FROM CONSPIRACY TO CHRIST: The Testimony of Andrew Spod Godkin

The following is a testimony from a dear brother "from across the pond" in England. I met him online with Facebook, and after getting to know each other a bit, and learning how he came to know the LORD, I was intrigued and wanted to know more about this. 
When he gave me a bit more detail, I asked if he would be willing to share his testimony with us all, and he agreed. So, the following is the testimony of Andrew Spod Godkin: I pray that it ministers and reaches people, particularly those who are on the same road that he was on - and how it all led him from conspiracy to Christ.

My childhood was very much a normal one, I would say; no abuse at all, nothing out of the ordinary, and my parents are still together after 51 years, so no suffering a divorced and broken family. 


I think the way I was brought up gave me respect for others; I am polite to everyone, and so for that I am thankful. We didn't have a lot of money and I could not have everything I wanted, so I had to learn to do without the things that some other kids had. This also taught me to look after my things ("look after your things and they will look after you").

We’re not a very open and close family with regards to talking about things and getting deep into any topics. I think it's quite hard to show our affection for one another (something that I wish was different but that's just the way it is) but besides all this I don't doubt their love for me, it's just different from how I see some others around me growing up. 

I don't think my parents are believer's but if they were and did believe my efforts in trying to help them see, they would most likely keep it to themselves (Although I did find out that they both went to Bible classes as youth). I have tried and still do try to talk about these things to them, but only ever get little response back.
They can't argue what I try to show them, but at the same time, they don't really want to discuss it any further.  I will continue to pray for them.

Growing up into my teens I very much floated through school and pretty much accepted what life told me was true, never for a minute thinking anybody would lie to us in the way that they do. So, as I got older as a young adult my thoughts were: If evolution is true, then of course aliens must be out there, etc. so I had a big interest in everything to do with life elsewhere. 

I guess sometimes I thought that I must not be from here, because the way that people treat one another and crap on each other, I just did not understand why and how they could do it so freely without having any conscience about their actions. 

It wasn't until my life progressed and bad things started to happen to me (and others) which I felt were unfair; in relationships for example, and being ripped off by someone for being so gullible of your hard-earned cash. Realising that things even your parents told you about the world wasn't true, I became more and more untrusting of the world and its people. Perhaps it’s when you learn these things it starts to make you think to yourself, Everyone else is like that so I may as well be like that too. 

No matter what people did or how they made me feel, even though I thought of bad things and how to retaliate, I still was determined not to let these bad experiences of being cheated on (in just about every relationship) make me be the same way and then I turn pass that on to someone else who didn't deserve it. 

Then I understood that the world which I lived in, I was never going to be successful; I didn't have what it took to be ruthless; and it seemed that only the crooked succeeded mainly (but also some few hard-working people too).

I think each negative experience that happened to me in life, set me up to search for truth and again, it made me very untrusting of the world and its people. 

My brother (I have two) was massively into 'house' music or electronic dance music, which I myself got into (because of him) and it became my focus, hobby and passion – my source of happiness and place to go to feel good. However it also at the same time led me down a path of women, drink, drugs many parties and late nights, expanding my mind and thoughts on life's bigger questions. Some of which I thought woke me up in some small way, but this does not truly happen, I would say until you know the truth of Jesus. 

Yeah, you may have looked a little further into things than the average person but at the end of the day, without Jesus you are still very much lost and nothing can truly make sense. 

So, through all this I guess I thought to myself that I was an 'OK guy' by the world's standards but in reality, I am no better than the rest and have my own secrets and dark thoughts just like anyone else when they think they are alone.

I had no background whatsoever in any kind of religion or Christianity and neither did the people around me (that I knew of). At no point in my life did I ever think I would be on this path as a believer in the one and only, true and living God.
During my youthful clubbing days I was always around the party scene (complete with drugs) which is how I met my long term girlfriend who I was in a relationship with for 13 years; we had a house and two dogs. I thought I would eventually marry her, have children and grow old together.


This relationship was full of partying, drugs and alcohol, and although I never lost control, it just seemed what most youth do around here nowadays. So, nights going on very late and right into the next day – even going out and doing it all again the night after – (in my early days), burning the candle at both ends so to speak.

I had a passion for all things involving music especially electronic; I was a DJ, loved clubbing and would even go as far as saying that music was my God. I was always around the party scene on a weekend (complete with drugs) and met my girlfriend during one of these times. 

