ROGER KEECH - MY TESTIMONY

Born in the Roman town of Verulamium (known since the 11th century AD as St Albans in Hertfordshire, it was the 11th day of February 1948. My father was present at my birth, and as is the custom in hospitals when the baby is born the midwife smacks the baby's bottom to get it breathing. I must have been an ugly baby because when I was born the midwife took one look at me and smacked my father. (English joke).

When I was born doctors thought I had jaundice as I was yellowish. I was one of those babies who tend to make a lot of noise, and in order to silence me the nurse put me in an airing cupboard and left me there for some hours. My parents were not real Christians yet the names they chose for me were quite accidentally prophetic. They gave me the first Christian name of Roger which means "God's Warrior" and gave me the second Christian name of Arthur which means "leader of men".

Nobody could have guessed that when I grew into an adult I would fulfil these definitions exactly. Throughout my childhood from about the age of 5 I attended Anglican schools up to the age of 15 when I left to start work. For as long as I can remember I was taught by my parents that if I did not do anything particularly wrong and did people the occasional kindness then I would certainly go to heaven when eventually I met my death.

I came so close to finding out from personal experience that this is a lie from the enemy. At this point in my life I did not know that. I had a great deal of time off from school in the early years of my education because I suffered with chronic asthma, an experience I shall refer back to in a short while. By nature I was a person who would always go out of my way to avoid fights and loud disagreements, probably as a result of this I was taken advantage of at school and at work (and at times at home also) and bullied from an early age.

Because of these things and because I was not clever academically, I took the first opportunity to leave school. I had been bullied for most of my life, by my brother and by many people at school, but when I went out to work I was given the red carpet treatment - people thought that they could walk all over me. At home throughout my school years I was constantly being told by my parents that I would never make anything of my life, they thought this would cause me to try harder and do better, it did the opposite.

After having a string of jobs that I was no good at I ended up with a job selling newspapers, magazines and books on St Pancras station. My boss wanted to change my hours so that I began late and finished around 9PM in the evening. This meant that I could not see any of my regular friends because they were off Saturday and Sunday and I was in a job where I was required to work these hours.

I spoke to my boss who was most unsympathetic so after a while I decided that since I regarded myself as a Christian, as I believed in Jesus and the stories in the gospel about Him, I no longer wanted to live in such a cruel world and would much rather be in heaven where most of my teachers had taught me I would be when I died. I therefore left work one evening with an absolute determination to commit suicide. I would throw myself under the wheels of a speeding train and make sure that the wheels ran over my neck thus severing my head and leaving me with no possibility of recovery. Sitting in the seat opposite me in the railway carriage was a man who realised what I was planning to do and physically prevented me from doing it.

As you may have guessed by now, this man was travelling further than St Albans so when we arrived at that station I got off the train knowing that I was so successful in life that I couldn't even succeed in killing myself. I began to walk home from the station crying like a baby. I remembered the painting of "The Good Shepherd" and Jesus trying to rescue a sheep in a deep black hole.

In utter desperation I cried out "Lord, if you can get me out of this situation I'll be yours forever." I meant not one single syllable of what I had said yet Jesus was determined to take me up on what I had said. Right before me Jesus appeared in shepherd's guise much like Paul on the road to Damascus. He started showing me that because I had no relationship with Him but only knew about Him from what I had read and heard I would not have gone to heaven had I killed myself that night, but quite literally the very opposite.

As per usual when I got home my parents were in bed and as they both got up for work in the morning I almost never saw them because of the hours of work I was stuck with. The very next day my boss called me in to the office. "The area Manager wants to see you" he said. Hitherto whenever my boss summoned me to appear before him it was always because I was in trouble.

That same day I went to the Area Manager who told me that he had arranged a transfer for me to a place where I would be much nearer home and where I would have no large rail fares to pay. I was given an appointment to see him the next day. It would mean that I would no longer be required to work evenings or Sundays, so it was much better for me in more ways than one.

I met my new boss who told me I would be starting work with him on the following Monday. As we both were to open the store in the relatively early morning we would talk about many different things. After a while he became the first person ever to tell me that I could personally know Jesus and have a one to one relationship with Him before I died, something I had never heard of before.

