By Mark Dawes, Staff Reporter
TO HEAR Judy Mowatt speak of her journey of faith from Rastafarian to Christian is to learn how painful experiences in her childhood and adulthood served in the end to set her on fire in ministry for the Lord Jesus Christ.
When she became a Christian in the mid-1990s she faced ridicule from sections of the local Rastafarian community who branded her a 'sell out'. Some in the Christian community were not as welcoming as they could have been. "When I got saved, there developed a kind of scepticism 'Is she really saved?' Some people were saying it is because nothing was happening for me in the secular world why I came into Christianity and gospel music. A lot of people wanted to see the fruit before they would admit that I was indeed saved."
The reception from the Christian community was in general warm and welcoming. But there were significant pockets of persons "who said some things, that if I was not careful, I would not know where to go. I would not want to go back to where I am coming from (the Rastafarian faith). I would be really stagnant," she said.
It did not help her reception into the Christian church that for a few years she continued to wear dreadlocks. "Christians would say to me with my locks, 'So you are a Christian now, I am really thankful to God for you. So when you going to remove your locks?' I had to develop a defence mechanism for both Rastas and church people."
Miss Mowatt achieved local and international fame as solo artiste and as a member of the I-Threes, the back-up singers for the late reggae icon, Bob Marley.
'CHURCH WAS ONLY FOR CERTAIN PEOPLE'
Though she has experienced many successes as a singer, Miss Mowatt confesses that she was not a happy person until she surrendered her life to Christ. Much of her unhappiness dated back to her childhood where she lived with her siblings with grandmother and mother. Her father was not around. She felt starved of genuine affection, belonging and acceptance. Although she went to church as a young girl in the Gordon Town community. "I never felt fulfilled in church. It seemed to me then that church was only for certain people. There was a kind of class prejudice." Those were among the major reasons for her assimilation into the Twelve Tribes of Israel Rastafarian community where she received love, and she saw love being practised on a day-to-day basis.
Judy was an ardent Rastafarian for 22 years. Then "there came a time when I was in pursuit of something more. There was a vacuum - that vacuum was becoming larger and larger. And I realised that where I was as a Rasta, I was not being fulfilled. I was not satisfied anymore and so I started going to different churches."
Just about that time, through a mutual friend, she met Minister Andrew Lawrence of Bible Teachers International Church, on Half-Way Road. Minister Lawrence befriended
my welfare as a person, as opposed to wanting to push Christianity down my throat and that meant something to me. Even if I was going to perform at a secular concert, or I am going in any secular environment, it did not matter he would go with me. He was only there to pray with me, to pray me through. I just looked at his lifestyle, and I said I would love to be like this person. It was not that he was saying, 'You have to be this and you have to be that.' But it was as if he was saying to me, 'Just look at my lifestyle.' He was non-judgmental and non-condemning. There were times when I got in situations where he could have condemned me and he said instead, 'Come let us pray,'" she said. In 1994 Minister Lawrence invited her to a crusade at his church. Apostle Mary Banks was the speaker. "She preached and what she said touched my heart and conscience and I sat there and was unable to move after she finished preaching. I was so absorbed, it was as if she was speaking directly to me. She made an altar call, and I said in my mind, I am not going to go forward."
PRAYING OUT LOUD
Judy eventually went forward and the preacher met her half-way down the aisle. Mary Banks did not know who Judy was. But that did not stop her from praying out loud concerning her. Apostle Banks prayed something like "Lord in her heart she has searched for you in many places, and even the image that she has of you is a misrepresentation." Judy meantime said to herself: "How she know that and what gives her the right to say that in front of so many people."
"I was a little embarrassed. I left feeling good and feeling bad. In my mind she should have called me aside and said what she wanted to say. Not knowing at the time that the Spirit have a right to say anything anywhere. I thought it was her. I did not know at the time that it was the Holy Spirit that was speaking. When I left I really felt convicted but I was rebellious in my heart because I knew I felt God calling, but I would not allow myself to yield to the call." Not long after that, Miss Mowatt was part of a Reggae Sunsplash overseas tour. Just before she left for the tour, a friend from Twelve Tribes gave her a cassette that helped to change her life. It was an interview with Emperor Haile Selassie I. She and a cousin listened to it on the tour bus. She heard when the interviewer asked, 'Your Majesty why is it that people all over the world say that you are the returned Messiah?'
Speaking through an interpreter, she said, the Emperor said: 'I am a mere man and I will be replaced by the oncoming generations and a human being should not be emulated for a deity.'
Just before that Sunsplash tour a most devastating experience touched Judy's life. A member of her family ran afoul of the law in a ganja case in Bermuda.
'NONE OTHER NAME UNDER HEAVEN...'
"What I want to tell people is that when you know the Hand of God is on you, and you know that God is calling you, and the signs and signals are there that God is drawing you to Himself and you are refusing, He will give a wake-up call, a rude awakening sometimes. And that was what happened to me. At the point I said to myself, it is best I die. Because I don't have no reason for living, because my Rasta beliefs were just ebbing away. I did not feel like I was giving my 100 per cent to Rasta - I was wondering if something was wrong with me and I began to feel confused. And my mind was leaning more towards Christ. And I started praying and I said 'God I don't know you and I am asking you to reveal yourself to me. If you are Selassie, I want you to reveal yourself to me and if you are Jesus Christ I want you to reveal yourself to me. It was two weeks after my prayer I got the cassette with His Majesty. After the cassette came, the revelation came and two Scriptures came to me. The first: 'Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved' (Acts 4:12). The second, 'That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phillipians 2:10-11).'
"After that it was not difficult for me anymore. I saw plainly that Jesus was the Son of God and Saviour of mankind. This was about 1994-'95. It was a time of affliction, but I recognise now that God's purpose is more powerful than pain. If I had to go through it again, I would do it again. It was the purpose of God that I should come to know Jesus Christ if even by pain. And if I had to go through it again, I would do so because it is the truth that has set me free and joy results from that."
