Complaint Review: Hill Country Faith Ministries DRAKE BELLAMY - San Marcos Texas

These people apparently have a church now but as I remember them in the early spring of 1974 or 1975, they were meeting in a storefront in downtown San Marcos,Texas. I can't remember whether or not it was an old movie house,a theatre or an old five and dime store. Their minister appeared to me to be a very kind, scholarly man named Dwight, I believe and he preached a very good sermon that showed an excellent understanding of what I felt were excellent New Testament values, I can not believe he condoned what happened to my cousin and her marriage as a result of her husband's involvement in that church.

I THINK THERE WAS THE CHURCH AND I THINK THERE MUST HAVE BEEN A CULT. I think the Church was OK but I can't tell where one stopped and the other began.

I hope they have changed from the way they used to be because I have never encountered anything quite like them before or since and I will thank them for being one of the forces that discouraged me from ever participating in Christianity or their version of it and gave new meaning to the question," Are you saved?"

SAVED FROM RABID FANATICS LIKE YOU!

I was working for San Marcos Printing when this guy came in wanting us to print him up some flyers for a revival at the Hill County Faith Ministries. I had been burned already by some recruiters for the Children of God and didn't want to have anything to do with religious fanatics but we figured that we would print up their messages, they would pay and that would be it.

My cousin was married to the guy who owned the print shop. he had bought it from a guy named ken G and the guy who ran the offset printing portion of the plant was a Tejano preacher named Sam.I came in to help out.

The dude who wanted the revival notices printed up was a white guy with short dark blonde hair slicked back and spiked and his name was DRAKE BELLAMY. Or that's the name he went under and he had a HUGE BIBLE and he began to preach to us in the print shop. He didn't like the way Sam or I were running the presses so he took off his suit coat, rolled up his sleeves and rudely pushed us both out of the way and ran off his own d**n flyers and then refused to pay because he had done the work and God was telling him that he should have the flyers for free. I just wanted the slickster con artist to get out of there! But he engaged the owner of the printshop into a conversation about the Bible and how he and his wife could benefit from godly associates and some good old time religion. He reminded me of a rattlesnake and I still can see those cold, calculating eyes.

I attended services there a few times but never felt at home. My cousin didn't either. She said she was afraid but only went to make her husband happy. I think the money he thought he was giving to the church went straight into the pockets of Drake Bellamy.

After three tries, I went back to Austin and decided to stay closer to the house. All of that babbling and falling down and all of the other things they did in there made no sense to me. The claims of no one ever dying in this church... claims by Drake Bellamy that people who attended this church and paid money would not die,etc.I decided that their church was too weird for me.People falling down, babbling incomprehensibly ( at least to me) and all of this other stuff that charismatic, no name churches did.

CHRISTMAS DAY,I got a frantic call from my cousin pleading with me to please come and get her in San Marcos --that she was hiding near the student lounge at Southwest Texas State University and she was at the payphone outside on the corner. She was crying hysterically so I got some of my friends with baseball bats and so forth and we left Austin and were there within a few minutes.

She told me that she had spent the entire night CHRISTMAS EVE hiding under a lecturn in Evans Hall on the campus of Southwest Texas State University while a gang from that cult had been trying to hunt her down "to beat the devil out of her." I had read about a couple of women who had died as a result of similar exorcisms -- and I asked her why had they thought she was possessed by the devil. This stuff was bordering into psychotic land!

If she was going to be a Christian, she should have been at Midnight Mass because they had good music and it is almost always a profoundly beautiful experience.

She told me that Drake Bellamy had been wanting her husband to donate the printing shop to him in the name of the Lord and that when she protested, he gave her a hate-filled look and told her that she need to be submissive to the will of her husband and to Jesus. He then would pray with her husband, warning her to stay away because women were inferior to men.

I am not sure what all happened but he managed to get control of the print shop and stole the Baldwin concert grand piano that had been a wedding present and it either went to the church or to his residence. She had seen him threaten her husband and actually hit him and curse him and then curse her when she came to his assistance.

And there was now a small army of men, somehow with her husband along, blaming her and accusing her of being demon possessed for all of his troubles, including troubles in the marriage which had not happened before Drake Bellamy intruded into their lives. They were coming to get her!She thought that someone might have had a torch and feared that they were so nuts that they might burn her as a witch. They called it an intercession.

She was afraid that DRAKE BELLAMY was trying to take the house away just like he had conned hundreds of dollars out of her husband, and her piano and the printing business. She could not get to a telephone and she was trapped up on the second floor of the house in the master bedroom. She managed to get down a rope ladder and get onto the campus. Because of the winter holiday break, there were no students and no one to see what was happening because it was rather late. She said she knew of a door on one of the buildings which was not secureable and she was able to get into the building then secure the door behind her. She ran into a classroom and locked the door behind her. She stayed under the lecturn all night while she saw the people searching for her and yelling her name outside the windows. She didn't know where the campus police were.

I wanted to punch out Drake Bellamy for interfering in their marriage and I asked her not to go back. She said she had to try to save her marriage but I figured it was already over and my opinion of Charismatic No=name religion was getting wore by the day.

A few days later and she drove her car back to our place FOR GOOD.

DRAKE BELLAMY had threatened to burn down the house if he couldn't have it because they were going against the will of God and because her husband hadn't turned his wife over to be exorcised of her demons, she was a demon and because her husband remained married to her, he was a demon too. So he was going to kill both of them. I am not sure if the San Marcos or college campus police were called about this or not. She had sat in the bushes outside her house with a .22 rifle that she did not know how to shoot in mortal terror of her life that DRAKE BELLAMY and his team of demon busters would come back

and make the threat good. I understand that he might have been on drugs.

She found herself asking what sort of husband would subject his wife to this and then she asked what sort of religion would have people like this in it?

She divorced her husband who went on with the charismatic no-name religion and she returned to the JEWISH faith!

i have no idea whatever happened to DRAKE BELLAMY. I hope he rots in hell for what he put my cousin through,.

When I found the website, I asked my cousin if she recognized any of the two people listed there and she said she did not. She said she had forgotten that phase of her life IT WAS OVER and even IF THEY STILL HAD THE PIANO THAT DRAKE BELLAMY STOLE FROM HER AND HER FORMER HUSBAND ( WHO IS DECEASED) SHE WANTS NOTHING MORE TO DO WITH THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION. SHE SAID THE NIGHTMARES FINALLY STOPPED AND SHE HAS NO DESIRE TO HAVE THE MEMORIES AGAIN.

I don't know whether this particular church still advocates BEATING THE DEVIL out of WOMEN BUT A LOT OF THESE CHARISMATIC CHURCHES IN THE CENTRAL TEXAS AREA WERE STILL DOING THIS SORT OF THING WELL INTO THE 1990S.

IN CASE THEY DO, I AM POSTING THIS AS A WARNING to anyone who wants to get involved in this type of religion.

I INVITE ANY REBUTTAL OR APOLOGY FROM THESE PEOPLE!!!!

I HATE RELIGIOUS FANATICS

houston, Texas

U.S.A.