rhomphaeam
Member
My witness of Christ (part one)
Salvation came to me in a prison cell in Stafford Prison on the Crescent Wing on the 10th May 1984. I was serving a 30 month custodial sentence for theft of goods under the 1968 Theft Act. On that morning of the 10th May I was brought up from the Block - punishment cells - having been taken before the prison Governor for conduct that was against prison regulations. I lost 60 days of my remission period and so effectively 60 days were added to the time I would have to serve to complete the sentence of the Court.
The previous evening at around 21:00 Hrs six prison officers burst into my cell which at that time was on the Main Wing of the prison and carried me down to the block. They had concluded an investigation into my conduct in the prison as a trusted inmate where I had been giving other inmates extra wages and fiddling the books which I was in charge of in the Pay Canteen. I was already in a single occupancy cell on the Main Wing. Yet my cell was twice the size of a normal cell and shaped rather differently as it was one of the cells that was built into the Main building for trusted inmates - they were known as Red Bands.
In that rather splendid cell I had books, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, art equipment, divination tools and a host of other things so my life was in fact extremely comfortable and pleasing to my flesh. I worked in the Prison Pay Canteen and my job was to process the inmates who were coming into the prison from Remand Prisons across the region. They always came with a Pay Slip and that slip contained the amount of money they had in their prison account. So when they came I selected all the men I knew from within the prison system and destroyed their slips wrote new ones and increased their savings by as much as 100%. For which I took a 50% cut.
It was on one of these Remand Prison intakes that a man by the name of Stephen suddenly appeared in my office and at first I though that I was in for another 50% cut because I knew him and so knew that I could trust him. But as my eyes settled on him a thought suddenly came into my mind that somehow he was different. And he being the great brute that he was came and sat down right next to me and said quietly "I have become a Christian." I wasn't going to argue with him and so I processed his Pay Slip penny for penny accurately. Then he left. It was three days later that the Prison Guards burst into my cell.
When I was carried down the Block - punishment cells - I was so enraged that I began to manifest demonically and by the time we got to the block the guards were shaking and almost seemed to be powerless. I should say that at this time I was already a committed occultist and my cell contained a 200 page occult theosophical framework I was writing in order to establish an occult order when I left prison. As they tried to close the cell door they found that they could not do it and I demanded that they went and brought me some paper and a pen. On that agreement the door was shut and a few minutes later the shaken guard brought the paper and the pen. I then sat down and began to write. All I can remember of what I wrote consist of no more than one line.
"They do not comprehend that the greatest power is hate and not love.”
So the next morning I went before the Governor and had the 60 days added to my sentence. I lost everything from my Main Wing cell and all I had to take with me to my new isolation cell was my bedding and my occult theosophy. It was 09:30 Hrs on the 10th May 1984 when I was taken to the Crescent Wing which at the time was a filthy and vile Victorian prison block built by mad men who imagined that austerity was a benefit. As I arrived on the wing the other inmates on that landing were slopping out (an amusing term to describe emptying ones potty), and as I turned to look across the landing in the very opposite cell door way was Stephen who had so sweetly told me that he was now a Christian just a few days previously in the Pay Canteen. So I shot across whilst I had the chance and asked if he had any books.
When I entered his cell it was free of all pornography on the walls and I joked that it looked like a monks cell in an Abbey. He gave me a book by Rita Nightingale called Freed for Life. I looked at him in disbelief and asked him somewhat carefully if he was jesting. He just loved me right back and so I took this book that is a testimony of a sister who was saved in prison some years earlier across to my new solitary dwelling and the Prison Officer closed the door. By this time it was 10:00 Hrs. By 12:30 Hrs when the cell door was opened for me to go and collect my food to return to my cell and eat it I was completely changed and my occult theosophy was in the bin.
I had gone and laid on my bed to begin reading this book Stephen had given me and before I was more than a few pages into it my cell was filled with the presence of the Father and I threw the book over my face and cried out "Forgive me Father, I did not know that you were real". I was not only shattered by the presence of the Father in my cell filling the room and filling me also, but I was deeply grieved that I had sung His praises as a choir boy when I was seven and had been held in His hands as a child and had not realised His great love and His mercy also. In the interim years not only did I forget what I had known as a child, but I forgot God Himself and so came to a place that His presence seemed as though it were the first time I had known Him. I wrote a prayer to commemorate this recollection when as a seven year old boy sitting in a theatre with my class mates from the same Religious School and knowing then that despite the insanity of my troubled childhood the Father knew me and He had His hand on my life.
Continued......
