Confessions of a reluctant confident messiah¹

Keywords: life, depression, bipolar, bipolarity, symptoms, cello, second coming, body of chrisst, ocean

During the following 2 years I first contacted Rhema Church and told the counselor that there was going to be a massive revival in South Africa and the world. I was advised to join my local church and serve God through the church. This I did - I joined the local Dutch Reformed Church where, until 1996, I was a member of 3 outreach programs: on Friday evenings I handed out soup and bread at the central station in Johannesburg to the homeless; I was a member of Aksie België vir Christus, a missionary organization in Belgium and I was one of the first members of the church to be trained by Sowers International in sketch board evangelism.

My last Christian activity -
sketch board evangelism on the streets of Hillbrow
with Sowers International:

Thys van der Merwe (far right) from MES (Middestad Evangelisasie Sending) and other students in training	Ken Rout from New Zealand who taught us
My first (and second to last) sketch board sermon called "Lost and Found" about the parable of "The Lost Son". Take note of the words on the sign in the background: "Cosmic Vision" I did not really stop the sketch board idea. You are reading my "high-tech electronic sketch board" - a web site! :)	Hey! Never without my Cello! I played Tchaikovsky's "Nocturne" that evening, the piece of music that kept me going during my second hospitalization in 1993. Back then I had my cello in hospital with me and though my coordination was zero during that time I tried playing every day for a short while. I must have got the idea about working with numbers from Sowers International, because they often work with numbers in their sermons.

Then in September 1996 I went on holiday to the Natal South Coast during which time I became, in the eyes of my family, manic again. Walking on the beach one afternoon I again pursued the quest that haunted me ever since my last year at school when, for my final Afrikaans oral examination, I prepared a speech in which I explained to my class mates the nature of the Antichrist (I based my findings then on end-time literature from a church in America.) In 1996 I asked myself the following question: "Where would Satan hide himself so that nobody would ever find him?" My answer at the time was: "There where nobody would go to look for him." Where, I asked myself, would nobody look for Satan? Where else, but in the dogmas and rituals of an institution calling itself: the holy/only church of God.

On returning from holiday I took it upon myself to speak to the leaders of my church about the importance of studying other religions like Buddhism in order to gain a more complete understanding of God. My words fell on unwilling ears. Finally I wrote a 13-page letter to them in which I resigned from the church and voiced my grievances about the church. I concluded my letter with the following prophecy. In order for the reader to trace my spiritual development, I quote the original version (I would not express myself using these words today):

Out of the Blue Fountain there shall come streams of living water
from which all nations shall drink.
Oh, beloved city of God, Place of Gold,
Your streets will be covered with gold.
You will be called: Place of Peace.
The nations shall come to bow before you and they will acknowledge that God loves you.
Elephant of the South, Cape of Good Hope,
From you will go out a message of salvation for all the nations.
They will come to wonder at your treasures and they will admit that God loves you.
They will bring you gifts from all four the directions of the wind.
Oh, New Jerusalem, I will not cease to remind God of his promises,
I will not stop giving witness of the great deeds of my Father,
until every knee submits to Him.
Repent, for I have come like a thief in the night,
Because you did not want to wake up.

eyakho

I also signed my letter in the following way: 

The "I am" statements I added recently to clarify my intention with this signature then. You ask yourself whether I really believe that I am the Second Coming of Christ: further on I have explained what I believe about the nature of the Second Coming. My answer is both yes and no: through the spiritual process I went through I have claimed this longing to be a Christ for myself, I believe it so completely that it will inevitably become a reality. And no, I am not the Second Christ - I am like you only one cell in the Body of Christ. Like a drop of water does not constitute the whole ocean, it does contain in itself the complete essence (DNA) of the ocean. You will claim this truth for yourself and together we will become the Second Coming.

Recently I discovered a song that one of my favorite artists, a legend in her own right in the Afrikaans music scene, Laurika Rauch, recorded, called Hot Gates. This song expresses very much the same idea as my poem, but symbolically includes all cities all over the world. Read the text of Hot Gates.

A while after I delivered this letter to the 6 pastors of my former church I asked the leader of the church, to come and visit me. When he came we went to walk in the garden. I screamed at him and demanded from him that he should help me realize my dream. He promised to help me, but until today he has not done anything… How could I expect anyone to help me if screamed and demanded?

Back then I managed to stay in a "high" for 6 months. But for a very view people, nobody noticed that I was manic. I continued my life as I usually did. During this time I started going into Soweto alone to teach music to township children.

In my rebellion against the morals of the church I decided to experiment for the first time with a few friends, who I new smoked "dagga" (marijuana). At first I did not notice anything, but as the drug gradually took effect my mind started racing and I had a grotesque vision of myself jumping off a very high building in front of the whole world, not falling to my death, but flying up into the sky. This vision was so strong and it upset me so much that I became paranoid. My friends did not know what to do. I was crashing out of my 6-month "high". Within a few hours I was in a deep depression. The next morning they took me home. I lay the whole Sunday on the corner of my bed contemplating suicide. On the Monday afternoon I had to make a tough decision: should I try to go and teach my cello pupils or stay at home feeling sorry for myself? I scraped myself together and my father drove me to work. Then the strangest thing happened: while I was teaching I did not feel depressed at all, but when I stopped, the depression returned. So the answer to my depression was obvious: I had to continue working at all cost. It took me one week to get out of the depression.

A month later my dearest father had a mild stroke and three months later he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. For the next 18 months my whole focus was on helping my mother taking care of our beloved, dying husband and father. We tried various therapies, but in the end he experienced death in my arms. Up to that day I had never seen the face of death - the silent blue face of the person I respected most on this planet. The day before his funeral I wrote the following homage:

"We will never forget the day that we drove around St. George’s Park in Port Elizabeth with Mum. She said: 'There is something you can learn from your father and that is to put your feet in the shoes of someone else.' Dad knew how you felt - sometimes even before you said anything.

"From the moment he got up in the morning until the moment he went to rest at night he tried to spread the Colours of Love in his family and amongst his friends and colleagues. Whether it was the sandwiches he made us early in the morning before breakfast, or the warm water he carried out to my sister's car in the winter to melt the frost on the windscreen and then wishing her a "beautiful day", or the friendly smile with which he greeted every person he met, or the "Peace be with you!" with which he said good bye, or the fruit salad he quickly threw together late at night when you were sitting in front of the computer 'specially just for you, just to show you how much he loves you'; truly, Dad learnt from life what there is to be learnt from life: "You must love one another." There is nothing more to be learnt from life and he lived it from day to day. In his human imperfection he was perfect and he did not stay with us one moment longer than was necessary. If there is one reason why he had to suffer for so long, then it is this: I needed so long to consider what he tried to teach me.

"Bon voyage Pappa!
It was a privilege to live with you again for 5 years!
I love you so much!"

For the purpose of translations confessions_4.htm has been split into 2 html documents.

¹ I titled this article originally in reference to one of my favourite books, Illusions - The adventures of a reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach. I have realized that as long as I feel reluctant about what I would like to do, I will never end up becoming that what I would like to become. This is why I changed the title (18 April 2004).

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