Posted: 09/05/2013 at 1:03pm | IP Logged

CWMBRAN, UK (ANS) -- A young man who had already become a career criminal as a teenager had his life transformed after feeling the ‘hand of God’ on his shoulder as he stood for sentencing in a Crown Court.

(Though he had repeatedly felt a hand on his shoulder, there was no-one there when he turned round to check).

Richard Taylor of Victory Church in Cwmbran, Wales, preaching (Photo: Clive Price)

Richard Taylor was expecting a long prison sentence for an accumulation of crimes including aggravated burglary but, because he was showing signs of a desire to follow Christ, he was remanded instead to a Christian-run drug rehabilitation center.

And it was there at the Victory Outreach, which at first he treated as just another “open prison”, that he saw a vision of Jesus dying on the cross and turning to him, saying, “Richard, I did this for you”.

Leaving behind a trail of destruction which included many lives he admits to having led astray, the 18-year-old from Llanelli in South Wales had an overwhelming experience of being born again and filled with the Holy Spirit as he began praising God in a language he had never learnt.

He is now pastor of the Victory Church in Cwmbran, where the so-called Welsh Outpouring is currently taking place with nightly meetings (except Fridays and Sundays) ever since early April.

The church meets in a downtown warehouse known as the “tin cathedral” where packed services have been accompanied by miracles of healing and the restoration of broken lives.

And it is staffed by ex-drug addicts like Richard who have graduated from the rehab center – one of six around the country operating in this way.

Book cover

Richard, who took part in a TV program called “To Catch a Thief” in which he demonstrated for the benefit of would-be victims all the various means used to gain illegal access to premises, began his criminal career as a tearaway 13-year-old whose parents had fallen out constantly until separated by divorce. He got in with the wrong crowd and soon took the initiative in a series of wild escapades all in an effort to feed his growing drug habit.

He got hooked on heroin, cocaine and whatever else he could get hold of, and his desperate drive for the next fix landed him in court time and again until, still only 15, he was sent to a Young Offenders’ Institution.

He “graduated” to HMP [Her Majesty’s Prison] Swansea and later had a spell at Usk Open Prison, near Abergavenny, as he continued on a downward spiral to a life controlled by drugs. Even among his fellow inmates, he stood out in his own words as “a very nasty piece of work” aggressive and obnoxious to almost anyone he met.

But then at last he began to wonder what life was about and whether there was any way out of the mess he was in – some of his friends have since died of a drugs overdose and he was heading in the same direction.

The prison chaplain was very friendly and helpful, and there was a man from an organisation called Prison Fellowship (started by former aide to President Nixon and ex-Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson) who visited him. The upshot was that he began reading the Bible that until now he was using for cigarette roll-ups.

His attitude changed and, as a result, he was given a chance to find his feet with Victory Outreach rather than spend a stretch of several years in prison for his latest accumulation of offences. And it was there, still a little skeptical of what it was all about, that his life was turned around in a dramatic way. And miraculously, he never had any of the withdrawal symptoms expected for someone so powerfully hooked on drugs. After being filled with the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, he felt cleansed, forgiven and free from addiction.

“It came as a beautiful breaking dawn, the realization that I no longer needed speed, heroin, cannabis or anything else. Both mentally and physically, I was absolutely free.”

“To Catch a Thief” (written with John Miles) is also the title of the book on which this article is based, published by New Wine Press. For further information on the Victory Church, see their website at www.victorychurch.co.uk

Source: Assist News Service