About the Authors

Tonie Harris Gatlin

Tonie Gatlin was a nationally acclaimed black belt karate champion, teacher, and trainer with her own school before her dynamic conversion to Christ in 1984.

In nationwide tournaments, Tonie earned 58 trophies in six years; and in 1979 she was rated by Karate Illustrated as the Top Female Karateka in the Pacific Northwest, a title she retained for seven years. She was in Who’s Who, Karate Illustrated, Fighting Women News, and Black Belt magazine. In 1983, Linda Atkinson wrote a whole chapter on Tonie in her book, A New Spirit Rising: Women in the Martial Arts, listing her among eight contemporary women who were among the age's most accomplished martial artists.  One of Tonie's teachers believed that, if it weren’t for the times, Tonie could have been a world class fighter and perhaps even the world champion in the Women’s Division.

After becoming a Christian in 1984, Tonie taught karate to both Christians and non-Christians until the Lord opened her eyes to the occult and destructive elements within the martial arts and impressed her with the need for this book.

Today Tonie is a well-known Bible and aerobics teacher and an assistant pastor who preaches regularly and leads a church sign ministry. She is married to Walter Gatlin and has four grown children.

Linda Nathan

Linda Nathan has been writing, speaking, and teaching in the area of Christian apologetics since 1980. Since 1992, she has been the president and senior editor of Logos Word Designs, Inc., a Christian consulting, writing, editing, and desktop publishing service at www.logosword.com. She has been the editor of numerous publications and has had many articles published. Linda and her husband, Richard, who has an M.A. in Church History, work together on many projects. Richard was the theological consultant for The Dark Side of Karate.

Linda provides the perspective of 14 years of personal involvement in the New Age movement and nearly 25 years of evangelical teaching and speaking experience after becoming a Christian. Her spiritual search began in the early Sixties with LSD in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District, where she met her husband Richard, who had been raised as a Marxist-atheist revolutionary. Their search led them through 14 years of humanistic and transpersonal psychology, Eastern religions, spiritualism, and witchcraft. In 1976, Jesus Christ healed Linda of virulent cancer hours before a scheduled hysterectomy and gave her a child after 15 childless years of marriage. Within weeks, both Richard and Linda were born again. Today they have been married 40 years and enjoy the freedom, hope, and joy that is in Christ.

In 1987, the Nathans began equipping Christians about the New Age at conferences, seminars, and on the radio. This includes a seminar at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA; numerous workshops for international students and scholars as part-time staff with International Students, Inc.; and talks and seminars in churches in three states.

The Glittering Web, Richard and Linda's new novel dealing with New Age deception, will soon be available. Designed to attract and confront those in the New Age with their need for Jesus Christ, as well as awaken and equip Christians to the deceptions permeating both church and society, the fast-paced spiritual adventure story follows a couple through initiation into the New Age elite to their miraculous conversion and stand for Christ in a hostile world.

Linda wrote The Dark Side of Karate through her research and interviews with Tonie.

Note: For photos of the authors, see the Photo Gallery.