In Depth:  John Newton Webb

letter from Japan

Last week, Mr. A asked me, ‘Does Jesus really love me? The voices in my head tell me that he doesn’t.’

He first got in touch with our church a couple of years ago, asking ‘Does the church help suffering people?’ He has schizophrenia and for most of his life has been hearing voices, sometimes telling him to commit murder, sometimes that he is useless, sometimes that there is no hope for him. Readers familiar with mental health issues will know that these voices often feel authoritative and compelling to the sufferer. The medicine he is on wasn’t helping him much and he got in touch with the church because he had been wondering if he is demon-possessed.

letter from Japan

‘I’ll definitely come. I love Easter!’ said one girl as we were distributing fliers for our evangelistic Easter service outside a primary school.

Easter is barely known here in Japan, though a few years ago Disneyland Tokyo started an Easter celebration, and chocolate eggs have started appearing in shops. Until last year, only one or two non-Christians would come to our Easter service, but last year we had 20, and though the aforementioned girl didn’t come, this year 30 people came and heard about the resurrected Saviour.