Chapter 11: Entering Spiritual Warfare

Rebecca Talks:

I continued to see Elaine as an outpatient for a month after she was finally discharged from the hospital. Then satan "lowered the boom."

Elaine called me at home one night and I immediately recognized that she was deeply upset. She had received a letter from The Brotherhood that day and so had I.

The letter to me detailed my activities of the past two weeks perfectly, right down to what I had bought at the grocery store. They knew my address and phone number. They told me that if I ever spoke to or saw Elaine again that they would come and get me and sacrifice me.

Elaine's letter told her that if she ever saw or spoke to me, and that if she did not return and repent and serve satan again, that they would get her and sacrifice her at the upcoming Black Sabbath. One line in each of our letters was very similar to the letter from the field commander of the king of Assyria to King Hezekiah. They said, "You two are fools if you think your God can protect you from our Prince of Darkness!" (See Isaiah chapters 36 & 37·)

"What should we do?" Elaine asked. She wanted to sever all contact with me in hopes of preventing the cult from harming me, but I was sure that that was not the Lord's will. Shaken, I told her that I must take the situation to the Lord in prayer and ask Him what He wanted us to do. I I knew that we could not run away. You cannot hide anywhere from satan. I knew too, as did Elaine, just how capable these people were of carrying out their threats. I remembered the young pastor who had fallen into their hands and was almost tortured to death. I also knew what was awaiting me if the cult got their hands on me. The Lord had, not long before, given me a vision of how a virgin is sacrificed in that group - death is a pleasant release for the victim!

I took the problem to the Lord in prayer. He told me that He wanted me to have Elaine move in with me immediately as she did not yet have faith enough to stand on her own.

She had been divorced for a number of years and had no close friends. Her daughter was temporarily staying with her step-sister because of her prolonged illness and hospitalization, so she was alone. Father told me that she would commit suicide rather than fall into the hands of the cult. She knew only too well what fate awaited her. Moving Elaine in with me would bring the attack directly to my own home.

I was literally ill with fear for two days as I struggled with the decision. Basically, I am not martyr material! I could not face the physical torture that surely awaited me if The Brotherhood got their hands on me and, by that time, I had grown to love Elaine and could not face seeing her so tortured either. I also realized that I had been daily asking the Lord to allow me to stand in the gap for that area for almost two years. I knew that since I was in the gap it might be necessary for the Lord to allow satan to put his hand on me as he has on so many down through the ages from Stephen, the first Christian martyr, on.

I knew that to take the problem to the police would be useless as so many of them were involved in The Brotherhood in that area.

Elaine and I were helpless in the face of so large and well trained an army as satan had.

Yet at the same time I also knew that to refuse to do Father's will would be the same as denying Jesus. Finally, the second night, I got honest with the Lord. I threw myself prone on my face before Father and sobbed my eyes out, saying:

"Father, Father, I am so terribly afraid. I just cannot face such physical torture or face the possibility of seeing Elaine so tortured. But also, I simply cannot deny Jesus or You. I just can't! I will do your will, but please help me, I am so afraid!"

At that point the Lord began to minister to me.

I was really wasn't any less afraid, but somehow I had the strength to go on and do what I knew I had to do. I called Elaine the next morning and told her that I was coming to get her that afternoon after work, that she must come and move in with me. She was shocked and told me that I was absolutely crazy and that she did not want to do so. But I told her that that was Father's command and that she did not have any choice if she really meant to follow and serve Jesus. So that day Elaine moved in with me and we have lived and served the Lord together ever since.

A believer empowered by the full Armor of God.

We had two weeks to wait before the night of The Brotherhood's Black Sabbath. They were

furious about Elaine's move and let us know in no uncertain terms in all kinds of harassment.

Phone calls at all hours, banging on the side of the house and at the doors in the middle of the night, rocks thrown through our windows at night. They even shot holes in the walls of the house.

In the meantime, I felt that the battle was really a spiritual one. Only God could fight it. I read and shared with Elaine the story of King Jehoshaphat in II Chronicles 20. A vast army had marched against King Jehoshaphat. He could not hope to stand against that army. So he and all his people took the problem to the Lord in prayer, and the Lord answered them that the battle was His and that He, the Lord, would protect them. I told Elaine that our only hope was to stand in faith that the Lord would fight this battle for us. We had to simply trust that if He did not choose to do so that He would give us the strength to endure whatever His will was for us. My prayer was that if He did allow the group to torture us that He would give us the strength not to deny Jesus no matter what they did to us. Whatever the outcome was to be, I knew that I was to stand by Elaine and support her faith to the end.

I did not share any of this with my parents as I did not want to risk bringing the wrath of The Brotherhood upon them. In fact, we had no one to turn to for help except the Lord. I did have to tell my roommate what was going on, and she was so scared that she moved out for those two weeks.

