If You Really Knew Me (Anyone Who Believes Book 1)

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  “It is our belief that a wolf has been allowed in among the sheep, that this dangerous creature is even honored in some circles of the Evangelical church, when he should be chased away for the protection of the innocent among us. We want to make it clear to all of our faithful members, and close friends in Christ, that they must stay clear of this man for their own spiritual safety, disassociating ourselves from false teaching and rampant sin.”

  “Though I could stand up here and list the deeds which have prompted this warning, we would rather let you see for yourselves the kind of behavior that is being tolerated in Christian churches right here in our state, and across the country. We have acquired video footage of the sort of things that this supposed minister of the Gospel is doing in church meetings and in his personal life. So we’ll dim the lights and let this short film show you what I could only tell you about. See for yourself. . .”

  Kyle wasted no time responding to Dixon’s prompt, anxious as he was to get things back on schedule. Lights faded from a moderate glow to a faint twilight in a single second, provoking a brief “whoa” from members of the audience. But the flashing light from the video clip jumped in to illuminate the room once again.

  The opening shot of the film showed a well-known pastor of a large California church holding the door handle of some building, perhaps his church, standing halfway in the door. The hand-held camera angle called to mind exposé journalism. An unseen reporter said, “Pastor, are we correct in believing that Beau Dupere is a member of your association of churches?”

  The gray-haired pastor, looking through designer sunglasses, nodded his head uncertainly. “Yes,” he said. “What’s this about?” His voice hesitated in a way that would alert the suspicious listener. To most of the viewers in that auditorium, this surprised hesitation made that famous pastor look guilty of something.

  A deep, authoritative voice began to narrate. “Pastor Jack Williams acknowledges that his church supports one of the most dangerous men in California, and with no apologies.”

  Back to the interview, the reporter said, “Do you know, Sir, that this man has more than one wife and spends much of his time partying with movie stars and rappers?”

  Pastor Williams removed his sunglasses, perhaps feeling that this would make him look less dubious to whatever audience this report was designed to insight. “Well, Jesus was accused of hanging out with some pretty questionable people, as I recall,” he said with a small grin.

  The reporter pressed his point. “But what about the multiple sex partners, and affairs with several women?”

  “I’m not aware that he has multiple sex partners, or multiple affairs,” said Williams, beginning to sound a little squeakier. “I know Beau very well. And I’m not sure where you’re getting these accusations.”

  The film cuts here to a picture of Beau Dupere with his arms around two women, with two more women flanking each of these. Dupere, the well-known healing minister, is in top form, perfectly tanned, his dark hair immaculate and his white shirt and gray suit pressed and pristine. The four women could easily be actresses or supermodels—glowing skin, brilliant smiles and luxurious hair of various shades from blonde to brunette.

  The voice-over defined the picture for the viewers. “Here is a picture of Dupere with just four of his wives, or girlfriends, attending a Hollywood opening. Later they would all join the party at Daphne Kline’s house, the well-known lesbian actress and liberal political activist.”

  Back to the handheld shot of Jack Williams, we see the pastor trying to extricate himself from the blindside questioning. “I don’t have anything more to say. Good day, gentlemen.” With that, he scoots inside the building, an assistant or security officer steps in front of the camera, and the shot swings wildly as if forced away.

  The voiceover resumes on a picture of Beau Dupere leaning intimately close to Connie Phillips, the actress, famous for salacious movies featuring her nudity. They both hold champagne glasses. “In spite of questions about his moral character and sexual behavior, Beau Dupere continues to be featured in church meetings and special services in his home church, as well as around the world. But many of those who attend those meetings, desperately in need of help, find a rude awakening instead.”

  A new scene fills the screen, another hand-held shot, but this time it appears to be a cell phone or mini camera, the image less stable and the audio muffled and distorted. A throng of people crowd in near Beau Dupere, who has shed his suit coat and pushes through the audience in his shirtsleeves, his tan face and arms prominent against his pale shirt.

  The audience in Calvary church stare at the jolting images, reacting involuntarily with moans and gasps as Dupere punches a man, who collapses to the ground. The film skips a bit and we see him confronted by a ten or eleven year old girl, in a wheel chair, begging in a tearful voice, her hands stretched toward him. Instead of stopping, he just waves his hand at her in what appears a dismissive gesture. The girl screams and we hear her crying and shouting inarticulately as the camera follows Dupere and he pushes through the crowd, away from the girl. “Not only does he refuse to minister to some, but others he assaults violently,” says the narrator. Again, the video skips and we see Dupere reach his hand toward the blouse of a young woman who screams and falls backward. From our angle, it seems that he may have pushed her over after what looked like a sexual assault.

  “At times, he seems delirious and disoriented, as if unaware of the great crowds who think he has some hope for them.” Another brief hop in the footage lands much closer to Dupere, who is muttering in an unfamiliar language. People around him are calling out and someone seems to be narrating or commentating, but we can’t understand what that other man is saying, blocked out by Dupere’s meaningless muttering.

