BABA RALPH AND THE PRISON ESCAPE (Charismatic Caucus)

Dr. Ralph Bethea has never taken the cautious road in reaching the world for Christ. "Baba Ralph" has been instrumental in leading many to the Lord in Afghanistan and other Middle East nations. He recently he went into Teheran, Iran to help six of his young evangelists who had imprisoned for winning hundreds of students to Christ in the University of Iran. Bethea says he has been wanted by the Iranian Islamic government since 1992. The Lord directed him to offer himself in exchange for the release of the young men. The secret police accepted the offer and sent a man to check up on the captives. Some of the Christian young men followed him and discovered their location.

"Thankfully" Bethea says, "the prison was not well built. I had always wanted to try a cool maneuver I saw 40 years ago in a John Wayne movie where he pulled the bars out of the cell wall. I asked the Lord for permission, rented a big truck and a long cable and joy upon joy, pulled those suckers right out of there late that night! In fact, we pulled a 12x12 ft. entire section of the wall out which opened up the adjacent cell to our boys. Turns out, they were political prisoners (out type folks) who had all accepted Christ from the witness of our boys a week earlier. So all six of our boys and eight of our new bold believers jumped on the truck and we scurried out of town laughing and praising God. Now, I know this is not God’s best plan and many would have done better, but, God forgive me, I did enjoy it so much! Our Lord allows us a few indulgences and the boys thought it was real "cowboy stuff." I did so enjoy myself!

They dropped their new brothers in Christ off near their homes and drove several hours to one of their "safe houses" where they had an old-fashioned "praisin’." When the worship got too loud several Iranian police officers and a magistrate came to the door and arrested everyone. Bethea says, "I turned out to be in their top 20 most wanted! For 14 years now our boys have blamed me as the instigator and their hirer every time they get caught printing Bibles or distributing tracts or CDs. The legend of "RaphAH" just keeps growing, even though I am in Iran only a couple of times a year now. I am having to slow down in my late 50s! It has, however, protected our boys hundreds of times and serves the cause of Christ well!"

Ramez, the magistrate, (a code name) threw Dr. Ralph and the young men into prison. The next morning he had them brought into an empty courtroom. "I asked him to let the boys go as I had hired them to help me. [This was true as Bethea pays each boy $5 a year for their "travel expense."] When Ramez dismissed the boys, they refused to go saying, "RaphAH is our Baba and elder. He brought the salvation news of Christ to most of us."

When he asked the boys what they were doing in Iran, one answered, "We are taking over Iran in the mighty name of Christ." As the boys went on to preach the gospel to Ramez, Bethea was worried thinking, "We were going to jail for a long time!"

Bethea says, "Magistrate Ramez sent the boys back to their cell and had the bailiff haul me to his ‘personal interrogation room.’ As soon as we were alone, he unlocked my handcuffs and began to weep! ‘For four years I have prayed to meet you, RaphAH! I was a close friend of your old friend Basrah was killed by Saddam just before Baghdad fell to the Americans. He told me about you and Christ the Savior many times." Ramez deeply regretted not accepting Christ then. As Ralph was the only other believer he had heard of, Ramez and his wife had prayed for four years that God would bring Ralph to them. Ramez said, "The secret police discovered your safe house last year and I took the responsibility from them of watching it, hoping you would show up one day. Today God has answered my prayers. He captured you, heh?"

Then Ramez opened a side door and his wife stepped in. "Please, show us the conversion."

"I cannot convert you," Bethea answered him, "but I can lead you to the Savior, God’s anointed King who died for your sins so that you might live forever with Him. On earth, God’s Son became as us. He was called the MessiYAH or Christ. He died on a cross for your sins. He wants to spiritually enter your life as Lord and Savior and give you eternal life today. He will convert you!

As they rejoiced, Bethea says, "The Holy Spirit told me a strange thing. Ramez was to send us to a maximum security Iranian prison so that when the Lord got us out, it would not be blamed upon Ramez. God had future uses for Ramez remaining undercover! Ramez objected strongly.

‘That prison is nearby but nobody gets out alive. There are not even beds or toilets.’

I assured him God would protect us (even though I did gulp hard at his description).

We forced Ramez to act out his part, which really protected him later. The boys all agreed with the plan.

"The maximum security prison was definitely high security, surrounded by three electrified fences, patrol dogs and armed guard towers. The cell blocks were solid. Had we made a huge mistake? Had I missed God? I have already lived ten great lifetimes, but the boys were just 20-24 years old!"

