My call from God to Christian schools (Part 2)
I wasn’t overly deterred by the negative effects of my foray into turning my teaching into a ministry at a Christian school. I admit that I’d had rosy-tinged views of how enjoyable it would be if I could actually use my teaching as a Christian ministry. (I think I had my rose-coloured glasses on at the time!) It didn’t take long to have those very positive views disappear like fog on a sunny day. By the time I’d finished my three years at Benalla Christian School, looking back, it was as if I had entered a spiritual battle-field. It was something I’d read about in various books by missionaries on overseas missions, but never expected to be hit with it in allegedly civilized Australia.

I had been well aware of spiritual warfare before I left for Benalla. In the early 90s at the rural school where I was headteacher, we had some serious demonic opposition. (And for those who claim that demonic attack is not common even for Christians, Paul wrote that it was more or less constant: “As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” (Romans 8:36) We were holding a sleep-in camp night at the school. Parents brought food supplies and some stayed to assist with the evening. After their evening meal, some older siblings who were attending went off on our church bus to the church youth group meeting, while the school children had various camp-style activities and games, including a large campfire. And then it all began, sudden sickness for some (but no symptoms for the others). Amidst ringing up some parents to come for their children, we also checked what had been eaten, but could find no food that had been eaten by the “sick” group and not by the “not sick” group. Whatever it was also affected some adults but not others. Everyone was either sick or not sick; there was no-one who was just a bit sick! It was all very mysterious indeed. To add to this, the church bus was late and we were wondering why; it had been due around the time the sickness began. (Mobile phones just weren’t around then.) The bus finally turned up maybe an hour late, with the driver saying sorry I’m late but we had to stop on our way home because three of the passengers had suddenly got sick. And at least one of them had not eaten food at, nor attended, our sleep-in evening.

It was weird just how it happened. All of the sickies got sick at the same time. One minute all were healthy; the next minute (or so it seemed) around a third suddenly were violently sick, while the rest showed no symptoms at any time. And they were all miraculously fully healthy the next morning. The meals at the sleep-in were spread out with food being eaten over a period of maybe an hour, bites in between activities. But it was the bus situation that really stood out. All three sickies had got sick at the very same time (the driver said they all started all at once). They were all away from each other, so it couldn’t have been a case of one sickie setting off the others. The driver was visibly shaken by the ordeal. The food at the sleep-in was not responsible for at least one of those on the bus. So, all we could come up with is that it was case of spiritual warfare. This was just one example of some of the weird things that occurred, events that I can only attribute to spiritual warfare. So when I settled in Benalla, I should not have been surprised when spiritual warfare hit hard right from the beginning.

Soon after we arrived in Benalla, and had finally bought an old house that had a sloping floor and old facilities (the recent floods had made housing scarce and what was available was costly), a group moved into the rental property next door. From then on, every Saturday night (for much of the night), plus many other times, very loud rock music disturbed my sleep. I’d  wake up most Sunday mornings exhausted from lack of sleep, only to have the Ford dealer behind us pressure-cleaning cars from around 6am for a few hours. I don’t know exactly who our neighbours were, but it was clear that they had an agenda. They played their noise near a window facing us, mostly left open even on colder nights, and the stereo had a goat’s head glued to the plastic cover on it. Witchcraft was rampant in Benalla with at least three significant witch covens operating: the Benalla East coven; the Gaskin St coven, and the Benalla hospital area coven (sometimes referred to as the Calder St coven, where Calder St was the extension of our street. We suspected our neighbours belonged to the Calder St or hospital coven (the hospital was not far south of us).

I couldn’t stop the noise even with ear plugs because the sound could be felt more than heard. And every Saturday from late evening until at least 4am the house literally shook with the blast. On Saturday nights a group of them (maybe a dozen or more, noting that quite a few cars would park out front) would gather for the noise. They’d arrive around 10 or 11pm and the “party” would begin. And the noise ramped up to unbelievable levels! It got to the stage where I was seriously considering moving back home to the farm, with no job and no income, but at least I could have some peace and quiet. One night maybe around August 1994 I’d had enough. I prayed (in my thoughts, not aloud – I wouldn’t have heard myself much anyway!) for an answer. Or else I was out of there as soon as I could pack up.

