MISUNDERSTOOD

Woman of Worship Under the Banner of Whoredom

Prologue

The Audible Voice in the Darkness

On 5 September 1996, the day before my children and I were due to leave Montserrat for England, a massive volcanic eruption plunged the island into darkness. My children were all around me, but the blackness was so thick that we could not see one another.

Before the darkness had fully lifted, I heard the audible voice of God. Even before I could call my children's names to reassure them, I heard three words: “Aholah and Aholibah.”

I had never heard those names before, yet I knew at once that they were divine and scriptural. Before I could grasp their meaning, I heard the voice again: “Stay away from secret societies.”

I considered myself a little country bumpkin from a small island. The expression “secret societies” was unfamiliar to me. I thought it meant people gathering in cliques to gossip. Since that was something I did not practise, I resolved that I would have nothing to do with it. I took the words as a solemn warning, especially as I would be travelling to England the very next day.

About thirty minutes later, when the darkness had fully lifted, I told my friend Sister Delis Daley what I had heard. We were both staying at Woodsville Condominiums. The names were unfamiliar to her too. She advised me to research them because they sounded spiritual.

The volcanic eruption on Montserrat had begun on 18 July 1995. In July 1996, I had gone to St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands to escape the volcanic activity. I returned to Montserrat in August, before we left for England in September.

During my stay in St Thomas, a gentleman I had met briefly and spoken to only once gave me a large study Bible. “The Lord told me to give this to you because you are going to need it,” he said.

It was my first study Bible, and I was pleased to receive it. Until then, I had used a plain King James Bible without footnotes. Now I had a Bible that could help me investigate the unfamiliar names I had heard: Aholah and Aholibah.

On 6 September 1996, my children and I left Montserrat for England as refugees. We were strangers to Britain, and I did not know where to turn with my small children. Fortunately, there were associations that helped families like ours to settle.

One of the gentlemen whose association assisted us was someone I understood to be deeply involved in the Lodge. What he told me began to change my understanding of secret societies. When I invited him to church, he told me that I should not attend that church because, he said, the pastor was also in the Lodge.

In time, I came to associate the warning I had heard with the Lodge, Freemasonry and the Illuminati. I understood such involvement to be a form of idolatry. The gentleman's words also caused me to question what I was supporting through my own church attendance.

I still needed to understand the two names. I searched my study Bible and found Aholah and Aholibah in Ezekiel 23. Verse 4 identified Aholah as Samaria and Aholibah as Jerusalem. As I read about the two sisters, I went numb. I closed the Bible, then opened it again and again to the same passage.

When I finally came to grips with what I was reading, I understood it as a warning from the Lord. I resolved to keep away from adultery. Although I did not yet fully understand the meaning of the passage, I knew that I did not want to follow the example of those two sisters.

The church I attended was made up mostly of women. I was troubled by their loyalty to the pastor, even when I believed he was speaking about Scripture out of context. He firmly told the congregation that anyone who left to attend another church would not make it into heaven. I came to understand the warning I had received in Montserrat as applying to this situation, and I decided to leave the church.

The words Jesus spoke to the woman at the well began to speak to my own situation: “Ye worship ye know not what” (John 4:22, KJV). I was attending church, yet I had begun to question what I was worshipping and supporting.

In 2 Kings 17:33, I read of people who feared the Lord while also serving their own gods. I recognised that danger in my own worship. I feared the Lord, yet I had become entangled in what I came to understand as mixed worship.

That day, in the darkness of Montserrat, God did not give me a sermon. He gave me two names and a warning. It would take years for me to understand what He was showing me through them: the danger of secret mixture in worship and of religion with “a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof” (2 Timothy 3:5, KJV).

Aholah and Aholibah represented Samaria and Jerusalem. Their story in Ezekiel 23 became, for me, a warning about spiritual unfaithfulness. It helped me understand how a person could attend church and still be caught in mixed worship.

This book tells of my deliverance from secret mixture. I write to help worshippers find healing and understand what they are worshipping. I want to call every true worshipper out of that mixture and into worship in spirit and in truth.

This book is my obedience to that voice in the darkness.