As the two weeks passed by and the harassment grew, over and over Elaine and I sat down and read that passage in Chronicles. The day before The Brotherhood's Black Sabbath, I was sitting

in the library' of the hospital when one of the Christian medical students came by and dropped a card in my lap. It had some Scripture verses on it. She told me that she didn't know why she was giving them to me, but that Father had been steadily putting it on her heart to write them down and give them to me for the past three days. I still have that card. Here is exactly what it said:

"Fear not and be not dismayed... for the battle is not yours but God's. You will not need to fight in this battle; take your position, stand still, and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf." 11 Chronicles 20:15 & 17 Those were the very verses that Elaine and I had been standing on! I will never be able to express what I felt in that moment. For the first time, I knew, without doubt, that Father meant to fight the battle for us and that we would be safe. And so we were.

The night that The Brotherhood had specified, Elaine and I sat up until midnight listening to records and singing praises to the Lord. As the clock struck 12 midnight, the record playing was by Bill and Gloria Gaither. The song they were singing was It Is Finished. And we stood and praised God that it was finished. He had kept His word. He had fought the battle for us.

We were unharmed. We went to bed then and slept in peace the rest of the night.

The next day after the Black Sabbath of The Brotherhood, the battle really began in earnest.

The demons in Elaine began to openly try to kill her. Up to that point, she had persistently denied that demons were in her, but that evening she was suddenly seized and thrown to the floor with excruciating chest pain as if she were having a heart attack. I didn't know what to do, so I cried out to the Lord to intervene.

He did and the pain ended.

"Elaine, that must have been a demon! Why do you continue to refuse to admit it?"

"Yes, it was Mann-Chan. He is trying to give me a heart attack."

"Who is Mann-Chan?"

"Mann-Chan is the demon that has been my guiding spirit for years. He has orders from satan to kill me."

I knew very little about fighting demons at that point but I thought that they surely must be resisted in the same way the Lord had taught me to resist satan - that is, out loud and in the name of Jesus. I told Elaine about this and told her that she should, out loud, in the name of Jesus, command him to stop and go away.

Elaine found such a suggestion very embarrassing and flatly refused to address Mann-Chan out loud. Time after time over the next two days Mann-Chan threw Elaine to the floor. Always she refused to open her mouth and finally I would command him to stop in the name of Jesus and he would stop.

I knew that Elaine must learn to fight also, that the Lord would not permit me to fight for her indefinitely. I had come up against the stubbornness that had enabled Elaine to survive all these years, only now, it was directed in the wrong way. Finally, the third day, in utter desperation, as Mann-Chan was attacking Elaine, I marched her to the front door. Opening it I told her:

"If you don't humble yourself and address Mann-Chan out loud as the Lord wants and stand up and fight him, he will kill you. Now go outside where no one can hear you and don't come back until the issue is settled! If you let him kill you, I don't want him doing it in the middle of my living room floor!"

Out she went and immediately I was engulfed in horror. What had I done? Suppose he did kill her? I certainly did not want that to happen.

Had I been too harsh on her? I fell to my knees and prayed intensely for her. As I was praying, a couple of minutes later, Elaine sheepishly came back into the house. I was immensely relieved to see that she was all in one piece.

"Well, what happened?"

"I did as you said and commanded him to leave, and he did."

From that time on the battle grew. Ri-Chan began to afflict her and many others. Within a week I knew that if the demons were not cast out that they would kill her. I had never really dealt with casting out a demon and was not sure what to do. So, I called Pastor Pat on a Wednesday morning and told him about the situation. (I did not contact the pastor of the church I attended locally by the hospital because I did not feel he would be able to help me. Later his actions proved that the discernment given to me by the Lord was accurate.) I told him that I felt that if Elaine wasn't delivered that day that she would be killed. He told me to bring her down to the prayer meeting that night and that afterwards we would deal with the demons as the Lord led.

It was a major battle to get Elaine down to the church as the demons in her did everything to keep me from getting her there. I had to practically carry her out to the car and then seat-belted her in. The suffering Elaine was enduring by the me the prayer meeting was over no one but the Lord will ever know. The demons were ripping and tearing at her body from the inside, trying to kill her before they could be cast out. I greatly admire Elaine's courage and determination to be delivered. She did not once complain of the agony she was enduring.

After the prayer meeting Pastor Pat asked Elaine and me to in with him and two elders of the church in his study. I don't think that either of the elders had ever participated in deliverance session before either. Pastor Pat had. He opened with prayer. He asked the Lord to seal that room with His angels so that nothing could get in and we could not get out until the work we had come to do had been completed. Elaine and I looked at each other. I knew that she was thinking the same thing I was: "WOW!! NOW WHAT?"