Knowing that I was still very slow in coming to The Lord, I used to go to Speakers Corner on my Sundays off, and there was one person there (whom I later found out came from St Albans every Sunday afternoon) I don't know what else he preached, but every time I went by all I could here was him saying "God loves you." I thought I knew that, but now I came to realise that He loves me as an individual not as part of a crowd.

This also was completely new to me. For months I continued to frequent Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, London. Then one evening in St Albans I decided that as an act of nostalgia I would go to a Christmas Eve open=air carol service. This I did, enjoyed it but had no intention of taking things any further. On that Christmas Day in 1967 my aunt came to spend Christmas Day with the family.

So that my mother could get on with cooking the Christmas Dinner she and I were ordered to go to the service at the local church. She did not want to go, I didn't want to go, but you don't argue with my mother. When we arrived and sat through the service there was no nativity play, no evangelistic sermon, no altar call but just a re=statement of the most basic details of the Christmas story which I had known since very young.

God was powerfully present in that meeting, at least as far as I was concerned. Nobody told me I had to commit my life to Jesus, nobody told me how to be born again, much less what that phrase meant, but just before leaving that church I could do nothing else but surrender to Christ, ask Him to forgive all my wrong doing and take over my life from here on in.

When I left that church around ten minutes past midday, I was filled with a joy so great it defies description. Hitherto wild horses could not have dragged me to church, now I had fallen in love with Jesus to such an extent that the devil and all his angels could not have kept me away from that place where I could fall down on my knees and worship Him.

Shortly after that Christmas, a publisher said he would publish the entire bible in magazine form in 112 weekly parts. I still have the complete set of these bible magazines giving many explanations and commentaries on many biblical passages. As a result of these bible magazines I have now read through the entire bible 47 times (minus the apocrypha).

Not long after this I joined a bible study group which was in a neighbouring town and remained with them, watching them minister and learning much from them, for almost 10 years. It was also a prayer group and many exciting answers to prayer were received by the group during the time that I stayed with them. Almost everyone in the group moved away to minister in the calling of God and eventually broke up.

However, I joined a more local bible study group which had an amazing ability to recognise and draw out the gifting in a person. Some of the most remarkable healings I have ever known occurred during the time I was with that group which through the faithful prayers of other members of the group expanded greatly both in number and in the blessing of God.

In 1982 I gad a remarkable experience in The Lord. The church I was with at that time decided to get some practical experience of missionary work, and as they were in contact with two missionary workers in India we took almost three weeks off our normal duties and spent them in several parts of India. We stayed mostly in Sholapur though we went to other parts of India also. This was my first missionary trip abroad.

On the first Sunday we all got to choose which church we wanted to go to in Bombay. I chose to visit a church in the slum area of Bombay. As we were returning on what the Indians refer to as a bus the Minister began to ask me to send out bible studies and sermons that I had used. At that time I had not done either, but he kept on at me to do it and the Minister and I got on very well, so well that through radio and making bible studies available to many churches we worked together for more than 30 years.

It was he who was keen for me to work on Christian radio stations in India and for me to broadcast the gospel to many thousands of Indian nationals, the opportunity for which was fully open to me for more than five years, and on average it is estimated that during this time I must have brought the gospel to more than one hundred million people on that sub-continent.

This was not the only time God did a remarkable thing in my life, how does God bring people together who are thousands of miles apart and who neither knows that they are going to meet the other person yet can cause them both to work together and produce much fruit for the kingdom of God? This was in a big way the fulfilment of what God had told me back on the day I got saved: "I have called you to handle my word."

Perhaps not surprisingly at this time, when God called me to do this at the age of 19. I got a great deal of hostility and discouragement from the very people who should have been helping me and encouraging me the most. After a while I told The Lord: "Right,.that's it, I've had enough of this hostility, find somebody else to do the work, I quit. He left me to stew in my own juice for a week and finally I came back to Him saying: "Alright Lord, I give up, you open the doors of opportunity and I will teach your word to your people.

Then The Lord told me to turn to Jeremiah chapter 20 and read verses 7 to 9. I did and they echoed how I felt, perfectly. "When I open my mouth I get hostility, I said I will not speak in your name any more, but the word of The Lord burned within me to such an extent I could not hold it back."

