Anyway, we got a call from a woman named Anna, who asked us to go to a friend's home where she was taking a woman who needed healing or deliverance or both. Now Bev always seemed eager to minister deliverance, but I never was - at least, not in the beginning. Often while Bev was getting ready to go, I was busy complaining to the Lord about having to go.

But the complaining never did me any good. All I ever got back from the Lord was a Scripture, "Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in the power of your hand to do so." (Proverbs 3:27), and a couple of questions: "If not you, who? If not now, when?" After several months I stopped complaining, because He never said anything different.

Now on the way to deliverances in those days we did a lot of blood pleading and singing songs about the blood, like our favorite, "There's Power in the Blood." I can't sing, but Bev has a great voice; nevertheless, I would bellow along with her all the way to wherever we were going.

When we got to the home of Anna's friend, Anna introduced us to her friend and to a young lady whom we'll call Jane - she was the one with the problem. For some reason, before we started ministering to her I spent about twenty minutes talking about the blood of Jesus. Later Anna told us that it was greatest teaching she had ever heard on the blood. But I had no recollection at all as to what I said about it, and never did remember a single word.

After my teaching whatever it was I taught about the blood, I asked Jane what her problem was. She said that she had periods of violent itching all over her body, and that none of the doctors she had been to were able to help her, and none of the medicine they prescribed helped her either. She itched so badly that she had scars on her body where she had dug out the flesh with her fingernails scratching herself.

This had been going on for about two years, and she said it was getting worse and more frequent, and if she could not get some help soon she was going to kill herself. Now the last part of her statement did not help my faith at all, because in those days I was always concerned that we would get a demon in a person acting up, not be able to get it out, and the person would go home and do some terrible thing - like what Jane said.

She also told us that her husband was against her getting prayed for, that he thought it was a lot of foolishness, and if he knew she was here for that reason he would be extremely angry - and we only had a couple of hours because she had to be home before he got home from work. I mention this because if you run into these kind of things they won't help your faith at all.

We sat Jane in a straight-back chair and Bev and I sat in similar chairs on each side of her. Then I said a short prayer, laid Jane in a short prayer, and then started commanding the "spirit of itching" to come out of her. Sounds a bit stupid, I know, but after all, itching was her problem, so it seemed like a logical place to start.

Well, almost immediately Jane began to scratch at her arms, then her legs, then her stomach and chest, and then literally her whole body. She's also began moaning louder and louder until she's was nearly screaming. In the meantime, I'm getting nowhere with casting out a spirit of itching, my heads going crazy with all the possibilities - like having to call an ambulance for her, and how her husband would react to it - and wanting to really be somewhere else, and what am I doing trying to cast out demons anyway?

Then in the midst of all that, the words "spirit of self-destruction" popped into my thoughts. Since what I was doing wasn't working, and being desperate to try something else, I immediately switched to commanding a spirit of self-destruction to come out, and got an instant reaction from the demon. Jane started shaking her head back and forth and saying, "No, no, no."

When that happened we knew we had the right demon, and I doubled my efforts, giving the Holy Spirit all the power of my soul that I could muster, and Bev came against the demon with various expressions about the blood of Jesus. In only a few moments, the head shaking stopped, and the itching started receding. Then Jane yawned so strongly and long that I thought her jaws were going to break apart, and that was that. The demon left and the itching stopped.

Later, as we thought about it, a "spirit of self-destruction" was logical, considering that Jane was gouging out her flesh scratching herself, which also could have lead to all kinds of infection, and if the itching had not stopped she was going to kill, or self-destroy, herself.

We saw Jane a few years later, and the itching had never come back.

By the way, we ran into a similar "spirit of self-destruction" a few years later with a young man who could not keep himself from speeding every time he got into his car and had several accidents as a result. Once we cast out the spirit of self-destruction he had no more trouble with speeding. Again, spiritually quite logical.