Conversion to Christ Testimony, 1 of 2

October 6, 2014

Ezekiel: Hello! Welcome to Heaven Talk; dreams, visions, comment and discussion on all things Heaven. I'm Ezekiel, speaking to you from the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains here in Taos. Beautiful fall coming on into October as we speak. Tonight we're going to be speaking with Clare du Bois about some of her background, namely her testimony. Welcome to the program, Miss Clare!

Clare: Thank you.

Ezekiel: Just kind of getting started, I know that folks have heard of us already on some dreams about Heaven and particularly rapture dreams and things like that. Kind of got to thinking, well, where did all this come from? How did all this start in the first place? And we don't get to hear much testimony like the good old testimony services we used to have once upon a time. I just thought that might be a good place to let folks get to know us a little better. What about your background?

Clare: Well, you know, I'll make it short, the part that isn't so interesting really. I was born in Chicago and lived in the city, basically all my life, except for summers that were spent on a lake in Wisconsin. My mother was a single mother and I was what they called in those days a latch-key kid. Where if she'd be at work, I'd come home and unlock the door and just be home by myself basically. No brothers and sisters and no father so it was kind of a lonely life.

Ezkeiel: Did you have any spiritual upbringing at all?

Clare: Well, my mother was kind of a Congregationalist but it was more like the Easter parade and Sunday hats and very fashionable and superficial. She was a makeup artist and so everything in our lives revolved around fashion.

Ezekiel: Got you.

Clare: So, there wasn't really any spiritual upbringing. In high school I started asking some serious questions, I think I was about thirteen or so and I got real disillusioned with the whole Easter bonnet parade down Michigan Avenue. And I thought, 'Wow, this is really hypocritical, this is ridiculous. You know, this is supposed to be about something important and instead it's about a fashion parade.' So, I got real disillusioned and turned away from that. Lived in a Jewish neighborhood, so we didn't really have Christians around that could witness to me so I guess I kind of drifted along and became an agnostic. I didn't know if God existed or didn't exist.

Ezekiel: How old were you about this time?

Clare: Oh, thirteen, fourteen.

Ezekiel: Wow that's pretty mature for a young girl to start thinking at that age. You know, the Lord's hand was probably on you even then, drawing you in I'm sure in different ways.

Clare: Yeah, actually I do remember as a little girl - well, not little girl - twelve years old, having a little churchy looking altar in the corner of my room and I used to kneel and kind of talk to God, you know, thinking maybe God did exist.

Ezekiel: Wow!

Clare: And that was - I guess that was grace back then and I just didn't really pursue it or recognize it at the time. But um...

Ezekiel: That's amazing, the innocence of a child, being open when no one had even told you much.

Clare: Right. Well, I think that again was the Holy Spirit. I got to a point when I was about eighteen, nineteen, twenty, where I really was disillusioned with the whole idea of religion. But then I became basically an atheist for a very short amount of time. Then I got introduced - somehow I started taking an interest in spiritual things and supernatural things and I thought, 'There's got to be more to this life than fashion and taking care of your body and careers - there's got to be something beyond that.' I remember I asked my mother about death once and she said, 'Well, you just die and you go back into the ground and that's the end' and I was so grieved by that. It just felt wrong. Really, deeply wrong. Somehow something just wasn't right about that.

And so anyway, I ended up when I was in my early twenties being a nature photographer. Now, that was during the 60's when the hippie movement was going on. I hated Chicago and Illinois and I moved to San Francisco and started studying photography - nature photography because I loved nature. I started going out on shoots and bringing back material and started going to see ad agencies and getting jobs and pretty soon I had a good career in photography. I was being nationally published in nature magazines and camera magazines and so on. But I remember one day, when I was on assignment for - I guess it was Boise Cascade - I was in Maryland in the Pocono Mountains and I woke up one morning. I had everything going for me: I had airplanes, airboats, horses, whatever I needed for my assignments but I felt so empty inside. I thought, 'Wow, I'm living my dream, this is what I've always wanted.' But I was sitting there photographing dew drops on a spider web in the morning and it just hit me that my life was so empty.