That issue settled, I went on to greater and greater experiences of, and revelation from God not because I am special but because He is so gracious and kind. Many people have asked the question "Is hell a real place or is it just a state of mind?" From my experience I can tell you without a doubt that it is a real location. In 1995 I have a remarkable and profound experience with God, I will recount this true story now.

While in prayer for the lost in the city I then lived in, it was as though I had been "carried away" as Ezekiel put it and actually saw hell itself. The Lord was with me the whole of the time and it was He who initiated the whole experience.

It is not accurate to say that I had a vision; it is much more accurate to say that I had an experience. The Lord told me that He was not going to leave me: He would be with me throughout but would withdraw from the sense of His presence so that I would feel and understand what those who die without coming to Christ will experience for eternity.

The first thing I felt was terrific heat, so hot that I felt sick and was convinced I would pass out, but realised I could not as I was no longer in my physical body. I still had all my five senses still intact.

Next I remembered when people had come up to me in the street or pushed a leaflet through my letterbox telling me the way of salvation, I had not thought that I might soon die in an accident or be taken through sudden illness and felt I would have plenty of time to consider these things later in life.

Then I thought of the times when people had hurt me terribly and my anger boiled up wanting to take revenge, but I was now in no position to do anything. I then thought of the times when I had hurt others, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally, and wanted to make amends but it was too late for that now.

Next the thought of my loved ones came into my mind and I wanted so much to warn them of this terrible place of torment. No matter how much I would have liked it otherwise I had a terrible feeling of guilt that would now be with me forever. It was dreadful to realise that I was eternally unforgiven.

However, the worst experience of them all was the knowledge that God had abandoned me forever and that there was now no more hope for me, no rest from these agonies. Then God took me back to where I had been where this experience had first begun but I was now a profoundly different man.

I now knew the minimum of what the lost will experience for all eternity, abandoned by God, eternally guilty and with no way of being able to do anything about it. After this experience whenever I pray for lost souls to be saved I do it with tears since I have experienced what awaits them if they do not come to Christ before they die.

Now I will do almost anything, go anywhere in this nation to testify of how The Lord has moved so dynamically in my life and to explain how hell can be avoided. Jesus did everything necessary to ensure that nobody would ever have to go there - except one thing - He has left us with the ability to decide whether to accept what Jesus has done for us or reject it.

If we accept it in this life and walk in fellowship with Him we shall live with Him forever. If you are going to go to hell you do not have to make a choice, just put off receiving Jesus as your Saviour, Messiah, Lord and friend until it is too late.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I urge you to resolve to do everything you can to bring in the vast harvest of souls that is out there right now. People in this nation will die tonight having never heard the true gospel of Jesus Christ (salvation through repentance and fellowship with Jesus, not through good works), if we do not reach them then who on earth will?

Now I would do almost anything, go anywhere in this nation to testify of how The Lord has moved so dramatically in my life and how hell can be avoided. Jesus did everything necessary to ensure that nobody would ever have to go there, except take away our freedom of choice. If we trust in what Jesus has done for us in and through the cross and walk in a relationship with Him day by day then we shall avoid hell. If we refuse to accept what Jesus has done then we will be condemning ourselves to hell for eternity.

This experience had a profound effect on me, and it was around this time that my mother got sick with bowel cancer and I had to care for her and do a full time job in London until six weeks before she died, when she went into hospital. This was a stressful experience of gigantic proportion. After her death I had to leave the home I had lived in all my life to then, and find somewhere else to live alone.

I thought I had found the ideal place when got a mortgage on an apartment in what the people in Scotland call a multi. The building was so nice to live in that tenants were regularly going to the 13th floor of the building to throw themselves over the balcony. Mow let me recount another remarkable experience I had in The Lord during my time in that building.

I was in my flat at St Albans preparing for bed and was feeling particularly depressed at the time. Before I fell asleep I pleaded with The Lord once more to take me home whilst I slept. My father died practically instantly with a massive heart attack and I asked The Lord for the same kind of experience.

I seemed to fall asleep very quickly, and had a vision of myself (with all of my senses functioning) of myself in a prison cell, and I knew that within the next few minutes I was about to be taken out by the Governor and the Prison Officers and executed for a crime I did not commit. I also heard The Lord say that if I appealed to the Governor he would release me at once.

