She went to sleep praying in tongues and when she woke the next day, she was still praying in tongues. She wasn’t hungry but forced herself to eat a slice of toast washed down with mugs of strong coffee and innumerable cigarettes.
She arrived at the church office and sat in the chair while Alwyn took the sofa. The exorcism began with a time of prayer, during which Matilda heartily prayed that whatever was causing the thoughts would be prised loose by the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit. While they were praying, Alwyn commanded the demon to reveal its name. There was nothing. He then commanded the demon to leave in Jesus’ name. No reaction. Alwyn commanded the demon to go again. Again, no reaction. He then started praying loudly in tongues and Matilda began to drool. He handed her the metal wastepaper basket and she drooled into it as he prayed for ten to fifteen minutes. Matilda began to feel uncomfortable and still she drooled but the blasphemous thoughts were still there, poking their heads above the parapet. But there was no manifestation of the demonic, no talking backwards in Latin, no spewing up of platefuls of green pea soup qua The Exorcist.
‘I’m still having blasphemous thoughts,’ she said to Alwyn as he ushered her out of the office.
‘Think rear-guard action,’ Alwyn replied decisively. ‘After a few days, you should find the thoughts lessening in intensity.’
She waited patiently for the blasphemies to cease but they did not, neither did they lessen in intensity.
15
After two weeks, Mandy said, ‘You should think about going home now.’
Can’t I stay a bit longer?’ Matilda asked, doing her best to look pathetic.
‘You’ve stayed long enough and I can’t stand your drinking.’
‘Oh well, that’s it, I suppose,’ she said with resignation.
She packed her bags and ordered a taxi to take her back to Poppy Road. When she got there and let herself in, she called out to Stuart but there was no reply, so she hauled her bag up to her room.
The first thing she did was to go to the Spar and buy a four-pack of Strongbow and sixty Cheap & Nasty cigarettes. She returned to her room, sat on her bed and cracked open the first can. She took a sip, lit a cigarette and inhaled, greedily sucking the smoke into her lungs. It was the nearest thing to bliss she knew. Of course, total bliss would have been a cessation of the thoughts and a Word of forgiveness from the Lord.
As she smoked and listened to the incessant dripping of her mind, she thought she couldn’t go on being a repository for these thoughts. She would have to speak them out. Personally, she was loath to say anything bad about Jesus because she knew she loved him. Her mind focused on the Holy-Spirit-is-demonic thought. If she got it again, she would have to repeat it. By now, the goading was unbearable, so she took another sip of cider and said, clearly, ‘The Holy Spirit is demonic.’
There was no flash of lightning, no wrath from on high visited upon her. She was still living and breathing and having blasphemous thoughts, so she said again, this time louder, ‘The Holy Spirit is demonic and God is Satan!’
She had blasphemed but oddly felt no different.
‘God is demonic and full of ____,’ she said.
If the truth were told, she felt a strange kind of satisfaction, having said the worst about the Almighty. She was sure she couldn’t be forgiven and carried on drinking, downing all her cans and letting rip with the foulest thoughts she could utter. It was a relief to get it out into the open after being subject to such slow-dripping poison for so long.
Then the reaction set in. Matilda was consumed with remorse and shame in the morning. She dressed for work (it was a Monday) and told everyone there that she had committed the Unforgivable Sin. There was no point in remorse, no school in shame. She had spent two hours the evening before disburdening herself of blasphemy, hateful though it was – the relief was only in lancing the boil, not squeezing out the pus. It was a relief after the weeks of having Satan’s filth swamping her consciousness. If God couldn’t forgive her after weeks of torment, then he was unworthy. Simple as.
She told Greavesy of her sin.
‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,’ she told him.
‘I’m sure God will forgive you,’ he said as he fastened a jute mail bag onto the fittings of the drop-bag frame.
‘He can’t,’ she replied. ‘It’s the only sin which is beyond God’s mercy. If he forgives me that, he’s only gone and perjured himself rotten.’
‘You’ve got quite a thing against God, haven’t you?’ Greavesy said as he reached for another mailbag. ‘Don’t you think you’re taking all this just a bit too seriously?’
She said the same thing to Phil, a Christian working on Forward Roads.
‘You’ve finally come out with it?’ he asked when she told him of her sin. ‘I reckoned you might. Oh well, better out than in!’
‘I’m a Satanist now,’ she said.
‘I’m sure you’re not,’ he chirped.
By late afternoon, the bravado was gone and Matilda was meek, submissive and fearful once more. After the manager called the shift off, she crept home and bought her rations from the Spar before it closed and guzzled the whole lot by bedtime. She had blotted her copybook eternally and it was no use being sorry after the fact, so she might as well spend her time getting monumentally drunk and disorderly. And how she would get drunk! Bring on the boys; bring out the booze; bring on the baccy!
She woke the next morning to a hangover and had to drink a bottle of Coke to sober up. She showered and brushed her teeth, changed into a clean work shirt and ate a hurried breakfast of toast and Marmite before going down to the church office, where she saw Paul and confessed all to him.
