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Good morning. Uh, I wasn't quite sure what to do this morning with the Sunday school class. We had a good one last week, uh, thanks to, uh, Bill Pollard's question and the follow up, uh, on what was so well taught by, uh, Chris. Uh, I'll tell you, this morning I'm going to be a little, uh, autobiographical. I don't like to do that, but the subject that I'm going to deal with this morning, I think it'll help us maybe to understand a bit more if I bring a few examples from my own experience, from our experience in Africa. I'll tell you what, uh, set my thinking off for this Sunday school class this morning. Wednesday afternoon, my wife and I and our family, our 2, uh, kids, were headed off to, uh, north of Detroit near Port Yorn to have Thanksgiving with the family.
And as we were driving along, we had this news report, a traffic, uh, report of a fifteen-mile backup on the tri-state, and we were headed into this. Well, as we were sitting there, it usually takes me three hours. We're going to Grand Rapids first, then over to Port Yorn the next day. Usually takes me, maybe I shouldn't say this, but around three hours, three and a half hours to get to Grand Rapids. Well, it was getting on to three hours, and I hadn't gotten out of Chicago yet. We were in this massive traffic jam up near three eighty, and, uh, I said to my wife, I said, you know, wouldn't it be wonderful if we, if somebody could come up with something that you could just get into this box and they could fax you to New York, and they could fax you here and fax you there.
We kind of laughed, but I started to think about that, and you know, if I said that to an African, they wouldn't laugh because, uh, you know, that's kind of getting into a realm that we aren't too familiar with, uh, and we kind of laugh now, but, you know, if somebody would have said a hundred years ago you can put a letter in, you can fax it, or, you know, a hundred years ago somebody's going to the moon, we'd have laughed at that. So there's a lot of things that are crazy I don't laugh at anymore because it's very possible they'll happen. Another thing that set my thinking off, last week our brother, I believe it was our, I don't know your name, but our brother was sharing some of his personal experiences during the breaking of bread, uh, and how he felt so oppressed by satanic powers, and he just couldn't get rid of these satanic powers.
And I said, I sat there and I kind of woke up, uh, and I said, wow, this sounds like, uh, you know, something I've gone through many times in Africa, uh, this sense of a satanic oppression on my spirit, heaviness on my spirit. And then as we were riding to, uh, Port Yorn, I happened to put the radio on, I picked up Chuck Swindoll, and he was, I think he was preaching from Timothy, I'm not quite sure, but he was making some references there to demonic power and activity, uh, just kind of in passing. So this is kind of, all this came together to, uh, direct my thinking this morning to share with you a little bit about the spirit world and the realm of the spirits and, uh, what we've seen in Africa, and I think it, hopefully it will help you a bit here, uh, because you have quite a missionary commitment to all parts of the world, where your missionaries are working very much in the context of spirit demonic activity.
And, uh, also what I have observed from coming back, after coming back to America, uh, there's much, there's a great increase in this whole realm of, uh, demonic activity, and, uh, sometimes it's very, uh, kind of covered in some ways, but I think if we scratch beneath the surface, we see very much demonic activity. And as I look out, the Malsteds and the, the Richards and others, the, uh, Hesses are people that have worked in the third world where much of this activity is taking place, and probably there's others that I don't know of. So maybe, uh, you can share some things too as we get going. As I talk, if, uh, I tend to preach when I teach, so if you have a question or anything, just raise your hand to interrupt me.
Uh, I'll try to leave some time at the end for some questions and a bit of discussion. But, uh, as we have worked for twenty five years now in an African context, we have learned and seen things in the spirit world, in in the realm of the spirits that we just never would have have known here in this country. Uh, I went to Moody, and I thank the Lord. I got three things from Moody that I praise the Lord for. I got a good Bible education, I got my missionary call, and I got my wife. Now those are, you know, you can't outdo those three uh, on the, on the level of importance in, in, uh, value. But, and I got a good Bible training in, uh, in demonology, in the spirit world, studying angels and theology, but it wasn't until I got to Africa that I came face to face with the flesh and blood of it.
