The remarkable true life story of Peter Newman (Part 13)

One of the cult's main errors was that the members believed that their prophets were infallible and that you had to do exactly as they said. They eventually ruled our lives, even telling us which soaps to use. I took it for so long, but then I started to question and indeed disobey the "prophets". I was told that I was blaspheming the Holy Ghost in doing so and must repent. I refused, so I was shut up in a room for three days in a bid to make me come to my senses. Barbara meanwhile, was in our quarters, torn between thinking they were right and I was wrong, and that I was right and they were wrong. The enemy is so very subtle, and although we'd only sat under the cult's teachings for a few months, they had already started to indoctrinate us.

Deep down I knew they were wrong, and during those three days I resolved to get myself and my family away from their influence as fast as I could. Some of my old evangelistic team had gone out with us and I prayed that they, too, would break away and head home for England.

Meanwhile I pretended to repent for not listening to the prophets and I was allowed back to my quarters. Barbara and I made preparations to leave. The prophets told us that if we left we were walking out of our salvation and that our marriage would break up. They also said that our children would die.

We arrived back in England terrified and in deep depression. Satan really attacked us and I used to spend days in total mental confusion, wondering if the cult had been right and I had been wrong. I felt I was heading for a complete mental breakdown and our marriage started to show signs of stress. I had a spirit of fear upon me. The Bible says that fear brings torment and, believe you me, it does. My spirit still communicated with God, but my mind argued that because we'd left the cult, we were destined for hell and damnation.

Shocked and depressed, feeling like Elijah underneath the juniper tree (1 Kings 19:3-4), we felt that we wanted to die. But God had called us to live, and we soon began to discover that He was faithful and continued to supply our needs. Just when there seemed no one to provide we would find provisions anonymously supplied. And there were those loving Christian brothers and sisters who saw our hurt and bewilderment and helped us and provided for us many times, giving us the love we so desperately needed at that time.

My spiritual life was maintained in the only way I knew; by continuing to witness to the love and mercy of God. I would make my way to hippie communes, and into houses that hippies had squatted in, and invite them to our flat for food and talks and prayer. My candle may have been flickering at this time, but I was determined that it would not go under a bushel.

This stress lasted for about eighteen months, although it took me about four years to feel free from those we had known in South Africa, but I knew that I was free when I was able to pray for them earnestly and in love. Thus my deliverance came by continuing to preach the gospel, for that is where the real power of God is made manifest. It was difficult at times, and only those who have had the misfortune to be involved in these things will know how strong those powers are that seemed continually to cling to my thoughts. But in the mercy of God what seemed terrible at the time has now become profitable in our ministry to those who have been involved in such bondages.

But meanwhile there was worse to come. We found that Christians in England didn't want to know us. Church leaders who had once clamoured to have me take meetings in their church now shunned me as if I were something unclean.

On the odd occasion that I was invited to preach, my old "friends" would warn people away. During those years people even said I was a spiritist and that I should be avoided at all cost! There was no spirit of forgiveness at all; the Christian gossip vine was alive with the news that Peter Newman had gone into error. The people who had once put garlands round my neck were now throwing stones.

I thank God that He is always faithful. His hand was on me right through those nightmare months and years. It was a long time before the scars were healed. Deep down I was still afraid that the things the so-called prophets had forecast would come to pass.

Meanwhile God was still using me, telling me to fly here and to fly there, miraculously providing me with the cash to do so. My timetable was secret only the Father and I knew my destinations. I remember going all the way to Ethiopia once just to cut some grass for an old missionary lady. I'd arrived in the country and had spent four or five days preaching in one village when the Lord seemed to tell me to walk into the middle of nowhere, in Africa! I walked for what felt like ages before I came upon a group of huts. A Finnish missionary, a white-haired eighty year old lady, came out of one of them.

"This is the second time I've had to come out to Africa, brother," she told me, "because no one else will come out to look after these people." She took me into her hut and gave me a cup of tea and a bed for the night.

The next morning she handed me a scythe and said: "Brother Newman, I'm so glad God has sent you to me. I've been asking Him to send me a man for several weeks now. Will you please cut all this grass for me, because it's full of snakes and the natives won't do it."

So I set to work chopping a quarter of an acre of elephant grass in the blistering heat of the day. I later preached the gospel to the natives, but I'm sure my main reason for being in Ethiopia was to cut that old Finnish lady's grass!