‘I’m worried that God might not be able to forgive me.’
‘Were you drinking at the time?’ Paul asked.
‘I’d only had half a can of cider, so I don’t even have that excuse.’
‘Have you seen a doctor?’
‘When they discharged me from hospital, they said I had no mental illness.’
‘But if the thoughts are driving you to drink and blasphemy, then surely your doctor ought to know. Maybe there’s something he can give you.’
‘Alwyn said the demon would deploy rear-guard action but there’s been no let-up in the thoughts.’
‘Which is why you ought to see your GP.’
‘I’ll make an appointment tomorrow,’ she promised him.
On the way out, she met Avril and they went for coffee at the wine bar across the street, the same place Matilda had retired to for her celebratory glass of wine two weeks earlier. They ordered at the bar and found a table in a quiet alcove where there were only two or three other customers.
‘I feel so ashamed but I was desperate,’ she told Avril. ‘The thoughts are constant and there’s no way of switching them off.’
‘It sounds as if you’re ill,’ said Avril as she cupped her mug of cappuccino in both hands.
‘Paul thinks I should see a doctor.’
‘God won’t blame you if you’re ill.’
‘It’s no excuse,’ said Matilda.
The last thing she wanted to do was make excuses for herself. Matilda stirred her cappuccino and looked around her to see if anyone was listening.
‘It sounds as if there’s a tape recorder inside your head playing on a constant loop with no “off” switch.’
The image was arrestingly accurate.
‘That’s exactly what it’s like!’ said Matilda.
They finished their coffee, paid the bill and walked out. The rain had cleared up and now the sky was a dappled blue and white.
‘Why don’t you renounce what you said about the Holy Spirit and about God?’ Avril said as they walked towards Avril’s studio flat.
‘Is that likely to work,
do you think?’
‘It might.’
Matilda renounced what she had said about God and about the Holy Spirit, though if the truth were told, felt no less despicable for it.
‘What I need is a Word,’ she sighed as she settled into the armchair in Avril’s flat. ‘A powerful Word.’
Avril was already praying for one.
‘Hold on a minute,’ she said, turning the pages of her pocket Bible, ‘I think I’ve got something. Isaiah six, verses seven and eight. Let’s see what it says.’
When she reached the book of Isaiah in her miniature Bible, she read, ‘Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal which he had taken from the altar. With it, he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” Seems like just the right word for you.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ cried Matilda.
‘Have a look for yourself,’ said Avril, showing her the passage.
‘So you admit that I have!’
‘I admit nothing except that I got the chapter and verse before I knew what it said.’
‘I can’t believe I’m forgiven,’ said Matilda. ‘Why would God say something’s unforgivable then forgive you for doing it?’
Avril took a small red and green notebook out of her file and wrote over the top of it, “Matilda’s Promise Book”, then started transcribing all the words Matilda had been given since she got ill, all the words from people at church and from pastors, starting with the word she had just been given and concluding with the exhortation, “Forget all about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit!”
‘There,’ she said when she had finished, ‘it’s your personal promise book. You can look up these Words if you feel that God hasn’t forgiven you.’
16
For a while, the little red notebook – Matilda’s personal Promise Book – went with her everywhere. She took it to work so she could look up all her Words and scriptural quotes. She would linger with longing over each one.
Before long, she felt a Word from God for herself, from God directly to Matilda, without the need of an intermediary. She took out her black Biro pen and wrote opposite the exordium “Forget all about blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” the words, “Behold, I am bringing down all the strongholds in your life. One by one I am demolishing them. My grace is sufficient for you.”
She felt a rush of pleasure. It was as if she had experienced a flicker of light in the darkness that was the Abyss.
By teatime there was more: “Remember, says the Lord, I see the end from the beginning.” She wondered about that one – shouldn’t it be, “I see the beginning from the end”?
She thought about this as she worked on into the evening, sorting the mail then going upstairs to code the letters. How thrilling to think that the Lord was speaking to her through the clamour – though unless he told her specifically that she hadn’t blasphemed the Holy Spirit, she didn’t know what she would do. Go mad, probably.
After the shift had been called off, Matilda went to the vending machine to get a coffee and retired to the Smoke Room, where she tried to sooth her frazzled nerves by smoking a few cigarettes. She read her Words again and hoped there would be more tomorrow. She needed a stiff Word!
There was time to nip to the Spar before it closed to buy her rations. When she got home, she put the cans on the chest of drawers in her room and sat down on the bed. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke and unwashed body, so she opened the window, returned to her bed and lit up. Taking a can of cider from the plastic grip, she cracked it open and took a sip, then drew on her cigarette. She felt the Lord trying to communicate with her, so reached for a pen and opened her Promise Book.
Remember when I told you I was pleased with you, she wrote, I was speaking eternally. My word never changes, goes out of fashion or fades after a season. I have loved you with an everlasting love and that love is eternal.
Remember, you are my little one, precious in my sight. My son paid the price for you and that price is eternal. Nothing can snatch you from my hand. Nothing you can say or do will make me not love you. If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t have called you, so listen to my people and put this foolishness behind you.