A little bit of background on that. I had been kind of on the outskirts of the New Age and the counterculture. Never was a hippie. Never got into that kind of immorality and what have you but I was very definitely countercultural. I started getting into the occult because I saw that that was supernatural. Everyone was doing yoga and songs were being written about Eastern Mysticism and these things, really - they spoke to my mind. They brought something alive inside of me. You know, the possibility of the supernatural.

Ezekiel: What was your interest in people at the time? I mean, did you have any interest in other people or were you kind of self-seeking or...

Clare: I had a very lonely and difficult childhood. I think abandonment was probably the type of abuse that I went through and I wanted to help other people that were hurting. That was really important to me, so I started taking up the study of astrology because I figured well, if I can cast charts for people, I can see what's going on in their life and how to help them. But that didn't quite get it and I'll explain to you why in a minute. I was also reading tarot cards, I was doing Native American medicine ways and the Peyote Church and Scientology, Buddhism. I mean, I went through everything...

Ezekiel: The whole gamut, huh?

Clare: ...looking for the truth. The thing that I liked the most out of any of those things was the I Ching because of the wisdom of those eastern books. The Bible was the last thing on my mind. I thought, 'Christians have their heads stuck in the sand. This is where it's at...'

Ezekiel: (Laughs)

Clare: ...this is so where it's at. So, I went on this wild-goose chase, you know, trying all these different things. I finally ended up one day - well looking back on my life it was like I was... I lived in New York City and San Francisco both with my photography career, and I don't know if you've ever been to New York City and if you've ever gone down a blind alley. That's like these towering buildings and you walk down this alley and it's like a dead end with another towering building and it's all trashed out and dark... and that's what my life felt like. And that's what was at the end of all these different spiritual disciplines that I got involved in. It was just a trashed out dark dead end. That's the only way I can explain...

Ezekiel: Didn't really come up with the answers you were looking for.

Clare: Not at all. I was looking for the truth.

Ezekiel: Um-hum.

Clare: I remember kneeling down one night when I moved to Phoenix, lived in Phoenix, given up my photography career in pursuit of spiritual things. I got down on my knees and cried out to the heavens, "God please, I want to make a difference, is anybody up there? Whoever, you know, whoever is in charge of this mess down here, show me the truth and help me make a difference in people's lives, please!" I think I was probably about twenty seven when that happened. I went to Ecuador for a while, looking for - sent there by a trance medium - looking for some medicinal plant that didn't exist. (Laughs)

Ezekiel: (Laughs)

Clare: He was actually trying to hook me up with an old friend of his down there who was looking for a wife. (Laughs)

Ezekiel: (Laughs) Spiritual...

Clare: I figured it out when I got down there. "Oh, that's what you were doing when you told me this lie..." So that was another dark, blind alley.

Ezekiel: Rabbit trail.

Clare: Oh man. It was terrible really. I was so confused.

Ezekiel: Well you mentioned at some point you had a dream that made a real difference or it began to open some...

Clare: Well, yeah, I was reading the tarot cards and my life was so dark and miserable but this card, this ace of cups, which I equate with the Holy Spirit in my own mind, you know, at that time I didn't know who the Holy Spirit was. It was some kind of good spirit.

Ezekiel: That's like a chalice, wine cup thing?

Clare: It's a chalice with a dove descending into it and...

Ezekiel: Wow.

Clare: ... it's overflowing kind of and I kept turning this card up as an end card in my tarot card reading. And then one night I had a dream and in this dream I was walking down a dark city street in Chicago with these towering apartment buildings, you know, poodle poop in the grass... I mean, just really the worst kind of place you'd want to be, especially for someone who loved nature. I was walking down the street and it was dark and this was right after a betrayal with a trance medium who I was going to their trance things with - she was supposedly talking with outer space people, right?

Ezekiel: Oh yeah...

Clare: ...and something happened and I was betrayed in this situation and I was heartbroken. Well, in this dream I was - I had just had that experience. But in the dream, I was walking down this dark street and all of a sudden I was transported onto a brilliant, brilliant white beach somewhere in the Bahamas or whatever. And in my dream it was - light was blinding. The light was so blinding, it was like light at noon day you know, on these white sands and everything was sparkling and beautiful and pure and I woke up. I thought, 'What's this dream about?' It was powerful and I knew that it had a significance, because in my conscience I could feel something: "Pay attention to this dream, it has meaning."

