About the Author

Foreword:  I am not a pastor, prophet or apostle etc.  I do not have a degree in religion or theology or the likes.   But I do have a BA degree - I am ‘B’orn ‘A’gain and the Holy Spirit leads me and you and any truly born again Christian into ALL Truth.  We all have access to the Word of God - use it!

My Testimony: 

My name is Deborah, I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ into my life at the age of 9 but by the age of 14 something started to go horribly wrong in my personal life.  Home life was exceptionally good and I had an excellent Christian up bringing. But I found myself propelled towards ungodly things and soon began to rebel against my parents and God.

I was always a lonely person with very few friends and found it difficult to be ‘accepted’ in what one would consider in today’s world ‘normal’ circles.  I would make myself familiar with the darker side of life as this complemented how I felt about the world around me.   As time went by I met new friends and was introduced to Heavy Metal.  I found this type of music really enjoyable and soon my ‘metal’ personality was taking shape.  Gotta dress the style, black, black and more black.  The heavy metal I am talking about you won’t hear on the radio – thrash and death metal.  

My mother would ask me over and over again (like a broken record).  “Who is Lord of your life, Deborah?” “Does Jesus not mean anything to you anymore?” “Who is controlling you?” because she could see the transformation taking place as she would find demonic looking LP covers, occult books and trinkets hidden in my closet and under my bed.  I would ignore her, shout at her, tell her to leave me alone, tell her she knows nothing about me etc.   I had found my place in the world.  A place where I could hide in the shadows, a place where I felt accepted.

I was now in my early 20’s, I had graduated from school and I was working and studying at the same time.  Even though I was now ‘technically’ old enough to make my own decisions, my mother still questioned my choices. To make her feel better I would lie and tell her things like ‘just because I like this type of music does not mean I listen to the lyrics’, or ‘not all heavy metal is satanic’ or ‘my friends do not worship Satan, they might be atheistic or whatever, but that’s as far as it goes’ – oh the list goes on.

I had a huge cd collection by the age of 26 and my favorite heavy metal was black metal.  I knew practically every band and album out there;  I was a ‘heavy metal encyclopedia’ amongst my friends.  But deep down something was not right.  Deep down I knew that all these years I was wrong in rejecting Jesus.  But how do I stop listening to something I love so much, how do I change after nearly 17 years of metal mayhem and what about my friends?  

One night I had a revelation, I would destroy every cd that I owned and turn my life around.  I prayed and destroyed hundreds of cds.  As I was doing this ‘something’ appeared in my room, it was about 1m tall and stood at the base of my bed.  I got the ‘feeling’ it was there because I was breaking the chains Satan had over my life.  I rebuked this demonic spirit in the name of Jesus and it ‘went away’. The next morning I awoke and I felt ill.  I was dizzy and my pulse was racing at 110 beats per minutes, I felt nauseous and I was sweating – I through I was going to die.   I prayed, my mother prayer;  it was so bad she called my grandmother over who prayed for me.  

After this ordeal I promised God I would never buy another metal cd again.  2 months later I was out shopping and stopped at my favorite cd store to say hello to some friends I knew who worked there.  And low and behold they show me the new cd of one my favorite bands that just arrived.  I thought to myself, ‘No, I don’t want it, I can’t buy it’.  I left the shop empty handed.  That afternoon I returned to by the cd.  On arriving home with my new purchase the Holy Spirit was convicting me, ‘why did you buy this, you know what you did is wrong?” But my answer was, “it’s ok, I’ve learnt my lesson, I promise I’ll only listen to the music and never read the lyrics or learn them.”  This seemed to be the answer to my problem.  I believed I could still listen to my favorite music and appease God at the same time.
  
So I had my friends, I had my music, I had a very good IT job, I bought my own house, I bought a relatively expensive car and I regularly travelled overseas on holidays - what more did I need?  What a question!!   Anyhow, so now I’m  29 years old and I feel depressed.  Something is missing from my life.  I don’t know what it is but I feel sad.  I visit friends and they can see something is wrong, I explain to them I am just going through a bit of depression and I’ll get over it.  (Note, depression had been a part of my whole life, from as early as the age of 11 from what I can remember but I always got over it).  Then the dreams started.
   
The first dream I had was terrible. I woke up and I felt like I was in a twilight world.  I felt ‘cold’ the entire day.  The second dream was horrific – no horror movie out there could compare to what I dreamt.  I woke up in shock, I was covered with sweat and for a whole week I felt detached from the world and I felt this cold feeling again.   I was worried because these dreams were not natural.   They were completely demonic.  My depression started to spiral downwards, I became more of a recluse – I stopped visiting my friends and family.  I then thought that maybe I needed a holiday and that I was over worked.  So I took 3 weeks leave from work.  During this time I locked myself in my home, practically stopped eating and began wondering on ways on how to take my life – during this time I was praying profusely asking Jesus to save me from this horrible turmoil.

My prayers went from moderate to extreme, begging God to help me, as  I went from just crying to sobbing my heart out as my depression went from bad to worse.   It was a Monday night and I dreamt a dream that seemed to put my whole life on a movie reel.  However this was no Disney movie, but another sick, horrific, twisted dream that ended with me being bitten by a really tiny snake.  This angry little snake bit me because at the end of my dream I was chasing an horrible looking old man, who told me that he was the cause of my problems and I needed to catch him if I could.  As I got closer to him I was confronted by this snake.  After it bit me I reached down and picked it up my its head, squeezing it as hard as I could, my words where to this horrible old man, ‘is all you can throw at me?” and his reply was, “no”.  Next minute a giant snake about 6m long and about 30cm thick came slithering towards and very quickly I might add.  I woke up.  

