Learning the other day of Greg's death came as a profound shock to me. Firstly, because he died in 2016 and no one bothered to tell me (especially our mutual friends in the Mormon Church from the late 1970's), and second, because he was my best friend when we both lived in Oxford for the short period he was there writing a thesis for his doctorate (called a DPhil in Oxford, but no one in America knew what that was so he called it a PhD, which is the equivalent everywhere else).

One of the great things about living in Oxford, England, as I did as I did from 1973 to 1988, was that you meet all kinds of fascinating people whom you would not usually otherwise meet. Oxford is truly an international melting pot of the world's greatest minds. One of the worst things is that people don't stay - they're only there in transit to get a degree and then move on, though I was one of the exceptions, for after I got my degree, I fell in love with the place, remained in Oxford, built a tutoring business there, and got married and had two children. Greg had previously lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he had got one degree, before advancing into the world of doctorates. His Scottish ancestry (he was a Cameron) I'll get back to in a moment. It was in Aberdeen that he changed his life around, abandoning a worldly lifestyle and pursuing a life for, and in, God.

I first met Greg in the Mormon (LDS) Church, of which I was briefly a member for three years, where we became fast friends for in addition to our (then) shared religion, we were also both academics and scientists too - I a Biochemist and he a Clinical Psychologist, so we had a lot in common. Though Greg tended more toward a Freudian view of things (not exclusively, mind you) and I more toward Jung and, latterly, to Janov, we both loved the subject.

Seeing that I had some drawing skills (as I was then writing/drawing my Historical Atlas of Modern Europe) he asked me if I would illustrate the results of his research work for his DPhil (PhD) thesis. Indeed, he very kindly bought me my first set of Rotring pens, inks, drawing board and square with which to accomplish the task, which I still have. I fancy I must have done a reasonably good job as all the illustrations duly appeared in his thesis. Illustrating post-graduate theses became a sideline for me whilst writing and teaching as another American friend (from Maine), who was completing his doctoral thesis and with whom I shared accommodation (a typical jovial New England, atheistic, pipe-smoking academic), asked me to do one of the things I was best at, which was to draw maps, but this time of Roman fortifications along the Empire's German frontier.

We were both bachelors - I had my eye on a beautiful Mormon woman (a mathematician who eventually went on to study Psychology), she had her eye on Greg, and Greg - well, he was by then, for personal reasons, comitted to a life of celibacy. Indeed he was still unmarried when we were last in contact by phone about 10-15 years ago so I was really happy to discover that he eventually found a woman to marry - Kathleen - a real estate broker and agent whom it has been my pleasure to since get to know a little. Knowing how careful and picky Greg was, she must have been the right one for him. I am so happy he finally found his compliment in companionship.

What attracted to me to Greg? I think, as everyone who knew him will agree, he was the personification of kindness and affability. He was my senior by about five years. I was very much his pupil, and he my mentor. He also had been a Mormon a little longer than I had. But he was not your typical Mormon by any means, certainly not an institutional-type Latter-day Saint and, by his own admission to me (privately), somewhat on the periphery. You could say he was also a bit of a rebel, determined to hold his own views if they didn't align with the official monolithic Mormon institution. He got into a lot of trouble over his beard and shoulder-length hair for as you may know the official policy of the LDS Church was that men should be clean-shaven and be short-cut though, curiously and ironically, during my brief time in Mormonism, both the Bishops of our Oxford Ward of which we were members sported beards, the first a massive patriarchal-type one!

The first Bishop, I'm bound to say, was a wonderful man (reminding me a lot in appearance of a friend I have in the UK today) whom both Greg and I loved dearly and respected. He was a little 'liberal' (in respect of the Mormon institution), like ourselves, and the three of us had some wonderful times together. The second Bishop was very 'conservative', by-the-book, and mega-institutional, quite unlike us, and issued Greg with an ultimatum not only to remove his beard and trim his hair but to start wearing a shirt and tie because he had the habit of always wearing a polo-neck shirt or sweater, summer and winter. That was very much 'Greg'. It got quite unpleasant in the end and, with his membership being threatened by petty officialdom, he eventually shaved off his beard and started wearing a shirt and tie to meetings. But it was no longer the same Greg, and he was understandably not happy. He hated it. It felt a bit like institutional rape to him. When he went back home to America, which was not long after, the beard reappeared and, as you will see from the most recent photograph at the top of this article, he sported one to the end of his life, like Sigmund Freud himself.

