homosexuals and I desperately tried to not masturbate to give them another outlet.

It took about 18 months or more for the homosexual spirit to completely come out of me. During this period I was also delivered of other demons such as demons of alcholism and drug addicgtion, resentment, anger, bitterness, fear, anxiety, compulsion etc. Ed ministered to me one night a week at his meetings at the church. Sometimes I doubted but I kept seeing people being miraculously healed and delivered and this kept giving me faith that Jesus would also set me completely free from homosexuality. When the homosexual demon finally came out of me altogether, it came out screaming out of my mouth. I was convulsing and foaming excessively at the mouth; just like demons manifested in some people while they were being delivered as told in the Bible.  As the homosexual demon finally left I could actually feel it leave my body and although my eyes were closed I saw and felt an enormous black hole, which the demon was being sucked into as it left me. I could hear the scream of the demon at first through my own mouth and then not through me but outside of me, vanishing away into the vast distance of this seemingly endless black pit into which it disappeared.  I then felt empty, like a part of me was missing and this sensation lasted a few weeks. I imagine it may be a similar sensation that someone might feel when they first lose a limb. The only difference being that what I had always thought was a part of me, was never really a part of me at all and now it was gone! Suddenly I could really and properly comprehend that the belief that I was Born this Way was a delusion straight from the pit of Hell!

That night Ed confirmed to me that I was now delivered of homosexuality. Later he prayed that Jesus would fill me with his Holy Spirit, which did come to pass; I was not left clean and empty. Ed said, "There will be times when you will need more ministry but you will know when." He also said, "One day people will say to you that what you've just experienced, having a homosexual demon cast out of you, was never necessary. Well they're wrong. You know that and I know that! You couldn't have got out of homosexuality without that demon being cast out of you. Jesus doesn't want you to be a latent homosexual or bisexual because that demon's left lurking there in your mind. He wants you to be completely free". After the homosexual demon was cast out of me I started to test with my mind just to see if it really was gone. I would just think about a homosexual experience to check if the thought would produce any sexual arousal in me. To my amazement it didn't at all. However, I did this quite a number of times for several months until the act of doing so actually started to let the demon back in. I guess I lacked faith and wanted to keep reassuring myself that this was really all real because it was all such a mind blowing experience. Later when I told Ed what I'd done he quickly got it out again.

On a previous occasion while being delivered, I was lying on the floor after being blessed and happened to have a blocked nose, my mouth had become full of this clear, vile, putrid and thick spittle.  It was nothing like vomit or saliva and it smelled quite foul. Ed told me that every homosexual he delivers has this same putrid, thick spittle come out them during their deliverance. In my mind I felt like the devil laughed at me saying, 'Now I'm going to kill you'. I felt like I was going to choke on the voluminous goo in my mouth and suffocate because I was immobilised lying on the floor, not able to even turn my head to the side to expel the goo. Suddenly I felt a large pair of arms quickly scoop under me and flip me up in the air and I landed on my stomach and the goo flung out of my mouth. Afterwards I asked Ed's wife, "Who flipped me over? She said that no one had touched me. It had to have been an angel! 

Before the homosexual demon was cast out of me, some Christians told me that what Ed was doing was in itself demonic and that once I had accepted Jesus I was fully delivered and could not be controlled by a demon.  At the time this really upset me because I still had homosexual desires in my mind. If what they claimed was true then what Ed and the Holy Spirit had taught me was wrong and I was doomed to become the hypocrite I'd never wanted to be; wanting to be heterosexual but burning inside with homosexual lust. If I had believed them, or found this to be true, I would've gone back to living a homosexual lifestyle. Therefore, I wondered if it would be more logical to believe that I was not saved until I was completely delivered from homosexuality? However, I had sincerely and meaningfully repented, and my heart had already been changed and my life already transformed in so many ways that I could not believe this to be true either. I asked God to show me the truth and the Holy Spirit led me to certain scriptures in the Bible. He showed me Matthew 12:24-32 where Jesus was accused by the 'religious' of the day of being the prince of the demons because he could cast demons out of people ('religious' meaning the Jewish Pharisees and Sadducees and Scribes of the Law whom Jesus frequently rebuked because of their hypocrisy). The Bible describes this as blaspheming the Holy Spirit; in other words the 'religious' leaders of the day who should have known better were saying that something which was of God's Holy Spirit was actually of the Devil. The Holy Spirit also led me to John 13:27 which states that Satan entered Jesus' disciple Judas. At the same time a friend also showed  me in the bible where Jesus talking to Peter said 'get behind Me Satan'. I felt then, and know now, that it is possible for a Christian to be controlled by a demon. I also now understand that salvation and deliverance are really inseparable...to be saved means to be delivered of, and to be delivered means to be saved from.

