Women

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Soldier of a Lost Cross
By Patricia Backora, author of the book
Tough Love in Christ’s Millennium
Which you can order online from: http://www.publishamerica.com

All names have been changed in this autobiographical story.

Throughout the years I have observed that some of the Lord’s nine gifts of the Spirit have been neglected in the churches. Perhaps a general neglect of the Gift of Discerning of Spirits (I Cor. 12:10) has resulted from all the bad press which has resulted from its misuse. People can get so obsessed they’ll see a demon jumping out of every bush. But church leaders only play into the devil’s hands when they forbid the Holy Spirit to move in the Gifts as He deems necessary to protect the Body of Christ from very real dangers.

As a young girl newly baptized in the Holy Spirit, I faced a real danger. The devil capitalized on the fact that I was very unworldly-wise and ignorant of the wiles of men because I’d never dated. Aglow with the joy of the Lord, I was way too quick to trust everyone who professed to follow Christ. I had not yet learned to discern a sheep from a wolf.

Before my Baptism, I attended "Gospel Garrison" services with a friend of mine. That church didn’t believe in the "second blessing", or Baptism of the Holy Ghost, accompanied by speaking in tongues. I joined the "Soldier Songsters", a little group which sang to folks at nursing homes and a local hospital to cheer them up. "Sergeant Ben Beulah", clad in his crisp red uniform would sing: "Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the Cross, Lift up His royal banner, it must not suffer loss!" He briefly pray for the people, then shake hands with them and ask how they were. Afterward our little group (mostly female) would go out for burgers and fries. We would usually take our food back to the church premises so we could all enjoy a nice long chat. At first, nothing roused the slightest suspicion.

It wasn’t long before I met "Joan and Lottie", two girls who went out with our group one night. They turned out to be the link which enabled me to learn about and receive the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. Curious about a remark some kid made about their speaking in tongues, I asked Joan and Lottie to take me to visit their church. The Holy Spirit filled me with a heavenly joy and love such as I had never known in my life. I ended up dividing my time between the Gospel Garrison and "Deeper Life Church". Soon I only went out to sing with the Soldier Songsters, and attended Deeper Life Church exclusively. Brother Beulah thought they’d stolen me away from his church.

Back then I thought only pure-hearted people wanted to preach the gospel and cheer up sick and shut-in folks. At the time, the Gift of Discerning of Spirits was not operative in my life. At first, Brother Beulah enjoyed chatting with all of us over the hamburgers. But soon he wanted to talk only to me, while the others talked among themselves. He made me promise to keep everything we discussed confidential. If I felt the slightest suspicion about that it wasn’t strong enough yet. I think the devil was playing a perverse little game to see how many clues he could leave behind and still dupe me about Sgt. Beulah for as long as possible.

Although I tried to steer Brother Beulah toward decent topics, he was fascinated by racy Bible stories. One night he talked about 1920’s ladies’ lingeree. Maybe it was because they didn’t have TV when he was a kid, but he told me what a swinging place his barn was for his pet cats. God must have wondered why I didn’t wake up and smell the coffee. At least we had clearly defined boundaries at my church, where it concerned acceptable conversation between older brothers and younger sisters in the Lord. Unrelated brothers and sisters greeted one another only with a handshake. That seems a bit stuffy by today’s standards, but the line has to be drawn somewhere.

Brother Beulah resorted to flattery."You’re such a lovely person. You’ve just got a way about you that draws folks to you. I think of you as my own daughter. I’d like to just kiss you on the forehead like a daughter. With a twinkle in his beady black eyes he said: "If I were a young man again, I’d marry you." I thought he was just joking. After all, he was three times my age. It was a good thing his wife couldn’t hear him. That’s a sure sign of the decadence of the end times. A man doesn’t know how to grow old gracefully and with dignity. So he chases every pretty girl he sees and puts a spiritual spin on his sin.