That was not his only brush with the institutional Mormon Church, though, but let me back-track a little so that you, the reader, will be able to make better sense of what went on. Greg, like myself, was an avid reader, and liked to dig into LDS Church history, leaving no stone unturned, for which both of us suffered eventually. I remember he owned the complete 26-volume Journal of Discourses containing the sermons of Brigham Young (the successor to Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, at least in Utah) and the 'General Authorities' (LDS 'apostles' etc.) of that day which were not so easy to get hold of (though I did manage to get my own set eventually when I could afford them - I was an impoverished student at the time and then an author eeking out an existence on a tiny grant I got from my publisher in South Africa). Our independent studies of Church History led us to the discovery that Mormon doctrine had changed over the years. Greg coped with that by keeping his head down, retaining what he discovered to himself, and refusing all Church leadership positions, though he was briefly an Melchizedek Priesthood teacher. This avid pupil enjoyed his course so much that he kept a detailed record of it. His weekly Priesthood lesson was worth more than 6 month's worth of sermons to me. More about that in a moment.

I, on the other hand, did not refuse office and was keen to serve and so climbed the ranks rapidly for a while. I accepted callings as a Gospel Doctrine Teacher, Executive Secretary to the Bishop, and Elders' Quorum President, and taught in class what I had discovered in official Mormon publications from the past, figuring that as Mormonism was a 'Restored Gospel', as it claimed, that its 'prophets, seers and revelators' would harmonise and build upon one another. I was to become sorely disappointed.

After Greg left Oxford back for Barbados, and thereafter to Phoenix, Arizona, USA to begin his career as a consultant clinical psychologist, I simply kept on digging into the Mormon past and eventually came up against the monolithic Mormon Institution. For my trouble, I was 'demoted' from Elders' Quorum President and made a Gospel Doctrine Teacher to the adults in the local ward (congregation) which was perfect given my penchant for history. This was after Greg had left. I followed the manual but added lots of other materials I had dug up from early LDS publications. (I was then courting my first wife in Norway and sending copies of my lessons to her, and she in her turn was teaching it to her Relief Society class). That lasted for a while until one day the Bishop (the second, do-it-by-the-manual one) started openly challenging what I was teaching in front of my class. I politely and respectfully showed him the original teaching from official Church materials but, in so doing, I had apparently crossed a line by 'not supporting church leaders'. I knew the writing was on the wall when I saw the fury on his red face. I was called into a private meeting and told summarily I had been 'released from my calling'.

Thus was born my intense dislike for the institutional side of religion (and especially Mormonism) because of its dishonesty and totalitarian mindset. Greg, perhaps more wisely, was not so confrontational and was content to remain on the periphery, as I said, and gave more attention to his studies and (later) his career.

As I said, Greg was a Melchizedek Priesthood Teacher for a while and a very good one. He taught like no one else I knew. What grabbed me was not so much his knowledge of Church history or doctrine (which he knew a lot about) but his knowledge of the mind, behaviour and people which was was what you would expect of a clinical psychgologist. So what he taught was unique, the kind of material you never heard in a regular Mormon chapel even though we were in an academic town and there were scholars attending the same ward. These were mostly Ivy League types, one or two of them Rhodes scholars, and indeed one of them, who also became a friend briefly, is today an LDS apostle. Greg very much planted a passion in me to better understand human nature and the workings of the heart. But even that wasn't his main attraction for me. When he taught, everything was Christ-centred and based usually on the Bible and Book of Mormon, something very rare in Mormonism which tends to be more Joseph Smith- and Priesthood authority-centred. Or at least it was in the 1970's.

