Introduction

 

Truth is often stranger than fiction, or so it seems and what may seem as fiction to begin with often turns out to be truth. It is up to each one of you who reads this book to decide for yourself what is what, based on the convictions of your own heart and the reasoning of your mind. First though, some background.

As one acquainted from my past with some of the ways God appears to choose to communicate with the people of the world, I guess it should not have come as a surprise but it did. After all, I can still remember the times I used to ‘walk’ up God’s mountain to seek Him. I remember the times I heard His ‘voice’ and even ‘saw’ the burning bush that He must have shown to Moses. I even ‘saw’ the ring of fire round the bottom of the mountain when God calmly told me it was necessary for Him to take me off the mountain for a while. I didn’t understand why He had to do that at the time, but I begin to see the reason now.

I should explain that ‘visions’ were part of my belief system all those years ago. It was all part of my involvement in the Evangelical wing of the Church where I led worship, even preached and was part of a prayer team that fervently believed in the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Was it all a strange reality, or were we deluded? Certainly over a period of time I believed both, but not at the same time.

Soon after I first ‘saw’ the ring of fire, quite suddenly my world came crashing down around me. I was literally taken away from the mountain and the ring of fire prevented me from going back up it, try as I may. And, as the years passed I resigned myself to the fact I was in the world, alone with my beliefs, waiting to discover just why I couldn’t be on that precious mountain again.

A new life beckoned me, and the old one disappeared from my mind, until it was nothing more than a distant memory.

That was over twenty years ago, which may account for why I didn’t sense this coming. Even the years of passion and my love of that book left me unaware of what was about to happen. Even the firm belief that I was in that book, quite literally, had finally slipped from my mind, but it was all to come flooding back and now, through the help of the Son of Thunder, I bring my message to the world of the faithful and sceptics alike. It is for you to judge and you alone. Let no man on this earth make the judgement for you. For you are about to discover a message that could literally change your destiny on this planet we call earth.

Chapter 1

 

August 2013

 

The sun was warm and the grass was fervent and green. On my left and right, as I walked up the lane, the fields were growing whatever the farmer had planted. Somewhere ahead of me Blazer and Lulu, our Labradors, were running and playing.

“This is not the first time,” the rich, deep male voice said behind me. I’d heard no footsteps or swishing of grass as I’d walked up the path with the long, uncut grass on either side of the narrow well-trodden footpath, and spun round half expecting to see an attacker as he lunged at me and at the same time wondering why the dogs had not come running back to bark at the intruder. I spun and stopped dead in my tracks. The path behind me was empty. “I said, Stuart, this is not the first time. Actually I have been here six times before now and you are the final time.”

I spun round again but still nothing. I shook my head and said softly, “Who, where, why, what is this?”

“Questions, always questions. I said I have been here six times before now, and you are the seventh. Come with me, I have something to tell you.”

Twenty years ago I might have reacted more positively but the passage of time and the accumulation of age helps you forget many things.

“Who are you? Or should I say, what are you?” I was fairly sure in my own mind this was not God. He hadn’t spoken to me like this in nearly twenty years, or if He had then I hadn’t been listening and anyway, this wasn’t the voice that I had once been familiar with.

“I am the Son of Thunder.”

“The what?” A quick brain scramble, it was a familiar term from the past but not one I could immediately put a name to. But as I stood there, not really aware of the dogs any more, the name came to me.

“You’re John, aren’t you? But you died with the others over nineteen hundred years ago!”

“I am one and the same but what you say is not quite accurate though I do so like it when someone remembers the name I once shared with my older brother, James. Now come with me, I need to talk as we walk.”

“Err, okay, if you want to, but I have to keep an eye on the dogs.”

“Trust me, they will be fine.” The voice was positive, almost reassuring, but it had a sense of urgency about it. “Now, before I say anything else, I need to tell you one thing. The fire round the mountain is out. You are about to go back up the mountain but first you must understand why you were taken off it.”

