YAHWEH SHALOM. Numb.6v22-27. Ps.20v1-4. 1Pet.5v7.

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A TESTIMONY FROM BILL AND PAULINE TURNER.

My parents accepted Christ in about 1929, in a divine healing crusade in Hanley in the Potteries conducted by Edward Jefferies. An estimated 18 thousand people accepted Christ in about six weeks in these services. After the crusade it took a two ton truck to carry away the leg irons and crutches, etc., that people had left behind after they were healed by God. After accepting Jesus into their lives my parents attended the fervent and powerful services and regular evangelistic campaigns at the Methodist Church at Ipstones. Some members were known to have spent whole nights in prayer and worship to God, and one preacher had experienced proven visions of God. My uncle Jim wept for three weeks in holy wonder after having a vision of our Lord praying for His Church. I was born into this lively Christian atmosphere on July 29th. 1931. I remember clearly my mother asking me to let Jesus into my heart when I was about 4, I did so, and as a result of this, from about eight onwards I sometimes used to read over 20 chapters of the Bible a day, and with tears running down my face told the Lord Jesus how much loved Him. In the 1940's, after our move from Ipstones to Leek, my parents, greatly missing the exceptional spiritual fellowship of the Methodist Church at Ipstones, drifted away from God. During this time, at the age of about 10, I prayed for months for God to take me home to Heaven. God answered me one night with an audible voice in my bedroom, He said to me, "It is not for thee." So I did not pray that way any more.

On two occasions, between the age of about eight to twelve, God gave me the same awesome vision of a person in Hell and on both occasions He let me feel the mental torment that they were in. This torment came from the evil that the person had chosen and loved, and it tormented their mind in the most dreadful way. As I watched this vision God enabled me to feel a great period of time passing by; how long I do not know, but I was given the impression of many centuries passing by, and a hopeless future for this person, because of the evil within them. I am not saying that this vision was teaching the traditional view of eternal punishing, for this vision did not exclude annihilation, but it certainly conveyed the determination of the person to sin eternally and the pain that evil inflicts on those who embrace it. The lake of fire had already destroyed the body of the person I saw, and they were in the mists of eternal darkness spoken of in 2Pet.2v17. and Jude.v13.. There was no torment from God, the torment was caused by the gnawing worm of evil within their mind, as Jesus Himself states three times in the Majority Text of Mk.9v44,46,48. In spite of the torment their evil was causing them, the person showed no signs of any desire for repentance and righteousness. After over 50 years this twice repeated vision still lives with me, and I am full of gratitude to God for sending Jesus to save us from our sins, and the horrific end of the wicked.

During the 1940's my father became a drunkard, and ended up by often consuming over 20 pints of beer a night. The church I attended had no spiritual life, or real Christian fellowship in it, and I suffered spiritually as a result. One Sunday night in 1949, God led me to the Assembly of God Church in Leek, and I reconsecrated my life to God. With the help of Pastor Roberts, a godly and prayerful man, I deepened my experience of God and was baptised in the Holy Spirit. My mother attended the church and she reconsecrated her life to the Lord.

My father reacted badly to our new Christian experience and we suffered very real hostility and persecution. Our lives were even in danger at times. On one occasion my father turned all six of the gas stove taps on while we were upstairs in bed. We opened the bedroom window wide open and a strong East wind, undoubtedly sent by God, blowing directly through the window kept the poisonous gas from entering the room; which felt as if it was full of God's angels. A short time later my father attacked me and broke my finger and nose and turned me out of home, and I was away from home for about two years, until my father came back to Jesus.

During the first part of these two years I was still at the Leek High School. After this I went to the Kenley Bible School for a year, and after working for the Home Missions for a while, I stayed for a few months with my godly old grandmother at Ipstones. My mother spent a considerable part of the two years I was away from home praying on the stairs at night, as my father, lying in bed in a drunken stupor, continually threatened to kill her if he could get his hands on her. Dad's enormous strength would have made it easy for him to carry out this threat, for he could lift one hundredweight above his head in one hand. The trials that my mother endured with my father made her seek God in a way few people have done, and this resulted in God giving her an outstanding prophetic ministry; and on many occasions she had personal, national and international events revealed to her BEFORE they happened.

God told my mother to love my father and let her words be few, and this she did, and was a wonderful caring wife, and as Peter tells us in 1Pet.3v1?6., she did not preach at him, but tried to win him "without a word." However, in spite of her exemplary life as a wife, my father finally turned my mother and brother out of home and they came to stay at Ipstones with her mother, where I was living, and we stayed there for several days until my father came back to God. We had to have police protection as my father came after us with a gun. While we were there God told us that He was going to deal with my father and break his rebellion and this the Lord did in no uncertain manner.