Ezekiel: Okay.

Clare: Right about after that, I had pyramids and pyramid energy and all this other stuff. Anyway, I was sitting under my pyramid one night meditating, and all of a sudden - it was dark with my eyes closed, it was like black but all of a sudden, the blackness was split by a ray of light descending from above.

Ezekiel: This was in a dream?

Clare: No, this was an actual experience. This was...

Ezekiel: Wow!

Clare: ...and out of this ray of light descended a dove that was on fire like lightening. Just on fire.

Ezekiel: Wow!

Clare: It descended and it came down to rest in my body, and when it did that, my body just went into this incredible ecstasy... and all of a sudden, I knew that I was a sinner. Now, in the New Age movement there is no such thing as sin. You just make mistakes...

Ezekiel: Yeah, yeah.

Clare: ...you know, sin is not in the equation at all. But I knew I was a sinner and I knew I'd started seeing all the things that I had done that were sins. But I felt... simultaneous with that, was the awareness of tremendous love. Just a Love that I'd never experienced in my life. Ever. Just this transforming love. It gripped me totally. So, I was so gripped by this love there was not a chance for me to feel bad, because looking at my sins, it was like - I guess now it was, being a Christian, I'd understand that was conviction. I was convicted by my sins but I was so inebriated and flooded with love that I couldn't feel bad.

Ezekiel: That's amazing.

Clare: Yeah, it was - this went on for forty-five minutes without stop. I was paralyzed. I could not move and my husband at the time looked across the pyramid at me and he said, "Your body is glowing." He saw...

Ezekiel: He saw this light...

Clare: ...this light coming off my body. And I said - without even giving it a thought - I said, "I'm having a visitation from the Holy Spirit." I didn't know who the Holy Spirit was. The Holy Spirit spoke through me, because I didn't know who He was. But I remember praying a prayer that I'd never heard before and I found out later what it was. The prayer said, Have mercy on me, oh God, according to your love; your unfailing love and your great compassion. Please, blot out my sins. Wash away all my guilt. I see how guilty I am. Psalm 51: 1-3.

Ezekiel: Psalm 51.

Clare: Yeah!

Ezekiel: Wow!

Clare: Cleanse me from my sin for I know my transgressions. Wash me and I'll be whiter than snow. And this one line was just really - my whole being was just riveted on it - Do not cast me away from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Please don't ever let me be separated from you. Don't ever let me be separated from you. And that was my cry. Tears were running down my cheeks and I didn't say those words, I didn't say them with my mouth because, again, the only time I spoke was to my husband at that time and telling him what I was experiencing because he didn't know. And when it was over with, I just collapsed. I was just wrung out.

Ezekiel: Gosh!

Clare: The next morning...

Ezekiel: It was a Paul getting knocked off his horse kind of thing.

Clare: Yeah, yeah very much so.

Ezekiel: A bombshell.

Clare: Very much so. That night - it was a Saturday night - I got up Sunday morning and I felt like, I need to go to church. We didn't have a car, so I had to go to someplace in walking distance. The only church in walking distance was a Catholic church. So, I went to the Catholic Church and everyone was going up to receive communion. I didn't know how to receive communion. I just went up with...

Ezekiel: (Laughs) Just get in line!

Clare: But something, you know, didn't connect with me in that church and I started asking God to show me where I could go to church. Because the experience that I had had was so incredible, I was expecting like trumpets blasting, you know, a fan fair and just this incredible experience. I was looking for that in the church.

Ezekiel: Well, you had mentioned earlier too - excuse me for interrupting you but - that you knew somehow that you had to get a Bible and that you needed to...

Clare: I knew I was a sinner. I knew that I was sorry for my sins. I knew that I was forgiven. I knew that God loved me and I knew I had to get a Bible.

Ezekiel: And conform your life...

Clare: Yeah, yeah, conform my life to the Scriptures.

Ezekiel: Yeah, yeah.

Clare: That was the conviction. Absolutely. I mean, my whole life just changed overnight and I thought well, what about all my occult things and my medicine ways and my crystal ball which I looked into and I saw these demons, these monkeys with pointed ears and I thought, 'This is gross!' and I put that thing in the trash. Oh my gosh! I put it in the trash but I didn't know what to do with - see, I had been training to be a trance medium and I was taught that you had spirit guides and they were your friends and they helped you.