The theory, uh, kinda was up for grabs, but there we were face to face. Let me just quickly share with you three uh, experiences we had. The first one we had, uh, is when we really realized there was something there in this African context that we had never experienced in America. We arrived in France, uh, to study, to brush up on our French. We'd studied in Quebec, and we went to France for about three months. And, uh, it was interesting that when we were studying, uh, French in Quebec, this was back twenty seven years now. Uh, when we were in Quebec, we had some very difficult times there, and there was some real, what we look back now on as satanic attacks on us as we were preparing for the Lord's service.
Uh, just oppressive times, difficult times. We didn't understand it at the time, but when we look back now, we can see. And I remember once we were coming home for the Christmas break, and as we gr- drove out of Quebec into, uh, into the non, uh, into, uh, English part of, uh, of, uh, Canada, it was just as though a, a heavy load fell off of us, because at that time, uh, there was much, uh, spiritual activity there, and, uh, the whole situation there in Quebec at that time, spiritually, was very oppressive. So as we came out, we, we felt a, a, a release. We had the same experience when we were in France and then went across the channel to England.
Now, England is far from a, a Christian country, I'm sure as the Malsteds could confirm, but just as we were coming out of France, going to England, we, we sensed a whole freedom, a kind of a, a, a release of a burden that had been building up in France, which is a very non-Christian, uh, country, very great s- uh, center of occult and spiritism. Uh, now when we got to Africa, we arrived there in about three weeks after we arrived in Africa, we had an experience that was very difficult for us. Our first son, Steven, he's twenty six now, uh, every night he, at the time, he was fourteen months old, and every night he woke up screaming.
And uh, well, we tried, you know, all the traditional methods. We gave him water, and we tried to reason with him, and then, you know, spank him a little bit. Everything to try to encourage him to go back to sleep, but he kept doing this about every two hours all night long. And this, we were in a village where it was very quiet at night, and he would not just cry, but scream, kind of blood-curdling screaming. And, uh, this went on, kind of kept going on and on for about a week, and we were just at the end of ourselves, and my wife and I finally said, listen, if we don't, you know, something doesn't change here, we're not going to make it. Because in Africa, if you don't sleep and you don't eat, uh, properly, you just won't last long. So after one night, I remember out of sheer desperation, I got up and I went over by his bed, and I knelt down by his bed, and I just said, out of desperation, I'd never done this before, I just said, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command any and any and every spirit that may be involved in this to leave.
And almost automatically, almost on the spot, he he calmed down and went back to sleep. Now, a little while later in the evening, he woke up again. I did the same thing. We did this for a couple nights, and then finally it left completely, and uh, no more problem. We have have trouble getting our kids up. We've never had problem getting them back to sleep, and the the devil has never come in at us again through our children this way. We have never had problems with any of our kids going to bed at night and sleeping. Uh, they don't almost never wake up at night, and so we've had other attacks in other ways, but never this way. And we realized and we learned there at that time that there is a spiritual world, there is a spiritual power, and there is a way to deal with it.
Uh, and only one way to deal with it. Later on, actually, uh, incidentally, we were talking with some people and explaining our situation. We realized, discovered that, uh, at that point where this missionary house was built, back before it was built at sometime in the past, it was a place where village sacrifices were offered, and it's very possible that right in the ground at that place was a piece of metal that was associated with the regional demonic powers of that whole region. So that is, was the source of these attacks coming in on us. So there I realized, I learned something in practice, in flesh and blood, that we never realized in theory, uh, we never could have learned in theory, uh, in Bible school in this country because of the context.
I remember another time, uh, later on, this was a few years later, I was in my office. We'd moved to another area. We're working in a very strong Muslim area, town that was about ninety five percent Muslim. I was in my office studying, and I heard Mary, my wife, call me from the kitchen, and I could tell the way she was calling, she was in a bit of distress. So I went out there, and there standing in the kitchen with was this demon-possessed man. Uh, you can tell in Africa when someone is demon-possessed just by the way they dress and by the way they're acting. So there this man was in our kitchen. Now, what do I do? I could have reasoned with him and said, now listen, this is no way to treat a missionary. I'm a missionary. I should be treated with a bit of dignity, a bit of respect. You don't just walk in my front door, uh, like this and come in and frighten my wife.