 I prayed for three things: for their party to break up, for them all to clear off from there, and for their music machine to blow up. What happened next sounds unbelievable but it really happened. Immediately they all started shouting at each other (I could hear bits of this above the “noise”). Then they ran and got into cars and drove off, so quickly in fact that as one car pulled away I heard one of them shouting, “Hey, wait for me!” But the noise machine kept on thumping its noise at me. I thought Well, 2 out of 3 isn’t too bad. Then, after maybe 15-30 minutes (I wasn’t counting time that much), the noise abruptly stopped (around midnight). At first I thought that maybe someone had turned it off because their “party” was over, while hoping that it had actually blown up! For the first time in months this Saturday night was quiet. In the morning I told my wife what I had prayed for and what had happened. She was sceptical; maybe it was just a coincidence. Most likely the noise machine had been turned off after their party ended early. But the peaceful evenings went on; even the following Saturday evening was peaceful! However, when she saw that noise machine being delivered to the house by the local electrics store repair van (after 10 days), she decided that what I had said was probably true.

It was clear now that the next-door disruptions were a matter of spiritual warfare, and that these Saturday night meetings were the local coven gathering for mayhem on the Christians in town. From that night on, while the noise machine continued to hammer us on Saturday nights, it was no longer threatening to make me leave Benalla. And then, one day, those neighbours just weren’t there anymore.

The local Baptist church used to hold open air street meetings in the Gaskin St area in East Benalla. And their local coven (the Gaskin St coven) used to attend, not to get saved, but to be as disruptive as they could. The Baptist pastor told me of one meeting they held on a nice sunny Sunday morning in the Gaskin St area. The coven turned up in force. As soon as the church meeting began, the rain poured down, and as soon as the church finished up and packed things away, the rain stopped and it became a nice sunny day again. Things like that used to happen in Benalla!

We were told at the school that the local covens prayed against local Christian ministries on a roster basis; and we used to cop it every 5 or 6 weeks. I remember being at the school one morning and feeling like I was trying to walk through deep water or even quicksand. Moving was a struggle, and thinking was difficult. I  was to find out that it was our turn on the coven roster. Benalla seemed such a nice place but underneath it all there was a lot of evil running deep.

However, it wasn’t just the local covens that hit out at the two teachers at the Christian school. In my first two years there the school board chairpersons were reasonable, but in my third year the woman who took over seemed intent on destroying the Christianity of our school. She seemed to take delight in using the school board to create difficulties for the teachers, and was most likely the one who pushed for the staff hours (and wages) to be reduced and to have them both dismissed at the end of the year. It appeared to be a power game with control being her issue here. She had a full-time job in Benalla, but after interfering with our careers, I was informed that she lost her full-time job in Benalla and ended up with a part-time job in Wangaratta which meant less income and greater distances to cover to get to work. She made no effort to assist the teachers in their difficult task and seemed to want to punish the teachers who had given up much to teach at the Christian school.

I used to mostly attend the church she attended but in my third year, after she took over the school board chair, I had to go to the pastor and tell him that I had difficulty in attending with someone who seemed intent upon destroying me. He acknowledged that she was difficult but didn’t accept that she was deliberately opposing me. After that, when I attended other churches in Benalla, a rumour went around that I was no longer attending church; I was even questioned about this by people at the school. (I suspect the rumour may have begun with this woman, too.) Many years later, when talking to her pastor, he told me that she had left because of certain difficulties (unstated). In a way I think it could have been an admission that she might have been a problem when I was at Benalla. I certainly do not believe she was Christian in the way she treated the teaching staff while I was there.

There were many other issues that I would have to describe as spiritual warfare during my three years there. I found it hard to believe that there could be such anti-Christian attitudes in what seemed to be a civilised place like Benalla. By the time I left Benalla, though, I had learned a lot about spiritual warfare, an understanding that has been very useful since then in the discernment of spiritual opposition. I believe that once I decided to move into full-time ministry in schools, satan moved to try to dissuade me from succeeding. I think he would have preferred that I be convinced to move back to the farm, something that I almost ended up doing because of the pressure applied in Benalla. For those considering greater service for God, keep in mind that satan will do his best to oppose you. Christian school ministry was not easier in any way, nor comfortable at all.

I am glad that I made the move into ministry work, but at the time it was not easy to see where I was going with it. But over the years God has led me into different ministry areas. When I first decided in 1993 that I might resign and go into ministry in Christian schooling, I left it up to God to lead. Soon after I had decided to go ahead if something turned up, a call came from a long-time acquaintance (whom I hadn’t heard from for many years). He asked if I would be interested in teaching at the Benalla Christian School; and he had known nothing of my thoughts of resigning! Things like that do not just happen all too often, so I made the assumption that this was a call from God. And while it felt like hell had been set loose on me in Benalla, the enemy trying to oppose me also had to be a spiritual warfare response to what I saw as a calling. I have learned now that any calling from God will attract opposition from satan and his demons. And I have learned somewhat how it works now and that such opposition cannot succeed against any calling from God if God is trusted to be in charge and in control at all times.