If he was attracted to the joy of the Lord I exuded, that wasn’t my natural side showing. Before my Baptism in the Spirit, I was as cynical as a wounded war veteran. I’d thought life on earth was just a sick joke. That was a legacy of the damnable high school years I endured. The Holy Ghost gave me every positive thing in my life, including the ability to love others, not just tolerate them. But Brother Beulah was too blind to see that my good points were just the life of Jesus shining through. Maybe at the time I didn’t fully realize that myself, being a babe in Christ. After all the **** that was heaped on me at Hellhole High, hearing kind comments was soothing to my wounded soul. But Brother Beulah wanted more than light chitchat.

I did tell Brother Beulah about my Baptism in the Spirit, but he denied that there was any such thing as the Second Blessing. He had to be faithful to the teachings of his denomination. I know now that I should have realized how serious it is for other Christians to be so fearful of religious authorities that they don’t desire the supernatural works of the Holy Spirit in their church. All they might give Him permission to do is convict people of sin...quietly and discreetly in the privacy of their own hearts. But whatever happens on the outside must remain strictly under the control of man. I once thought that any other churchgoer’s opinion was equally valid, no matter what it was about. But democracy has no voice in the Most Holy Place of God’s Presence. It’s just not the same as respecting someone else’s opinion on choir robes or stained glass windows. The Holy Spirit must absolutely be reverenced. I believe in democracy, fair play and listening to your own sanctified conscience. On peripheral issues we can all agree to disagree and still have fellowship one with another. But on issues crucial to salvation we must agree with the plain teaching of God’s Word, in order to maintain true unity. Lots of Christians think the Baptism is an optional accessory you can get by without, but I now firmly believe that being filled with the Spirit IS an issue crucial to salvation. It is a Biblical commandment (Eph. 5:18-19). If you know the Holy Spirit Baptism is a real experience but still deride it as being a doctrine of the devil, you’re in deep water with the Lord (Mark 3:28-29). God’s Holy Spirit and His power is one of the linchpins which holds our whole salvation experience together. We can’t do that by struggling to be good people. The Baptism of the Spirit is so precious it should be above criticism of any sort. Had I realized that at the time, I might have known that Brother Beulah was bound by satan.

I see now that Brother Beulah opened himself up to satan because some churches don’t war against him in the Spirit (II Cor. 10:3-5; Eph. 6:10-18). They have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof (II Tim. 3:5). If you get souls saved but deny the existence of demons who are oppressing church members, you won’t draw on the power of God to resist them. If a church denies the power of the Spirit and the Gifts of the Spirit, its members become more vulnerable to satanic control. A spirit of lust was controlling Brother Beulah, but I didn’t discern it.

I didn’t want to leave that friendly little group because I treasured something other young people took for granted: sitting at a table with friends, talking and sipping a Coke. Even after you receive the Holy Spirit it takes a bit of time to recover from all the hurts of your past. When I was in high school I usually ate lunch by myself, because I had been singled out by satan as the target for school bullies. Daily I was harassed for my hair, my figure, even my name. I was always last to be chosen in P.E. I was attacked on the school bus. At least one lowlife urged me to kill myself. After my Baptism, prophecy was spoken over me by a minister who had never met me: That when I was young, satan had tried to destroy me and take my life. True. During those stinking teenage years I’d been tempted to end it all, just to get out of the devil’s world.

In getting me to overlook Brother Beulah’s quirks, satan was taking advantage of those ruined years. He is the father of all workers of evil, inclulding bullies (John 8:44). Satan fights, but he is no valiant warrior who fights by the rules and dares to look an opponent in the eye. He is a skulking coward who attacks the weak and the walking wounded. The devil knows Jesus stripped him of his dignity and might at Calvary, so he can only win by fighting dirty. His children are just as cowardly as he is. Time and again, I hear news stories about a gang of bullies beating up a little kid or a helpless old man. A lone bully is way too chicken to challenge an individual of equal strength and skill. Gutless cowards all of them, just like their father satan. If the devil is a lion, he is the Cowardly Lion of the universe who picks off the wounded lambs of God’s flock.

