By J.M. Longstaff

BEFORE becoming a Christian, the driving force of my life was patriotism, coupled with a devotion to my monarch.

My first calling was to arms, and I entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, England, in 1938.  I was commissioned in the British Army on July 3, 1939, exactly two months before World War II broke out.

I served in France, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, India, Burma and Italy. I was once wounded in Burma, where I was leading the African soldiers I had trained in Sierra Leone against the Japanese.

I met my first wife, Frances, some 15 months before we were married – and we were soon in love with each other. She was beautiful, she was Irish, and she had succeeded as a journalist in London.

I did not realize that hereditary factors predisposed her to bipolar disorder – then known as manic depressive psychosis.

Spiritualism intrudes

In an early conversation, Frances told me that her widowed mother talked incessantly about Spiritualism (as the spiritists falsely name their movement). She said that, when her mother talked in this way, she would feel the sides of her head swelling.

Years later, I realized that when Frances had felt the sides of her head swelling, she had gone into a trance – and a demon had spoken to her mother through her. When she awoke at the end of the trance, she would remember nothing. Her mother was using her as a medium.

Once, when Frances, her mother and I were sitting together, her mother mentioned that a certain lady, whom she named, had moved into an apartment in the building in which she lived – and that this lady “laid cards” for occult purposes.

Frances exclaimed, with a virulence which surprised me: “I don't want to hear about card laying!” Later, I realized that the fear of going into a trance had prompted her to speak in that manner.

Frances told me later that she hated Spiritualism. But as she felt deeply concerned for her mother's happiness, and as Spiritualism was her mother's only interest, she had encouraged her to pursue it -– and had attended séances with her mother.

Trance encounter

Very soon after we were married, Frances, her mother and I were sitting together one evening. Frances suddenly went into a trance. I had never seen such a thing before, but I knew what was going on.

A spirit who posed as her late father, a learned professor, spoke through her. He said he had come to express his pleasure at his daughter's marriage to this fine young man. There was a brief but affectionate exchange between the mother and the supposed spirit of her late husband. Then he departed, and Frances regained consciousness.

During the next six weeks, he made occasional appearances while Frances and I were alone together. Then, for about a month, there were very frequent trances and visitations by spirits, which could happen at any time of the day or night. Frances was exhausted and usually in bed.

 The control spirit claimed to be a French doctor by the name of Charles Montarlet, who had lived in the time of Napoleon. There were several guides, one of whom professed to be a Chinese man named Ling Fu. When a month had passed, the frequency of these visitations diminished, and they happened only every few nights.

As time progressed, the inherited mental illness – the bipolar disorder – caught up with Frances. After that, in the late spring of every year, she suffered a breakdown – either manic or depressive – necessitating admission to a psychiatric hospital.

The first such admission took place about six months after the demonic onslaught described above. She suffered acutely from the combined afflictions of demon possession and mental illness, and my heart was frequently rent.

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The damned revealed

About this time, through the work of the Officers Christian Union, I was converted to the Lord Jesus Christ – and I began to associate with born-again believers.

As a result, I said to Frances: “The spirits who speak through you cannot be the souls of saved people.” The next time the spirit of the French doctor appeared, he said: “You are right, Monsieur. We are the damned.”

In due course, the Lord clearly called me to the ministry. I transferred to the Reserve, in the rank of Major, and applied for admission to Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. When I returned from my interview at Wycliffe Hall, a terrible demonic onslaught began – and lasted for about five weeks. The demons that possessed Frances showed intense hatred of me, and even moved her to attack me physically.

Having been trained for the ministry at Wycliffe Hall, I was ordained as an Anglican minister in South Africa – to which the Lord called us – and later transferred to a Baptist ministry.

Turning point

During one of Frances’s stays in hospital, I requested a certain Christian lady doctor to visit her. This woman, whom I will refer to as 'Doctor X,' possessed a special kind of discernment – which is described in 1 Corinthians 12:10 as “the gift of discerning of spirits.” After her visit, the woman informed me that she had cast three demons out of Frances.

When I paid a subsequent visit to Frances, and we were walking on the hospital grounds, she said: “This may seem a strange thing to say, but I think I must have been possessed by evil spirits.”

I replied: “You were, but Doctor X cast them out.”

She also said: “I have become a Christian.”

Before her exorcism, she – like many others trapped in the occult – had made beautiful statements about the Lord Jesus Christ, which had led many to suppose that she was a Christian. But she had denied his divinity; she had rejected the doctrine of the atonement; and she had shied away from any mention of his blood or his cross. The demons had held her will in bondage, until the intervention of Doctor X.

From the date of that conversation onward, her faith in the Lord never wavered. None of the symptoms of possession or signs of mediumship ever returned.

However, the mental illness – which was quite distinct from, and independent of, the demon possession – remained. She suffered alternating manic and depressive swings, in the usual bipolar pattern, until her death from cancer.

But as she had been cleansed of the demonic by exorcism, as she had become a born-again believer in Jesus Christ and had the strengthening power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in her, she was better able to handle the mental illness.

A spiritual helpmate

Within a year of the death of Frances, I married my second wife, Norma. She was the widow of a fine Christian man and the mother of three grown sons.

She had been converted to the Lord Jesus Christ and had been baptized in her teens; she had served her Saviour faithfully ever since. Norma possessed the ideal personality for a pastor's wife. She was blessed with many gifts and talents.

 When she was in her 60s, it became apparent that Norma had the gift of discernment. She would instantly detect the presence of a demon in a possessed person or in the vicinity of a spiritually oppressed person or in a haunted place. Norma would discern, she would tell me what she had discerned – and then, if necessary, I would exorcise. After nearly 33 years of happy marriage, Norma was called home by her loving heavenly Father.

 What I have learned, through my experiences with my two wives, and through years of counselling and ministering to the sick, I have included in a book which I have recently written and published.

November 2010