William Kelman MACKIE, (better know as Bill) was born on 24th. May 1954, in Aberdeen, Scotland. He left school at the age of fifteen to join the Royal Navy in 1969, and he served as a Boy Sailor at HMS Ganges, near Ipswich in Suffolk, England. He was being bullied by one of his instructors, and bought himself out of the Navy, and returned home to Scotland, where he returned to full time education. His plan was to go to college and apply to join the Scottish Episcopal Church as a Priest.
ARMY SERVICE
Unfortunately, Bill's stepfather did not understand why he would want an education. Within a year of so Bill joined the Royal Signals, Territorial & Army Volunteers, at Fonthill Barracks, in Aberdeen two years later he decided to join the Regular Army, and enlisted in the Royal Army Pay Corps in 1973 for 9 years service. He spent his 9 years service, in Winchester, Chelsea Barracks in London and Chester, in England, Londonderry, Belfast, Holywood, and Armagh in Northern Ireland, Bielifeld and Munster in West Germany (as it was then). He also served in Kirknewton in Scotland.
MARRIAGE.
Bill Mackie has been married twice, once in 1975, when he married Moira Green in Stonehaven. They agreed early on that they had made a mistake and were divorced in 1981. They stayed friends, even after Bill remarried, this time his bride was Heather Elizabeth Miller, they married in Stonehaven in 1986. Two years later whilst attending a wedding in Maidstone in Kent, he discovered that he was married to the daughter of the Chief Petty Officer that had been the bully, whilst in the Royal Navy.
UNIVERSITY of ABERDEEN
After leaving the Army, he moved from job to job, before becoming an undergraduate at the University of Aberdeen, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Theology Degree. He turned his hand at training to become a Secondary School Teacher, specialising in Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies. Two weeks short of graduating from Aberdeen's Northern College, he decided that it would be more rewarding to teach Adults and not children, working on the premises, that adults are there because they want to learn.
JIMMY SWAGGART MINISTRIES
Bill Mackie became the U.K. Director of JIMMY SWAGGART Ministries in 1987, he was later Licensed as an Evangelist at Swaggart Ministries H. Q. in Baton Rouge, Louisiana during the Easter Camp Meeting of 1989. The same weekend, his daughter Faith was dedicated by JIMMY SWAGGART live on TV on Easter Sunday 1989.
SELF EMPLOYED
Bill Mackie became a Self Employed as a Security Consultant and Training Provider, and he travelled as far afield running various course, in York, Leeds, London, Aberdeen, Thurso, the Orkney Islands and Shetland Islands.
BRAVEHEART WEDDINGS
Ordained fully as a Clergyman, Bill was asked if he could do a wedding for a friend. The stipulation was that the service had to be the one seen in the movie Braveheart.
There was a problem with this idea, because the marriage service seen in Braveheart had been outlawed by the Pope over 500 years previously.