A few days after this my mother was turned out of home, my father was driving his car at about 7.00 p.m. one night, (before he had drank his usual great quantity of alcohol); God's presence filled the car and God spoke audibly to him, "William; unless you change your ways, you are going to Hell." As this was said the bottom of the car seemed to disappear and God gave my father a vision of the Abyss (the bottomless pit) and suspended him over it, and he felt he was in danger of falling into it, and clung to the steering wheel in terror. This vision caused him to seek out Pastor Roberts, (who had been in danger of his life, for my father carried a gun in the car to shoot him, if he saw him) and the faithful pastor led my father back to the Lord at about 1.00 a. m. in the morning. God's remarkable intervention in our lives enabled my mother, brother and myself to return home, and God blessed our home and our family garage business, and gave us many more remarkable experiences in our home, business and Christian work which are too numerous to list here.

My father had a heart attack in 1963, so he sold his business and retired; this left me free to give more time to my Christian work and I was asked to pastor several Pentecostal churches. For many years I followed out Paul's principle of not being a burden to Christians, by supplementing my income by working in the building industry. In later years the demands of preaching, lecturing and writing, caused me to finish this part-time work.

In May of 1968 I married Pauline, who has proved to be a remarkable gift from God to me. She has been a thoughtful, loving wife, who has been willing to make many real sacrifices for the sake of the kingdom of God. Our ministry together began before we were married. The Lord began to allow people's thoughts, illnesses and deeds to be known to us. God revealed these things to manifest His love, and these revelations have never been used to condemn anyone who was coming for help; for this is the way that the Lord Jesus Himself used these gifts. Over the years Pauline has experienced a quite outstanding prophetic ministry, and God usually tells her in advance important events in the services and meetings that I preach at, or go to. God has also on occasions revealed to us major national and international events, like the revelation about the Chernobyl atomic power station disaster in Russia, some two months before it happened.

God has graciously manifested some remarkable miracles of healing of minds and bodies in our ministry together. Pauline has been healed of many things, for which we give God all the glory. These include the healing of a severe life-threatening brain haemorrhage, which was stated by a neurologist to be a miracle; and with God's healing touch she was out of hospital in two days and back at her work as a district nurse within a week. God has also healed Pauline of breast cancers, kidney problems, and trapped nerves in the spine, which almost crippled her. All of these healings were recognised as miracles by the medical profession. Why has all this happened? Certainly not because of our holiness or righteousness. God has been glorifying the name and person of Jesus, as Peter himself clearly states in Acts.3v12-16.. It is because of God's grace and gifting; for He takes pleasure in choosing despised nobodies to confound the wise, mighty and noble; that no flesh should glory in His presence. 1Cor.1v26?31. 12v28. We are very thankful that God has included us among the despised nobodies that He uses. Amen. 1Cor.1v26?31. 12v28. Lk.10v21?24. Mt.11v25?30. Is.53v3., Mt.5v11,12.

THE TESTIMONY OF W. H. TURNER SENIOR TO GOD'S SAVING POWER.

When I was about 18 months old my Father died. My mother and myself went to live with her parents and brothers and sister at a Public House. Almost the first thing in life that I remember was living at this Public house, here I saw many things which a child should not see. As I grew up having no father to guide me, I became a naughty and disobedient boy, even though my father's brother and sister paid for me to have a good education. At the age of seventeen I started to walk out, with the permission of her parents, with a girl who later became my wife. When I was twenty one my mother married again and lived in London 150 miles away. At 23 I married my sweetheart, who had received a good Christian upbringing, and she played the organ at the village Church at Ipstones. We were very much in love and were very happy.

Shortly after my marriage my wife's brother Wilfred was taken ill with an incurable disease. At this time a Pastor Edwin Jefferies was conducting a Gospel and divine healing campaign in the Potteries about 12 miles away. We knew that Wifred's only chance of a recovery was a miracle, so we took him to the Victoria Hall, Hanley, to be prayed for by Pastor Edwin Jefferies. Wilfred at this time had something that we all admired, he was a born again Christian, and up to the time of his illness had been an ardent Church goer. However, even though many other miracles took place that night, Wilfred was not healed when he was prayed for, but both my wife and myself gave our hearts to the Lord. We were happy before, but we now had an even greater happiness and we revelled in the Christian life. We both decided to go to the Methodist Chapel which was a real "live Church" and my wife soon became the organist there.

