Very soon after I was called of God, I was preached to by some brethren from the denominational church. Because they spoke in tongues, I thought they had the same Spirit I did. They came to me and said, “How can you say you are of God and you withdraw from us? Would God have somebody else, by himself, out there?” Because of the humility of my own soul, I felt that there was some validity to what they were saying. For how could God have somebody out there, and have His church here? (With the exception that God was at that moment drawing people out of the church unto Himself.) I was never in the church, so I did not know. My wife and I decided to pray about it. As we did, God gave us a vision, but we interpreted it wrongly. In the vision we saw this particular bishop as a great general riding in the state car. We thought God was telling us that we should submit ourselves to this great man of the church. Brethren, never interpret your own visions! If you do, you are going to be lopsided, the same as we were. We interpreted our own vision and joined the Pentecostal Church which was called the Church of God. We were there for eight years and were beaten, bruised, lied to, cheated upon – you name it. We did not know there were such crimes and sins inside the church until we got on the inside!
Finally, God began to do something in my life that was peculiar. I would go out and start a meeting and revival would follow; people would be saved. And not only a few, but many people would be saved as the power of God would move. We were building churches throughout the whole island of Jamaica. It was our calling – to build churches, to bring people together in the Lord. We would go into a city, preach for one week and a big church was left there. We would go to the next city, preach for another week and another church was built. We preached, but the church would take over and send in a pastor. But when I came back to the church after these revival meetings, I would not be given any offering. No tithes, no offerings. Of course, they were working on me, because I refused to ask for any offering. I refused to beg for money.
Let me share with you some of my experiences of that time. I was sent to a place called Falmouth to preach. No sooner had I started in this one church, when I became aware of a woman who had a little church down the street. She was struggling with her church. She was a lonely woman; she didn’t have a husband for her husband had died.
God said to me, “Go down there and preach a revival for Sister LaFranc.”
So I went to her and said, “Sister, the Lord is telling me to come and help you.”
She replied, “Well, praise God!”
She was so glad for the help! And we had a revival! God blessed it and many, many were saved. At the end of the week we had a big baptism. However…
My district pastor and bishop heard about it, came to me and asked, “How many people were saved from your preaching?”
“Twenty-five.”
“How many baptized?”
“Twenty-five.”
“How many added to our church?”
“None.”
They were shocked. “WHAT? Are you working with God?” they asked. They put a black mark against my name.
I said to them, “I am working with God and I am working for your church. But if God wants to save people and put them in another church somewhere else, it is His business.” Then I got into their really bad books.
Let me tell you another experience I had. One Sunday I was invited to one of the Church of God churches in the neighboring city to preach. So I went and sat down in the midst of the congregation. While they were having the song service, I heard a deep groan. But there was nobody around me groaning. Then I heard the voice of the Lord say, “My house is a house of prayer.” He didn’t say anything else but, “My house is a house of prayer.” As He said so, the pastor turned around and said, “Brother duCille, come and give the message.”
Tell me, what would you give for the message? I had nowhere else to go but to say, “My house is a house of prayer.” As I opened my mouth, the Spirit of God took over and out came, “My house is a house of prayer and ye have made it a den of thieves.” (Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46)
That was absolutely no compliment to the pastor who invited me to his church! There was an explosion among the people. They jumped to their feet and screamed, “Hallelujah!” However, the other side of the church was, “Hmmm.” I was in the middle of a church war and did not know it. The pastor reported me to the headquarters accusing me of joining a group of people in his church in order to come against him. God said, “My house is a house of prayer; and ye have made it a den of thieves,” but the pastor said, “It was duCille who said so.”
They called me up on trial. When they had laid up the charges against me, I asked them, “Are we supposed to obey God or the bishop?”
They said, “Oh, you have come to set us straight!”
I replied, “Definitely! For I am hearing from God and the church is not straight. You men are not straight.” That was it. They didn’t want me to preach in their churches any more.
There was prosperity in my ministering. I would go into a town and minister and people would be saved, falling down on their knees. We would have a church right there! This way we would build many churches for the Church of God. But when we went home, we were hungry. We had nothing. No tithes, no offerings. We couldn’t understand it. As the church leaders were against me, I finally, after eight years, went to God. I said to Him, “God, I am distressed!” My shoes had a big hole in the bottom (I should say two holes) and the hot asphalt was burning me while I walked proudly down the street. I was being scorched, but I still had to step like a gentleman. I said, “My God, what are You doing to me? I was an accountant and made a good amount of money to take care of my wife and children. But, You called me and sent me and now I…”
This was after eight years in the church; eight years of suffering.