Although I always thought deep down this would eventually calm down in my life, it didn’t. During this time, I had also been a smoker of marijuana (for the past 18 years of my life); it was something I very much enjoyed.

This lifestyle hadn’t affected me work wise. I had always gone to work and paid my way. By the world’s standards I didn’t think I was a bad guy in general; I was quite pleasant and got on with most folk easy enough.

Getting back to my girlfriend: eventually I had some quite rough patches in my relationship and found out I was being cheated on around the time when we were supposed to move into a lovely country cottage. So, in the end we split up and went our separate ways quite quickly; that was back in November of 2013.

This was quite a gutting, embarrassing experience for me which brought me down to earth with a crash. I was greatly upset at this time; I felt some anger as well and a greater loss of trust in people.

I moved in with an old friend I used to hang around with before meeting my girlfriend as I couldn’t afford to live by myself. This friend happened to be the place in my life where I first began my marijuana smoking journey; it just so happened that he was also growing it himself. So then, this looked like what my life was going to shape up to be because I enjoyed smoking it and was quite content.

I thought to myself, This is who I am and if I meet another lady, she will just have to accept this. However, it was always a drain on my money – I had even tried to stop a few times but never seemed able to get away from it (besides the never-ending joints I smoked, I also used an E-cigarette for about 4 years previous to moving in with my friend).

So, anyway during the next two-year period at my friend’s house (after my split from my girlfriend), I began searching for some kind of truth in the world:  looking into all kinds of so called conspiracies.
Anything from the twin towers, to UFOs, ancient civilisations and then I eventually came across things like the new world order, the Freemasons and Illuminati, etc. I began to see that there was something seriously wrong with our world, but still nothing close to the truth about Jesus.

Then I remember one particular conspiracy which I actually think is leading others down the same path I went down.  It's the one about fluoride being put in our water to perhaps dumb us down as a society. So, I looked further into this, which led me to hearing about the fluoride causing some kind calcification of the pineal gland (otherwise known as the third eye) crystallising it and stopping it from opening.

I know now that this was leading me into New Age things and secret knowledge etc. but at the time I was wondering, ‘What does this third eye do?’ I was very intrigued.

This again led into something else: I began looking into ancient civilisations in general and specifically into Egyptian and Sumerian; as well as this, the possibility of a spirituality of some sort. It seemed there was a whole lot more going on in all of this; the rabbit hole deepened even more, but still with no answers.

I came across a documentary called ‘DMT the spirit molecule’ and I was fascinated by it. In it, people were talking about this apparently ancient drug which is a component also found in Ayahuasca (which is a drink Shamans brewed in jungles in places like Peru); they were having strange but interesting spiritual psychedelic journeys that sometimes brought them (in their minds) into very similar experiences and meetings with strange entities.

People appeared to be having what almost seemed like religious type experiences/visions or somehow connecting to higher being –  perhaps even God? I got curious, and for me this was more than just taking another drug like the ones I did in my previous years (ecstasy and marijuana mainly, closely followed by cocaine and amphetamines; also, ketamine a few times too). I became convinced it was a gateway to the spirit realm (something I still believe today*).

[*Note to reader by James: The word for "witchcraft" in the Greek as used in GAL 5:20 is pharmekia, which is where we get the word pharmaceuticals - or drugs. Drugs have long been used by various cultures to perceive the spiritual realm, but that is the realm of darkness.]

I researched DMT thoroughly; something I had not really done with previous drugs and was convinced it wasn’t like an addictive drug and is only something to try every once in a while, with no danger of getting hooked on it. I also researched other people on youtube videos, documentaries, etc.

To cut an already long story short, I managed to get my hands on some of this drug. It was the scariest and strangest thing I have ever experienced, hands down. I tried a few times but couldn't seem to get into it deep enough and reach the point that these other people reached in their experiences. Yet what I did experience convinced me of the spirit world.
I will try to explain parts of some trips I had but without the whole story as I don’t really want to glorify this substance as it isn’t the main focus of this testimony. 

The first time I tried it, it seemed to have an almost ‘Egyptian type’ of feeling to it, seeing some kind of strange stone wheel that was turning around; it had writing along the edges that was either hieroglyphs of some kind or alien writing. The wheel stopped, and it felt like time had stopped which is hard to explain; but it felt like I was outside of time. 

On another occasion, upon smoking some more of this drug, I couldn’t tell if I was still breathing or not upon taking. I can remember thinking ‘Am I still breathing?” And it was then I heard what sounded like a female voice in my ear saying in a ghostly voice, “breeeeeeeathe”. 