I was leaping around in my cell ecstatic that I was within a few minutes of being with my Lord forever, such a prospect was delightful to me. Then I had the sensation of travelling through a narrow tunnel at very high speed. The tunnel was illuminated and at the end of the tunnel was a much larger, much brighter light. When I arrived at the end of the tunnel I knew I was in the throne room of God.

I could not see His face but from what I could say I guess it was Father Himself who spoke to me. He said "You can come up here and be with me forever right now if you want to, but first I want to show you two things." The first thing He showed me was how upset my friends and family would be if I came now rather than going back to earth. This did not move me one bit and I told Father so.

Then Father said: "Now look behind you." I did and what I saw was a sea of faces, all of whom were of different nationalities. I asked Father who these people are? To which He replied: "These are people who may never come to know me if you come now." To which I replied: "In that case send me back, but only for their sake." I then found myself back in the prison cell, the door of which opened seemingly of its own accord and I immediately returned to consciousness.

Roughly ten years later I met someone from Portsmouth who was up here visiting a friend and was introduced to him. His friend had told him about the bible studies I sent out to two countries every month, and the man from Portsmouth said I should have the teachings put on a website, and that I should pray about it and see what The Lord showed me.

I did pray about it and I felt God say that this is exactly what He wanted. I spend many weeks looking round for someone who would build me a website for a reasonable sum of money, as I was in financial difficulty at the time. I found nobody, yet The Lord kept urging me to put the studies on a website. Eventually I turned round to The Lord and said: "If you want them on a website you find me someone who will do it for nothing." I was convinced that this could not happen.

Next day I was in town and met a former tutor who had taught me the little about computers that I knew. I was at least 99% computer illiterate. When I asked him in disbelief if he knew anyone who would build a website for me for nothing to my astonishment he replied: "I will, it is part of my job on the council." So the two of us together produced a website containing all of the teachings now on a different website.

To view most of these studies (which are mostly the original teachings) go to the following web address: www.allelujah.co.uk I now have two other websites, the main one of the two is www.1way2god.co.uk I asked google how many countries there are in the world, and google told me is was 196. To date my websites have been hit by 118 different countries, totally fulfilling the vision God gave me at St. Albans all those years earlier (this was approximately 2005).

Amazingly many of the ministers in Dundee are convinced that God did not call me to raise up a website and that I only did it out of my own ego. Tell me, do you think that I am clever enough to reach more than half the countries of the world with sound biblical teaching unless The Lord were working through these sites? I am not that clever, only God is.

In October of 2000 I sold my property in St Albans where I had lived my whole life up to that time, and ventured to set up home in Dundee, I have remained here ever since. I love the city and I love the people who live in and around it. When I went to the benefits office I told them that I was not fit to work, they did not believe me. I spent five years out of work then they found a short-term job for me. After a few weeks I collapsed on the job, quite literally.

I remember one day literally collapsing at work and being taken to a nearby surgery where my own doctor has a practice. She took the situation in hand very quickly and arranged for me to have a number of tests. The result of one of these tests suggested that I was suffering from cancer. As almost all of my relatives had died of this and I had seen the treatment they had to undergo I refused all medical treatment.

At the next opportunity I asked my Minister and elders to pray for me, I was not worried about dying as even today I would much rather be gone and with my Lord, but I remembered the vision God had given me where He had shown me I would reach many nationalities and peoples before He called me home. As cancer was suspected I was sent for a biopsy to confirm whether a malignant tumour was present.

The result came back positive, they had found and (under a microscope in the laboratory) identified a malignant tumour. Although I would not accept it my doctor pressed me to go to talk to the radiologist about treatment and its effect on me. With complete confidence I agreed to do this, believing that I had already been healed of the disease by God.

So that they could find out how fast the tumour was growing I was given a second biopsy and the result past on to the radiologist for her to advise me. She spoke to me for about 20 minutes, urging me to have treatment, then at the end of it she opened the envelope containing the result of my latest lest. Then she said: "I don't know why they have sent you to me, there is nothing wrong with you."

This was a confirmation of what I felt The Lord had told me, that it was not my time to come home and as there was still work for me yet He had healed me of cancer without any medical treatment whatever, and this is now documented in my medical records. That was some years ago now and I am re-tested every six months. Every time the results come back they are always the same, no trace of cancer or any other serious illness.