Sid Roth - How to Deal with Infidelity in Your Marriage
Sid Roth: Hello, I'm Sid Roth, your investigative reporter, and I have here a woman that got a telephone call that no one should get. Jimmie Ruth Matthews, when this woman called you, "Your husband is mine", what did you feel inside?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: It was such a shock to me because Lorne and I had not had marriage problems as such.
Sid Roth: How long had you been married?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: 18 years, and Lorne was approaching 40. And I often say you should either cage a man that's approaching 40 - you either cage 'em, kill 'em, or freeze 'em.
Sid Roth: I'm so glad that I passed 40!
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Then you can thaw them out when they hit 50.
Sid Roth: I see. I'm thawed out now. But it wasn't very funny back then, was it?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: No, it wasn't.
Sid Roth: When you had the confrontation with your husband Lorne, tell me what it was like.
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: I couldn't believe that it was happening, and the grief just overcame me, but I remember I sensed God speaking to my heart and he said, "You're not responsible for your husband's actions, but you are responsible for your reactions". He said, "I want you to praise me".
Sid Roth: Could you? Could you?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Well, it's a choice that we have to make and, you know, we are so feeling-oriented that we usually do what our feelings say, not what is the right thing to do. But with my will, I started choosing to praise God through this time because, see, God is so great that he's able to take the things that Satan thinks he's going to destroy us with, and God can use it for good in our lives.
Sid Roth: Jimmie Ruth, 18 years, two children. You thought you had a good marriage, and boom! Right out of nowhere, "I'm leaving you"! You're a woman! How did you really feel?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Very wounded, very hurt. You know, through this two years of separation, I learned that Lorne and I had not developed a real healthy marriage.
Sid Roth: What was unhealthy about it?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Well, Lorne had become wimpy, and I would rush in to fill in the missing areas, which is such a general pattern in our society because men just don't want to carry responsibility in the home, in the church - anywhere! So women feel like the only choice that they have is to...
Sid Roth: They pick up the mantle, which they shouldn't have had in the first place.
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Right. And so I became the head of the family and Lorne became the wimp under me and that's the way we were functioning. And we had a functional relationship.
Sid Roth: Wait, he wanted a divorce. He wanted to marry this other woman. Did you just let him do it?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Uh-um.
Sid Roth: What do you mean "Uh-um"?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: No, I put up a great fight. You know, I had a lot invested in this man: 18 years! And you know, in our society no one has commitment to anything. If it doesn't feel good anymore then you throw it in the garbage.
Sid Roth: Listen, in Christianity, divorce is cheap.
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: It's very expensive though.
Sid Roth: It is. Why is it so commonplace today? I mean in Christian families?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Because we are a feeling-oriented people, and if it doesn't feel good, then we search for ways to relieve ourselves of the pain.
Sid Roth: But the Bible says that God hates divorce. How come?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Because I think it's the damage that it does to so many people. More than just the two people. I remember when I was a child, so I have experienced this from two different angles: from the child's perspective, and from the wife's perspective. And I remember my mom going to seek out a lawyer to get a divorce. My dad was an alcoholic. He left us many times for weeks and months at a time, and mom kept praying for dad. For over 30-some years she prayed for him, and, you know, she passed that along to me: that you don't just quit when the going gets tough. You stand up for what's right.
Sid Roth: But what if he had divorced you and you were standing up for what was right?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Well, you know, I can't control another person's choices, and I would have suffered a great deal had that gone through. There are a lot of people who are divorced that don't want to be divorced. But the laws of our land have become so corrupt that they make it so easy.
Sid Roth: But you weren't going to make it easy for this man, Lorne, were you?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: No.
Sid Roth: How hard were you going to fight?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Well, he didn't get a lawyer. He sent me divorce papers, and I found out in passing that I was - I think it was 30 days' notice that I was supposed to receive, and the papers were, like, 3-4 days short of that, so on the morning that the hearing was scheduled I just called the judge and I said, "This is Mrs. Matthews, the real one, and I am contesting this because I know legally what I'm entitled to". So he covered the phone up and told Lorne, "This is your blankety-blank wife and she's not going to let you go, so you'll have to go and wait 30 days and re-file.
