My
name is Marty Clayton-Banfield. I am a singer/songwriter for the Lord
but I used to be involved in Country Music as a former Nashville singer,
who released records, tapes and CD's of my own original songs. (This is nothing
I am proud of-just showing you how entrenched I was into that lifestyle)
The Name of my first album was called "Dark Side"....that
ought to tell you where I was spiritually, I was living on the Dark Side and
did not care.
I left
home in 1986 , a native South Carolina country girl, to pursue fame and
fortune in Nashville, Tennessee. I grew up in the 1970's, on Rockn' Roll-
Led Zeppelin, Jimmi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Aerosmith, etc.
and I went the whole round of the drug culture. I was a hippie, and all
that came with that territory. I went to many rock concerts, having
my ears blasted out by those huge walls of speakers. Eventually I
ended up in Country Music, a bar singer playing the bars and clubs.
I was saved
in a little church at age 12, with all sincerity of heart. I backslid at
age 14, went into sin, and got deeper
and deeper into sin as the years went by. I did not come back to the Lord
until 1995, after twenty five years of backsliding.
During
those many backsliding years, I began playing the drums, when my
long-haired pot smoking first husband bought a set to learn on.
While he worked, I entertained myself with the challenge of those drums.
I learned to play them and so did he. We then began playing in a small
country-western band. We played at Elk's Lodges, Moose Lodges, and VFW
Clubs.
I left
the drums behind when he and I divorced, and did not pick them back up again
until after I came back from a backslidden condition, around 1995.
I was a member of a Pentecostal Holiness Church, and of course, the church
drummer. When I changed to another church, I always ended up as the
church drummer. Even when I went to a Revival, and they did not have a drummer,
I would sit in and play for them.
The
main part of my testimony is about the drums. I was the church drummer at the
time, at a Church of God of Prophecy, and they had a full band-keyboards, bass
guitar, and drums and rhythm guitar. I had never felt any conviction
about playing the drums until this one particular night! I will never
forget that night long as I live!
The
Pastor was out in front of the pulpit, preaching on the microphone, doing an
altar call, the musicians and I had all been playing for about 20 minutes
nonstop....the anointing felt strong and getting stronger...and felt like any
other time I had felt the presence of the Lord! Then, all of a
sudden, the Pastor's wife began singing a song about thunder, and I immediately
picked up the beat, and it became a much stronger hard driving rhythm, then I
added full drum rolls, which sounded like the thunder, and I made them go BOOM
BOOM BOOM BOOM as I hit each drum in succession!
There
was a lady standing near my drum set, in line at the altar. She was about
3 feet in front of my drums, so she could hear my drumming REAL LOUD! I
kept noticing that a different atmosphere had taken over in the church when I
began making the sound of that thunder and booming it out on the drums.....the
whole church began speaking in tongues, and making a high pitched wailing sound
in unison...and they were swept into a total frenzy! I began to feel
very uneasy.
I
noticed that the lady in front of me began screaming at a certain time-ONLY
WHEN I DID THOSE DRUM ROLLS! I felt that she was screaming because the
drum rolls were exciting her. I knew that this was not right, and
then immediately as the Holy Spirit convicted me, I wanted to put my drumsticks
DOWN, and I did for a minute, but the keyboardist motioned to me to keep on and
not stop. I tried to keep on playing, but I knew those rolls were
controlling that one lady, and making her scream and scream and scream with
excitement! She got into a total frenzy of screaming, and I felt a
coldness come over the whole church. I knew
it was an EVIL
SPIRIT, and I looked at my mother in the back of the church, and
she was PETRIFIED! I looked at the bass player and guitarist, and they
walked away from their instruments and sat down and just watched the whole
church go wild in screaming, and screaming, and wailing-the WHOLE CHURCH went
wild! It reminded me of those rock concerts where the young girls
just scream and scream themselves silly and can't stop!
I put
my sticks down and held up my hands and just praised God, trying to feel
better, but that cold spirit was over the whole crowd, and I knew it was NOT
OF GOD!!! But the whole church had gone WILD. I sat on my
drums, hoping they would stop, but they didn't-it had caught a hold of them and
they didn't even need the music by that time. I got up from my drums and
pushed through the crowd and went to my mother, and as I did, she said, "I
want to get out of here!"...and we left that church.
I
never went back to that church, and I don't play the drums in churches anymore
for this reason. It was such a horrible feeling, to know that through my
drumming, I opened up the door for the people in that church to be
susceptible to evil spirits, who then took them over, and they believed it
was the Holy Spirit.
This
showed me that my drumming could control a crowd, and make them go wild!
I was so ashamed that I was a part of opening the door to demons in that
way. This type of drumming is in all rock n roll, and all modern
music. Don't think it can't control your mood and your emotions, because
I know through personal experience, being a drummer, that I controlled the
crowd in that church ! When I realized the power of control that
rested in my drumsticks, I knew I had to put them down. I didn't want to
be a door opener for Demons. This is my testimony on being a
drummer, and why I don't play drums in churches today. I am not and never
will be DRUMMIN' FOR THE DEVIL anymore!
Marty Clayton-Banfield