  The video cuts away to what seems like the same meeting, where a half dozen people squat and kneel around someone lying on the ground, weeping inconsolably. Then they show Dupere on stage, holding a microphone, waving a bundle of money and laughing. The voiceover says, “Though many receive nothing but disappointment in his meetings, Mr. Dupere has become one of the richest men in California, from the donations of desperate and deceived people.” An ornate, ocean front home fills the screen, presumably Beau Dupere’s home.

  The scene switches next to an attractive young woman with long brown hair. “I thought he could lead me to God. But I went to his house, after he invited me there, and he just made sexual advances at me. There was only one thing he was interested in,” she says, in a surge of indignation.

  Back to that scene in front of Jack Williams’s church: they rerun that one grinning excerpt. “Well, Jesus was accused of hanging out with some pretty questionable people.” The narrator responds in a scolding tone. “And his own pastor claims his behavior is like our Lord Jesus Christ, a sad confession of blatant disrespect for the things of God.”

  During the video, Darryl Sampras sat with his mouth open, dodging between shock and disgust. He is shocked that he is seeing this exposé in church, at an event sponsored by his church, and his disgust rises from the jarring images of behavior by a man many consider to be a gifted healer. Darryl had spoken to one of his cousins recently who became pregnant after her doctors told her it was impossible. She credited a healing touch she received at one of Dupere’s meetings. How could this be? How could any of this be?

  Repercussions

  When the video ended, Kyle barked direction to the tech crew. “Cut to the live camera feed and raise the lights.” At least the prepared video ran on time, and without a glitch. Several people in the booth leaned forward to get a look at the congregation as the lights returned. Even in the booth, they heard crying from several points in the auditorium. At least a dozen people stood and stormed up the aisles, using their feet to communicate what they thought of the video.

  In the auditorium, Claire Sanchez sat with her hands over her mouth. She watched as an African American woman she didn’t know stomped up the aisle saying something that included, “my Jes
us doesn’t come to meetings like this.” A small girl, with braids down her back, bounced along behind, her hand gripped tightly by the retreating woman.

  Dixon Claiborne stood at the microphone by the time the lights revived, ready to direct the agitation inflicted by the video. “I do apologize for the offensive images of this man’s behavior. I didn’t want to see any of that either. But we must be aware of false teachers in our churches. The Lord himself said that in the last days, people would come along claiming to prophesy and heal in his name, and he says to them, ‘I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.’” He surveyed his congregation with eyes like polished stone, his jaw set, hands gripping the edge of the podium. “How could our holy God respond any other way to behavior like this?”

  A murmur swept across the crowd. One man, to Dixon’s left, stood up and shouted, “This is not appropriate among God’s people. This is the work of the Devil, the Accuser!” Hands reached for him, as if to pull back into his seat. Ushers ran down both aisles that bordered that section.

  Dixon leaned into the podium, his mouth on top of the microphone. “There’s no need for us to accuse anyone, his own actions and his own words condemn him.” He looked at the disgruntled man, who was now being tugged up the aisle by three ushers. Then his eyes swept across the crowd. “And our task here is only to warn you, our people, to stay clear of this man and those who associate with him. We make no accusation against those who have attended his meetings, or even those who claim that they have been healed by his hand. We only unite here today to warn you to protect yourselves, to stay clear of those who seek to soil the name of our God and King, our holy Lord and Savior and his precious church.”

  Dixon stood up straight, his head high, and looked down at the gathered crowd, like a father laying down the law and waiting to see acceptance reflected back. Hundreds of heads nodded in affirmation of the warning, in support of keeping the church pure. Still more sat in stunned stillness, not yet recovered from the affront of the video images.

  For Claire, that shocked silence sheltered an internal voice noting the way the video evidence had been edited. She had attended a couple of healing services such as Dupere and his home church hosted, she knew they could appear strange and dramatic to an outsider like her. A conversation with a coworker who invited her once to such a meeting resurfaced from her mental archives. “The proof of his ministry is the fruit, the results,” said her friend, Pam. “People getting well, glorifying God and devoting their lives to God’s service because of their experience.” This was Pam’s response to Claire questioning why people cried out and fell down in the meeting she attended. Though her friend’s explanation seemed reassuring, she had declined all subsequent invitations to similar meetings. In her mind, this expression of God’s work in the world was just not for her, but she felt very uncomfortable having to decide whether it was wrong for anyone else.

  She could imagine ways that the meeting she had attended could have been filmed, and that film edited, to create damning evidence in the minds of outsiders. On the other hand, counter to her internal hesitation, she wondered whether Pastor Claiborne and his colleagues knew more specifics that caused them to issue so clear an indictment. And she did have to admit that some of the images she saw in the video would be disturbing in any context.

  For Jonathan Opare, however, the cultural context for his evaluation of the meeting’s agenda had to cross oceans, as well as a big religious divide. In fact, he had attended hundreds of meetings in his life that included scenes similar to some of those offered as video evidence against Beau Dupere. He would have to be convinced of the veracity of all of the shocking claims before he could comfortably remain in Dixon Claiborne’s church. For him, the confrontational style of the meeting had spun the focus toward the behavior of his own pastor, instead of Beau Dupere. To Jonathan, making unfounded accusations against another Christian was at least as inappropriate as the actions for which Pastor Claiborne judged Mr. Dupere.