When I was a homosexual I had never considered myself to be effeminate.  I remember, however, one boyfriend saying to me 'I don't normally go out with guys that are really queeny like you'.  Another boyfriend was watching me cook my tea and he laughed at me and said 'Your mannerisms are so camp'. After the homosexual demon was cast out of me I didn't decide to try to talk and act straight but my manner of behaviour just changed and the obvious physical evidence that I had been gay left me.

Several months after the homosexual spirit had been cast out of me Ed told me off for not doing my part, "Jesus has delivered you but you're not doing your part and dating girls". Frankly, it just hadn't entered my mind so I started to date girls. After my deliverance from homosexuality, and up to this time, I felt neither homosexual or heterosexual; I just felt nothing. The now much rarer times I masturbated I thought of nothing. However, once I started taking out girls I then definitely knew that I had become heterosexual. At the age of twenty-two I suddenly felt like a fifteen year old again and just holding a girlfriend's hand was enough for me to know that I was heterosexual. It then felt like Jesus took me through a crash course of the teen years I had missed out on and He prepared me for my wife. 

Before I met my wife I had seen a Christian video produced by the pastor of the world's largest church in Seoul, Korea (700 000+ congregation).  In the video the pastor was saying that if you want a partner you have to be very specific about the type of partner you want by praying about the colour of their hair, their height, their job etc.  At the time, having just been delivered from exclusive homosexuality, I had no idea what type of woman I was specifically attracted to. Suddenly most women were potentially attractive. But I listed that she should first love Jesus and be born-again, that she would be a good mother and that she would have an occupation honourable in God's eyes; my wife is a nurse so God must look very highly upon nurses and she's a fantastic mother and my best friend. One day when I was praying about getting a wife and going through my list, the Holy Spirit led me to the passage about the virtuous wife in Proverbs 31 starting at verse 10. I felt that Jesus was saying to me that he knows what is beautiful in a woman and would provide me with a wife as such if I just kept trusting in Him and following Him. And He did!  

Ed said that there would be times when I would again need more ministry and there were. In the earlier years after my deliverance I once confided to my mother about feeling like I needed some more deliverance and she snapped, "After all Jesus has done for you, how can you still be having trouble?" She spoke like she was telling off a naughty little boy. Such an expression of her fear felt like she was ready to give up on me but Jesus wasn't going to. I can't explain how condemning her outburst was. I cried out to Jesus, 'Don't let me go back to my own vomit like a dog does.' (2 Peter 2:22 & Proverbs 26:11)

Fortunately Ed's reaction was quite different. "Well you've got a chink in your armour somewhere", he said. "The devil knows where you're flesh is weakest and of course that's where he will try to attack you. He's not going to waste time trying to get you into a casino when you've never had a gambling problem, but he will try to get you back to where you have come from." Ed would then deliver me, just as the Appostle Paul instructs in Galatians 6:1. This time the deliverance was very quick and easy because the demon was only attacking my mind and wasn't residing in my heart because of repeated and practised sin. Even now I am constantly renewing my mind recognising any chinks in my armour and letting the Holy Spirit make me more like Jesus.

Christians are supposed to be warriors and the battle always begins in the mind. The Appostle Paul describes this battle very clearly in Ephesians Chapter 6:10-18 The Message:

And that about wraps it up. God is strong and he wants you strong. So take everything the Master has set out for you, well made weapons of the best materials and put them to use so that you be able to stand up to everything the Devil throws your way. This isn't some afternoon athletic contest that we'll walk away from and forget about in a couple of hours. This is for keeps. A life or death fight to finish against the Devil and all of his angels.

