My Testimony

Wally Taylor
October 1970
English family

I was born of humble parents, and life was very hard at times. My father passed into the spirit world when I was still young, so life became more difficult for my mother and her family of ten, and she had to work many hard hours to feed us. It was at this time that I began to think of God, the God that was taught to me at school, not God I know now. God to me then was a high-in-the-heavens God, who was very limited in space and did not appear as a man of an angel but as a triangle. This was my God to whom I could pray to ask for things I desired. This satisfied me.

As I grew older, I loved my mother more and more, and through her I first came to know of the spirit world. After my father's death she had become drawn to a spiritualist church attended by a friend, and one day I followed at a distance to find my way to the back of that church. I was fifteen then. By what I heard and saw my appetite was whetted, and for many years I followed this pathway of understanding. I look upon these years and all that followed as of enormous benefit toward understanding and accepting the Divine Principle.

Nevertheless, my interest in the teaching of the spiritualist church began to wane: they seemed to get stuck on a certain wavelength and be incapable of moving on. I wanted more of something I could not explain. I sought a brotherhood where man could speak to man from his heart, I found that the truth within individuals was superficial--just reserved for the church -- and so I made fewer anti fewer visits there until I got married when I did not attend any church at any time for seventeen years. However, I still lived in the knowledge of the spirit and of the loving Everlasting Father, and I know now the reason behind these years. I can say now that I regret nothing of my life -- indeed I am happy that I underwent all that I did because of what has taught me.

The seventeen year period ended with the death of my wife. It was at this time I spoke to God from deep within my heart and asked Him to help me bear the burden of sorrows. From that moment my heart became lightened and all the past teachings brought me complete freedom from sorrow which, I discovered, was only self-pity. Thus I began a new way of life: I knew God was ever present and ever loving. I had climbed another rung of the ladder.

I must at this point go back to the time when I was eighteen years old. At this time I used to converse with those of the spirit world not directly, but by a medium, one whom I trusted and had tested. I used to ask question after question, and learned very much of the spirit world, and of what was to happen later. At one such discourse I was told that sometime in the future I would be involved in wartime activities(this was two years before 1940) and that although things would be very difficult and dangerous, I would return safely to England. And this is what happened, for I served for five years as a soldier in the Middle East.

It was here that the knowledge of the spirit world and my faith and trust in all things good were to prove so helpful to me. One day whilst serving in Egypt I had to take a column of vehicles with ammunition to a forward point. It was after journeying many -Ales that it happened. We were travelling unconcernedly along a dusty track when I felt impelled to tell my driver to bail out -- never mind stopping the vehicle! He did bale out, and I followed by the same way that he went fast! It was then that I knew the reasons for my unpremeditated actions: at that moment death was riding high in the form of seven enemy planes, spitting cannon shell from their vicious guns. As we both the sands of the desert we felt the vibration of this cascading death striking around us. In such moments, when one becomes so much more aware of life and death time stands still. Yes, 1 prayed as I never prayed before. I prayed for it seemed many minutes. Yet it was all over in the time it takes seven fast moving planes to pass by. I then realized the truth of the saying no time in spirit---- I raised my head and saw behind me five of my comrades no more living in this world, and others the same behind, eight passing to the spirit world out of the total of fourteen.

The people of the spirit world saved my life because I had rapport with them: when I returned to England it was they who told me of my experiences there was nothing I could tell them. That is how near spirit world is to us. But that is not enough.

On another occasion, during the Second Front I happened to be involved in an encircling prong, one of those black arrows one saw on campaign maps in the newspapers. It was on the thrust through Belgium and the advance was so fast that we ran out of maps. Then one has to use commonsense and hope for the best. So we travelled on behind the lines, until dusk called us to a halt. I had seven ammunition trucks under my command and I told the drivers to bed down. Fortunately, we came across a small village, which we found later was called Eye, and so we slept there. But during the night the enemy moved in, so it was up to me to make the necessary reconnaissance. I went with one of the drivers, but as we made to turn a corner of the road a voice in broke.

English called out, 'come on, Tommy! Come this way!' and I saw the wrong end of many rifles. I instinctively turned to seek a way of escape, but a voice said, 'No,' so I and my driver became prisoners-of war. How could this happen to me! What could the spirit would do now to get me out of this fix? We were ordered into a staff car and the N.C.O.S. in charge were instructed to take us to a place six kilometers away. When they reached that point the enemy found it deserted, so we began a wandering tour of the countryside until we came to a point where we could see some cross-roads about a kilometer ahead, and at them, some armored vehicles_ Spirit spoke to me at this point. 'They are ours! They are ours! And so, while our captors still assumed the armored cars were theirs, I, for no reason I could conceive, reached out for the handle of the car door while we were still travelling fairly fast. So I came to a meeting with death once again, and again the spirit world intervened, for the next.' thing I knew I was sitting on n grass verge at the side of the road watching the destruction. Once again the spirit world had saved my life.