I served the Lord happily for several years until one Sunday, it was a Temperance Sunday, a man came to preach who was a much respected builder and contractor, but I afterwards discovered that at the very time he preached, he was building a Hotel at a nearby village, which at a later date I was often drunk in. Although I had been brought up in a Public House, since my conversion I had been strictly teetotal and had never been inside a Public House. I took my eyes off Jesus and thought that if this Christian man could build this Hotel, there was nothing wrong in going to such places, so I started to enter these places again. How we need to watch ourselves so that we do not stumble others. Never before had I been a drunkard, I had prided myself over my physical fitness as an athlete, I was a non-smoker too. But soon the Scriptures were to be fulfilled which states that when the evil spirit comes back and finds the house swept and garnished, he brings back seven devils more wicked than himself. Lk.11v24-26. I started to drink heavily and also to gamble and smoke. In one day I lost £250 gambling, money which later I had real need of in my garage business.

In 1945 I started a garage business on the Ashbourne Road, in Leek; but because of my drinking, I could not make it pay, even though I worked long hours for seven days a week. Much of my spare time was spent in Public Houses, and much of my business came through this, and was nearly always unprofitable. On many occasions I came home drunk and was quite unfit to live with. I turned my eldest son William into the street, he was 18 years of age. Some of the members of the Assembly of God Church took him into their homes and looked after him, and he was away from home for about 2 years.

My wife put up with untold ill-treatment from me, but like a good Christian wife, she continued to pray for me, and remained both loving and caring. However, nothing she did for me suited me, and one day I came home and turned both my wife and younger son out of home into the night. A few months later my wife came back to me, but things were no better, and I once more turned her out again. During the time that I was living alone in the house, I even sat up all night drinking and the following day I was totally unfit for work, and as a consequence my business went down. Many times I came home very convicted over the way that I was living, I knew that what I was doing was wrong, and I tried to pray on almost all the steps of our stairs, but my prayers were a mockery they went no further than the ceiling. I burned all the Christian literature that I could find in the home, except one or two family Bibles etc.; this was my way of fighting against God.

One night I went to one of my favourite Public Houses to see a special darts match, and everything went wrong all due to my own fault. I fell out with everyone including my friend, and I had very little to drink. Later I took my friend home and dropped him off. As I turned out of the street where he lived into Britannia Street, I became conscious of the mighty presence of God in the car, and while I travelled up this street for about a 100 yards, God drew a picture of my life before me, He then spoke to me and said, 'William you are going to Hell,' then at my side I saw a dark abyss, it was so real that I reeled away from it clutching the steering wheel of the car. Instantly I knew that this was my last chance to get right with my God and I said, 'Lord, I will by your grace and forgiveness come back to you and lead a life well pleasing to you, and one by your grace, fit for eternal life.'

I then changed the direction of the car and went to the house of the Pastor of the Leek Assembly of God. This Pastor, along with many other Christians, had prayed very earnestly for me. The Pastor was not at home when I arrived there, as he was preaching some distance away, only his wife was at home and she was very afraid of me, as I had threatened to shoot her husband, but God had carefully hidden him away from me, and I never knew him until the day that God spoke to me. I went home to my empty house and searched for a Bible to read to get something of comfort, I found my own father's Bible and took it to bed. As I lay in bed and opened the Bible, a small text, a cutting from a daily paper, fell out, I picked it up and read it; it was Eph.4v32., 'And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.' This broke me down and I wept. At about 1 a.m. a knock came on the door, it was the faithful Pastor, Pastor A.G. Roberts, who came knowing that God had spoken to me, we talked and prayed together, my own prayer I cannot remember, but I know that it came from a renewed heart and a tear stained face.

The following day the Pastor, his wife and myself went to my wife's mother's home to ask my wife to come back to me, this my wife joyfully did, for our love for each other had never died. God had shown my wife a vision of myself standing in a pulpit in a certain Church, a vision which came to pass; so she knew that God would save me sometime. I returned home with my wife and two sons to start afresh. The power of Jesus Christ had immediately and completely delivered me from the desire to drink. I closed my business on a Sunday and never saw any drop in takings; indeed, the business began to prosper, for now it was under new management; God sent me many good customers, among whom were many Christians. God continued to bless my family, I paid for my eldest son William to go to Kenley Bible School; and now, by the grace of God, he is a full time minister for the Lord, and as a family we are seeing God do many wonderful things. How wonderful is our God and how mighty is His power, wisdom, knowledge and grace, He can save to the very uttermost. Hallelujah!

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