Former New Age Guru recalls harassment, abuse and fake miracles he witnessed in the Assemblies of God (AG/AoG) movement.
My name is Zach Bourne and I’m a 54-year-old British. Growing up, my father was a high-paying company representative that required frequent travel, so I experienced many parts of the world and enjoyed a comfortable life. Eventually, he landed a job in Porto Alegre, Brazil and we stayed in an apartment with all the furniture left from the previous tenant, including a rocking chair.
I was around 6 years old and playing by myself, when an old woman suddenly appeared sitting on that rocking chair. Sitting by her feet, I started conversing in Portuguese with this seemingly benign, harmless old woman. I had regular conversations with her almost every night until my parents saw what I was doing and freaked out. In reality, they only saw the rocking chair moving by itself and not the old woman, so they believed I was talking to a ghost. That was my very first spirit encounter.
A couple of years later, I snuck under my brother’s bed and chanced upon a box of esoteric books that included Buddhism, Hinduism, Hare Krishna, Aleister Crowley, Loch Ness Monster, Bermuda Triangle and other occult practices. I digested them like crazy since I found them much more fascinating than normal life. I pored through fantasy novels like Star Wars and obsessed over mystical stuff like stigmata, Catholic miracles, dreams, and anything that involved the “other world”.
“I took part in their initiation rites, practised many types of Yoga, Reiki meditation and adopted many spiritual New Age practices. I even developed “intuitive psychic powers” and I could see people’s “doors”, where I knew things about them that they never revealed to anyone. I even predicted four people’s deaths including my brother’s.”
At 13, I was introduced to meditation. While in boarding school, I was exposed to Christianity since we were always dragged to assembly (although I liked the hymn that sung Psalm 23), but I thought it was boring, corny and too “goody-two-shoes”. The idea of a man dying for our sins was very ridiculous and too negative. It was also at this age, that I sustained a back injury that never fully recovered despite repeated visits to the Chiropractor, doctors and spirit healers over the years.
After I left boarding school, I started doing drugs until I overdosed in my late teens. I knew I needed to change and decided that I need to abandon the material world. So, I visited and lived in Buddhist temples and Hare Krishna temples around the world for many years. I took part in their initiation rites, practised many types of Yoga, Reiki meditation and adopted many spiritual New Age practices. I even developed “intuitive psychic powers” and I could see people’s “doors”, where I knew things about them that they never revealed to anyone. I even predicted four people’s deaths including my brother’s.
From 2016-2019, I was now a New Age Guru, giving initiations, teaching people eastern spirituality and mindfulness, counselling them, bestowing them mystic powers and making good money from these activities.
Despite what appeared to be spiritual success, deep down, I was searching for God, but I was looking for Him in all the wrong places.
When I moved to America, I was involved in a few relationships and eventually had kids. A break-up from a deep relationship that happened on my birthday caused me months of trauma, until I decided to take my life and power back, and went back to the UK.
One day, while I was deep in Reiki meditation, I saw in my vision, a glowing silhouette of a figure whose features I could barely see. He put his hands on my shoulder and said, “I am the Healer.” I felt a wave of love from Him. I thought, “Cool! Jesus is my spirit guide!” Still, I did not become a Christian as I just treated this figure as one of my many spiritual guides.
By this time, I had finished reading all my spiritual books and I wanted more, so me and my son visited a charity shop. My eyes chanced upon a book called “The Shack”. I am aware how controversial it is now, but back then, I did not know. As the book was under the Christian category, I avoided it and left the shop. However, a voice in my head kept nudging me to get the book, so I got my son to return to the shop and get the book for me.
The moment I read the book, I could not help but read it cover to cover till 4am the next day. That same day, I visited a Baptist church. However, I was turned off by their intense preaching that focused on sin, hellfire, penal substitution and all sorts of heavy stuff, and it was boring. So, I walked out halfway.
Then, me and my son chanced upon a nearby church that had worship nights.
“There are so many mystical similarities of the Charismatic movement’s five-fold gifts to the occult I was involved in, like super powers or “attainments”, so you could see why I was drawn to this movement.”
The setup was concert-like, with loud music and many people gathering. It drew me to their style of prayer and worship. Tears streamed down my face and I felt all these emotions, believing it was the Holy Spirit. Towards the end, there was an altar call that asked for healing, and I responded for the sake of my back injury. Many hands laid on me and I felt something travel down my spine and abdomen, then a “crack”. It was a miraculous healing! That awed me that I decided to pursue Christianity.
I explored other churches, mostly pentecostal, Assemblies of God (AG/AoG), Charismatic and Pentecostal ones. I met my wife online during this journey and she got baptised in one of those churches. We got into their deliverance ministry, where they spoke and prayed intensely in gibberish tongues. I saw one of their “disciples” having spasms and catching deep breaths. I discerned that it was not quite right that I almost wanted to laugh. Sensing my reaction, she approached me and demanded, “Cough it out, cough it out!”.