Matilda paused for a while and thought about going to bed but felt the Holy Spirit urging her on, so she picked up her pen once more and wrote: I will do everything I have committed myself to doing. Listen to my words for you, my daughter. It is the truth about you.
You ARE MY TROPHY, says God.
Listen to my words of wisdom, daughter. Who is it that tells you are an eternal failure? It is NOT me, says the Lord. Do not look back, do not be like Lot’s wife. Do not mull over yesterday’s failures, for then you give Satan power over you. I am the Lord, your Holy One, your Eternal King and Father.
Remember these things, says the Lord. Commit them to your heart and forget this blasphemous rubbish.
Matilda thought for a bit, then added: – Lord, help me to remember your words and forget the rubbish. In Jesus’ name I ask this.
But that wasn’t all. She remembered somewhere, possibly in a Francis Urquhart book, that God answered every prayer in Jesus’ name. You only had to believe it had been done for you. She reached for her pen a final time. Her nerves buzzed as she wrote: It is done, says the Lord.
The next morning, after a bath and breakfast, Matilda took out her Promise Book and wrote: Beloved, I will always love you, no matter what you do or say. Not so the wicked. My daughter, you are not to classify yourself among the wicked, for my son paid the price for you. Remember this too, I cause all things to pass away, even grievous sin, so be wise and sin no more.
The Lord was still warning her, so there was hope. Nevertheless, the threat that his forgiveness might be withdrawn if she doubted his word tweaked her anxiety a notch (but here was the rub: she didn’t doubt it was the Lord who was speaking to her).
On a new page, she wrote: God’s promise to Matilda: Those whom I have called, I have justified; those whom I have justified, I have glorified.
Beneath this, she wrote: Matilda’s prayer to the Lord and listed the following points:
To stop sinning against the Lord
To remove the desire to even think blasphemous thoughts
For strengthened faith
To know God’s mercy in my life
To serve and love the Lord
For the Word of God to take a deeper root in my heart
For assurance of my salvation.
Now that the Lord had spoken to her, Matilda thought it appropriate that she should speak to the Lord. She didn’t trust her prayers – they were so riven with blasphemy she could scarcely get a word in edgeways – so when she got back home from work that night, she took out her Promise Book and wrote out her message to the Lord.
There were several pages of it, in which Matilda begged for mercy but at the same time questioned the sincerity of his forgiveness. He had, after all, categorically said that speaking a word against the Holy Spirit was unforgivable. How then could she be forgiven for uttering these blasphemies? Did God perjure himself or, if not, how was it possible to be forgiven when forgiveness itself was impossible?
Sometimes I feel so low I think death is the only way out. I feel so ashamed and regretful about what happened. I know what Scripture says about speaking a word against the Holy Spirit, yet you tell me I am forgiven. Sometimes I don’t know what to think. I’m scared God I’m scared of blowing my salvation and wonder what will become of me. Sometimes I wonder if I’m still saved, especially after what’s happened. I wish I had never uttered those blasphemies and wonder if I am forgiven. I long to be forgiven and taken back. You know that God. I hate this whole situation. I hate my weakness, my giving in to temptation and my resentment and hatred against [sic] you. I wish this situation had never arisen.
&n
bsp; On and on it went, pages and pages of self-hating drivel. Matilda was no longer sure whom she hated more – herself or God. The simple fact of the matter was the more the thoughts came, the more she longed to give them utterance. But she dared not. It was the eternal dilemma: damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
17
The second thing Matilda had done when she got back from Mandy’s was write a letter to Betty Boulder. She got her ministry address off the Word of God website. One of the things she wanted to know was whether the blasphemous thoughts were part of the “times of shaking” Betty had prophesied. She was concerned she might invalidate her prophecy, she told Betty, by repeating the thoughts going through her mind.
Matilda posted the letter. She waited a long time for an answer and when one was not forthcoming quickly enough, she wrote another, repeating what she had written in the first. In these two letters, Matilda explained what was going through her mind and how it had started. She emphasized that the thoughts were completely involuntary and that they were driving her to madness.
She waited a month before she realised Betty would not be replying to her second letter. She was determined to have Betty’s advice on the Unforgivable Sin, so she would have to look sharp. She drew up a third letter, in which she apologised for the astringent tones of her first two letters, saying she had, with the blasphemous thoughts, been under a lot of stress. What she really wanted to know, with the garbage that was going through her mind, was whether she could still be saved or whether blasphemous thoughts would annul her salvation.
This third letter brought forth a reply. It arrived two or three weeks after she posted it. It assured her that her salvation was sure and said that if she was sick, she should notify the elders of her church and have them anoint her with oil. It reassured her that the blasphemy about which Jesus spoke was altogether a more serious proposition and, from what Matilda had told her, she was in no danger of committing this sin. She said it was an honour to be thought worthy of advice but said the proper vehicle for prophecy clarification was the leadership of the church. A prophet only became involved to clarify a point of prophecy if the church leadership couldn’t reach agreement.
Kingdom Come Page 6