The Gates are Down

The Enemy in the Gate? Who Are You Going To Tell? Who Is Safe?

When the criticisms and denials and reverse blame, shame and accusations happen in the home, church, schools, gyms, Olympic venues, Hollywood, counseling offices, with “trusted friends”: THE ENEMY IS IN THE GATE!

So many tragic instances of BETRAYALS in trusted arenas or what was thought of as safe havens. Those safe havens, many of them, have turned to real nightmares personified and never seem to end in the traumas to the soul and body.

The wounding and infection of perversion is worse than a virus in its ferocity of evil and its horror is widespread especially in the dark of secrecy and silence!

Now its extensive, wide-sweeping horrific presence is being exposed. It has been a rampant cancer and life threatening toxic source of contamination in its perversion and destructive forces to virtually millions.

The “ME TOO” campaign is the telling of or unleashing of a pent up poisonous dam of perversion and pretense experienced. The needed flood of veracity can begin to reverse denial, blame, shame, intimidation, and bring correction, consequences to perpetrators, offer repentance and start to bring needed hope and healing while building of a wall of true safety among our Me Too ranks. For as we speak up and stand up for what is right and stand against allowing abuses and silences to flourish, we are part of the solution.

The elephant in the room is finally being dealt with in our culture. One victim now famous victor has begun to strongly speak up in love and truth for herself and others.

She says, in a recent blog on her ministry site: “I was the elephant in the room with a skirt on.”

Yet it is hard for some victims to know who to trust to tell. Especially the first times that "the telling" happens. Those first times, in my experience, were the hardest times. And if one tells the wrong person worse things can happen!

Will you think on this with me?

If a victim was groomed by a “supposed loved one” and has been accused or blamed of the wrong doing when they were a victim (especially at a young age) and then the victimization is denied when the victim tells other loved ones and even sometimes the loved ones told blame the victim, WHERE IS A SAFE PLACE to tell and get help? Answer me that? (**One answer is below.)

Families of incest and even churches and schools are some of the worst places of sexual abuse from “trusted authority figures”. Abuse from a “trusted” perpetrator is harrowing. The fallout after often includes the most secretive, seductive, sick and perverted tactics and maneuvers. The denial and blame and shame from others coupled with the increased self perpetuating shame and self-blame is legendary in most of these cases!

Society in general can agree that sex trafficking is horrible but the numbers of involvement and the reality of the ongoing participation in our cities and world are staggering. The denial of sexual sin is not just in family, churches and schools, it is a worldwide epidemic leaving behind victims of every age, status, race, color and gender!

“The same/similar cycle sex traffickers use to get victims unaware” is auto-pilot for many abusers and handlers! Grooming victims is an “art” or act of deception” at its worst. Pictures, works and offerings of all kinds of “goodnesses” are used in order to build trust and create and connect heart-strings with the unsuspecting. Many are given concrete convincing evidences that they are an “especially loved one”. Tactics such as these have snared millions.

All this deception ongoing all the while the perpetrator is preparing for the take! Oft times the result is a mountain of perversion and an avalanche of despair or a burial while alive from the slaughter to the soul.

The slurs of perversion may be absent initially. As time goes on perversion may be barely visible, not distinct, but eventually the perversion becomes muddier and quicksand becomes a way of life for the struggling victim. Inevitably the soul of the victim feels like sinking sand that has no foundation when left on its own in the wake of the abuses and a victim can feel themselves falling out inside in a way that is hard to explain. Deep depression and agony can become a way of life.

Grooming for the taking or betrayal started in the garden. Human kind is perhaps most like Satan in these deceptions to the innocent ones.

The magnitude of reversals, betrayals, poisons of unrepentant sexual sins, especially of victimizations, like these in “the American churches” today is tantamount to the rubble left behind from what was supposed to be the walls of true safety and true temple worship as Nehemiah surveyed for rebuilding! Sin tears down all levels of society. Have we forgotten Jesus warning in Matthew 18:6?

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Have those “FAKES in the home, church, schools” who hide behind their pretenses and masks and use the “supposed safety of an evironment” to do dastardly deeds, will you not fare like Judas? Does that not faze or bring the fear of God to these types? Romans 1:26-30 and 2 Timothy 3 are "telling".

We are surely nearing the end of days. We are told the end times will be like the days of Noah!

LORD HELP US to respond like in Proverbs 31:8-9 –

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."

I believe there are many who have not found their voice yet or who do not know who to tell. There are safe hotlines set up for help:

**Remember, you are worth a call – a hotline is there for YOU.

**If immediate danger, dial 911*

Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network Hotline: 800-656-4673

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800-273-8525

PLEASE CALL ANYTIME: YOU ARE WORTH IT!

The networks boast of providing a safe haven and confidential help.Help others call when necessary or in doubt, fear, pain! WHO YOU GOING TO CALL? Not ghost busters! (trying to add humor to a horrible situation!) Please consider starting your telling by calling a hotline today. It is a designated safe place. Thank you for reading. Feel free to write me at theelephantgospel@gmail.com

May it be “The healing has begun… once the walls of silence fall..” as Matthew West’s song exhorts:

“The Healing Has Begun"

You have carried the weight of your secret for way too long

Thinking if there is a place called forgiveness you don't belong

Oh, but freedom can never be found behind those walls

So just let 'em fall, just let 'em fall

Oh, the healing has begun

How long has been since you felt anything but shame

Child, lift up your eyes 'cause mercy remembers your name

And those tears you've been holding back, let 'em fall down like rain

'Cause today is the day, yeah today is the day

Oh, the healing has begun [x4]

Halellujah, halellujah

Just lift your eyes

Lay it down

What once was lost

Has now been found, oh

There's a world full of people dying from broken hearts

Holding on to the guilt, thinking they fell too far

So don't be afraid to show 'em your beautiful scars

'Cause they're the proof, yeah you're the proof

Oh, the healing has begun [x6]

Sincerely caring and desiring to make a difference,

Deborah