After praying, the Pastor addressed Elaine asking her to confirm that she had made Jesus the Savior, Lord, and Master of her life, that she rejected satan and anything from him and that she desired the demons to leave. She did go. From that point the battle was on. The demons began to surface and speak through Elaine. I had never seen anything like it. Her eyes, voice, and whole face changed. I will never forget the first demon. Suddenly a guttural male voice said, "I am Yaagogg, the demon of death, and you are all fools. You cannot win; we will kill this foul traitor. She belongs to satan and he will not permit her to live."

Pastor Pat didn't bat an eyelash.

"You lie, you foul spirit! Elaine is now holy ground, she belongs to the Lord and you know it! I command you in the name of Jesus to come out of her!"

The battle raged for eight hours. Many many demons were brought to the surface, forced to identify themselves and were cast out. It was a beautiful experience. The Holy Spirit was absolutely in control and there was a smooth coordination of all of us as He used first one of us then another. The presence of the Lord in that room was felt by all of us. We commanded the demons to come out of Elaine by the authority of the name of Jesus, read Scripture aloud, sang songs of praise to the Lord and prayed and praised Jesus for His complete victory over satan. The demons were particularly tormented by our praise and they seemed to lose strength rapidly then. Most of them came out by violent coughing.

What a time of joy and rejoicing we had when the deliverance session finally ended. We all stood crying, clapping our hands and praising the Lord in complete and beautiful unity.

Exhausted but overjoyed, Elaine and I praised the Lord all the way home.

The weeks following Elaine's first deliverance were intensive weeks of decisions that would affect the rest of both of our lives. The Lord spoke to me at the beginning of that week. He asked me if I would be willing to commit my life to Him in a new way, to be used by Him in any way He chose to directly fight satan, and stand "in the gap" so that many souls could be saved, especially among those of The Brotherhood. The Lord told me that if I chose such a course that I could expect suffering and persecution. Also that I would have to change my career plans. He showed me that I could expect much loneliness and rejection and eventually have to lay down my medical career completely, but that He would always be with me. He also told me that I would lose my entire family, which I have.

It was a big decision. I have always loved the field of oncology and had, just the month before, been accepted into a Fellowship Program to train in oncology at one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in the U.S. Oncology7 is the field in medicine which specializes in the treatment of cancer. Being accepted to that particular program was considered a great honor. I wanted very much to specialize in that field. The Lord told me that He does not give His children second rate options and that if I did not choose to commit my life to doing battle with satan, that He would greatly bless me anyway.

The decision was a hard one. The Lord wanted me to stay in internal medicine and open a private solo practice so that I would have a broader range of patients. This was necessary so that He could bring to me the people I was to minister to, especially cult members. As I thought about it, I realized that I loved the Lord too much to do anything other than His first choice. As I mentioned this to a few of my "Christian" colleagues at the hospital and the fact that I would have to refuse the position in the oncology fellowship, they all told me that I was crazy to even think of refusing such a position.

Also, many of my friends were beginning to pressure me to have Elaine move out. Those that did not know that I had moved Elaine in with me also began to turn against me for no explainable reason. satan worked in such a manner that by the end of that week I did not have one friend left. My family and my roommate were also pressuring me to have Elaine move out. They did not think I was hearing the Lord correctly.

Even the minister of the church I attended locally by the hospital, called me and counseled me to have Elaine move out. He, too, told me that I "... got too involved with people, and especially with Elaine." Then he went on to tell me that I was not welcome to return to his church until I had gotten rid of Elaine!

I was shaken and began to wonder if I had really heard the Lord correctly. But during that time, the Holy Spirit forcibly brought to my mind the Scripture in I Peter 1:22, "... see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." That certainly didn't sound like a surface-only involvement to me. Also the Holy Spirit quickened Galatians 6:2 to my heart, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Once again I had peace in my heart and spirit that I was hearing the Lord correctly.

Nevertheless, by the end of that week, I was both discouraged and depressed. I saw Pastor Pat that next Sunday again, and shared with him what had been happening, and also my depression. I will never forget the experience.

Pastor Pat looked me square in the eye and said:

"Rebecca, entering into spiritual warfare in a deep commitment such as you are describing will mean much rejection and suffering. If you can't take it, then you'd better get out now!"

I felt about two inches tall! But it was what I needed to hear. The next day I made my decision. I told the Lord that I gave my life to Him to be used in this new dimension, totally committed to Him to be used in any way He chose to directly battle satan in order that souls could be saved, and Jesus glorified. Then I sat down and wrote the director of the fellowship program in oncology and told him that after much prayer I knew that it was not the Lord's will for me to take that direction in my career and that I would not be coming after all. What a furor that decision raised at the hospital! The directors of my program were angry7 and could not understand my decision. I tried to explain to them that it was not the Lord's will for me to become an oncologist.