I could have mentioned that I've, you know, got some degrees here and there. I could have taken him in my library. Look at that, you know, that should impress you. But no, that wouldn't have worked. So I simply said to him, I said, listen, in the name of the Lord Jesus, you get out of this house. I didn't try to evangelize him. I didn't try to win him to the Lord because that wasn't the need at that point. I simply said, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, you get out of my house. He just turned tail and ran out of the house like a scalded rabbit. He was, he knew he was coming up with another power greater than his own. Uh, another time, I remember I was, I had bush typos, and I was, uh, in bed, and bush typos, it gives you a tremendous headaches. It kind of starts here and goes across. And, uh, we were again living in a Muslim town, and I had these terrific headaches, and I'd had them for a couple weeks.
And, uh, I was discouraged and depressed and, and, uh, just down under it all, and it was early in the morning, and just about four in the morning, the call to the mosque came out. And, uh, if you've ever heard the call to the mosque early in the morning, it just, it does something to you, and this just started to penetrate into my soul, and I just felt all the demonic powers just coming down and just pushing me down and pushing me down. And again, I just claimed the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and started to sing a song, and just automatically, like that, the room was filled with, uh, with lightness, with joy, with light, and, uh, with the presence of the Lord.
So these were experiences that underline to me there is, in fact, a spirit world and a spirit realm out there. And uh, many times I think in our culture in this country, because of, well, we'll maybe we'll get that to that question later on, why, but from what I observe, often we are a bit insensitive to this realm. Uh, it's what uh, Paul Hebert, uh, refers to as the excluded middle. Now, we all here, I would assume, believe in God, and we believe that God is there, and that he answers prayer, and he gives us blessing, and we believe in the natural world that's all around us. It's there, we can touch and feel it.
But often, I think, uh, in our cultures, in Western cultures, we are ignorant of or insensitive to the middle realm, the realm of spirits, of demons, of angels. Uh, how off- how often within the week do you think of your guardian angel? I- I think the Bible speaks about the ministry of angels and that we have angels around us, but how often are we conscious of the ministry of angels? Uh, in- in the- in the- the whole realm of, uh, demons and evil spirits. Now, in the, in the Af- African atmosphere, in the African, uh, culture, and I'm sure most kids could share the same from the Middle East, uh, that's the atmosphere you're living in.
Uh, it, it, it's there. It, it's always, they're always dealing with it. They see it in everything. Now, I feel the problem, we often work in the realm of, of, of extremes. Uh, in the church, it's either, it's either, uh, uh, Saint Vitus' dance or rigor mortis, it seems we're always in one, one extreme or the other. We always have a hard time finding a happy medium. And, uh, I think, from what I can observe many times in, in our culture, uh, we don't see spirits, demons, or angels in anything, and, uh, it's kind of, as, as Paul Hebert here says, uh, the excluded middle. Now, I don't know how we often read our Bible.
I- I- I think we're a bit schizophrenic. We- we look into the Bible and we see these things in the Bible, and yet we somehow divorce them from our own culture and our own society. And, uh, I think we need to, as Christians, really try to understand and realize how much our culture and our- our own context affects the way we interpret and understand the scriptures, uh, because it does very much. And before we can really, uh, get into the scriptures and understand them, we must understand our own culture and how much our culture affects the way we filter out and accept and reject cert- subconsciously, unconsciously many times, uh, various aspects, uh, and various teachings and truths in the word of God.
Now, the other extreme is, and this I think we many times see in Africa, among the African people, is the, the fact of seeing demons everywhere. And I think there is somewhat of a tendency in certain circles, among certain people in this country, in the church, to do that. There's, you know, there's the demon of overweight, there's the demon of, of sports, there's the demon of, uh, of poor grades, you know, whatever. I- it's blame shifting instead of taking the blame ourselves, we we see demons in everything. Now, I think that's the other extreme, and I think the Africans often fall into this realm, especially, for instance, in the realm of dreams. Uh, dreams play a very large role in the Christian life and in uh, in the life of the Christians and in the life of the non-Christians.