God seemed to be very glad that I finally woke up and asked Him the question. He replied to me, “All right, let us reason. If you were working for your Government, what would your Government do for you? For example, if you were a soldier in the army?” I began to name out shoes, clothes, food, subsistence for my wife and going to school for the children, and everything else. God said, “Yes. So, now you tell Me, is your Government more righteous than your God?” I said, “No, God. My Government is not righteous at all.” He said, “Well don’t you see then that there is a reason – that something is wrong?” I said, “Yes, God! Something is wrong! I know that You are not wrong and so the wrong is here, but I do not know what it is!”
Then He told me a short little sentence. He said, “For the past eight years you have left Me. You have not been working with Me.” I said, “What! God, I have given up my whole life. I have given up my profession – everything! I have given up everything to work for You and You say that I have not been working with You for eight years! On top of that, You have been blessing my preaching so much! Who have I been working with?” He said, “You have been working with the church.”
“The church?” I did not know, up to that point, that the church was not working with God. I honestly did not know. I was so sad. I said, “So then, God, what should I do?” God answered, “You know what to do.”
Before the argument got cold, before reason came in, before any of those black birds came in and disturbed that word, I grabbed my pen, wrote my resignation and rushed it off to the bishop in Montego Bay. The bishop said, “I am glad you brought in your resignation. If you did not bring it in, I was coming for it.”
Brethren, you have to know that you, your gift, your life, your operation, everything pertaining to you has no value outside of the Body of Christ. You see, I was wasting God’s time. That day, I realized that the church was not working with God. The church is an institution that went from bad to worse. It went from Catholicism right down to where God said it was a den of thieves. Yes, a den of thieves.
Let me give you another example. One day we had a missionary meeting. It was for the young men who came out of the Bible school in order to give them help to go out into various places. Sometimes they would go back to their homes and preach and we would build so many churches because of these young men going out. Because I was an accountant, I got into the statistics of the whole thing. I found out that for every dollar we gave these young preachers, they would produce a soul. And so, I said in our missionary meeting, “Brethren, I am going to take the offering myself.” I went up and explained to people what God was doing in our midst, how these young men would win a soul for every dollar we gave them. I saw men go into their treasury and take out their money. A farmer would have a little bag with his money; he would take it out, count it and say, “So many souls.” “10 souls.” “20 souls.” “I want 50 souls.” It touched my heart!
When the offering was taken, we got into conference to count the money. We were so delighted in the offering we got. But they began to share it! The bishops were sharing the money among themselves and among the ministers!
I said, “NO! What are you doing? We told those people that we were going to give the money to the missionary fund and help the young men in the field. How can we…?”
“Oh, you are too naive! You are just too naive!” was the reply.
They felt it was a good “line” I used in collecting the offering. That money never went to its purpose.
I have had my experience! I found out that the church, which was under bishops and district pastors, was under a government that was not God. If you can tell me that the bishops, the district pastors, and all the government (the hierarchy) of the church is under God, then you need to go there!
I am giving you the account of these experiences to let you know where I am coming from. When I resigned, God took me out that very day and showed me the “righteousness” of the church we were a part of. I lived in the church parsonage. I had nowhere else to live and so I said to the bishop, “Well I need a month or two to relocate.” He replied, “Get out now!” Righteousness? He said, “Get out now!”
I went to my wife and said, “What are we to do?” We had bought a piece of land on the hill with an old ruin of a house the slaves had built sometime in the 1800’s. As that was all we had, we got people to help us clean it out, put a canvas over the top of the ruined walls and the family moved into the ruins. We had no place for a refrigerator so we left the refrigerator in the parsonage. They charged me a month’s rent for it! I am telling you all this that you might understand the righteousness under which we were functioning as a church in those days!
From that day to this, God began to bless us. In two weeks we had a house built to where we had the outer walls put up (2,500 square feet on one floor). It was a 5,000 square foot house. It was a “great house.” I do not want to go into the details to tell you how God built it, but I saw trucks coming up with materials and men coming up to work. I never called anybody! First of all, one man came up with his crew and started working. I asked him, “What are you doing?” He said, “Brother duCille, we hear that you are going to build a house.” I said, “Me? I never told anybody that.” He said, “Listen, brother duCille, we know you. If you want a house, God is going to give you a house; and we want the job, so we have come!” He gave the men orders to start working and they made short work of cleaning up that place and getting it ready for work.
We still had no materials! But God sent materials and then He sent their pay on Friday evening (I did not have a cent). It went on like this until the house was finished. Bless God!
I am sharing all this that you might know what is going on in the church as I know it. I have given you the experiences I had with one church, however I could give you many other examples I have seen in other churches, too. They have all fallen from grace. But we want to see the church come back to God. And it has to be done by RIGHTEOUSNESS and by HOLINESS.
