About Me

Tricia

This blog is a mirror of the one on my new website (well, not that new, as it’s been around since I put the Cross+Word archive on ice at the home site of Banner Ministries.)

I am a long-serving Bible-believing Christian, concerned about false teaching and the coming signs of the End. I’m not working with or associated to anyone. What I have written is the product of my personal studies and research as a believer.

Almost all my Christian life has been spent reading the bible, researching it, studying theology and doctrine and applying myself to the biblical truth.  Despite that I still acknowledge how little I really know, and all that I do know is only by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit without whom we’d all be drifting in a sea of error.

At the advent of what was called “Shepherding”, I began to be disturbed and alarmed at the amount of false teaching I encountered in churches. After pleading with the Lord in the early 80′s that he would use me in some way to defy some of the heresies I saw around me, I began to be used locally to write tracts, and that progressed to a newsletter (“Mainstream“). For reasons that are too lengthy to explain here, the work was called “Banner Ministries”.

Over time (and as we saw the advance of the “Restoration Movement” and then the “Revival”) this newsletter became a popular source of information, as well as audio tapes,  and conferences that I was blessed to be enabled to organise. For none of this do I take credit.

I met and shared information with a number of excellent researchers in England and other countries, and we all worked as individuals but as a fellowship in Christ to hold back the flood of deception.

I realised that – far from putting myself at God’s disposal in the 80′s – in God’s eternal agenda he’d actually placed in me the desire as well as the willingness to be part of this team of individuals, and that God himself had called a number of Christians to act as watchmen/women on the walls of the Church.

From small beginnings in the 80′s this joint worldwide ministry grew (and was given the tag of Discernment Ministry for want of a better title) and in my own case led to me writing larger articles (books almost) on the topics of the Latter Rain, Oneness, Restoration, Word of Faith and the Revival that I placed on my original website CROSS+WORD (An acronym for Christian Research on Scriptural Subjects plus the Work of Researchers and Discernment Ministries. It was a collaboration.) That website was located at http://www.banner.org.uk/ and I still own that domain.

I brought the Mainstream Newsletter to a close when I could no longer find the amount of time, work and expense involved in producing it (which I had done by myself for many years, originally photocopying it and all the other literature as well as mailing it out.)

The audio tapes were also pensioned off for much the same reasons, and most of the important information was transferred to the website as the Internet became a better source of research.

I also knew that things were changing, and a different response was needed, so Banner Ministries became mostly a Website.

Things remained this way for a number of years as Toronto and then its offshoots, and various other forms of the “New Church” took shape and bit into the Church.

At a time that I can’t exactly state I realised two interlinked things: I was in danger of going over old ground and just repeating myself when the bulk of the information was now readily available; and the discernment ministry as a whole had become less focused and more self-centred than at the start, with an unfortunate tendency to cling onto popularity by almost any means and indulge in in-fighting instead of dealing with errors in the Church. (Speaking in general.)

Increasingly I was hearing from God that my work was drawing to a close, and to prepare for something different. I said as much in my news reports but I’m not sure anyone understood. I was still being asked to lead meetings and produce literature but since that would mean fighting against the God-given impulse to back away from such things, I refused. For a few years I remained in a kind of limbo, and those years coincided with much spiritual, emotional and marital stress that (amazingly) led to something unthinkable, a divorce.  God had been speaking to me about it, but I had been completely missing the point.

I am now happily married to a Christian man who shares my faith and stands with me in my beliefs.  Out of deference to others and because I believed that work was already at an end, I put the Banner website aside without even the permission to use the site or the material. Recently I was led to write again, but this time about devotional issues, biblical studies and the endtimes and that is my current focus.

I have not lost my sense of indignation at false teaching but that work is no longer for me; it is being done much more effectively by others on the Net.

Ungodly gossip circulated the Net when I was divorced in 2005.  I would like to lay that to rest and move on. God is now speaking to us as a Church and showing us that the Lord’s coming is closer than ever. Time is too short for finger-pointing and gossip. We need to keep short accounts with God and be prepared for the life to come.

Only God is qualified to judge, since only HE searches the inner heart and intentions. Although I have never claimed to be perfect or inerrant, I do have a clear conscience about the events surrounding my divorce.  Those who cannot bring themselves to accept either divorce or remarriage under ANY circumstances will have to take it up with God, but I will not break fellowship with you for that, nor would I expect you to do the same to me.

James 2:12-13
So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.  Mercy triumphs over judgment.

If I had to sum up the condition of the Church I would say “self-indulgent, unwary and gullible” on the whole. What is needed is a holy shakeup which I believe God will send whether we like it or not. I want to write about his call to repentance, reconsecration and the need to be strong in God, standing on the ROCK for the days ahead. Nothing else is important, including the personal details of my life as given here.

I have given this testimony only to satisfy the curiosity of visitors who do not know who I am, and for others who have been wondering where I disappeared to for those years.