And this is good and bad. God actually does many times communicate with uh, uh, an illiterate people, a pre-literate people through dreams. And, uh, by the way, dreams often play a very major role in the conversion of any Muslims. Sure, the most heads could confirm this also. And in the, especially in the beginning movement toward salvation, dreams, the Lord can often speak to Muslims through dreams. I often pray that the Lord will give dreams to Muslims where they'll see possibly Jesus. Uh, coming to them after we share the gospel with them, after we have open air preaching. Pray that they will have dreams about the truth of Jesus, and then they'll come to us, uh, with questions. But this can work against them too, because you see, uh, there are biblical dreams, there are dreams that come from the Lord, there are dreams that come from the, the demonic world, and there are dreams that are just dreams because of what you ate, because of what you thought about all day long.
If you think about something long enough all day, you may dream about it. If you have the wrong kind of food, you may, you know, some people dream about certain things because of what they eat. But this does not mean to say there are not real dreams, and nor does it mean to say there are not dreams inspired by, uh, demonic spirits. Remember once we were working with, uh, an African brother and his wife, and she had a dream that night that her mother died, and her mother was a long ways away, and it was a long trip, but she, there's no way that anybody was going to talk her out of going there to see if this was in fact true. Now, these are Christians, African Christians. He was a church leader, but there's no way that you're going to talk this woman out of going to see if, in fact, her mother did die, and she went there, and her mother wasn't dead.
But, uh, so this is where you can see the, uh, the dreams working, uh, against, uh, against us, and this is the realm where we see the other extreme of seeing demons in everything. But that doesn't mean there's not demons in anything, which many times is our reaction in this, uh, naturalistic culture that we live in. Now, uh, do you have any questions? Are you like crocodiles sleeping with your eyes open? Well, no, cro- crocodiles sleep with their eyes open, so you can't tell if they're sleeping or not. Uh, one question is, when you started giving examples of, uh, depression, uh, can you answer the response that a lot of individuals are taking, and I imagine it was the response to some of these sentences that felt stress and psychological.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I think people that do that and talk that way are people that have never experienced, you know, the situation. Uh, you know, it's hard for me to to talk about something I have not experienced personally myself as whether it's true or not. Now, there's no way a Christian can go to the word of God and say this isn't possible, this isn't true. I mean, to the contrary, to my understanding of scripture, it's it's there very much. But I think it depends on the context that you're in. And also, I think it depends, I mean, you have tourists that go to these to countries, and they they go and they come, and they they never have contact with this at all because they're, they're not in that realm, see? They're not. But once you get into spiritual ministry and into, uh, the, the ministering of the gospel, then you are entering into this realm.
Whereas as a tourist, you could go and come back and say, well, I never saw anything. The people are just like we are, and I couldn't detect, uh, anything of this going on. But when you begin to live among the people and begin to minister the word of God and get into spiritual warfare, I think that's where it would come out. So, I mean, someone could explain my experiences that way, but I, you're not going to explain it to me that way because I know it's not true, because there is this, what uh, Hebert calls the excluded middle that we, we often aren't entering into. And uh, I think it's going to be coming more and more evident in this country, uh, as as the influence of the gospel, the salt and light is is getting less and less, and uh, spiritual powers are becoming more blatant and out- out- outright and more evident in our cultures.
Okay? Yeah. Mm-hmm. And that's something that we all ought to keep. Mm-hmm. Because it's easy for us to perpetrate a good nature glorified. But just recognizing that the expressions of evil become different because you may have different expressions, it doesn't mean there's less involved in life.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a good point. I appreciate that. Yes. At the risk of being thrown out, I'm, I'm serious, I want to ask this question. The Bible, I believe, to be an inspired book. God, God breathed, however, however he wants to. Mm-hmm. But it, it was written in space and time, and, and the world in which the Bible was written was very different from how their understanding of illness, for example, there is is very different from, say, the understanding of the illnesses that, uh, Dave Bruce would explain, or a physician would explain, or a psychiatrist would.
And, and I'm wondering if, if we need not be careful in reading the Bible to understand that. Mm. And, and not take every word exactly as it's presented, but try rather to understand what lay behind that, what was their perception of the world, of the world. Mhm. Uh, and and even though they might say that this particular person, uh, who told to get them out was feeling sad.
Mhm. That might not have been true. That would be the way they perceived it. Mm-hmm. But what not ours will be better. Yeah. So I, I think very reading the Bible. Mm-hmm. Uh, we under- we can understand the Bible in its culture and not... Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that, and that's what I say.