The prison cell was the filthiest, stinking cell I have ever seen. Several of the boys vomited. Small flashes of natural fear crossed a few of their eyes, but they soon recovered their faith. I hoped they had not seen the same in my own. I wondered why they had left us all together. I had expected solitary, at least for me. Then we found out why.

They threw two old, craggy, stinking wild men into our cell. I had heard of this. Insane maniacs are used to destabilize political prisoners. These guys had long hair all bushed out with penetrating strange eyes, one with azure blue and the other had emerald green eyes. They tried intimidating us but the boys were used to demonic oppression and started to cast out the demons.

Some of the boys started praising the Lord in preparation when these two men fell on their knees, lifting their hands to heaven and praising the Lord also! We were astonished! These were not insane maniacs nor demon possessed! They were Old Testament "Nabii" (prophets)! We all soon sensed it! These were spiritual prophets!

They knew the Torah of Moses and most of the Old Testament prophets in Hebrew like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Joel and Zechariah. They did not know of YAHUWshua the MessiYAH, so the boys took turns explaining the Gospel of Christ to them. They wept with great joy and received the Savior readily!

We knew then why our precious Lord had sent us there. These Nabii were already famous across Teheran and some other regions of Iran. They had publicly called the President of Iran a "son of Satan" in a presidential political rally! Only their "holy men" stature kept them from being killed. They had been in this prison for many years. They used the insanity bluff to get to know all the political dissidents in the prison.

The next three nights were some of the most marvelous hours of my entire life. The Nabii had dug tunnels all under that prison complex connecting most cell blocks. Most of the guards or their families had been healed by the Nabii’s prayers and they turned a blind eye if they saw us. We led 87 of the top political dissidents to present day Iran to Christ, including several former top ministers who had gotten fed up with President Mahmoud’s lies and dangerous rhetoric. It was a human gold mine for Kingdom missionary Christians!

After four of our boys volunteered to stay behind and disciple the Nabii and new believers, we began to pray for a way to escape. We invited the Nabii to join us. They refused!

"We do not get offended," they replied, "but we do not waste our God’s important time with such trivial matters! You should ask us first about small details." Their eyes danced with their delight at rebuking us.

"Well, just pardon us," I retorted. "I did not know escaping from Iran’s maximum security political prison is any small detail."

"It is if you have one of these," he grinned as he pulled out a key embedded in his bushy, unkempt hair.

He unlocked our cell, walked down several corridors to a rough wall of stones which both Nabii scampered up like squirrels on a tree hole. Soon, they led us to an ingenious passage outside the prison. They hugged us, asked [us] to come back when we "get some free time" and promised to take good care of our four boys excitedly staying behind to disciple the new believers.

Ralph Bethea’s ministry, No Greater Love International, supports 436 "underground" evangelists serving Christ in Iran. He says, on average, each of these brothers leads one or two Iranian students a day to Christ. Bethea is currently setting up his first Royal Ranch in South Africa to house and educate from 300-500 AIDS orphans.

Source: NGLI’s December, 2006 ministry report. Dr. Ralph Bethea can be reached at No Greater Love International, P. O. Box 1976, Claremore, OK 74018, E-mail: mailto:ralphcbethea@yahoo.com

A dear saint, who's discernment I can easily at times respect more highly than my own--asserts that this post is nonsense.

Have reread it.

I still believe the guy has hit some nails accurately on the head.

1. I have long thought that culturally we needed to be wiser about how and what we did there.

2. I don't think he's 100% accurate about democracy being incompatible. The purple fingers and risks voting demonstrate that.

3. I do think there's an inherent incompatibility between Islam and democracy. And folks who are going to believe, feel that they Jihadi's are the more spiritual Islamics will tend to be more sympathetic to tyrannical arbitrary rule in the name of some element of Islam or another.

4. In terms of going into Iraq . . . I was sobered before we went in by prophetic voices who warned that it would not turn out as we expected or needed.

5. However, it felt like a deadly catch-22. That somehow, God expected us to go in while warning us about the disasters involved in doing so. Saddam did have WMD's. He was training Al Qaeda and harboring them and funding death and mayhem far and wide. He was a danger to us. He likely had involvement with 9-11 at least tangentially. I'm skeptical that we should not have gone in, at all.