They thought I was crazy, after all, "God doesn't speak to people like that."

Most Christians are quite unaware not only of the spirit world, but of the fact that every action we take in our physical world also affects the spirit world. Charles G. Finney describes this cause and effect relationship between the physical and spiritual worlds beautifully:

"Every Christian makes an impression by his conduct, and witnesses either for one side or the other. His looks, dress, whole demeanor, make a constant impression on one side or the other. He cannot help testifying for or against religion. He is either gathering with Christ, or scattering abroad.

At every step you tread on chords that will vibrate to all eternity. Every time you move, you touch keys whose sound will reecho all over the hills and dales of Heaven, and through all the dark caverns and vaults of Hell. Every movement of your lives, you are exerting a tremendous influence that will tell on the immortal interests of souls all around you." The Last Call... For Real Revival, by J.T.C., p. 31.

An incident happened which suddenly made this truth a reality to me. I had not realized the significance of the waves of reaction in the spirit world to the events in my own life. First, I had been involved in using the power of Jesus Christ to block much of the witchcraft in one of satan's special hospitals. Then, the Lord had involved me in the battle in which satan lost one of his top brides - an event which certainly caused satan to lose face in his kingdom. Shortly after that satan and his demons failed in their attempt to use Elaine and myself as human sacrifices because the Lord had intervened and protected us. I guess the last straw, so to speak, was my total committal of my life to the Lord to be used in warfare directly against satan.

Quite unaware of the "waves" all of this was causing in the spirit world, I calmly went out into my back yard one day to have a quiet lunch on my picnic table under the trees. As I was sitting there enjoying the sunshine God permitted the veil between the spirit world and the physical world to be briefly torn asunder.

Suddenly, a shining figure appeared and sat down across the table from me. He was in from as a man. As I sat staring at him in silent amazement the Holy Spirit forcibly revealed to me who he was! This was the last being I had ever expected to personally meet. This shining figure presenting himself to me in radiance as an "angel of light" was actually the Prince of Darkness, the Prince of the Power of the Air, ruler over a vast kingdom of evil - satan, himself! I don't remember details about his appearance because I could not seem to draw my eyes away from his, his eyes were so evil.

They were like black coals and had a depth and blackness and evilness that seemed to reach out threatening to engulf me. For an instant I felt as if I was falling forward into the black pit that was in those eyes, but something held me back, stabilizing me. I could tell that satan was angry, very angry7.

"satan!" I exclaimed. Upon receiving his curt nod acknowledging his identity, I asked, "What do you want?"

"Woman, do you dare to come against me?"

"My life has been so committed."

"I know, but, DO YOU DARE to actually come against ME?!"

I was very puzzled and surprised at his repeated question. It was obvious that his anger was growing by the moment, but the Holy Spirit filled me with a complete peace such that afterwards I marveled that I had felt no fear.

"satan, I am not coming against you in my own power, but in the power and authority of Jesus Christ."

"You had better count the cost, this Jesus whom you serve advised His followers." (And he quoted accurately word for word the following:)

"For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace.

So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:28-33 "Woman you had better count the cost because I tell you, I will make your life an agony and an anguish that you never knew could even exist!"

I knew this powerful creature was deadly serious and that since I had committed everything to the Lord (all my possessions, career, family, my very life itself), I had no doubt that satan would petition Father for it all just as he had done many years ago with Job. It was a very sobering thought. Finally I replied:

"I have counted the cost to the best of my ability and I know that whatever is to come in the future will be under the complete control of my God, and I simply trust that His grace will be sufficient for me. So, YES, satan, / DO DARE to take up the authority and power that Jesus has given me, and I DO DARE to come against you in the name of Jesus Christ my Lord!"

My eyes locked with satan's for a long moment of silence. Again I had that peculiar sensation that if something had not been holding me, I would have fallen forward into the awful evil that I saw there. Then satan nodded curtly and said, "So be it." With those words, he vanished.

I sat pondering the experience; wondering that the sun had continued to shine warmly, the breeze gently rustling the leaves on the trees, and the birds had continued to sing. I sensed that somehow I had just taken a major irrevocable step. At the time of this writing the cost has indeed been great. I have lost my entire family, my career and everything I had in terms of worldly possessions. I have also suffered much in my physical body. BUT through it all, the Lord HAS been with me and what satan means for defeat the Lord will turn into victory.

The road has indeed been very long and rocky since that first meeting with satan and he has made my life an agony and an anguish that I never knew existed, and I know also that there is more to come. But, also, never could I have come to know the Lord as I do, and though I know I'm just getting started there, too, getting to know Him this much is worth anything! I know at last the meaning of Matthew 6:19-21 where Jesus said:

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasure in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The most valuable treasure anyone can have is personal knowledge of Jesus, and Father, and the Holy Spirit!