Usually I closed my eyes when I sat and experienced these trips in my room; but one time it felt like my head was being scanned somehow and I didn’t want to open them – but eventually I did: the whole room looked distorted and vibrating almost horror-style like.

The only time I saw something close to an entity was when a trip was wearing off and it appeared as though light began breaking through my wall; a face appeared which looked like a lion. It was just looking at me. I’m thankful that I didn’t interact with it but that was in fact, the only time I saw something that seemed like a being of some sort.

Anyway, after a few of these experiences and being convinced of a spirit realm I began to think that if this is real, then there must be a dark side to all this. Because my experiences so far, felt very scary, I thought to myself whilst researching a darker side of spirituality,that demons must be real too if I believed in the Spirit world. I didn't enjoy watching/researching this stuff, I just wanted to know what we could possibly be dealing with and what I could have been getting myself into (unknowingly). This also led me into more research into even more satanic things and twisted people like occultist Aleister Crowley who seems to have greatly influenced many high profile people (celebrities) that were or still are in the public eye today with his writings and practises. The Beatles, Ozzie Osborn, David Bowie, Led zeppelin and Jay Z just to name a few I found.

I decided one day, before I thought about trying DMT again, that I would pray as I had no one else to ask about what I was doing or even to talk to that would understand, so I just prayed saying ‘Lord’ in quite a humble way, to ask if what I was experimenting with and searching for was the right path in looking for answers, some kind of truth to the world; I’m not sure what I was searching for but now I believe it was God.


The next day, I felt I got an answer in the form of a video popping up in my feed.  It was someone I previously was into, but had decided he was part of this secret world system too, what with all his connections. In the video he was only championing this DMT stuff (I think this would only make sense to me as an answer to my prayer, but it worked). I decided then and there to stop what I was embarking on and began searching even more into these trip experiences of people who were experimenting with this drug. 

People under the influence of this, eventually came to the conclusion that “we are all one and all God” (which is pantheism). This raised some big red flags and I thought to myself ‘this stinks of new world order deception’!

Some conspiracy videos I came across also had Bible scriptures in them and one video was even exposing churches that were involved in these conspiracies. Very shortly after, I can't really explain why, but it seemed like a few connections from all the things I had ever watched and researched all joined together and started making more sense in my head as to why the world seemed so corrupt.

Then one night, in August of 2015, while alone in my room I had a moment of realization: ‘Ahhh it's all been a trick, God is real, Jesus must be real’ I then thought how am I going to explain this to people (laughing to myself); that I really believed it all. Thinking, People will think I’m a nutter, but it was all true! 

In that same moment I then realised that God had seen everything I had ever done, every little bit of it and I then regretted a few things I hadn't previously regretted; some actions in the past and ones I still did.

Things like smoking cannabis, taking drugs, looking at porn, masturbation and the sexually immoral things I’d done; all my secrets where I thought I was alone. Also, my relationship I spoke of:  My ex-girlfriend at one time (three years into our relationship) was pregnant and decided she didn't want to keep it.  At the time I decided to stand by whatever decision she made (which was abortion). I totally thought it was the right thing to do given our situation money wise and because she was wanting to further her career at the time. So, I stood by her.

This now, I also realised was wrong to do, even though I don't think I really had much of a part in deciding overall – still felt bad about it and wish I’d tried to persuade her to keep it. 

Shortly after thinking Jesus is real, the Bible is real, we have been lied to in a big way, I thought, How can I talk to God stoned and learn the Bible? 

So, I decided to quit smoking cannabis – and haven't looked back or even felt like going back to it at all (even though previously I had pretty much committed to smoking it the rest of my life)!  

It felt easy to quit too, not like before, so I believe my new faith in Jesus freed me from this, as it did with masturbation, porn, fornication, taking God’s name in vain and swearing too (used to swear every other word) . . . I don’t drink at all now either (that was never a big problem), but I don’t feel the need to get in that kind of state of being anymore.

Looking back, I remember that my ex-girlfriend was a nightmare when drunk which put me off it. Now I could say I would never do those things again, never feel tempted around those things again, never even want those of things in my life anymore.

I generally stay away from my old life and friends although I still speak to them; I just don’t go drinking with them or do anything I used to do with them. My close friends and family all know my belief now and even people at work

I have moved back to my parents to get my finances in order. I have decided to have a go at growing vegetables and took on an allotment growing food as a side hobby to me learning all things biblical in my spare time after work.