You see, there are, in my experience, basically two types of Mormon. The more common one, at least then, and I suspect today too, was the one attracted to Joseph Smith's later esoteric ideas about Priesthood and his disasterous flirtation with free masonry (through his brother Alvin), kabbalism (through Joshua the Jew who taught him in Nauvoo) and the occult (he died at the hand of assassins with a Jupiter talisman in his jacket pocket crying out a masonic plea for help). I call all of that 'Temple', 'Doctrine & Covenants' or 'Pearl of Great Price' Mormonism. Early Mormonism, as is reflected by the Book of Mormon, was, as one historian has described it, more a kind of 'Refined Presbyterianism', and as LDS historian Dan Vogel has so brilliantly demonstrated in his scholarly studies, is theologically an expression of the Protestant debates that raged in the 1820's when Joseph Smith first penned it. The speeches and sermons you read in the Book of Mormon are typical of the times, what you would have expected to hear in revival meetings and church services. Back then the big 'debate' was between the Puritan Calvinism that had founded America and the arising Arminianism of the Wesleys (which strongly influenced Mormonism) and the emergent Universalism (which the Book of Mormon opposed). Early Mormon convert Eli Gilbert rather graphically placed Mormonism (as chiefly expressed in the Book of Mormon) as somewhere between "mungrel calvinism and crippled arminianism" (Messenger & Advocate 1:10, October 1834). But that is a whole story in itself about which books could be written, and have been.

What Greg did for me more than anything else was to remind me of the importance of keeping focussed on the Person of Christ and not let religious officaldom trample down the heart. He was a great advocate of LDS writers like Truman G.Madsen whose books, Four Essays on Love (1971) and Christ and the Inner Life (1978) were published a little before or during 'our time'.

Greg's incredible lessons formed the basis of some of my earliest writings and a book I wrote entitled, Discourses on the Light of Christ. Though I later gave sermons based on this, which were recorded on cassette, it was never published as it was more of a transitional work between my attempt to find Mormonism's Christian roots and my exodus from that religion to where I am today viâ evangelical Christianity.

It was also Greg's influence that led me to fall in love with the writings of the apostle John which so heavily influenced his own thinking as a self-avowed ascetic (which he ramained, I suppose, until he later got married) and would later lead him to write his own books, Winds of the Soul: Heaven's First Voice to Us (2000) and Winds of Forgiveness (2004) in which he examines the Lord's Prayer and the Prayers of Jabez & Solomon. These two volumes are without doubt Greg's lasting legacy which are still being sold on Amazon. His wife has very generously offered to let me have copies which I can't wait to read. I will, Yahweh willing, write a follow-up to this report when I have done so.

According to his wife, Greg attempted to return to LDS Church activity when he got back to America but was treated so badly, worse than in England, that he withdrew to the periphery again. When we last spoke, Greg still counted himself as a 'Mormon' though by then he was very removed from the institutional Church. I was more political and brazen about my issues with Mormonism which led me into direct conflict with that institution, was kicked out, and tried to get back to 'pure Mormonism' as an independent only to conclude after several more years investigating all the break-offs and early histories that it was corrupted from the outset. For me the Book of Mormon was the last to go. And though I think it contains some excellent sermon material that even several modern Baptist preachers are hailing as exceptional and 'baptist', I concluded, after 10 or more years of intensive research, that it could not possibly be an historical document. In fact I dusted off my old copy of the Book of Mormon and started reading the Book of Alma (which undoubedly contains some of its best material, such as King Benjamin's speech) only to be more convinced than ever that this was the work of one early 19th century American writer and not of ancient Hebrew prophets. I recommend Dan Vogel's, Indian Origins and the Book of Mormon (1986) and Religious Seekers and the Advent of Mormonism (1988) for those who might be interested in this subject. I'd rather not get into that any further here which you can read about on my website dedicated to Mormon origins.

A conversation I had with Greg's wife basically confirmed what I had suspected, namely, that he remained a totally Christ-centred, non-institutional Mormon. As Sufism is to Islam, so I suspect Greg's belief system was to Mormonism, but that's just my guess. I'll come back to this once I have read his books.

I don't think there was any real danger of Greg ever being excommunicated for his illegal beard, longish light-brown hair, or polo-neck sweater. The second Bishop did remove his own closely trimmed red beard eventually, coming under pressure himself to conform to the LDS Church's institutional standards once he assumed the pastoral office. Greg was, however, hauled before a Mormon Church court over another matter, and that was his firm conviction that the Holy Ghost was female, a belief we both shared and one which I continue to hold but based purely on what the Bible teaches.