I think we often work in, in extremes. Uh, either we see nothing of, of this activity or, or totally ignorant of, of this. We believe there's a God, and we believe there's the natural world, and uh, but we often aren't sensitive to the world in between, or we see demons under every chair and in e- in every corner. But I think there are, I mean, in the Bible, there are certain cases, like you mentioned about uh, foaming at the mouth, where the scripture writers did say this was because of demon activity. Uh, so there are cases, but then our, our uh, weakness is that we often transfer that to every case, and that's where I say the African people are often, they often err in going in the other direction, and they fail to realize.
I've seen, uh, cases where they've tried to cast out demons when it's very probable that there's simply a har- a harmonious imbalance physically that was causing this, but they were dealing with a spiritual problem, and they never did touch it, see. Uh, so there there's the other side of the coin that we have to be careful with. I think there's a lot of video that goes around those too, because, um, there's something more of, uh, sharing and, um, looking back in other areas, but also seeing people on the foreground and things going up.
So we can go where I would go and listen to music, and then come up with people, thousands and thousands of people that are in, uh. Mm-hmm. Mm, good, thank you. Bill. Uh, just to reaffirm what you're saying, me and I've had an experience with somebody who's now better than me, but there's a difficulty in transition.
If I come here, if something goes wrong, I don't feel right, or something in Russian. In Africa, the first question I'd ask is, what's wrong with birds? Here, the first question you ask is, what's wrong with pigeons? And I think that kind of gets to the point that we are the product of an educational system coming from enlightenment, all of the scientific knowledge, from, from attention to reason, and we're, we're the product of that. There's a lot of positive things that come from that, but we're really the product of that.
And, and, and they're in some of these other cultures, that, that they're not the product. Mm-hmm. Right. And the discernment to see them, uh, not to ignore that they are. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what I, I say. We need to realize how much our environment and our culture and our context does affect the way we come to the scriptures, so I appreciate that.
Yvonne. Yeah, it's so much easier in many ways for us in Africa to teach the word of God because it is, you mentioned, so much closer, uh, culturally and spiritually to the context of, uh, of the scripture.
So I think we need to realize that, I mean, this realm, it exists, but we need spiritual discernment to know exactly, uh, what is going on, and and not to go to one extreme or the other. Let me just, uh, point out two areas, uh, two basic areas that, uh, I think this has come to to our attention and that we really work in, uh, in this whole realm in in an African context, in the realm of demon possession and in the realm of sickness. Now, in the realm of demon possession, uh, I mean, I'm, I'm completely convinced in the, in the existence of, of demons, and you can't be a s- a biblical Christian and not believe that demons exist.
I mean, where you can come to the conclusion that, uh, wi- in the time of the New Testament and the s- first century, demons went out of existence, it just doesn't fit. And you see, the danger is that many times producing and sending missionaries in our culture and going out to another culture where they're really living in this, in this middle realm, uh, we often can come across as atheists because we just a- aren't, uh, touching in, just like Bill mentioned. This girl, the first thing she asked, what's the spiritual cause of my problem? We ask, what's the naturalistic cause of this problem? And, uh, in, in the case of this girl, there, at least in her cultural context, there probably was often a spiritual cause to the problem, whereas in our culture, it probably is more in the realm, at this time at least, more a natural, normal cause to the problem.
But, uh, we, we believe, I believe that there are basically three areas in which demons, uh, act. They, there is the, the occasional attack, demon attack. I think our brother was mentioning something like this, oppression. I just feel oppressed, uh, spiritually. There are these times we, in our African ministry, uh, there are certain times in the year or in the events of African life when there's more demonic activity than others. For instance, during a funeral. During a funeral, we just go into the house, uh, not so much among the, the, the Muslim, but when we worked among the animistic people, the Lobi, when there was a funeral, we just kind of went in the house and prayed for two days because it just kind of let loose tremendous demonic power, just oppressive.
My wife and I would have problems between us and with the kids, uh, you know, that you just never normally have. What's going on here? You know, we're not like this, but this is what, this is what happens. Uh, during initiation times, when, when they have their, their, their rites of passage to become adults, uh, and there's this, these initiation periods, there's tremendous demonic activity at this time also. So we have to, we had to learn, and one has to learn to recognize this, because it's not something you can grab a hold of, you know, it's not like an infection you can look at and see, or appendicitis that, you know, you can grab a hold of that, but it's just something that's there, and if you're not sensitive to it, you don't, well, what's going on here? You don't really, you don't realize what's going on, but it is.
