Heather Bellamy spoke with Jim Ford about his violent life and his Damascus Road experience that turned his life around

Jim Ford

Jim embarked on a life of violence from just 10 years old; before he was 15, he was a bouncer and a barman, but by 17 he'd had his first encounter with Jesus. Having walked away from God and the church shortly after his conversion and gone back to his life of crime and violence with a vengeance, at 23 he then had a Damascus Road experience with God, which has since taken him all over the world. Heather Bellamy spent time with him hearing his story.

Heather: We previously heard about your first encounter with Jesus and then how a response in church ended up turning you away. However you ended up with quite a nasty demonic encounter as well. What happened?

Jim: It happened in this particular church that I've just been talking about. One night we were in the church in the sanctuary, in the main body of the church. We were in a sense having a high on Jesus. We were taking the rip out of the devil, 'Yeah, yeah the devil who's he?' and all this kind of stuff. At 17 you think you're immortal and invincible. There were probably about 60 of us in this church at the time, all young people and suddenly we felt this incredible cold come in the church. It was freezing cold and we're talking in the middle of summer here. This freezing cold started at the back of the church and went towards the altar; of course we're all like whoa what's going on here and it went really cold. All of a sudden the girls start to scream and we turned and looked at where the altar and pulpit were and there was this thing standing on the altar. It would be 10/12 feet tall and looked like Old Father Time like you see on the cricket, Old Father Time with the sickle. If you ever go to Lords and watch cricket, it's the weather vane. It looked like Old Father Time, but you could see through him, yet you could see very clearly the outline of this sort of red and black thing; the black infill with a reddish outline and it looked like Old Father Time, but the face was really evil. I've never seen anything like it. I was sitting next to this girl and she grabbed hold of my arm and I had a leather jacket on and her nails went through the leather jacket and scratched my arm. We were just petrified. I was hard, my life was brought up being ice cold and a thug and all the rest of it, but this thing just appeared and we were almost rooted to the spot and this thing just stayed there; never did anything; it just stood there as it were and almost glared at us. Then a couple of the elders from the church came running in and wondered what was going on and a few seconds later this thing had disappeared. That was my first encounter with the demonic.

Heather: And from that point you went back to the red light district?

Jim: Yes, because obviously the whole thing as I've just explained happened and I thought, well if that's Christianity you can shove it where the monkey shoves his nuts. I'm just not interested; it's hypocrisy and this Christianity sucks. I'm not interested if people are like that. I actually went back to the red light area and went back worse than I came out. I mean I really did go back to the red light area.

Heather: You were quite ruthless weren't you?

Jim: Oh yes I was definitely ruthless. Don't forget I'm looking for love and looking for recognition and if you can't find it in church where are you going to find it? God sucks was my attitude; God you don't work; it aint working so I'll go and find it somewhere else. I went back almost with a vengeance and just threw myself into that kind of lifestyle, drugs, sex, and rock 'n roll.

Heather: And a lot of fighting?

Jim: And a lot of fighting and a lot of crime. I was racist and all kinds of things. I was just not a nice person.

Heather: You did almost get sent to prison at one point didn't you?

Jim: I was arrested for being involved in a robbery. I was the getaway driver. I hadn't even got a licence at the time. I was the getaway driver in a robbery and four of us were stood in the dark. Looking back hindsight is a wonderful commodity and I think God had his hand on my life even though I just was not interested in God at the time. I was stood in the dark and I was dressed to go to work and the judge said to me, 'Young man what are you doing? Where do you think you're going?' I said, 'I'm going to go to work'. That was how arrogant I was. He said, 'Don't you realise I can send you to prison?' I said, 'Well please yourself'. I mean this was nothing new to me in the sense of being in court or anything like that. He went along the line and the first two got two years each and he came to me and he said, 'I'm banning you from driving'; well I hadn't even got a licence. It's like I was banned from driving before I'd even got a licence. He said, 'I'm going to give you three years probation'. I couldn't believe what had just happened, because I was driving with no insurance, no tax, I was the getaway involved in a robbery and I didn't get sent down. Two of the others got sent down and the guy after me actually got probation too. God has been gracious to me over the years.

Heather: You did eventually come back to Jesus in quite an unusual way. Tell us about that.

Jim: I'd got involved in transport and I was travelling all around the country. You know sailors have women in every port so the story says and that was what I was doing. I became a lorry driver. I was away from home all the time, but one Sunday, I was 23 and I was down my local pub in Hanley having a pint at lunchtime, which was what I did, that was my life and we used to play cards for money, quite large pots of money. I came out of the pub at three o'clock to go home for lunch and there was nobody in the street; not a soul in the street. I was walking up the street and I heard this audible voice. The strange thing was I knew who it was and I went, 'I don't want to know'. This is true; I started having this conversation with this voice.

Heather: What did the voice say to you?