Be prepared. You're up against far more that you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get. Every weapon God has issued so that when it's all over but the fighting you will still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace faith and salvation are more than words, learn how to apply them you'll need them throught your life. God's word is an indespensable weapon. In the same way prayer is essential. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other's spirits up so that no-one falls behind or drops out.

Many people do not understand the deliverance process. When I first started attending Ed's meetings and the Pentecostal church, a sailor I'd met who Ed had delivered from homosexuality told me that he had just gone out on the weekend and had group sex with two men. I suggested to him that he'd better get back and see Ed for some more ministry. He said that when he told this to another Pastor who was counselling him, the Pastor said that as this had happened only once, it didn't mean that the homosexual demon was back in him. I was quite concerned about this, selfishly more so for myself, as this did not meet my expectations of being delivered from homosexuality. When I shared this with Ed he said that the Pastor's advice was wrong and that he would have a talk with the pastor.

I now fight the Devil the moment I'm aware of him trying to snare me into anything; just as Jesus did in the desert after his 40 days of fasting and the Devil tried to tempt him. The difference though between the way Jesus managed sin and how we manage sin is this: Jusus was absolutely sinless. Even though the Devil tempted him he never accepted any temptation. Had've he even pondered or relished one suggestion that Devil threw at Him, He would've given the Devil immediate power over himself.

Sin gives the devil power over you. People say, 'Well what is sin'. The Appostle John (1John 3:4 The Message) wrote, "All who indulge in a sinful life are dangerously lawless because sin is major disruption of God's order. The Appostle Paul said (1 Timothy 1:9-11 The Message), "It's obvious isn't it that the law code (The Law Code given to Moses) isn't primarily for those who live responsibly but the irresponsible, who defy all authority riding roughshod over God, life, sex, truth, whatever. They are contemptuous of this great message I've been put in charge of by this great God.

In other Bible translations the contemptuous who disrupt God's order are summed up as follow: the lawless and unruly, insubordinate, the ungodly and sinful, the irreverent and profane. Those who strike and beat and even kill mother and father. Manslayers, murderers. Immoral and impure persons, perverts, those who abuse themselves with men, sodomites, homosexuals, kidnappers, liars, purjerers and whatever else is opposed to wholesome teaching and sound doctrine.

No-one is sinless like Jesus. Even Born-Again Christians sin but not habitually and deliberately; if they are truly regenerated by God's Holy Spirit (1 John 3:4-10). Consequently the Devil does and will get into us to some extent until we are in our sinless resurrected bodies at the completion of time, promised to everyone who trusts in God's only son, Jesus.

I now try to not let the Devil get in to me to begin with. But the moment that I'm aware that he has got a foot in door then I tell him and his angels (demons) to nick off in the name of Jesus. And if that doesn't work then I go to someone who I can trust and I know is moving under the annointing of the Holy Spirit and I get them to minister to me. If needed, I then getting ministry until I know that I am free. This is how Jesus told us to pray: Lead us not into temptaion but deliver us from evil. In other words He's saying that we should pray: Father don't let me sin but if I do then deliver me from it. The devil doesn't hide behind a bush and just jump into you as you're walking down the street. He gets in through the power of suggestion into your mind just as he did the first time with Adam and Eve, arousing the mind through the lust of your eyes, body and flesh. I don't wait until the Devil's got me doing whatever it is he's trying to get me to do before telling him to nick off in the name of Jesus. If you've got Jesus in you you attack him immediately with God's Word and the Power of His Holy Spirit. Unless you read the Bible (especially the New Testament) you won't know what God's Word is and will have nothing to fight with and coming under an annointed ministry as I did with Ed is the best way to recieve ministry and to learn about moving under the power of the Holy Spirit yourself.