A friend of mine phoned me who I had been avoiding (like the rest of my friends) and begged me to let him come and see me as he wanted to talk to me.  I agreed, he arrived at my home on Thursday evening.  We sat down and I began to tell him about what was happening to me.  I began to tell him about my current dreams and about one that I had was when I was 13 years old (and never forgot).  It involved people standing in a house made of wood and they were on fire.  As I was telling him about my dreams his eyes went huge as if he had a revelation, but he looked at though he had just died and entered the gates of hell as well.  He told me about a book he had just finished reading and that my dreams I told him about were depicted in this book.  He said that I should read this book as he thinks it’s going to solve my problem.  I refused.  He begged me and I refused some more.  I told him that this book he was reading was demonic and I refuse to read it.  Well… what happened next is something quite unfathomable.   A few minutes later he became dizzy and tried to stand up but struggled as he almost lost his balance.  That is when all hell broke loose in my home. It was if the air around us became as dense as could be, almost like if one was put inside a decompression chamber.  And I ‘saw’ something fly towards me, as though the air itself rushed in my direction.  My ears began to ache because whatever was hanging over me felt like it was crushing the air around my head.  My friend looked like had been removed from earth and placed in hell – as he later described what he saw flying and crawling around my home.   I begged my friend to stay with me that night as there was no ways I was going to stay in my home alone.  I lay in bed with my bible open at psalms and I read it out loud for the rest of the night.
 
My battle had just began;  the sad part was my battle was not the demonic spirits, my battle was to find a Christian out there who could help me.  Shockingly there are very few.  And even more shocking are the Pastors out there who have ‘got the papers’ to confirm they are Pastors, but that’s about as far as it goes. 

My friend unfortunately decided that ‘these things’ just happen and are ‘quite normal’ and still to this day refuses to accept Jesus into his life.

So to cut an extremely long story shorter.  A month prior to all this happening I found a church to go to and I re-dedicated my life to Jesus, I repented for everything I did and changed my ways.  The day after all horror broke loose in my home I contacted the pastor of this church and told him about what had happened.  I told him I did not know what to do and his response to me was, ‘well I see it’s getting quite late now, don’t watch any horror movies’.  I was flabbergasted!  You’re supposed to be a Pastor? You’re supposed to help me, not make a joke of the situation and tell me not to watch any horror movies!  I realized that anything I did from that moment on I was going to have to fight for it.
 
That Sunday, I went to the same church, I walked up to the Pastor and told him I wanted to be baptized that day.  He said he could not do it and suggested I do it in summer (when it’s warmer).  I thought to myself, “is this guy for real?”  I argued with him and told him that it had to be today!  After a few minutes of disagreement he accepted.  I was baptized along with my father that Sunday afternoon in an 8°C swimming pool in the middle of winter.  When I came up out of the water it felt as though my entire past had been erased.  Since that day I have never been the same.  Thank the Lord Jesus Christ!

A woman in the church had over heard my situation and came to speak to me, she told me that she would help me remove the demonic spirits in my home as the Pastor clearly was not interested.  The Pastor even had the audacity to ask me if I was taking drugs! 

I lost all my friends, no let me rephrase - I left them all.  I was verbally insulted, sworn at and told what a pathetic person I was for becoming a Christian.  Some told me that I could remain friends with them but only if I never spoke about God to them.  It was ok for them to insult and blaspheme Jesus in front of me but I was not allowed to counter act.  Hmmm decisions, decisions, oh what do I do!  I know, I’ll choose Jesus.  End of Story!

At this stage in my life my biblical knowledge was minimal and my fear and doubt that I was not strong enough to handle the demonic manifestation in my home was very apparent.  But I did not understand at that stage that it’s not my power that makes demons flee (I have NO power) but it is the power of Jesus Christ that makes demons flee.  Fear is Satan’s greatest tool, he tells you that you are not strong enough to stand against him.  He tries to convince you that Jesus is weak.  He places doubt in your mind as to whether you are truly saved.  He tries to confuse you and deceive you all the time by using Christians and non-Christians alike.   Therefore you need to be vigilant and stand guard at all times and DISCERN everything that comes your way.  If it differs even slightly from the Word of God – BEWARE!

I would like to tell all those Christians out there who listen to Christian Heavy Metal that it’s wrong and very dangerous.  You can’t mix music like that with the word of God.  It might seem ‘ok’ and your Christian faith might ‘be ok’ for now, but you are playing with fire.  I believe there is a demonic spirit associated with this type of music hence you find it difficult to listen to anything else.   Even though it’s Christian Heavy Metal it’s still associated with dark thoughts.  Jesus is NEVER associated with dark thoughts!  This music is not God glorifying.  You will argue that the lyrics are Christian.  Are they really?  If you can’t give up this music to edify Jesus then there is clearly a problem.  

I wrote the above testimony about myself in relative detail, in the hope that I can help someone out there who is in the same predicament I was.   The answer is;  Accept Jesus Christ into your life as your Lord and Saviour, ask for forgiveness for everything you have done and most importantly change your ways - turn your life completely over to Jesus.  If you don’t there is no hope otherwise.  Without Jesus, your life means nothing and you are on a road to destruction.