So then you'd have to realize, recognize it and know how to respond to it. Uh, and and this is what we had to come to. I also believe that there is demonic oppression, where you just, it's a constant oppression by demonic powers. And then, of course, the third stage is demonic possession, uh, where the demon powers just take control of, of that person. Now, uh, in the, in the African context, and in much of the third, what we refer to as the third world context, where they have not gone through all this educational enlightenment that, uh, that Bill was mentioning, uh, there, there is this power struggle, this balance for power in the spiritual world.
Uh, this is even seen among the Muslims, for instance. Uh, theoretically, Muslims, Islam is against idols, they're against fetishes, they're against, uh, all any paraphernalia that has to do with, with Allah. But in actual fact, at least in Africa, uh, the, the higher your position in the Islamic hierarchy of leadership, the more powerful will your fetish be, the fetish you have to protect you, because there's a power struggle there, and there's other leaders in the Muslim community that want to zap you with spiritual powers to get your position, and that's all in the realm of spiritual, uh, in power encounters.
One will try to find a, uh, uh, marabu or a shaman, which used to be called witch doctors, to to curse you, and you have to have a power that's stronger than that one to protect you. And this is all the powers that are going on. I had a friend that worked, he was an educated person, uh, he was upper class, uh, African, and he worked for the government. He took care of all the records, uh, in the in the office of the of the, uh, be like the governor of the state. And, uh, he didn't do something for somebody, and that person had him. And from that point on, he began to deteriorate physically, and he did everything he could to get help from medicine and from other, uh, shamans and whatever, but he just slowly deteriorated until he eventually died.
Uh, and this is what, uh, and this is what they fear. Let me share an example with you as to how this whole power encounter works in the African. Uh, there was this, uh, African man, he had a large family, and he was a farmer, and he raised cotton, and he wanted to have a bumper crop. So he went to one of the, uh, the shamans and explained the situation. The shaman said, okay, I can help you, and you will have a bumper crop, but it's going to cost you something. It's going to be expensive. It's going to cost the life of one member of your family. And he says, well, I got four wives, and I can, yeah, for a good bumper crop, I can sacrifice one of my wives.
So he says, OK, and they did all the, uh, the spirit, uh, incantations and all, all that's involved to make the alliance, and the sacrifice was made, and it was agreed that the first one that went into that field and picked the cotton would be the one that would die. The first one that went in, that was the agreement just between him and this other man. Well, you can't keep anything secret in Africa. Don't ever tell anything, a fam- you know, an intimate family secret to anybody because the next day, you know, it'll be told in gap. It'll be broadcast. Anyhow, word got out about this agreement, and uh, his one wife, the wife that he was going to, uh, sacrifice for the sake of this bumper crop, uh, she got word of this, that this is what was going to happen.
So the day came, and it was a, it was a beautiful crop. I mean, it was a bumper crop, the best one had ever been seen around the area. So he said, okay, and then he told his wife, he said, now listen, we're going to come, but you go ahead and ahead of us, you start to pick the cotton, and, uh, we'll be right along. I have a few things to do. I'll bring the rest of the family, and we'll be there. We'll catch up. She heard about this, so she went right to the field, sat in the little hut in the middle of the field, didn't touch that cotton. Well, he came a- along a little while later, and he's walking through the field, and he starts to pick this cotton. Man, this is good stuff. So he picks this cotton, he gets up there to the little hut in the middle of the field, he looks at her sitting, sitting down on the mat, and he says, well, great, but where's the cotton? She said, well, you know, I got here and I was so tired from the walk, and I was really not feeling too well, so I just came in here and sat down.
I thought I'd wait for all of you to come. And then the light went on. You mean you didn't pick any? No, and I did, and I'm the first one to pick, and the, the alliance was, the, the covenant was with the spirit world, first one to pick dies. Well, very shortly later, but not too much later, he died because that was the agreement. You see, there's benefits that come from these, uh, agreements that are made with the spirit world, but you have to, you got to work by the rules. So this is how this thing worked. And now you can say he died because of the psychological shock or whatever, but I mean, that is a whole realm in which these people are living and working that's real to them.