Early Mormonism taught that in addition to a Heavenly Father, we also have a 'Heavenly Mother', but back then She was regarded as separate, and in addition, to the Mormon 'Holy Ghost'. The modern Mormon Godhead technically consists of four personages though Mormons only ever speak of three, per pro their earliest beliefs. Mormons are polytheists - today they believe there are 'Three Gods' - Father ('Elohim'), Son ('Jehovah') and Holy Ghost. In the Kirtland period the Holy Ghost got briefly demoted to a 'force' (like the Jehovah's Witnesses teaching and that of others like early Adventism before it went Trinitarian), a form of Binitarianism. And the Book of Mormon itself teaches a peculiar form of Trinitarianism known as 'Modalistic Monarchism', a bit like that of the 'Oneness Pentecostals'. But in Brigham Young's day and for many generations thereafter, based on a later Nauvoo teaching of Joseph Smith, the belief was that there were millions of 'Gods' and that Adam is mankind's 'God' (the 'Adam-God Doctrine', now repudiated by the LDS Church, along with lots of other early Mormon teachings, though retained by 60,000-or-so Mormon fundamentalists). Indeed they still believe we can all become gods. And at one point they, incredibly, even taught that Joseph Smith himself was the Holy Ghost, a belief still held to by some fundamentalists because of a teaching of Brigham Young (who also taught the sun was inhabited, presumably inspired by Joseph Smith who taught the moon was inhabited too, going so far as to describe their dress habits through 'revelation')!

Greg had received a direct revelation that the Holy Ghost and the Heavenly Mother were one-and-the-same, which he had concluded from his study of the Bible too. I too not only came to the same conclusion but had a revelation - a vision, in fact - of my own. Increasing numbers of non-Mormons, principally messianics and evangelicals, are arriving at the same conclusion from purely biblical exegesis. And Greg was sharing this not only with me but other close friends in the local Mormon Church too. One of the people he unwisely shared this with reported him to Bishop 'Redbeard' and he was summoned to a local Church court to answer for himself. He too was 'released' (suspended) from his calling as a Priesthood Teacher as I had been as a Gospel Doctrine Teacher (though I never mentioned this particular doctrine in public as I knew it would cause trouble) and never held a positition in the Oxford Ward again.

Greg was distraught and we prayed much together. He confided in me as his friend that he could never deny this doctrine but didn't want to be excommunicated either. He prayed that the Holy Ghost would give him the right words to speak so that he would never have to lie. He was a man of impeccable honesty and integrity. That prayer, I can testify, was answered. He emerged from the court beaming. "They asked me if the Holy Ghost was a woman and not whether She was female!" he blurted out when we were in private, "and I said emphatically that I did not believe She was a woman!" And that was the end of the matter. (I gather, out of shere relief, that that was the time he agreed to shave his beard, trim his hair and start wearing a tie in meetings, a concession he was willing to make to remain a member). What he meant by that was that only human beings can be 'women' and never deity. So he escaped on an etymological technicality. It was the last time he spoke about this doctrine to anyone but myself that I know of in Oxford.

Greg was tender-hearted and very easily hurt. He could sense what was going on in people just by being around them. Those who were not his close friends - the more conservative, institutional Mormons who did not like his ways or were jealous of his intelligence or appeal to the more spiritually-minded - said unkind things about him behind his back, and that is why he stayed on the edges of his religion. He was a favourite among the ladies because he was undoubtedly the most handsome of the male singles and was regarded as the most eligible bachelor in the region. But he never flirted, dated no one, and focused entirely on his doctoral research work and thesis, cultivating his relationship with his Heavenly Father, and teaching those who would listen.

I would like to share one more story about Greg before concluding though I could share many more. Mormons, as many of you know, believe in 'vicarious work for the dead' that includes baptism for the dead in their temples, which means they baptise for dead people using living proxies, a practice based on the very controversial passage in 1 Corinthians 15:29 which I discuss on my website. He related one experience he had had while fasting that quite obviously precluded the need for such ordinance work. One night he had an intense dream. In the dream he was sitting with numerous Scottish relatives and ancestors from the past. Most of them were dressed in kilts, sitting around a large camp fire outside at night. They were arguing with one another, sometimes quite violently. In the dream Greg arose and preached Christ to them and there was not only repentance but healing between them with generational curses being broken. That experience had a great impact on me and gave me an added depth of appreciation for the meaning of that famous passage in Malachi 4:5-6, the last verse in the Old Testament, which reads:

"Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD (Yahweh). And he will turn the hearts comes to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction ('curse' - KJV)" (Mal.4:5-6, ESV).