I don't really feel the need to do anything but learn the Bible nowadays and don’t feel I am missing out on old things. I just want to learn.

Just before I moved back home, a girl showed interest in me; I explained the path I was on but hadn't learnt a lot from the Bible at that point. Still didn't know much about fornication and godly relationships. So, one thing led to another, we slept together, and I thought things might be going well.

I really wish I hadn’t done this, but it’s a mistake I’ve made on my journey which I wanted to share, as I don’t want people to think it has been straight forward; and even though my life has improved and my person, I learnt more about fornication and felt mortified, upset with myself for doing this so shortly after believing in Christ.
I was so upset that I prayed saying I was sorry and that I would end the relationship but also asked God to help me end it. 

I had decided I was going to tell her that the path I'm on isn't going to work with her, but as it happened she seemed to just go her own way; it just fizzled out as fast as it started. 
I was so happy when this happened; I decided not to fornicate again, and stay single for the rest of my life unless of course, I could possibly meet a likeminded Christian girl (Bible believing woman) willing to wait to get married and do things properly (even though I believed it made my chances real slim, but who knows what God has in store?). 
If it's right it will happen; if not I'm not going to worry too much about it. I just don't want to displease the Lord.

I realise I am a sinner before God's eyes and that we all are because of the original sin of Adam. No amount of good deeds could ever make me righteous before God (ISAIAH 64:6) There is nothing I could ever do to merit or earn myself a place in God’s kingdom, it is a gift (EPHESIANS 2:8-9) in which we are justified freely by his grace (ROMANS 3:24-26) and we are saved unto good works (EPHESIANS 2:10) not for our salvation but as a show of our faith and because it’s our reasonable service (ROMANS 12:1).

You must be born again JOHN 3:3, which is what I firmly believe happened to me to change my life in this experience that I am sharing with you.

Jesus is the only way, the only truth to this place we live in and the only way to eternal life with God (JOHN 14:6). I am going to cling tightly to it and place all my faith in Him. I hope He finishes the good work he has started in me. All glory be to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel, to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Part of my conversion is a little bit vague. I think because for me, I did not have much Bible background knowledge from my life or childhood. The parts of the Bible I really knew from school: that Jesus (I did not know who he actually was) was crucified, but I never really knew exactly why. I always thought that it was just unfair he was killed in such a way.

So, I guess the single moment upon my conversion/realisation of the truth, although I'm not quite sure how I came to understand this but must have come from the snippets of scripture I was seeing within videos online exposing the truth. I came to the realisation that He wasn't killed against His will, that He wasn't just some wise man or guru, with good teachings, I believed that Jesus is God in the flesh and that he  willingly laid down his life for all of us; that He died on the cross to pay for the sins of the world (of course rising on the third day beating death) and also that this was all supposed to happen. It's been planned all along to set us free (all that believe the truth) from sin and from this current world set up and the course that we are/were  all heading on (hell).  

Something which I still can't fully explain or quite get my head around, is the Godhead; and  although scriptures show Jesus described in very much the same way as the Father, yet at the same time his role is also very much doing the will of the Father as the Son of God. However it works, the scriptures say that the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost are One (1 JOHN 5:7).

As a new Christian I used to watch some channels that made me question whether my journey in Jesus was real. I'm better with that now through searching the scriptures and prayer and research. I believe God somehow led me here (He must have, I would not be on this path at all). Some days are good, and I feel calm and at peace then others I worry about the world and people going the wrong way, deceptions and more coming, etc.

So here I am currently, I work and mostly spend my days studying the Bible, listening to sermons and learning about the satanic world we live in. My walk hasn’t been easy so far, and the whole area of Christianity is another mine field of its own, regarding part truths and deceptions.

And all God’s people said, Amen.

An AFTERWORD by ANDREW:

Before eventually being trodden down in life, this belief in Jesus and 'Christianity' was something I felt sure I would never pursue and was just like any other religion. I thought people who followed these things were just deceived themselves, but not me. Of course, the other religions of the world are (unfortunately) deceived – although there are nice people within all those areas.

What we must understand is that even Satan quoted scripture. As a new Christian we need to be aware of this fact; when people everywhere are all throwing scriptures at you, but they don't agree with each other on anything, that tells you something right there. Deception and conspiracy are everywhere and there is an answer to these things: the Bible is the best way to learn and know the truth; and once you are armed a little better, then I think you can venture into teachings and know better if what they are saying is right or wrong.