Sid Roth: Hold that thought. I want to meet this scoundrel, Lorne Matthews. We'll be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello, I'm Sid Roth, your investigative reporter, and we have that scoundrel here, Lorne Matthews. Lorne, with a shirt like that let's kind of explain. You were a pianist for some very famous ministers. Who did you play for?
Lorne Matthews: Well, I traveled with brother Swaggart and with the Cathedral quartet: different groups.
Sid Roth: I'm going to take you back. You're married 18 years. You've got two children. Your wife thinks everything is going fine, but obviously it wasn't going fine. How did you feel when you confronted her?
Lorne Matthews: Well, I felt confused. I felt also kind of numb. I felt like I was a puppet on a string. It's interesting: she was a ventriloquist and she could control that ventriloquist thing. I felt like that. I felt like she was...
Sid Roth: Too much control?
Lorne Matthews: Calling all the shots and kind of ruling the roost, and the thing that was really missing in our dynamic was, I didn't feel what I anticipated I would feel after 18 years of marriage. I didn't feel a nurturing love touch. I felt more like I was married to a machine.
Sid Roth: Now, tell me about the other woman. How did she come into your life?
Lorne Matthews: Well, I saw her in church, and she was very attractive, and you know, I began to look a little too long. I found out she cut hair, so I started having my hair cut. After a year of that kind of a relationship it happened. There was an exchange of emotion and it was a moment in time.
Sid Roth: Yeah, but you know better! You know that God would have...
Lorne Matthews: Oh, but it felt so good, man, like, you know, my wife was saying in her former statement, "Whatever feels good". I'm an emotional musician-type personality, and it felt - it felt so good, Sid.
Sid Roth: Well, didn't you go to some other - some ministers?
Lorne Matthews: Well, I went to a lot of good counselors and they told me, "Hey, you gotta quit this", but I didn't want that. Then I finally found a gentleman who was a phd and he's a priest. You know, he was supposed to be a godly guy, has a lot of insights, and he told me, "You're crazy if you stay in this marriage. You need to get out or you're gonna - you're fried. Tell me about this woman". I told him, "Well, when she touches me I feel, you know, she prophesies and things happen". He said, "That's the one you need to be with. That's the kind of girl you need. You don't need someone like Jimmie Ruth that's kind of a dead, dull personality. You need someone that'll flow with you, kind of a soul mate".
Sid Roth: But weren't you concerned about your children? Where did they enter in?
Lorne Matthews: Well, I told my kids when I was in that drunken state with that emotional flow, I told them, "I love you, but I will literally die if I can't be with this woman. So when it's all over, I hope that we can have a relationship, but I really" - I was mistaken in my concepts of what real love was.
Sid Roth: Now, this woman prophesied, you told me. Tell me what she prophesied.
Lorne Matthews: Well, it was a very, very amazing thing to me. She - the first thing she prophesied to me was that where we would live, you know, so we moved to Florida, and she prophesied a prison ministry would come and that developed. She prophesied that a millionaire would come and give me everything that I'd need, and a gentleman came that was sympathetic. He's a former pastor who was pastoring an independent church: how he had divorced his wife and took the wife he wanted. And he gave me a lot of financial help.
Sid Roth: A lot of Christians, prominent Christians, are getting divorced. It's really become cheap. Did this help you in your feeling justified?
Lorne Matthews: Yeah. It was a part of the whole bias of the culture and the whole thing. You know, it's really all my responsibility, but looking back now, it's a miracle that any marriage stays together today. I believe it takes the grace of God. I really do.
Sid Roth: Now, your - the daughter of the woman that you're living with, headed toward divorce to marry her, you're living with her. I understand prayed a pretty diabolical prayer against your wife.
Lorne Matthews: It was a sad thing. You know, Sid, it's the children we hurt when we get involved in this kind of adultery and this mess, but this little girl, I was trying to transfer all my feelings of being a father from my children, which I'd left, you know, to this little girl, so I would pray with her every night and read the Bible to her...