Ezekiel: Hmm

Clare: I didn't want to discard my friends. I didn't know how they fit in the scheme of things.

Ezekiel: Wow.

Clare: So, I went to a Bible study...

Ezekiel: You were a real believer in this stuff, huh?

Clare: Well, I had a relationship with these spirits.

Ezekiel: Wow. Wow.

Clare: You know, I wanted to help people by having supernatural knowledge and I thought that these were God's helpers.

Ezekiel: Oh, okay.

Clare: Like angels. You know. So, I finally found a church. I walked in there and this band was playing, choir was singing and I could feel the Spirit real strong and it was like what I had experienced that Saturday night, May the 5th So, I ended up going to a women's Bible study there and the leader of the Bible study was kind of a straight-laced young woman you know, kind of tiny, petite, pretty. And we were talking about meditation one day and she said, "Meditation is evil, it's bad."' And I thought, 'No it's not!'

Ezekiel: Hmm.

Clare: " thought, 'That can't be right,' so I argued with her. Well, that night I went home. I had a dream and in this dream I was in a dark cave and all the other people that were in the class with me were also in this cave and we were like, believers. And we were sleeping in this cave and Jesus came into the cave with a bowl of porridge and He said, "To whom I give this to eat, has the truth." And He gave it to everyone there in the room but ...and walked out.

Ezekiel: Wow.

Clare: That was a very humbling experience because I kind of looked down on Christians. I thought there were - you know...

Ezekiel: Didn't quite...

Clare: They had their head in the sand.

Ezekiel: Yeah, wow! Well, did you fit into the church at that point? Did you feel like this was a place for you?

Clare: For a time I did. It was a Spirit-filled church and I got into the prayer meetings and the healing services. We saw miracles. We saw healings. I felt a relationship with the Lord.

Ezekiel: You dropped the meditation, obviously, right?

Clare: Well, not only did I drop the meditation, but one day I was praying alone in my living room when the kids were asleep and the Lord brought to mind the seventy sons of Jezebel.

Ezekiel: Hmm.

Clare: And there on the spot He delivered me of - He had me make a list of the things that I had been involved in that were spiritually adulterous...or any other kind of sin. And right there on the spot I renounced those things. And I remember, He touched my - I could see Him in the spirit - and He touched my forehead and He put a mark on my forehead. I don't know what it was, but I think I was being sealed.

Ezekiel: Wow.

Clare: Because that's in the Scriptures, you know.

Ezekiel: Um hum. You mentioned something about a wall and or a television set. It's like, you had some pretty wild manifestations. The Lord individually, singularly coming right to you. Not an Evangelist on the screen. Not an altar call in the church. Just one-on-one. What's some of these - I'm not going to give it away! You tell about the wall and the T.V.

Clare: (Laughs) Okay, I was lying down - well, there were two incidents that happened actually in this one spot. It was like a little den and I was lying down on the couch and my husband was sitting next to me and all of a sudden - there was paneling at the end of the room and all of a sudden the paneling turned into a gigantic wave and wall of demons and they started to come out of the wall and fall on me.

Ezekiel: Oh, my gosh!

Clare: I was petrified. All I could say to my husband at the time was, "I'm under attack! I'm under attack!" and I could hardly get those words out and he prayed in the name of Jesus and the minute he used the name of Jesus, the demons fled.

Ezekiel: Well, we can get into this a little more. So, he kind of followed your conversion or what? Or he was already a believer?

Clare: I think it's kind of like the seeds sown along the rocky path. Matthew 13:4

Ezekiel: Hmm.

Clare: We both had conversion experiences. My conversion experience was outrageous and it had to be because my pride was outrageous. The Lord had to get to me in a way that I couldn't dismiss it and I couldn't write it off to anything. He had to touch me. I mean, I've heard of miracles with the Muslim people like this.

Ezekiel: Yeah, yeah.

Clare: You know, it has to be done supernaturally because the people are so convinced that they're right...that nothing else will work.

Ezekiel: Right, right.

