Robert Hines

About The Author

My father was an American serviceman serving in World War II based in New Zealand. He married my mother, a New Zealander and thus I started life with dual American and New Zealand citizenship.

My family were not practicing Christians although both parents had attended church growing up. But in rural North Shore, Auckland, where we had moved to in the 1960’s, when I was in my early teens, there was an amazing Methodist minister who was way ahead of his time.

This young minister allowed all the teenagers in the area to use his church hall on a Saturday night for dances on the understanding that we attend his Bible study classes on a Sunday morning. I don’t recall that any of us teenagers gave our lives to the Lord as we would know it now but there is no doubt in my mind that the grounding this wonderful man of God gave us had a huge impact on how we progressed through our lives from then on.

At the age of 16 I joined the Royal New Zealand Navy and a year later shipped aboard my first ship, an old WW2 minesweeper, and had my first adventures outside of New Zealand.

At 19 years old I married the girl I had been courting for 2 years and only a few months later shipped out on my next ship, a then modern frigate.

I was away from home for 10 months on this deployment during which time I served in a conflict zone patrolling the Malacca straights against communist insurgents infiltrating into Malaysia.

I experienced many special events during this cruise but the one that stands out is one where in retrospect I can see Gods hand at work. One evening whilst on patrol the action alarm’s sounded. At the same time the speaker system announced that this was not a drill and the ship healed hard over as the Captain ordered full speed and a full turn to Starboard. When I reached my action station on the upper deck I could see an enemy motor torpedo boat heading straight towards our starboard side on an obvious attack run. He had surprised us by hiding in the jungle growth at the lands edge.

However we had been training long and hard for such eventualities and within minutes (if not seconds) we were facing him and he was looking directly down the barrels of our 4 inch guns as well as numerous small arms.

Some would say the captain of the MTB then chickened out but others would say he saw discretion as the better part of valor and he high tailed it back into cover of the jungle and we lived to fight another day! I like to think now that God had other plans for me than to die on that day!

After returning to New Zealand, to my wife and newly born son, I served another year in the Navy and then resigned and started working in the electrical and construction industry.

Over following years I progressed through all management levels within the industry finishing up as a General Manager. I also ran various business of my own from electrical contracting to importing and exporting and a heating business.

But the important milestone in our lives came when in the 1970’s two of the teenagers that I used to spend time with at the church youth group invited us to attend a church service where they said they had found God!

It took months of persuading but eventually to get them off our backs we agreed to attend a Sunday evening service with them.

There is not a lot that we remember about that night except that we found ourselves at the front of the congregation responding to an altar call to give our lives to Jesus. Our lives were changed forever that night.

Some years later the church collapsed! What a catastrophe! We were utterly shattered! We realized later that we had put too much faith and trust in one man instead of God and his fall almost destroyed our faith.

Yet it did not! Sure we had a number of years, we call our wilderness years, but eventually we found a new church and even that is a story of miraculous intervention!

Our son, then in his 20’s, decided that it was time he and his girlfriend, later his wife, went back to church. He opened a telephone book to the churches listings, closed his eyes and stuck in a pin. That night he came home full of excitement to tell us that he had found the most wonderful church and that we just had to go with him the next week.

So the next week we dually attended this Baptist Church after years away from church and received what we like to call our re-birth. From that day forward under the direction and encouragement of the senior Pastor and staff we grew and matured in our faith. Within a short time I became a deacon responsible for property and I have worked in some way for the church ever since.

Early in my Christian walk various Pastors encouraged me to pursue my interest in Bible prophecy and future events, something that had been birthed in me the first time I heard a message that Jesus was coming back.

I started writing articles on this subject which were eventually picked up by overseas Christian publications and at one point were being read in 16 countries worldwide. One article was even translated into Chinese. I received numerous invitations to teach overseas but rightly or wrongly I never felt the calling to accept these and only accepted local invitations.

Currently I serve as property manager, community chaplain and funeral celebrant for my church. Although I am now looking forward to imminent retirement from my daily role I also look forward to spending more time writing.