Sid Roth: Divorce is, really, it is a tearing thing!
Lorne Matthews: I was hurting this child, you know. I bear responsibility for it, but she prayed one night in desperation, you know, "Lord Jesus, make Jimmie Ruth sick so she's got to sign those divorce papers", you know, and right away I said, "You don't do things like that".
Sid Roth: Did it bother you that your wife would not sign the divorce papers?
Lorne Matthews: Oh, I was totally convinced that - the counselors who told me to leave her. He said, "She'll never sign anything. To her you belong to her. You are part of her - she possesses you. She's controlled you: now she possesses: that's her concept of love. She'll never let you go. But if you go through with it and you finally divorce her, there'll be great ministry for you because there's a lot of people that are married to controlling people like that".
Sid Roth: How did you feel when the daughter of this woman prays that your wife gets sick?
Lorne Matthews: Oh, I know, I would pray for my wife, that she wouldn't get sick. But she...
Sid Roth: But you heard that! Did you stop her?
Lorne Matthews: Well, I said, "Don't do that. You don't do that".
Sid Roth: So what happened to your wife?
Lorne Matthews: Well, the next day I got a call. My wife's sick, so that literally - talk about title of your program, "It's supernatural"! I knew that I was involved with something that was not, you know, ordinary stuff. I thought, "How can this be? I heard this curse go out against my wife and within 24 hours she's nearly dying, having surgery"! I nearly had a nervous breakdown. I mean, I just really - it was tough. But then the next day I received another call and that was this woman's firstborn son, who was about 18. He was rushed into the hospital across town with a terminal brain situation.
Sid Roth: He had been warning you about his mother, wasn't he?
Lorne Matthews: He was a godly boy.
Sid Roth: What did he tell you?
Lorne Matthews: He told me, "Lorne, you're deceived. My mother has had other men. She's a very seductive type of woman". He called her a Jezebel.
Sid Roth: What did you do? Did you feel guilty?
Lorne Matthews: I said, "Don't you ever talk about your mother like that because she's a prophesy-type person. She's a godly girl. She just wants a happy marriage. She didn't have it with your father, and I'm going to, according to her prophesies, I'm going to adopt you when we get married. Don't talk about your mother like that".
Sid Roth: So now he's in the hospital with - what was wrong?
Lorne Matthews: A brain tumor.
Sid Roth: Just out of the blue.
Lorne Matthews: Just out of the blue. Sid, the day after my wife went in, I just nearly collapsed. I mean, I told this woman that I can't take this. So, I was always kind of a wimpy-type of a guy, running, looking, running from responsibility. And so I ran to my parents in Canada and waited it out.
Sid Roth: What happened to her son?
Lorne Matthews: He died.
Sid Roth: Why do you believe he died?
Lorne Matthews: Well, I know when I returned to my family, I went to where he was buried, and repented, and asked the Lord that question: why? I was the one that sinned. This boy was - he warned me. He was a godly boy". You know, the mysteries of God, the sovereignty of God...
Sid Roth: Why did he die?
Lorne Matthews: I believe that the scriptures cannot be altered. They absolutely are - I've come to that place where i, you know, it's not "Religion" with me. It's, "I believe what God has said in the holy Bible".
Sid Roth: And what did he say?
Lorne Matthews: In revelations chapter 2, it describes that very clearly. A woman who calls herself a prophetess and she seduces with her prophesies, God's servants took them in fornication, which is what was happening in my life. It says if she doesn't repent, that, "I will cast her into a bed of tribulation, and them that commit adultery with her into that tribulation. And if they still won't repent, I will kill her children with death".
Sid Roth: Hold that thought.
Lorne Matthews: It scared me.