And you get benefits from playing by these rules, but also there are, uh, you've got to follow the rules exactly as they're laid down. I've got a comment regarding the, uh, the whole matter of the differences between oppression, oppression, possession, Mhm. making a contract and so forth. At the very beginning of the New Testament, there is a story of the devil coming into the wilderness to tempt the Lord Jesus. At the very beginning of the Old Testament, there is a story of the devil coming in the Garden of Eden to tempt Eve. There's remarkable similarities between those two temptation records, but there's a very substantial difference between the two.
When, uh, when the devil came to the Lord, he said, I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world if you'll fall down and worship me. He never said anything like that to Eve, never suggested to Eve she should submit to him. He only asked her to become independent of, of the living God. Uh, the day you eat of that tree, you'll be of God, knowing good and evil. You'll be able to do your own thing. He didn't suggest at all, you, you, you change your loyalty to me. He invited her to declare independence. And the result of that is that the human race, born in sin and rebellion, children of wrath, are not children of the devil. There's a natural resistance in the, in the unsaved man to Satan.
And in order for a demon or for the devil to get into a life, he's got to find that, he's got to crack open the door, he's got to buy in, he's got to force his way in, or he's got the individual has to yield to him by playing around with the occult or astrology or something like that. He's got to open the door, maybe even use the drugs or use it, and you get an effect. It gives Satan an opportunity to get a symbol of him, but it's not natural for us. Natural for us to be as independent as the devil we are of God. Mm-hmm. That's a very interesting point, and that's very true. The, the, the African people, they fear the spirit world, and you'll find very few people that are in animism and traditional religions that are happy with it.
And now, many African, or many people in the world are not happy with Islam, but many are very happy with Islam. They're very happy and content to be Muslims, and they aren't about to change. But the reason, the thing that holds most African people, I mean, I speak of Africa now because that's where I work, in the traditional religions is fear. They're afraid of the spirit world. They don't want to be under. They they aren't looking, uh, to be possessed. Now, some do because they want the power. They want the power that goes along with that. But, as I say, if you if you get the power, there's always a a uh a binding uh contract law that that binds you into that power, and you really, as as the saying goes, sold you, sold your soul to the devil to get the the temporal benefits.
But this is a very real realm, and uh, so demon possession, demon activity is very prevalent, uh, in the the context in which we were working. Now, um, the thing that we have observed that many times the African people need help theologically. Now they can help us. They think the church in Africa, the church in the third world can help us in our materialistic orientated world to become more sensitive to this realm. I think we need help from the church in, in the third world to become more sensitive to this realm that's there, the excluded middle that we should begin to include more and become more sensitive to. But I think they need more help, and they can use help from us theologically, trying to understand certain biblical principles and, uh, begin to to to have more discernment in this realm and to realize some things are demonic, some things are just natural phenomena, and some things are are are explained in the the physical realm.
Uh, as I say, they often see demons in everything, and often they revert to force. Uh, I know of one example of a pastor who, with his elders, uh, took a woman who was really a demon-possessed woman. She was chronically demon-possessed in the village. They took her, and they tried to work on her to get demons out, and they became frustrated, so they tied her up, and they wouldn't give her water, they wouldn't give her food, and they began to tap on her with, uh, with, uh, one of these little, uh, rubber shoes, you know, they wear, thongs, I used to call them. Uh, they begin to tap on her and tap on her and tap to get the demon out. Well, eventually they, they killed the woman. It became a big court case.
She died from the, the heat and from the lack of food and water and this. Uh, so they, they became frustrated, and they reverted to physical force. Uh, and it just, it doesn't, doesn't work. Uh, and it kind of backfired in, in this case. But, uh, so I think they can, the, the African church, for instance, and the church in third world can, can use our help in discerning, uh, in sharing with them the, the wealth of, of theological background that we have in, in our, uh, culture, in our background. Now, another realm, very quickly, is in the realm of sickness. Now, you don't have to go to many parts of the third world and be there for long to realize how prevalent sickness is, uh, in the, the people's of the third world.