  Most of the silent majority sitting wide-eyed in that meeting did not ascend to rational considerations as clearly as Claire and Jonathan. Many of them slogged through the miry path that the video laid down and Dixon’s words reinforced. They saw no solid ground within reach. Stuck in an emotional reaction to the video evidence, most people swung wildly for any handhold, like a falling climber flailing to clasp anything. Whether he understood this in advance or not, Dixon’s conclusions from the video evidence offered most of the shocked audience this sort of desperate vine to grab.

  Another pastor, Tim Hanneman, followed Dixon to the podium, providing action items for those unclear about how to respond to the video and Dixon’s call to arms. He pointed attendees to a Website, with a catchy name, from which to gather more information and to track the united effort to warn the church at large about the threat of Beau Dupere.

  To the left of the speakers, down in the front row, another woman listened to all this and considered whether she should storm out of the meeting. But, since she was the wife of the meeting’s lead organizer, Kristen remained magnetized to her seat. She had been hoping that the full revelation presented in the meeting would relieve her fears and doubts about the wisdom of this campaign. Instead, her insides churned over how her husband could forget that Brett and other children his age would witness the harsh and revolting video images. How could he ignore the traumatic impact of his shock tactics, as if his lofty intentions would cover them in grace?

  Though these considerations ran deep, it took only thirty seconds for Kristen to riffle through her options, and she chose the one that her husband would have expected, if he had paused to expect anything. She folded what she saw, along with her emotional response, down into a small tight packet, small enough to fit into one of the little offering envelopes stocked in the pews of her home church. She put that little packet away in her heart for now, to look at some other time, some undefined future time.

  Sitting next to her, Sara would have worried about the colors her mother was turning beneath her makeup, if she wasn’t feeling bound hand and foot by the unimaginable thing she had just seen; not only in the video, but in the way the video was thrown at her, like the contents of a kitchen garbage can that hadn’t been emptied in weeks.

  Brett, well, Brett loved it. He could sense the rising war that lay ahead, and looked forward to more new experiences and eureka revelations like that which he witnessed in the video of Beau Dupere. The always-guilty child inside Brett relished the prospect that his parents would be honed in on someone else’s misbehavior for a change.

  The meeting ended with a few more disruptions quelled by the ushers and A Mighty Fortress is Our God, sung by choir and congregation. Though the size of the crowd wasn’t greatly diminished by those who stormed out, or were ushered up the aisles, that final triumphant hymn lacked the gusto of the earlier music.

  Dixon didn’t notice this. His mind had shifted forward to his press conference following the meeting. And the professional reporters packed into the front of the auditorium seemed just as anxious to move on to that part of the evening, a whirl—like fall leaves in a heavy breeze—rippled across the phalanx of media representatives as they used the sound cover of the final song to comment to each other and gather notes for questions.

  There was a closing prayer, but no one remembered it, not even the elderly pastor who spoke it.

  Just One More Question Please

  Dixon Claiborne stood surrounded by the other association ministers in attendance. A bottle of water gripped in his big right hand, Dixon absently twisted the cap back on with his left, as the first question from a reporter reached him at the podium.

  “Do you have proof of your claims that Beau Dupere is living with, or even married to, multiple women?”

  Nodding before he spoke, Dixon jumped in. “If you go to the Web site we indicated during the meeting, you will see eye witness accounts of behavior that proves that, yes. There’s people there that have seen him romantically, or maybe int
imately, engaged with at least three of these women, and it seems like there’s more than just three.”

  “How does his arrangement compare to Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends?” the same reporter said.

  Now shaking his head, Dixon shrugged and said, “Well, I can’t tell you anything at all about Mr. Hefner. I’m not a fan of his.” His volume faded toward the end of that response, turning away from the microphone and looking at his fellow ministers. At least one skeptical reporter wondered if Dixon was looking for one of the ministers who actually was a fan of Hugh Hefner. No one volunteered.

  Dixon tried to recover. “We’re not here to say anything for or against anyone who’s outside of the church, anyone who’s not supported by a church and a respected pastor. Our concern is a church that supports this man, and a man that claims to be a minister of the Gospel, whose behavior is not at all Christ-like.”

  A young woman in the front row, with big tortoise-shell glasses, raised her hand first, but Dixon bypassed her and took another question from a reporter with one of the major news networks, pointing his water bottle at the man before realizing what he was doing. He set the bottle on the podium in front of him while he listened to the question.

  “Are you aware of members of your own congregation that are going to meetings that Dupere holds, or who are following his teachings?”

  Dixon quickly looked to his right, knowing Ken Bennington had something to say to this, the pastor of the local Assemblies of God congregation. Pastor Bennington, a slim man with dark hair and a pinched nose, squeezed ahead of Dixon and spoke into the microphone.