Clare: With him, he responded to the Lord but he really was very much into the world and wanted to lead a worldly life. And I had told him before we got married, I said, "One thing you need to know about me is that my life is about following the truth and I won't let anything hold me back from the truth." And eventually that ended up being what separated us...

Ezekiel: Oh wow.

Clare: ...because he wanted the world and I couldn't do it.

Ezekiel: But at this point, he at least knew to use the name of Jesus.

Clare: He had an experience with the Lord in church. He felt the Lord's love. He gave his life to the Lord. But again, when persecution and situations came up, it didn't hold; it didn't last.

Ezekiel: Yeah. Well, thank the Lord we never know what the end story is and...you know, the seed planted that he'll finish the good work the Lord's begun. so either he came back along the way or will be. I'm sure we'll all get a few surprises.

So, about the television.

Clare: Yeah. I had mentioned that to you. The television was something else again. I had a lot of questions about these spirit guides. I tend to be a loyal person and it bothered me that other people were saying that these were demons and I didn't want to just cast these entities off...unless I knew the truth, right?

Ezekiel: Um-hum.

Clare: So, I was beseeching the Lord, "Please show me what role do they serve in my life. Are they of the devil or are they your helpers?" which is what I had thought they were. So one day, laying on the same couch, watching Star Trek, Captain Kirk - they landed on this planet. Captain Kirk went into this mine or this cave, he went deep down into it and when he got in there he saw his first love. The first woman he had ever fallen in love with, she was there inside the cave. He came out absolutely bedazzled and just totally head over heels in love with her. And he told Spock about it, so Spock went in to the mine shaft and a few minutes later Spock comes out and says, "My first love was there".

Ezekiel: Ah.

Clare: And he was, you know, head over heels in love with her and he wanted to, you know, they both wanted to stay there to do whatever... But I realized at that point, "How could this be that his... you know, that the same woman was...?"

Ezekiel: One way to one and one to the other.

Clare: Yeah, so, my mind was coming to a realization, "Oh my gosh, these demons are playing..." And before I could get the word charades to come together in my mind, it was like the television set blew up!

Ezekiel: Whoa! (Laughs).

Clare: Right there in the room! It just blew up!

Ezekiel: Wow! (Laughs) You had some pretty dramatic actors to your play there...

Clare: Oh my gosh.

Ezekiel: ...right off the bat.

Clare: Well it was like the cognition, the recognition was coming out of the television set to my brain and my brain was going to the story. And when they were about to touch - and when they did touch the television set blew up.

Ezekiel: (Laughs) Wow!

Clare: That was my answer.

Ezekiel: It's interesting that these things (the demons), you know, play on... they know the things that I might like or not like...

Clare: Right.

Ezekiel: ...and I certainly had my years of not knowing the Lord. They're not stupid, I mean, these were angels at one point.

Clare: They play on your vanity. They flatter you, and they take on the appearance of whatever will make the most inroads with you.

Ezekiel: Push your hot buttons.

Clare: Right.

Ezekiel: Yeah. Wow. Well, you mentioned you kind of started in the one church, you went to a few different churches. You had some different experiences in the Christian community. How did that go?

Clare: When I came to the Lord, I was really on the counterculture - was very - I liked whole foods and was a nature loving kind of person. And this whole lifestyle at the church was much more - was not as natural. It was much more culturally American middle class. And I tried to dress the part and to act the part and to be the part and to fit in with the church because I felt this goes... you know, I need to learn to be more manageable and more docile.

Ezekiel: Be a woman of the Word. (Laughs)

Clare: Oh boy. But you know, no matter how you try to cram your feet into the wrong fitting shoe, your feet still hurt and...something was not right about my walk. I could feel it in my heart. I remember one particular incident when Richard Wurmbrand's Voice of the Martyrs (he founded Voice of the Martyrs) came to our church and was speaking on a Wednesday night. And of course, he was sitting down because the communists had beat the bottoms of his feet.

Ezekiel: Oh my gosh!

Clare: Bludgeoned him! He was sitting on a stool on the center of the stage and I was sitting to the far right in the auditorium in the front row. And he was talking about the price that we have to pay to follow Christ and that so many people don't want to pay the price...and he turned his head and he looked right at me and he said, "What's your price?"

Ezekiel: You're kidding!