I asked, “What do you mean cough it out?”
“Cough out the spirits inside you!” she insisted.
I coughed a bit as a way to mock her, because I knew there were no spirits within me. She even tried to “heal” my wife. Nothing happened so we left that church.
We switched to an AoG church that had about a 100-people capacity. It was pastored by a husband-and-wife duo, and I was blown away by that female pastor who convinced me of Jesus. It hit me hard because I was diagnosed with anxiety and insomnia due to suffering from many past traumas and an addiction to sleeping tablets for the past one year despite failed withdrawal attempts. She prayed over me to get healed over the addiction and it worked that night, where I stopped the tablets and there were no withdrawal symptoms for the first time. I was convinced that this AoG church was the right one.
After all, there are so many mystical similarities of the Charismatic movement’s five-fold gifts to the occult I was involved in, like super powers or “attainments”, so you could see why I was drawn to this movement.
“The leaders believed they were anointed by God and that they could play God […] Because my wife was still not healed, they pushed her to “repent” and threw hurtful, untrue accusations at her […] The church refused to take accountability for their fake promises when confronted…”
However, over time, I noticed the cultish and guarded behaviour of this church. The leaders believed they were anointed by God and that they could play God. Their deliverance ministry was filled with verbal incantations of “I declare, I declare, in the name of Jesus, be healed!”, etc. As my wife was still not healed, they pushed her to “repent” and threw hurtful, untrue accusations at her, that she broke down. A few days later, my wife was hospitalised and had her appendix removed, and that affected her faith. The church refused to take accountability for their fake promises when confronted. They even distanced themselves from us and continued to be nasty to us.
During my wife’s recovery in the hospital, a church member whom my wife once considered a friend, exchanged numbers with me so she could be updated on her condition. Instead, I received a call from her husband at 5.30am, hurling vulgarities at me to not contact his wife and that she never considered my wife her friend!
I reported this nasty behaviour to the church and even to the headquarters of the AoG, but they did not do anything about it. Instead, I received a nasty letter from the church to shut up. It was at this point that I decided to dig deeper on the AoG movement. I discovered how the entire AoG movement ran like a multi-million dollar worldwide operation (only 25% of their money goes to evangelical outreach – according to their accounts in their website). It disgusted me when I recalled their relentless preaching on tithing for the first 15 minutes of every service with emotional music in the background. I noticed how they preyed on students relentlessly to give their 10%, even though many of them were financially struggling. The AoG was simply a global, massive cult.
We left the AoG church.
I went alone to an Anglican church and was introduced to Reformed books, which exposed the false doctrines of the Charismatic movement and the Pentecostal movement. Despite the trauma she faced at the AoG church, my wife eventually got back on track with the faith and decided to come along with me.
One day, there was a big worship night at the church where I used to be baptized in, called !Audacious Church in Manchester. I recalled how they made me fill out a questionnaire to determine what my “spiritual gifting and calling” before baptism. My scoring was so impressive that I was deemed an apostle! After baptism, I was being prayed over, and while they spoke tongues over me, they “prophesied” that I was going to be an apostle, which did not fool me since I knew they saw my scoring results first.
Anyway, I thought to drop by for a visit, enjoy some modern worship music and treat it as my goodbye, since we were moving to Wales. There was a celebrity pastor from a mega church in Australia, who was preaching that night. He started laying hands on people and knocking them backwards, and even “healing” them! I was curious since I developed fibromyalgia. I kept raising and waving my hand up, but he ignored me.
I knew something was not right when I witnessed some ushers pointing at selected people among the crowd, whom the pastor would “choose” from the stage. Then, he would “slay them in the spirit” and they collapsed backwards, shaking and speaking in tongues. Yet, this pastor continued to ignore me.
Eventually, I got disheartened and annoyed.
Sensing my frustration, a man beside me told me not to bother, as it was up to the Holy Spirit to bestow who gets healed. That struck me, realising for a moment that healing comes from the Lord, not from men. Me and my wife realised that this whole worship night was a bogus.
I realised how much the Charismatic movement is full of phony people and fraud, and even though I do not consider myself a cessasionist, I do not believe that the Apostolic office operates today.
The AoG taught me that being saved meant reciting the sinner’s prayer and be baptised (I believe baptism is important, but it does not buy salvation), and showing evidence of salvation through the sigh gifts. It was no different from the New Age incantations, mantras and rituals that I used to be involved in. Now, I understand that being saved means that if you accept the truth about Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, his resurrection and saving grace, based on the Gospel in the Bible, then you are assured of eternal life. It is not by works.
My walk with Christ feels more grounded and not based on performance. There is just a kind of knowing that it will all be okay.
While it was easy for me to leave the Charismatic movement, I understand that for many others, it’s not, especially when their whole identity is tied to a fellowship and the addiction to “spiritual highs”, rather than to God’s Word.
My advice to those who are still in the Charismatic movement: RUN!
Ex-Charismatics 