The devil doesn’t barge into your world waving a pitchfork. He sets devious traps for those ignorant enough to walk into them with eyes wide open. With studied stealth, he deceives people that everything is okay when it’s really not. Unless you’re sensitive to what satan is subtly doing, you are like a frog placed in a pan of soothing warm water which is heated up degree by degree. But the frog doesn’t jump out because it’s being soothed by the warm bath. Before it realizes the danger it’s in, it’s been boiled alive.

Brother Beulah started dropping me off last when he drove us all home. For the first time I felt uneasy. My, how satan takes advantage of naïve church girls who haven’t been round the block enough to know how the world operates! Before I could get out of his car to go into my house, Brother Beulah grabbed me and kissed me on the forehead, then went for my mouth. My arms and my head were held in a grip of iron by that 67-year old reprobate. As soon as I could move I dashed out of the car.

I still didn’t want to admit that Brother Beulah was nothing but a crafty snake; an adulterer in heart hunting for the precious life (Prov. 6:26). Solomon was always warning about wicked women, but there are also predatory males out on the prowl. He warned against fools, also, but as they say, There’s no fool like an old fool who has repeatedly read the Word of God and ought to know better. Such a one is without excuse in the sight of God.

I was way too nice to confront him about his ungentlemanly behavior. That’s a religious lie of the enemy: That as believers, we are absolutely forbidden to ever think ill of anyone, regardless of how much evidence is thrown into our faces. Why didn’t I realize that he took me home last because he wanted no witnesses? Then, if he did his worst it would be the word of a respected minister against mine.

But God saw him. Brother Beulah has long since died. Some interesting words must have been spoken to him by his Creator, if he went unrepentant to his grave. That, by the way, is still another lie of satan: A sinner or backslider can wait till he’s about to die before he repents, and God will still receive his soul unto Himself. But the danger of that belief is two-fold: Firstly, the blessed Holy Spirit is not at the beck and call of backsliders who decide to wait for the most convenient time to repent. The Holy Spirit must be present to grant a backslider repentance (II Tim. 2:25). Secondly, people who are dying want their final words on earth to leave behind a warm, loving legacy their loved ones will cherish. If Brother Beulah died before his wife did, he would only have marred his own memory by confessing that he had lusted after young girls and lied about it to her face. So even at death’s door a sinner might lack the courage to confess and receive God’s forgiveness. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Like a victim of domestic violence, I thought that kissing incident was just a one-off, that it wouldn’t happen again. But Brother Beulah followed the same pattern the following week: driving me home last, immobilizing my arms and head and giving me an unwanted kiss. I prayed within: "O Lord, if you let me escape Brother Beulah this last time, I promise I won’t ever go back." Thankfully, God heard me. Second chances spring from the Grace of God, because God doesn’t owe anyone a second chance to obey. I got away before anything worse happened.

A couple of nights later, I was over at a friend’s house. I felt God wanted to give me a further sign that I wasn’t borrowing nonexistent trouble. My friend’s Bible lay on a table. I flipped it open at random. This verse jumped out at me: II Samuel 13:14: Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but being stronger than she, forced her and lay with her (KJV).

It could have been about me! "He, being stronger than she!" I knew that story. King David’s daughter Tamar had been overpowered by her half-brother’s superior strength and what followed was extremely tragic. Because I listened to God in the nick of time, I was spared the same fate. It filled me with awe that 3000 years after it happened, God used Tamar’s story to warn me that my suspicions about Brother Beulah were neither uncharitable nor untrue. I just hadn’t wanted to think the worst of a so-called brother in the Lord. Amnon was Tamar’s half-brother, so she, like me, had not discerned any danger.