When the homosexual demon is 100% gone, you don't feel any homosexual arousal at all...the temptation that the devil is throwing at you is just like water off a duck's back. But if you do feel arousal by thoughts of sexual perversion in your mind then he's already there. Once you have pondered and accepted those thoughts then the demon enters your mind and continues to entice you to sin baiting you any way possible. If you look at pornography the demons will replay it in your mind over and over again enticing you to want more and more until just looking is not enough and you have to do what you have fed into yourself. Once we begin to actually do what the devil has planted into our minds then the demon can move deeper and down into our hearts, where it builds a stronghold within us in our flesh. Praise God that Jesus came to abolish the devil's ways (1 John3:4-10)! I'm amazed that these demons can get such a strong hold on us at such a young age.

No matter how much I wanted to be straight, which at the age of 20 I did not even desire or contemplate, no amount of myself trying to control my own mind and flesh has delivered me. It has certainly aided the deliverance process but only the Blood of Jesus and the power of His Holy Spirit has actually set me free. My conviction that homosexuality is a sin and is displeasing to God and subsequently wanting to be heterosexual, has opened me up to Jesus' Holy Spirit power to deliver me from demons which entered me as a consequences of: my exposure to abusive sexual perversion and also physical abuse as a child; as well as my own sinful flesh. The blood of Jesus and the power of His Holy Spirit continues to deliver me and ensures that I do not just become a latent homosexual or bisexual.Someone once said of me that I had gone' back into the closet'. I never was in any 'closet' to begin with so I'm certainly not going to step into one now. It is amazing, miraculous and wonderful to now be heterosexual and not burn with homosexual perversions!

Paul has written in Philippians 2:12-13  that salvation is ongoing and something to be 'worked out'; so too is deliverance ongoing. John Wesley wrote that demons come out of people instantly or over a period of time by varying degrees. I have experienced both. Even now after Ed has died the blessings which Jesus gave to me through his ministry increase and endure. Through the power of the Holy Spirit my life is heading slowly towards the perfection of Jesus. I truly feel that I have been born again; literally given a whole new life. Jesus is very real to my children in faith and through continual experience. They will never experience what I went through. My wife and I can now minister to our kids and others similarly as Ed ministered to us.

The relationiship I have with my wife cannot be compared with any relationship I ever experienced as a homosexual or have witnessed amongst homosexuals. The longer we are married the deeper and more fullfiling our relationship becomes in every way. I thought that our marriage was very fullfiling when we were first married but I'm amazed at just how much more fullfilling it keeps becoming. Since sin is simply a major disruption of God's order, homosexuality along with other sexual perversions, adultery and fornication are major disruptions of the 'marriage' that God has ordered between a man and a women. If I think back to how I was as a drug and alcohol dependent homosexual it is hard to believe that it was me; it is as though it was somebody else. Ed once summed up my testimony saying "It's really quite simple. Geoff had a homosexual demon in him. It's now been cast out and kept out so he's no longer a homosexual. Simple as that!"

The evangelist who delivered me never sought publicity, notoriety among people, or money throughout his ministry. As such I have not revealed his full identity as he always wanted people to focus on Jesus and never himself. He was invited by Protestant and Catholic churches to minister to people around the world and Australia. He became a Christian in his late 50s during the 1970's. He was a very successful businessman. He sold his mansion, expensive cars and racing horses and gave away just about all of his money and stepped out in faith with his wife and children to serve Jesus as an evangelist. They lived in a modest rental house for the first twenty-five years or so of his ministry. His children are now grown up. All of them have tertiary qualifications and one is a leading scientist. All of his children and their spouses supported his ministry. He ministered deliverance and healing for 33 years.  He never asked for an offering. On occasions I heard him say during his sermons, "I don't want your money. I don't need your money. My FATHER supplies everything I need. But if you're desperately short a quid I'll give you some!" I know that he has given many people a few quid, and others more like hundreds or several thousand dollars. I've never seen any minister dare to stand before hundreds of people and say and do anything like this. I've been to many other evangelical rallies which were full of emotionally charged pleas to get some money from you, not to give it to you. Ed once said to me that giving people money doesn't necessarily solve any of their problems and that sometimes it can just make it worse. What they usually need more is deliverance and when delivered then their money problems can get sorted out. Ed always said that he would never retire and that he would minister until he went home to Jesus. The last public meeting he held was about 6 weeks before he died in his ninetieth year in 2005. He exampled to everyone around him not only how to live a real and victorious Christian life working for Jesus but how to die victoriously as a Christian as well. I once said to Ed while we were talking in the prayer line, "I love you Ed." He grinned and said, "You don't really love me. It's the Jesus in me that you love. Why if Jesus wasn't in me you wouldn't want to have a thing to do with me!"  