Sid Roth: He died! That son died! I'm going to tell you something, though. Nothing is impossible for those who believe in God. We'll be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello, I'm Sid Roth, your investigative reporter. I'm here with Jimmie Ruth and Lorne Matthews, and you two - I mean, you wanted a divorce. You're actually living with a woman: some strange things are happening. Her son warned you that his mother is evil. You rebuke him and then he dies, mysteriously almost. I mean, your wife is cursed. What happened to you when you were cursed?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: I lived. I think I was delivered from that curse, yes, and you know, our society has forgotten the meaning of covenant. I believe the marriage covenant is "Until death parts us", so I prayed for God to kill him. I said, "Lord, I don't want to pull the trigger, but if you would get Lorne on a slick highway somewhere and push him over a very steep embankment"...
Lorne Matthews: I told you she was controlling.
Sid Roth: Now, if you were praying that, were you also praying your marriage be restored?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Yes. Yes, I was.
Lorne Matthews: When did it change?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: I'm not sure which day, like, on the calendar. But the emotions are very real, you know? And it was so painful, and I just thought, "Lord, I'm in this until one of us dies. So just kill Lorne". I had to go before God and ask him to forgive me for murder, because the Bible says, "That as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he", so you have a murderer and an adulterer here on your program today.
Sid Roth: How did you hang in there? I mean, he wanted to go. What did your friends advise you?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Oh, I got advice from everybody, Christians especially, that "You don't deserve this kind of thing. God doesn't expect you to go through this kind of pain. Get rid of the jerk and find somebody who will treat you good. You're a good wife".
Sid Roth: So why didn't you?
Lorne Matthews: Yeah, why didn't you?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: I had too much invested in this guy! I wasn't about to throw it - if a thief comes to your house and starts stealing your computer and, you know, different things - your Jewels, whatever you have - you're not going to sit back and say, "Okay, go ahead, thief. Take whatever you want". The thief was coming and he was stealing what was precious to me. And I think too many of us just sit back and say, "Go ahead, devil, just take whatever you want". And we don't fight!
Sid Roth: You weren't going to do that.
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: No. I would die in my tracks before I would give in to the enemy.
Sid Roth: So what did you do at these worst moments?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: I spent a lot of time reading the Bible and just getting strength. I remember one time I was so hungry for, just affection, and I was sitting on the edge of my bed. I'm not a visionary-type person, and I sensed there in that house, all alone, arms just wrap around me and hold me. And I know it was my heavenly husband...
Lorne Matthews: I believe that. Jimmie Ruth Matthews:....That came and nurtured me that night.
Sid Roth: Lorne, how did the spiritual scales come off your eyes? How did you see the truth?
Lorne Matthews: Well, in the segment before this when we went through those circumstances, that was what broke the shackles off of me and I began to realize that I was involved with something that was really serious. So I began a repentance process, and people have asked me, "Why do you share this now? Why do you minister like this? Why don't you go back to being a Gospel entertainer, you know, make people feel good"? I just feel like the Lord has compelled me to share, to try to help people not to go down this road.
Sid Roth: So, your daughter is graduating high school. You decide to come home - just to come home for her graduation. What was the first thing you saw when you came home?
Lorne Matthews: She had gone out and bought a bolt of cloth, yellow cloth, and made hundreds of yellow ribbons, put them everywhere, and I said, "What is this, honey"? And it was back in the 80s, in the early 80s when the Iranian hostages had, you know, they were - yellow ribbons were everywhere, and she said, "Some people are hostages in a political thing: but you've been held hostage by a spirit that wants to destroy you and destroy our family, and I believe God's brought you home for good".
Sid Roth: And what did you think?
Lorne Matthews: I told her, "Honey, you're crazy just like your mother. This marriage will not work". I didn't want the marriage at that time. I didn't want the other woman, you know. I wanted to be free. And so my daughter, when she expressed this love, it began to break my heart. I started to feel, "Well, maybe there could be a chance. Maybe..".
Sid Roth: How did you break off with the other woman? I mean, you decided to, but how did you do that?
Lorne Matthews: That was a process, and it's one of the things I'd like to say to any man listening. Don't get involved with anything outside of your wife, because what you have pleasure with, you bond to. And you don't snap your fingers and get over that bonding immediately. It's a process. It took about two years, to be honest with you, for us to be totally disengaged, and I couldn't fill that up with my wife and i. I had to fill it up with Jesus.
