‘Whole world on fire’: Inside one of Australia’s most extreme churches

For more than 65 years, Noel Hollins ran one of Australia’s most extreme and secretive Pentecostal churches. His teachings warned of imminent armageddon and he exerted total control over the lives of thousands of followers who believed him to be the apostle of God’s “one true church”.

From the late 1950s until his death in April at the age of 93, the baritone-voiced Hollins – standing just over 200 centimetres tall – led the Geelong Revival Centre and its network of more than 30 affiliated churches around Australia and the world.

Under Hollins, the church – which former members described as a cult – practised an extremely strict brand of Christianity.

“It’s a dangerous world. We are contrary to everything this world today pursues and follows and finds acceptable. We have to accept that it’s all war,” Hollins says in recordings leaked to a new investigative podcast, LiSTNR’s Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder.

“And I hope we see ourselves as soldiers. You can’t be neutral in warfare. If you run away from the enemy, the enemy will chase you.”

To become one of Hollins’ “Saints” – the title given to those whose souls have been saved – a person must be baptised by immersion and speak in tongues. For children born into the church, this happens when they enter their teens.

The prize, according to the church’s teachings, is eternal life, while the rest of humanity, including other Christians, burn in hell after a nuclear holocaust triggered by Russian aggression.

“The anger of the Lord is about to come on the world. When that day of the Lord’s anger comes upon us, this whole world is going to be on fire,” Hollins says in one leaked recording.

In another he says: “Vladimir Putin the other day claimed that they have a new weapon, a new missile that could destroy the Western world. Now, fancy even talking like that. What have we come to?”

Salvation carried one other condition: submission to Hollins’ authority.

We were taught the world was to be feared. We weren’t really living for this life or living for the next.

Former church member Ryan Carey

Several former GRC members, many born into the church, have broken a lifetime’s silence to tell their stories as part of the investigation, putting a spotlight on the autocratic and mysterious religious group.

They say it is hard to explain to outsiders the extent of Hollins’ control over their lives and the mental anguish caused by his rules — which are displayed on a wall inside the church’s orange-brick headquarters in Geelong.

Under those rules, relationships and marriages, as well as where people could live, had to be approved by Hollins. Church families were also required to sever all contact with those who left.

Hollins also demanded unquestioning acceptance of his teachings, which emphasise traditional gender roles, prayer taking precedence over medicine and zero tolerance for same-sex relationships, as well as promoting racial theories embraced by the Ku Klux Klan.

The rules state: “Report anything definitely out of order, any strange behaviour, doctrine or situation within the Assembly … any person stood down from fellowship, temporarily or permanently, noted to be visited or comforted by Assembly members … young people who desire to pair off must notify the Pastor.”

A diagram from Geelong Revival Centre material.

Celeste, who asked that her surname not be published, is a former member who joined the church as a girl and returned again as a single mother before leaving for good.

“You don’t go above Pastor [Hollins],” she said. “He is everything. He is the true prophet. He is the law.”

Other former church members accused Hollins and the pastors serving under him of practising a destructive form of coercive control, in which members are kept in a “spiritual prison” because of the threat of losing their family and salvation if they questioned anything or decided to leave.

Ryan Carey is the son of a former senior church elder and left the church a few years ago after turning 40.

He said he could no longer face raising his two daughters in a church where they could be married off to a man not of their choosing or have restrictions placed on how far they went in school or if they could work.

Ryan Carey, a former member of the Geelong Revival Centre. 

“The hardest thing about being in a cult is figuring out you’re in a cult,” he said.

“We were taught the world was to be feared. We weren’t really living for this life or living for the next. You grow up with a fear that virtually armageddon was going to happen. And if you weren’t right with God, you were going to burn forever.”

Carey said his decision to leave had cost him his relationship with his mother and sister, who remain in the church.

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The church also faces accusations of child sexual abuse going back decades, as well as extreme physical punishment of children under Hollins’ policy of “spare the rod, spoil the child”.

Former members spoke of men in the church being empowered to discipline children through beatings, strappings and choking.

In situations where children did not have fathers at home, other church men would be appointed to provide discipline, former members claim.

“I was down at the shopping centre the other day and there was a baby. It wasn’t crying. It was screaming. Possibly mother wouldn’t buy it ... a packet of Snickers or something,” Hollins says in a leaked recording.

Geelong Revival Centre founder Noel Hollins.

“You know the lolly? [laugh] Just a tantrum. It wasn’t crying. It was just screaming in frustration. And then over the other side, another child started to do the same.

“All he needed was a bit of a slap on the legs. ‘Stop that, or I’ll give you something to cry about’.”

In isolated cases, children in the church have allegedly suffered life-changing injuries, including pelvic damage to a toddler and deafness in one ear to another child.

Celeste claims her autistic toddler son was beaten by a man in the church a few years ago.

“He ripped him up by his arm and just whacked him so frickin’ hard. And [my child] just screamed. And I was just sitting there mortified. But I was too scared to say anything because, well, he’s a brother [church member]. They hold higher power than us,” she said.

“I just sat there in sort of silence, but utterly shocked. And I reflect on that now. And I hate myself for it because I should’ve defended my son. But he’s crying … and he [the man] gets in front of you and said, ‘If you don’t stop crying, by the time I count to three, I’m going to smack you again.’ And he counts to three and he whacks him again.”

Celeste says she was frozen and felt powerless.

“I was just looking at my little boy, just like, ‘Oh, my goodness, I can’t. I can’t do this. I can’t hit him. I can’t be the mum they want me to be.’”

Celeste is seeking legal advice about compensation from the church to cover her son’s medical expenses from injuries she claims were sustained during the beating.

Another former member, Robert Lockyer, remembers his father being in tears as he whipped him.

“‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’ That was spat out almost once a week or once a month as a sermon … that you must beat discipline into these children,” he said.

“Pastor Noel Hollins has told my dad that he must punish me. He must beat that wickedness out of me or he’ll spoil me and I’ll end up being the devil’s child.

“So my dad would get upset because I was crying and he was making me cry. He was feeling frustrated. And it was the frustration building up in him as a 60-year-old man saying, ‘Why am I whipping my son to tears?’”

Despite the teachings and incidents that former church members allege have taken place for decades in the GRC and its affiliates, Hollins and his churches have largely avoided public scrutiny.

The Geelong Revival Centre.Credit: Simon Schluter

Unlike other better-known Pentecostal churches, such as Hillsong and the Horizon Church, the GRC has no online or social media presence. The talks given by Hollins and other pastors are not made publicly available.

The former GRC members who feature in the investigation said they were sharing their private and painful stories because they want the public, authorities and politicians to know what goes on inside the insular church.

Hollins repeatedly declined requests for interviews from this masthead until his death earlier this year.

“I understand you’ve got a job to do, but I don’t wish to be a part of it,” Hollins said when contacted by telephone last year.

His replacement as church leader, Pastor Brian Griggs, has not responded to requests for comment.

The allegations of historical abuse at the church dating back 50 years are unconnected to church member Todd Hubers Van Assenraad, who pleaded guilty in August to 16 child sex abuse charges involving nine children.

This masthead does not suggest his victims were from church families nor that Hollins or the new leadership of the GRC were aware of his offending. Hubers Van Assenraad is yet to be sentenced.

The company behind the church, the Geelong Revival Centre Pty Ltd, owns property in Geelong and Ocean Grove worth more than $15 million.

The GRC is registered as a charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission, meaning it gets tax exemptions.

If you or anyone you know needs support call Lifeline 131 114, Beyond Blue 1300 224 636 or Kids Helpline 1800 551 800.

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