Mormons believe that the prophet Elijah appeared in the Kirtland Temple, what's sometimes known as the 'Mormon Pentecost' - according to eyewitness accounts, most of the people present were plastered with alcohol and imagined all sorts of fanciful things going on in their inebriated state. Mormons believe that this dead prophet's 'priesthood keys' were turned over to Joseph Smith at that time giving him the 'power' to do this 'turning' by virtue of the 'Priesthood'. The highly doctored Doctrine & Covenants (D&C) 27:9 speaks of this, though most of the verses containing this portion were completely absent from the 1833 edition of the Book of Commandments (BC XXVIII), the precursor to the Doctrine & Covenants as I would subsequently discover, and which, like so many of Smith's revelations, were written after the events claimed in order to conform the early LDS history with the ever evolving theological and historical narrative, a little like the Moslem doctrine of 'abrogation'.

As I would discover later, after leaving Mormonism, the 'spirit of Elijah' is something anyone with the calling as an intercessor for past generations can possess and exercise, without the need for any claimed legalistic Mormon-type 'priesthood', and I don't have the slightest doubt Greg exercised that power as a believer through the love of Christ that he had as well as the love he had for his ancestors. We were ourselves sitting in front of a small fire in his bungalow one evening as he told me of this experience and I can vividly remember having the distinct feeling that what he related was real and true. I have had experiences like this too subsequent to leaving Mormonism and renouncing it, and actually one only a couple of months ago. I know several Christian deliverance ministers who have had experiences like this that I have related on my website. So what Greg experienced I believe to have been authentic but capable of interpretation without the need for Mormonism's legalistic claims. It prepared me in an important way for the work I would do later helping the victims of ritual abuse.

In our last conversation on the phone we brought each other up-to-date on each other's lives. He told me that he believed in the basic LDS 'restoration' narrative (First Vision, Priesthood, new scriptures) and that was about the extent of his belief. But by then I had long since abandoned all three so there was not a lot we had in common on that exoteric religious level. However, we had a good time recounting happy memories and the doings of mutual friends. We shared some of our personal stories and after chatting about an hour, that was the last I heard from or about him until I learned about the massive heart-attack that suddenly took him from us in 2016. He was living in a beautiful part of the state of North Carolina which I know he loved.

I could share so many stories about Greg. It was an intense couple of years in the late 1970's. He played the guitar and was very good at it too. I don't deny that I had the occasional twinge of envy at the breadth of his talents. Indeed I had had no idea he been a gifted musician in Barbados.

He understood dreams like no one I had ever met then, or since, and I was constantly pestering him with mine. He taught me so many of the keys of dream interpretation that I have used ever since. He rented a cosey little house, appropriately, on the very edge of north Oxford in Wolvercote, where it would be hard for people to pester him, and had his own little car to ferry him into the city itself and to the Department of Psychology on South Parks Road which was just opposite from myself in the Department of Biochemistry. I think both departments have since moved.

When he left Oxford I was heart-broken and never had a friend like that again either in the short remaining time I had in the LDS Church or thereafter. He was one of those people whom Yahweh intends us to meet, interact with, receive and pass on wisdom, and then move on. It was all too easy to want to lean on him as a kind of guru, a reason why for many, I suspect, Yahweh kept moving him on, so that we could learn to stand on our own two feet. I am forever indebted to him and firmly believe that he is with our Heavenly Father and Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) whom he absolutely adored.

I realise that many conservative evangelical and messianic friends I know would offer theological objections to my belief that he was saved which to me would be the height of absurdity. Yahweh long ago showed me in a vision that there were saved people in all sorts of places that are not approved of by this or that Christian tradition, including in (and especially by) the Mormon Church. And I don't know how many churches and groups have said I was hell-bound because I didn't subscribe to their particular dogmas and traditions. Elohim (God) is far larger than our ability to draw boundaries to exclude or artificially include. He knows our individual hearts as no human being ever can. So I'll go along with the witness I have. See you there with Yah'shua (Jesus), Greg, and thank you for your friendship and brotherhood!