Clare: No! He looked right at me and he said, "What's your price?"

Ezekiel: Boy, he called the question out.

Clare: Oh boy. And I felt that like a dagger going into my heart, because I knew there was something artificial about my walk. I knew I was missing something very deep. I mean, the conversion experiences that I had I think called for much more - much more from me than what I was giving it.

Ezekiel: I heard someone say once, "I'm a fool for Jesus, whose fool are you?"

Clare: Yeah.

Ezekiel: Well, with that kind of conviction, it kind of brings to my mind part of my early conversion and one of the first things I wanted to do once the Lord got a hold of me, very much in a radical way like yourself, we'll talk about my testimony as well, I'm sure coming up soon but one of the things I wanted to do like a lot of us was jump up and sell everything and run to the missions, right?

Clare: Right.

Ezekiel: And you had kind of an experience like that, didn't you?

Clare: Well, there was a night there was an altar call on a Wednesday night in this church and I really felt compelled to go to the front of the church and give my entire life to the Lord in such a way that He would be leading it and I felt the call to missions. My husband - I don't know if he really felt that call or not but he was kind of - oh what's the word - going along for the ride.

Ezekiel: Coattails type of thing.

Clare: Right. Right. He was a somewhat of an adventuresome person, you know, and he hadn't really formed an opinion of what he wanted to do with his life. So, after that happened there was a lot of talk about YWAM and about Holland, going to YWAM and getting trained for the missions. My husband had just graduated from University or whatever it was, I can't remember exactly what happened. But he had just gotten some kind of a thing at the University of Arizona and his father bought him a brand new Ford station wagon for us, for the family, for the kids. I'd never had a new car in my life.

Ezekiel: Pretty nice of him!

Clare: My mother had, but I never had a new car in my life. We took it camping and we did different things with it. We wanted to get support from the church to go to Holland and the church would not support us. They were supporting a young girl who had a career in - secretarial kind of career to go out there and help.

Ezekiel: Yeah.

Clare: But I wanted something radical. I had a dream about being in Holland and about witnessing to a homosexual that was in this room with me, to someone who's gay and witnessing to them and telling them about the love of Jesus. And it was a real powerful dream and left a sweet impression. So, there was a draw in my heart to go to YWAM for training but it would have cost us $5,000.00 and we didn't have that kind of money. But if we had sold that station wagon we would have had $5,000.00 and we could have gone.

Ezekiel: Brand new station wagon.

Clare: Brand new and it would have totally alienated his family if we did and...

Ezekiel: Oh boy.

Clare: ...they'd be disgusted, you know. So, we thought about it, we prayed about it and I couldn't come to a decision and he couldn't come to a decision so we decided not to sell it and not to go to Holland.

Ezekiel: Save face with the family and friends...

Clare: Yup.

Ezekiel: ...a real pull there. That's a tough one.

Clare: And right after that, right after the door closed on that opportunity, I had a dream. And in that dream, I was on a ship and I was going below deck into this kind of large room. The captain of the ship was standing down against a table there and he called out to me and he said, "He called." I knew right away it was Jesus. He said, "He called but you missed the call; He'll call again" and I woke up. And I realized that that tall, handsome, blond-haired, blue-eyed man in the captain's uniform - white uniform was the Holy Spirit.

Ezekiel: Oh wow!

Clare: And that Jesus had called and I...

Ezekiel: And you missed the call.

Clare: ...and I missed the call.

Ezekiel: But He'd call again.

Clare: Right.

Ezekiel: Wow. Well, did He? (Laughs)

Clare: Yeah, well, I wanted something really radical, you know, something that more resembled the Lord's lifestyle. I ended up getting involved with a liturgical church that had kind of a monastic background...

Ezekiel: By liturgical you mean like the - we used to call them High churches: Episcopal, Lutheran, Catholic...that kind of thing?

Clare: Right, right, yeah. And the Franciscans really appealed to me, because their founder was a real radical person for the Lord and very much like Paul.

Ezekiel: Cookie-jar friars right? St. Francis, the bird guy? He liked the animals and they loved him. But right? The guys with the brown robes?

Clare: Yeah, yeah.

Ezekiel: Okay, all right.

Clare: And his relationship with nature was so beautiful...