During the 22 years that I attended his open meetings, I witnessed many miracles happening to myself and hundreds, or more likely thousands, of other people. I saw Jesus ministering through this man in humility, love and compassion.  I've seen a  baby that was born blind restored with perfect vision, people healed of various types of cancers, a person with HIV healed, different types of hepatitis healed, schizophrenics and the criminally insane delivered and restored to go on living normal lives, broken bones instantly healed, a punctured eye instantly healed, chronic back sufferers healed, a paraplegic freed from a walking chair, twisted and deformed bones and joints straightened, arthritis cured, diabetes healed, glaucoma healed, a collapsed lung made completely normal. A Pastor with terrible eczema woke up the next morning after being ministered to and there was a layer of his skin shredded on his bed. His body was covered in perfect new baby pink skin and he never suffered eczema again. A young man with autism was completely healed. All of these healings I've mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg. I have a son with a severe intellectual disability who just continues to reach milestones that he was never expected to achieve. I have also witnessed many people being delivered and healed from demons which have been crippling them with physical and emotional pain such as fear, anxiety, anorexia, bulimia, murder, epilepsy, hatred, unforgiveness, selfishness, pride, homosexuality in men and women, asthma, alcoholism, drug addiction, and many types of addictions and phobias and countless other demonic afflictions. 'Religious' people often said to Ed, "Your ministry is great, if only you'd just do the healings and leave out the demon part". And he'd reply to them, 'If I didn't cast out the demons then over half of them would never get healed!" 'Religious' people would also criticise him for allowing children into the meetings because people manifested demons during their deliverance. The 'religious' themselves were not use to this and if they came in to the meetings to watch it aroused the fear in themselves. He would reply to them, "Lots of these kids wouldn't have been born if it wasn't for this ministry". Certainly my four kids wouldn't have!  

If I had not experienced the love, power and reality of Jesus as I did through this man's ministry, or one like it, I would never have become a born-again Christian; I just would have falsely gone on thinking that I was a Christian anyway. I would never have known the difference; that is the difference between what I was as an unconvicted habitual sinner, compared to having my chains freed and bondages broken, blessings restored to me in abundance and the peace of knowing that God is my Father, that He cares for me, loves me, disciplines me, and has given to me the free gift of His Holy Spirit and the gift of everlasting life in His Kingdom. Jesus is in me. Once I thought I was a Christian because I believed the historical account that Jesus is the son of God. Now I know that I am a Christian because I trust Him, cling to and adhere to Him and rely on Him. I don't know in your country how many Christian men and women are like what this evangelist was. In Australia I have only seen, and currently experience, one other ministry with the same magnitude of Jesus' power and compassion and love. I encourage you to ask Jesus to lead you to stewards where you live who in nothing but humility, love and compassion are doing what Jesus said to do. Seek them out. The real thing is so much better than playing church!

And he said to them, "Go into all the world and preach and publish openly the good news (the Gospel) to every creature [of the whole human race]. He who believes [who adheres to and trusts in and relies on the Gospel and Him Whom it sets forth] and is baptized will be saved [from the penalty of eternal death]; but he who does not believe [who does not adhere to and trust in and rely on the Gospel and Him Whom it sets forth] will be condemned. And these attesting signs will accompany those who believe: in My name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new languages; They will pick up serpents; and [even] if they drink anything deadly, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will get well. ".

(Mark Chapter 16 v 15-18 Amplified Bible)

 

Amen - Let it be so.

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