Pat’s Beliefs Start Shifting
In the later part of 1983 Pat and Cheryl purchased a house and moved out of the duplexes, where Mike, Diane and most of the fellowship’s people lived, into a house off Holmes Road. He and Cheryl took Slick, TJ and Kathy Shurder along with Johnathon Brownly too.
A close friend of Pat’s observed that most people couldn’t even imagine walking in Pat’s shoes. Deep inside Pat there was a shift in his heart from wanting to be healed, to wanting to be Christ like regardless of whether he got healed, but also at this time Pat was going through an extraordinary spiritual experience in life in which he was coming face to face with his own sinful nature. People mostly don’t want to look inside to the ugliness of our fallen state. However, Pat was ruthless on himself and had to see this ugly part of who he was. So, he drilled down upon his own soul. Pat desperately wanted to be transformed and become truly holy. He didn’t like the darkness in his own soul that he found inside himself.
Pat relayed this change in his perspective during that season in 1984 to me later in 1988.
In mid-December of 1983, Pat was reading the Bible as was his custom and turned to the Lord's rebuke of the Laodicean church in Revelation 3:15–18: As Jesus was speaking to the church of Laodicea—15, “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish that you were cold or hot. 16, so then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, will I vomit you out of My mouth. 17, because you say that, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked—18, I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire, that may be rich; and white garments that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may repent.”
Something came over Pat and he started praying verse 18, asking the Lord to give him gold refined by fire, white clothing and eye salve to deliver him from the wretched state. Pat realized that, without the Lord's help, he had no real desire or ability to live according to the Bible. That night when Pat went to church Augustine prophesied to Pat, “There would be a change, and a turnaround that was happening within him, and that a new understanding was going to come into his mind, along with a new way of thinking.” Part of the contents of the message also included that the Lord's Spirit was coming upon him, and attitudes were going to be changing inside him. Augustine also said that “the Lord was concerned with his condition and that He was with him. He also considered Pat faithful.” Pat was very grateful for the prophetic word and was later in awe by the Lord's mercy. The part he didn't understand at the time was what that new change was going to be. This intrigued him. Right after Augustine had given the word, Mike confirmed the word by saying, “that a spirit of prayer had come upon him for Pat just prior to Augustine's word.”
On New Year's Eve 1983-1984, Augustine prophesied to Pat again, telling him that before the new year was over, God was going to do for Pat what He had promised to Pat, through the earlier prophetic word. Later in January, Pat read Matthew 7:16–20, “A good tree can't bear bad fruit, and a bad tree can't bear good fruit.” Pat began to understand that this was an all-or-nothing verse. You either do good or you do bad, but there is nothing in-between. At this point, Pat began to realize that because of anger, irritation, and other things in his heart, he wasn't a good tree. Rather, he felt he was a bad tree and everything he had ever done had been bad. He felt that God did not count any of his works as good because of the mixture of his motives and so, according to the Word of God, they’d be burned.
As this new understanding came upon him, his focus of studying the Bible became different. He became hungry for the Bible daily and he even started to hunger after verses that he didn't even know were there. He still spent a great deal of time in the Word and in prayer, but he started crying out from a different perspective. Pat started to renounce his whole way of life. He saw the self-righteousness and self-centeredness of how he lived in the past and knew that he needed God to change him. He started to believe in the possibility of God instantly making someone holy. Even though Pat had read books by Leonard Ravenhill and heard him speak and knew that Leonard had preached it, this was a totally new concept for Pat. He also could see through Charles Finney’s writing’s how the Lord had transformed him and then used him powerful and profound ways. Pat knew and understood that he needed this profound spiritual transformation.
Pat never stopped believing that he was saved. But since he was now aware of Howard Pitman’s revelation, which was reviewed in the last chapter, and how Howard experienced an overwhelmingly powerful rebuke from the Lord for claiming to live a righteous life before Him.