I told my friend about Brother Beulah and the verse and she urged me to tell our pastor. Surprisingly, he told me that he had discerned a spirit of lust in Brother Beulah the first time he had ever met him. The pastor apologetically admitted that I should have been told. Had this working of the Gift of Discerning of Spirits been acknowledged by the pastor, I might have been warned through this secondary witness: (Matt.18:16).

I didn’t want to leave the group without explanation. I wrote Brother Beulah a letter telling him that his conduct had been very un-Christian. I told him he had made me feel like some girl he was trying to pick up for indecent purposes. His wife got hold of it first, read it and chewed him out. He told the other girls: "I wonder what’s gotten into that girl, saying something like that."

Several years later, I had moved far away from my home town. My parents and little sister stopped at a fast food restaurant to get a bite to eat. They spotted Brother Beulah sitting at a table with a brand new batch of girls. He spotted my folks and had everyone collect their food and drinks and leave at once. Liars and deceivers don’t like to confront reminders of old sins. Here was a man who claimed to have walked with God as a soldier of the Cross since his youth, but he refused to come to the Light to confess his sin of lust and the lies he had told to cover it up. He had misrepresented himself to impressionable young girls as a grandfatherly saint who only wanted singing and fellowship. He was like a hunter patiently waiting for a dumb bird to get caught in his subtle snare (Psalms 91:3).

John 3:19-20 says: And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. In the margin of my Bible, that word "reproved" means "discovered."

The stumbling block that had hindered me from seeing Brother Beulah for what he was was the popular "once-saved, always-saved" doctrine. Like a lot of other spiritual newcomers, I had thought that verses condemning sin were only for the unconverted. Among those were verses about people hating the Light which showed them their sins. I did not feel I had the right to judge any converted person as a sinner, for Jesus doesn’t want us to point fingers of judgment at each other. But carrying this to extremes, should sin be ignored in the church, in the name of love? Paul found plenty of it in the Corinthian Church. Christians were swindling each other left and right. Paul tells them to judge such matters among themselves, rather than going before worldly judges (I Cor. 6:1-5). In Chapter 5 Paul rebukes the Corinthians for condoning a church member who has committed adultery with his own step-mother. Paul himself passed judgment on the offender and delivered him over to satan for the destruction of his flesh till he repented (I Cor. 5:3-5). That is one example of apostolic authority in action, an office which oversees the welfare of more than one local congregation (II Cor. 11:28) There should be strong anointed ministries vulnerable people can go to for counselling. Paul did not spare the man he judged just because he was a brother in the Lord. The supreme irony of the situation is this: Our Spirit-filled church believed in unconditional eternal security, while Brother Beulah’s church taught that you can lose your salvation. If he truly believed that, his actions sure didn’t show it.

I no longer accept the doctrine of unconditional eternal security. This heresy was taught even at the church where I received the Baptism of the Spirit. My belief is this: Abiding is the key word. We began this walk by repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus for remission of sins (Acts 20:21). We must continue this walk in the same way and hold steadfastly to the doctrine of faith in the atoning Blood of Christ in order to make it to heaven (Heb. 4:14; 10:23). II John 9 says: Whosoever transgresseth and ABIDETH NOT in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God. HE THAT ABIDETH IN THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST hath both the Father and the Son. John 15:1-7 speaks of the need of believers to abide in Christ, the Living Vine. It isn’t enough to come into Christ, we must remain in Him through abiding faith. Noah entered the Ark and was saved from the Flood. But what if Noah had jumped out of one of the portholes because he didn’t want to obey God anymore and stay put? He would have drowned like anyone else out in the water!

As I Corinthians 13: 7 teaches us, love beareth all thing, endureth all things, hopeth all things, and believeth all things are possible by the grace of God, even the reclamation of a backslider. But God is a God of truth. We are called to walk in truth, not just sweet love (II John 4; III John 3). Love does not lie to itself. Love must be tough enough to face the truth and deal appropriately with it, whenever warnings are given by Spirit of Truth, so that a snare of the devil might be uncovered and a life saved from certain shipwreck.

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