THE TESTIMONY OF 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 Mark 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 God 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, Luke 10v21-24, Matt 11v25-30, Isaiah 53v3, Matt 5v11,12.

Bill went home to be with the Lord on Saturday 14th, April 2012.

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