A SELF-STYLED evangelical vigilante has been warned he will be jailed if he repeats an attack on two friends he believed needed to be cleansed of their sins.

Keith Dack launched a mission to make his one-time associates see the error of their ways after finding God through the Jehova's Witness organisation, a court heard yesterday.

The 41-year-old barged into the home of one of the men, tried to throttle him and screamed: "I have been sent by Jehova . . . you are going to be murdered."

James Spencer, prosecuting, said Dack forced the 40-year-old man into the bedroom of his downstairs flat and repeated: "I'm going to murder you . . . you know what it's all about."

A neighbour in the Middlesbrough complex - another man known to Dack with a criminal past - tried to intervene, but fled to his flat upstairs when the intruder threatened him.

Mr Spencer told Teesside Crown Court that the 76-year-old suffered an angina attack after Dack chased him and menacingly said: "You know who I am, and I know who you are."

Dack was arrested after his first victim fled from the flats in Borough Road and flagged down a passing police car. He later told the police he went to speak to the men about their sexual activity.

Defence barrister Duncan McReddie said the three men knew one another because they had shared a "particular type of past" and Dack's decision to confront them came about after he turned to religion.

"Since Mr Dack joined the Jehova's Witnesses, he realised the error of his past ways and he went to the address it with the express intention of persuading them to attend church," said Mr McReddie.

"He wanted them to confess the error of their ways and thus become reformed, if not cleansed, in the biblical sense."

Dack, of Roscoe Street, Middlesbrough, admitted a charge of assault causing actual bodily harm against the 40-year-old on August 14 last year, and was given a two-year supervision order.

Judge Peter Fox told him that the three months he has spent on remand awaiting his court appearance was a sufficient custodial punishment for his crimes.

But he told Dack: "If you toe the line, you won't get into trouble again, but if there is any violence like this, you will be serving a much longer prison sentence. You were in no position to use violence to either of these men whether or not you took the view they had erred and strayed, as indeed you have in the past.

"The Jehovas Witnesses will point out to you, if you stay with them, that the first stone is to be cast by he who has no blemish. You don't stand in that position, so you should tread softly where your evangilism is concerned.