Sid Roth: Okay. You two, you come home: you're trying again. Did you love him immediately?
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: Well, I don't know what your definition of love is, but I've learned that...
Sid Roth: Feeling. Feeling: hugging: the gooey-gooey feeling inside.
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: See, love is a choice. It's not a feeling. We have good feelings as a result of love, but we both knew that this was right for us to be together, and so his feelings were dead and my feelings were dead. People say, "There's no hope"! But we made a commitment to do those things that happily married people do together. We started holding hands and we started embracing and even saying the words "I love you" by faith.
Sid Roth: Lorne, when you said that, what did you - the first time you said that, how did you feel in here?
Lorne Matthews: I felt like I was a liar
Sid Roth: You didn't love her.
Lorne Matthews: I didn't have any emotional feeling. I felt - most of my emotions were deposited in someone else and I was disengaging from that, but when this situation happened where all these - all hell broke loose, I knew that there had to be a repentance, so I had to really come into agreement with the word and with my wife, that love is not an ooey-gooey emotion. I began to see, that Jesus Christ was hanging on the cross because of love, that doesn't feel very good. So I began to see that. You know, the most beautiful part on my wife's body now that I love are the scars from the surgery she went through when I was away from her. And when she came out of that surgery, you know, pastors and friends and the lawyer were saying, "Divorce him"! And she said, "But what would Jesus do? Jesus would forgive him". So she...
Sid Roth: Wait a second! I see you holding hands!
Lorne Matthews: Oh, it's different now, brother!
Sid Roth: I don't see "Love isn't a feeling". I see a feeling! Tell me - will you do me a favor? Will you look at her and tell her the truth about how you feel - feel about her!
Lorne Matthews: I honor you. I esteem so highly. Thank you for being willing to die for someone that wasn't worthy. I love you with all of my being and I'm willing to lay my life down now for you.
Sid Roth: Jimmie, how do you feel about this man? Look at him.
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: I love you and I honor you and I thank God for the love of Jesus that flows through you, and I accept your love.
Sid Roth: Lorne, tell me about your last grandson. Tell me about - you went to...
Lorne Matthews: Zechariah, Zechariah.
Sid Roth: Tell me about him.
Lorne Matthews: Oh, hallelujah, I remember he was born premature a couple of months and they brought him and said, "He has to have heart surgery". I said, "Heart surgery? He's so small! His heart is, like, this big! How can he have heart surgery"? And so we had the heart surgery, and I remember going in to the - serious, all the tubes everywhere, laying my hands as the grandfather, in my place where God designed me to be, and laying hands on that boy and saying, "In Jesus' name..". I quoted Zechariah, his namesake, prophecy, "Not by might, not by power, but by my spirit, sayeth the Lord of hosts. This mountain shall become a plain". I said, "This mountain of heart sickness will become a plain. I speak health to you, son". And he came out of that surgery. He's alive, he's running. We had a miracle.
Sid Roth: How large a family do you have now?
Lorne Matthews: Seven in my daughter's family: five grandchildren. And my son is not married.
Sid Roth: You almost missed that!
Lorne Matthews: Oh, God. That's a thought every morning. You talk about love. When my wife and I are into our sharing, I say, "Thank you: thank you".
Jimmie Ruth Matthews: He tells me almost every day.
Lorne Matthews: "Thank you: thank you".
Sid Roth: You wrote a song about the love of God. Would you just acapella it? Just sing that.
Lorne Matthews: Oh, my. I remember when the Lord - he inspired me. She was putting her arms around me and I was putting my arms around her, and we weren't feeling anything. So we said, "God, it's got to be your love"! So this chorus came out, "Pour your love through me: pour your love through me. Take my vessel in your hand and all the dry and thirsty land. Pour your love through me: pour your love through me...
Sid Roth: And I pray in the name of the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua, that his love would be poured into you right now. Do not miss God's best! God says, "I hate divorce". There's two pictures of your life. One, horror and tragedy for everyone concerned, and the other, what God created. "What God put together, let no man divide asunder". In Yeshua's name, restore that marriage.