“I know why, people told me that at the time.”

“They were wrong. The reason you were taken off the mountain was to put you in a place of exile where you would not be affected by the things going on. Everything that happened to you all those years ago was part of the plan. Fair enough, it probably didn’t seem like it at the time, but it was and is part of the plan. Do you think I could be here today if you had not come down off the mountain? Of course not! I was in exile once, a really good place to clear the mind and be open to the truth and not be beaten down by what is happening around you with the constant demands of others, a place without the half-truths and lies, a place where you are just by yourself.”

“Yeah, I guess so, but it’s also kind of lonely.”

“True,” the voice said softly. “Patmos was lonely for a while but it gave me a clear head to understand the Master’s plans.”

“You call that clear?” I blurted out suddenly. “I’ve read Revelations dozens of times and I can promise you the one thing it is not is ‘clear’. Why write a book no one can understand?”

“I didn’t.” The voice sounded as if it had explained this more times than it cared to. “People took what I wrote and then turned something beautiful and simple into something totally incomprehensible, something man was never meant to understand, for if man did understand it, the church would never have been able to retain its authority. I will make it simple for you soon, but first there is a horse on the bridleway ahead so you need to call the dogs back.”

I called for the Labradors and they came running to me as we approached the hidden bridleway. With their leads attached to their collars again we walked through the thin line of trees and I could hear the sound of hooves just ahead of us. Blazer, as always, pulled on his lead, anxious to discover the source of the sound, but I held him fast, glad I had done so as the horse soon passed us at a trot. With the rider quickly out of sight I released the dogs and continued the walk, my mind in a different world, a world I had grown accustomed to not being in.

I walked some little way before the ‘voice’ returned.

“I said this is my seventh visit and this is my last one, for the time is to be soon. I will tell you about that later. My last visit was back in, now when was it, 1829, when I did much the same thing as I am doing today. Actually then I came back with Peter and James. Wow, that caused quite a stir I can tell you. Anyway, we spoke with a small group of people and as a result the apostolic succession of the priesthood was re-established on earth.”

“Whoa, you’ve lost me with that. The Apostolic what?” I was beginning to wish it hadn’t been twenty years of exile from the church and even some of its teachings. I was also beginning to feel decidedly ill at ease with this voice as I walked.

“Apostolic succession. It’s the method whereby the ministry of the Christian Church is derived from the apostles by a continuous succession. You really should check out Wikipedia more often. I’ll come back to it later on, but you’re not ready to understand that yet.”

“If you say so. So why is that important to me? Look I don’t know about you but this is kind of freaking me out a bit. I can’t see you…”

“Did you ever see God when you spoke to him?” Now the voice was sounding more pressing.

“N… no, but that was different. That was twenty years ago when I could talk to people about things.”

“Exactly, and that is plenty of time for you to get used to trusting your own intuition.”

“I guess so.”

“Look, if you want to see me as well, then that can be arranged. There’s a bench up there. Go and sit down and close your eyes for a moment.”

I did so. The dogs were chasing each other and the scent of rabbit or fox around the large expanse of field and there was not another human in sight, which at least was some comfort to me.

“Close them,” the voice said.

I did so and could feel a cool gust of wind pass by and then there was the smell of a fresh sea breeze.

“Open them.”

I did so slowly.

“Whoa, how did you do that?” I gasped and felt nauseous. No longer was I on the bench overlooking the field, but perched on a rock looking out to sea with a cave behind me. To the left was a small beach with half a dozen wooden fishing boats sat on it. The sun was beating down on the gently rolling waves. Beside me was an old man, wizened, with a Mediterranean skin colour, white teeth and long, grey hair.

“I didn’t, but the voice you once trusted has made this happen. Welcome to my old home. It’s been a long time but you are not the first to come back here. How else do you think Peter, James and I managed to convince the others who we were?”