Rhomphaeam
Salvation came to me in a prison cell in Stafford Prison on the Crescent Wing on the 10th May 1984. I was serving a 30 month custodial sentence for theft of goods under the 1968 Theft Act. On that morning of the 10th May I was brought up from the Block - punishment cells - having been taken before the prison Governor for conduct that was against prison regulations. I lost 60 days of my remission period and so effectively 60 days were added to the time I would have to serve to complete the sentence of the Court.
The previous evening at around 21:00 Hrs six prison officers burst into my cell which at that time was on the Main Wing of the prison and carried me down to the block. They had concluded an investigation into my conduct in the prison as a trusted inmate where I had been giving other inmates extra wages and fiddling the books which I was in charge of in the Pay Canteen. I was already in a single occupancy cell on the Main Wing. Yet my cell was twice the size of a normal cell and shaped rather differently as it was one of the cells that was built into the Main building for trusted inmates - they were known as Red Bands.
In that rather splendid cell I had books, tobacco, alcohol, drugs, art equipment, divination tools and a host of other things so my life was in fact extremely comfortable and pleasing to my flesh. I worked in the Prison Pay Canteen and my job was to process the inmates who were coming into the prison from Remand Prisons across the region. They always came with a Pay Slip and that slip contained the amount of money they had in their prison account. So when they came I selected all the men I knew from within the prison system and destroyed their slips wrote new ones and increased their savings by as much as 100%. For which I took a 50% cut.
It was on one of these Remand Prison intakes that a man by the name of Stephen suddenly appeared in my office and at first I though that I was in for another 50% cut because I knew him and so knew that I could trust him. But as my eyes settled on him a thought suddenly came into my mind that somehow he was different. And he being the great brute that he was came and sat down right next to me and said quietly "I have become a Christian." I wasn't going to argue with him and so I processed his Pay Slip penny for penny accurately. Then he left. It was three days later that the Prison Guards burst into my cell.
When I was carried down the Block - punishment cells - I was so enraged that I began to manifest demonically and by the time we got to the block the guards were shaking and almost seemed to be powerless. I should say that at this time I was already a committed occultist and my cell contained a 200 page occult theosophical framework I was writing in order to establish an occult order when I left prison. As they tried to close the cell door they found that they could not do it and I demanded that they went and brought me some paper and a pen. On that agreement the door was shut and a few minutes later the shaken guard brought the paper and the pen. I then sat down and began to write. All I can remember of what I wrote consist of no more than one line.
"They do not comprehend that the greatest power is hate and not love.”
So the next morning I went before the Governor and had the 60 days added to my sentence. I lost everything from my Main Wing cell and all I had to take with me to my new isolation cell was my bedding and my occult theosophy. It was 09:30 Hrs on the 10th May 1984 when I was taken to the Crescent Wing which at the time was a filthy and vile Victorian prison block built by mad men who imagined that austerity was a benefit. As I arrived on the wing the other inmates on that landing were slopping out (an amusing term to describe emptying ones potty), and as I turned to look across the landing in the very opposite cell door way was Stephen who had so sweetly told me that he was now a Christian just a few days previously in the Pay Canteen. So I shot across whilst I had the chance and asked if he had any books.
When I entered his cell it was free of all pornography on the walls and I joked that it looked like a monks cell in an Abbey. He gave me a book by Rita Nightingale called Freed for Life. I looked at him in disbelief and asked him somewhat carefully if he was jesting. He just loved me right back and so I took this book that is a testimony of a sister who was saved in prison some years earlier across to my new solitary dwelling and the Prison Officer closed the door. By this time it was 10:00 Hrs. By 12:30 Hrs when the cell door was opened for me to go and collect my food to return to my cell and eat it I was completely changed and my occult theosophy was in the bin.
I had gone and laid on my bed to begin reading this book Stephen had given me and before I was more than a few pages into it my cell was filled with the presence of the Father and I threw the book over my face and cried out "Forgive me Father, I did not know that you were real". I was not only shattered by the presence of the Father in my cell filling the room and filling me also, but I was deeply grieved that I had sung His praises as a choir boy when I was seven and had been held in His hands as a child and had not realised His great love and His mercy also. In the interim years not only did I forget what I had known as a child, but I forgot God Himself and so came to a place that His presence seemed as though it were the first time I had known Him. I wrote a prayer to commemorate this recollection when as a seven year old boy sitting in a theatre with my class mates from the same Religious School and knowing then that despite the insanity of my troubled childhood the Father knew me and He had His hand on my life.
Continued......
Rhomphaeam