6. I do not think and have never thought that Iraq was a very viable country. It needs broken up into the 3 tribal groups with some way to insure equitable oil revenue sharing.

7. Some assert convincingly that Iraq and rebuilt Babylon will be the seat of the World Government. More than a little plausible to me. We shall see. If so, then the globalists have certainly, as we have seen asserted from 1947 and Wherner von Braun--the globalists have scheduled the war in Iraq and evidently the setting up of their government there. Everyone else is puppetmasters, perhaps under threat of death if they don't comply with such a script.

8. I think that's another reason we need to pray for our more honorable leaders such as our beloved President. I doubt we can imagine the pressures from hell he has to operate under. Someone suggested some time ago that we pray that he has visitations from/visions of the real authentic JESUS CHRIST.

9. There have been persistent reports that Maitreyia has been materializing in the inner sanctums of leaders around the world giving them orders. NO THANKS!

10. We know that wars and rumors of war are our destiny in this end times era. We know that Israel will be slated to be wiped off the map at least a time or two with Russia and her allies taking it severely in the head, neck, groin and elsewhere on the battlefield. Persia/Iran seems to be clearly scheduled for the same thing in the same effort. Is that what's building for this year? I hope not but it's plausible.

11. I do believe that the demonic strong holds over the region are much more of a deciding factor than the armies involved. And, that prayer of righteous people exercising their giftings and prayers in spiritual warfare are the only ways of dealing with such.

12. I do believe that all Christians must consider themselves more and first part of God's Kingdom vs even as Americans. Nevertheless, I believe God raised up America and that He is not near done with her yet and Never will be as long as there is any significant portion of true believers invovled in America and concerned for her.

13. Yet, we seem hell-bent for some level of discipline for allowing our nation's evils to multiply as they have the last 50 years. The last election seems like a serious level of sinfull cluelessness, to me. And I believe God will be addressing that somehow. I think the DIMRATS will be helpless to do else but be revealed as clueless evil idiots. But there may be more than enough clueless evil idiots to go around by the time we count in the RINOS.

14. I think the Dr authoring this post has some accurate points. I think his biases and politics may well have colored his discernment somewhat. We shall see.

15. I do believe this is true: "the church is to have the cultural imprint of heaven--a testimony to and a witness against the world system."

16. In terms of Christ's millenial reign . . . I don't think I could assert that there'd be absolutely no democracy in it. It IS PLAUSIBLE THAT THERE WOULD BE NONE. But I personally couldn't flat footedly assert that. Who knows how Christ will set it up. With the knowledge of The Lord flooding the world . . . it's plausible that there would always be only one way of doing, choosing such things. HIS WAY in all details. But I could imagine all manner of layers and levels of stuff. What if Christ didn't care if a community chose red or blue for their flag color, wouldn't a vote be fitting?

17. He made us as choosing personalities, not robots. Being our LIVING KING IN OVERT PERSONAL PRESENCE will not remove all facility to choose. I doubt it will turn us into cloned robots in all respects. Merely that we will do the right thing from our hearts automatically.

18. If we are going to attack Iran . . . prayer of the most earnest sort is crucial.

19. Regardless of whether we attack Iran, or not . . . dreadful times are ahead. If not this month, this quarter, this half year, this year, then the next or a few or half dozen after that. Being ready in spirit is the most important. Stocking up on essentials, staples and doing such other things as possible and led of God is crucial.

20. Let us work for The Kingdom while there's a shred of daylight left. The night IS coming.

Your post #24 overall is excellent. Good wisdom there. I agree that no matter HOW the particulars play out, we Christians need to

* Labor while it is still day, by testifying to unbelievers of our faith in Jesus and His saving power, by supporting our local church and our pastors, by loving our neighbors, by serving our parents, spouses, siblings, children, and friends in whatever ways we can to build them up and shine the Light of Christ into their lives.
* Live squeaky clean lives that reflect the goodness and purity of Jesus Christ
* Pray, learn to pray, study to become a more effective pray-er.
* Pray for those in authority
* Study our Bibles
* Practice being faithful in small things to be ready to act faithfully in the big things later.
* Learn to recognize the voice of the Lord and to heed it
* Seek God's presence and His guidance in our personal lives
* Yield to the dealings of the Lord as He burns off the chaff in our lives in order to be better prepared to stay true to Jesus if / when difficult times begin
* Practice walking by faith NOW so it's a way of life when the going gets tough.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.