One passage of Scripture that stood out to him and had a major effect on Pat's understanding was Luke 18:10–14. This parable talks about the Pharisee and the tax collector who were both praying and how the tax collector went home justified, because he humbled himself before God. The Pharisee went away unjustified because in his arrogance, he relied on his own good works to please God. It was like Howard Pittman approached God the way the Pharisee and got powerfully rebuked. Later during the same experience when Howard appeared before the Lord with a contrite spirit, he received mercy and was sent back. Pat began to see that most of Christianity as a whole, in the nation, in SKCF, and himself were more like that of the Pharisee than the tax collector. That all our deeds and works would someday burn up because of this—self-centeredness within our hearts. As Christians, our destiny was to be saved, but only by fire. Unless God truly in reality changes (as Pat used to say) and purified us and rips the root of sin out of our hearts on the inside so that our motives are pure. Only then can we produce good works of gold, silver and precious stones that will remain with us into eternity (1 Corinthians 3:13–15). The parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee follows the parable of the Unjust Judge in Luke 18:7, “And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though he bears long with them…”1, 2
Now, Pat was a man who could not actively go and pursue sin. He couldn’t even scratch his own nose and yet he saw wickedness in his own heart. Mike felt that Pat was pushing the envelope in God of radical abandonment and honesty of heart and that this is a phenomenal envelope for anyone to push. However, one day it dawned on Pat (for right or wrong) that the root (self) is bad and everything we do becomes irrelevant. Mike believed that Pat was taking this idea too far and Pat began to go down an erroneous and dangerous path. Mike stated that Pat went down this road out hunger for God and out integrity. For Pat, it was like going hard after God.3 Now Pat told me that he loved his brother Mike but did not consider him sanctified.
Pat began to question the meaning of what it meant to be truly born again. He believed many in the church might be saved by grace, which he felt about himself. This was through the process of justification by believing in Christ's sacrifice on the cross, then by humbling oneself before God, like the tax collector, and admitting that we were wretched sinners who needed to cry out to God for mercy. For Pat, this was the doorway into salvation, and he felt that he had entered that door. But believers, including him then needed to seek God for His purifying Holy Spirit fire and power to make them holy “in reality,” deep on the inside. For a person to be truly born again, Pat believed that a man or woman must live the example of a Christian life taught in the Bible, which only is truly possible through the purification experience.
When we are fleshly: jealousy and strife our in our hearts [which can be found in the book of James] and our hearts are not being led by the Spirit of God. This is something we can easily discern. If we were truly sanctified, we would have the Holy Spirit of God as our true source…continually. But when we truly are purified the demonic has no place in us. John 14 vs 30
Pat realized that in the present tense, that the church was a mess. However, even though Christians were wretched; they were in a justified place, until they had been purified by the power of the Holy.4 This is similar to the way that the Apostles, who had received an impartation of the Holy Spirit immediately after the resurrection (John 20:22), but still had to wait until the day of Pentecost, when they Acts 15:9, “had their hearts purified by faith when they received the full baptized of the Holy Spirit with tongues of fire.” This is a supernatural experience in which God’s glory could then dwell within them. Without it, we are significantly limited.
Pat felt loved by God and encouraged others that God truly deeply loved them because of the cross of Christ, which proved that God is totally in love with his creation and his church even in its unpurified state. Because the Bible states, “he came to save sinners,” and “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.”These sinners included the likes of Zacchaeus in Luke 19, the woman at the well in John 4 and all the people who dined with Him in Matthew and in Luke 5, who were tax collectors and sinners. For we who are sinners, it should mean that we can have rest in our souls knowing God's love for us as sinners, and His determination to ultimately to purify us and use us, according to His timetable and His divine will.
Waiting is the tough part of the process. The Apostles had to wait for the Spirit to be poured out from on high and many of the heroes of the Scripture had a period of waiting on God before they were sanctified, or at least before they were used in a significant way. Some examples include the likes of; Moses (40 Years), Joseph (12 Years), the Apostle Paul, King David, and even Jesus had to wait for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to start his ministry when he was 30 years old, even though he was always pure and sinless before God the Father. Pat, once when he was first starting to reallybelieve this, was dealing with a measure of doubt. Then Bob Jones then came up to him and encouraged him to hold fast to what the Lord was showing him.
Now Pat continued to go to Mike’s church for several years and went to many if not most prayer meetings while believing this and a lot of the prayer meetings focused on praying to God to purify our hearts from the root of sin. But in 1987 Pat stopped attending KCF accept then on special occasions and would talk with many people one on one concerning his views on sanctification who came over to visit Pat at his home. If you want to know more please check out my book.