Uh, much of it, most of it results from, uh, poor living conditions, lack of clean water, lack of, uh, of medicines that are available, but also there are sicknesses that are demonic related, again, coming from from curses that have been put on people. And, uh, like Bill mentioned, uh, an African often asks not only what, but why. You know, this, um, Mamadu was walking down the road, going to his field, and a tree fell on him, and it killed him. Well, you know, what, what's our, how do we explain that? What, what questions do we ask in that case? You know, why hadn't that tree been cut down? Why didn't somebody observe that that tree was rotten and that it could fall down?
But Africans, they go beyond that. They say, why was it Mamadu? Why this day? You know, why that tree at that spot? You know, they begin to get into the philosophical questions and reasoning behind it. Now, for instance, you, if you're in the parking lot at Kmart or wherever, and somebody bumps your fender and dents your fender in, how many times would you ask, why my car? You know, there's two hundred cars in this lot. Why was it my car that got bumped? Why in this parking lot and not in the other one that I was in before? Why this fender and not that fender? You know, why me and not my husband? That'd be a lot better. We don't get into all these, we just, you know, why didn't he leave his phone number?
You know, that's the kind of questions that, that we ask, or how much is it gonna cost to get the thing bumped out? But the, the African would go much deeper and, uh, to, uh, find out the answer, and they can find out the answers to a lot of these questions because there's spiritual reasons behind it. And they'll go to a witch doctor or Marabu, and for a price, he can do, uh, work in the spirit realm with his, his grigri, uh, all his paraphernalia in the, in the s- in his spiritual practice of his trade, and he can find out why that happened to Mamadu, why it happened on that day, if there is a spiritual cause behind it, and there often is, there often is. So this is what, uh, what we see happening.
And in the realm of sickness, now look at it this way. When we come in and we, we make people Christians, or people become Christians through our ministry, we, we are taking people that, uh, live in the realm of sickness, and they have ways of dealing with their sickness. And, uh, when they, when we take this idols and take, uh, fetish medicine away from them, uh, and we replace it with nothing else, they're left high and dry, and if they get sick or their child is dying, uh, I know a man who lost five kids in two days to measles. Uh, i- i- if there's some sickness and they can't get to to medicine, they can't get to a doctor, what do they do?
Well, the the witch doctor can help them, and many times you can. You see miraculous things happening by the powers of demonic, of, of demon spirits, again, to get people in. Well, if we, we take that all away, if we don't replace it with the power that, that there is in the name of Jesus, for instance, in prayer, then they're, they're, they're left with nothing, and they're going to be tempted to go back. And yeah, my time is gone. Uh, so, uh, hopefully I haven't confused you more. Uh, yeah. Comment. I, I hope this may help and not to simplify matters, but most recently, in the last years, trials and simulations, realizing that we have to ask the question why on numerous occasions, and it makes a very serious fact to, uh, consider our faith and question it and wonder what God is doing and why he's doing this and why is the body and not other things.
And at a very critical point, uh, a friend of mine who happens to be a mortician deals with that and a lot of why questions often every day. He said to me at the time, I thought a lot of history, and he said, sometimes it doesn't do us any good to ask why. But the reality of it is we are not in Godly world. This is a fallen place, which is, I think, sometimes still facing some slight chance of coming to return. Amen.
We're more than conquerors through Christ, and that's our position in him, and that was some of the other information we're going to get to, but we don't have time. Our victory in Christ, and in that we are protected from anything that the enemy would ever want to try to do to us. I just share this with you from our own experience, and as they say, you have much, you have a real commitment worldwide to missions, and many of your missionaries are working in these circumstances, in these situations, and it maybe hopefully will help you to better pray for them and better understand some of the circumstances and struggles they're going through. Thank you. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for your goodness to us. We do thank you, Father, as uh, we just heard that uh, Jim just shared us with us that we are more than conquerors through Jesus Christ, and Father, we thank you that at the cross you destroyed all the powers of the uh, demonic, satanic world, and that we're set free in Jesus, and that we can have this victory through him.
Thank you for your word. Thank you for prayer. Thank you for, uh, Jesus Christ in us. We just pray that you glorify and honor your name. Bless your servants, Lord, many who are struggling, uh, with these forces. Bless your church, which is being born in real spiritual conflict in many parts of the world today. And Lord, we just pray that these young new Christians, who many of them can't even read the Bible, will find victory and power through the name and power and blood of the Lord.