Dave Adams, Author, Queensland, Australia.

Some years ago, I was coordinating a children’s ministry which included a Thursday night meeting where I would present some form of Bible-based teaching.

On several occasions, while I was on my way to these, I would come under a dreadful attack of pain in my back, so bad at times my vision would become as if I was looking through milk!

I would pray against this, and the Lord would take the pain away! This enabled me to drive to the event and preach.

This peculiar intense pain in my back does not affect my driving today and nor do I have the strange interference with my vision. In fact, I drive thousands of kilometres each year, including trucks to deliver or collect goods. My wife and I have recently returned from a caravanning holiday in Tasmania and often go caravanning. The interference with my vision and the great pain in my back were definitely attacks from Satan – proven by the manner that God released me from them through prayer.

Dave’s testimony shows that:

1. God is boss over the devil, who will attack you at your weakest point. So, ask God to show you your weaknesses and to help you deal with them.
2. God can and will defeat satanic attacks. We, though, need to realise we are being attacked, and give the problem to the Lord in prayer. We can’t win without Him.

 “Greater is He who is in you, than he who is in the world” (1John 4: 4)

3. God defeated the devil on the cross. He will defeat him for you, using your prayer and faith.
4. God taught me to ask for His protection before I was attacked. Remember, the Full Armour of God is powerful but requires us to obey God in every aspect of our lives.

 

Ivan Rudolph in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe).

A lovely devout Christian lady went forward for prayer in Bill Anstruther’s Apostolic church. Brenda and I knew the lady and were surprised to see her there because she was a member of another church, but a series of extraordinary miracles had been happening in our little church that had even made the newspaper. Perhaps she read about these or heard about them through the grapevine because there she was.

During the prayer line following the sermon, I was near enough to hear that she had been plagued with severe headaches, unexplained fears that kept her awake, and unexplained depression. Pastor Bill did not pray for her there and then but asked her to stay behind at the end of the service for special prayer. She said she would.

I had something I wanted to speak to Pastor Bill about at the end of the service and I went into the vestry where he was questioning this lady, telling her he had not prayed for her during the service because he had sensed that there was more to her problem than anything physical. He asked whether she been involved in spiritualism.

No, she hadn’t.

Pastor Bill was not satisfied and kept probing. She told him the only unusual thing she had done was to join with others for a while in an ‘automatic writing’ group where they first prayed and waited for inspiration, and then wrote down anything that moved them. “But the messages were all beautiful, about love, friendship and God,” she assured Bill.

“They were counterfeit messages and not from God, and I am ready to pray for you if you would still like me to.”

I was then witness to a disturbing confrontation between God and powers of evil. Bill demanded different spirits leave her. Some refused at first, and some even cursed as they left. What struck me as a gobsmacked observer was how some spoke and argued with a male voice coming out of this gentle, lovely woman.

I never saw her again in that church, but knew her outside of church such that I felt comfortable asking her months later a little more about her experience that night. She assured me that the headaches, depression, fear and sleeplessness had been cured that night and had not returned. She had been cleansed and set free!

“What were you feeling while the male voices cursed and swore?”

“I felt like an observer,” she responded. “It’s the only way I can explain it. I could feel in my throat the vibrations of the voices, but otherwise it was as if I was not involved.”

Many years later a friend visited us in Australia who knew this lady. Without mentioning the incident, I asked how she was. I was delighted to hear she still served as a Sunday School teacher in her original church and remained a shining Christian.

       Ivan’s testimony shows that:

1. God is able to remove the influence of evil spirits even when they have taken up residence in someone.

2. God discerns evil spirits even when they masquerade as beautiful, loving inspirations.

3. God may use a Christian minister to cast out evil spirits successfully. (On another occasion when help was needed Ivan discovered many Christian ministers were ignorant about how to deal with deceitful spirits. It follows that it is important to approach a minister you trust to help you if you have problems in this dimension.)

4. God knows that the harm evil spirits do can be subtle and not obviously related to their presence – for example, causing headaches, irrational fear, sleeplessness and depression. Of course, there are other causes for each of these symptoms and a medical investigation is the best place to start pursuing solutions unless you suspect strongly that your problems have a spiritual source.

Dave Adams, Author, in Queensland, Australia

Some years ago, I was coordinating a children’s ministry which included a Thursday night meeting where I would present some form of Bible-based teaching. There were three children, brothers and sisters that happily attended every week. They came because a Christian neighbour had invited them, so never give up on trying to help families find Jesus!

Sadly, we learned that their mother had committed suicide. We also learned that she was a prostitute, a heroin addict and a practising witch. Please note even though the media and entertainment industry has lied and misled the world regarding witchcraft, it is not of God and is in direct conflict with Him. Even some practitioners don’t know or believe this; nevertheless, it is a Biblical truth.

Our Church had prayer meetings every Friday night which I attended. At one of these, a trusted member of our church approached me and stated; “There are two huge Angels standing either side of you” (me). (Genesis 24:40). At the time, I was grateful, however, I just thought it was a general encouragement. 

The next day I went to visit the three siblings who had lost their mother. A young man was standing at their front gate and as I approached he said; “What do you want man of God?” “I replied that I was here to visit the family in their time of grief.

He then threatened to return with all his friends and beat me up. I ignored him and pushed past.

That lady who answered my knock and opened the door was a thin dark-haired woman wearing a long black dress and covered in tattoos. Please note, not all witches look like her, and I found her looks a little bit of a cliche. I saw that she was wearing silver amulets and necklaces.

On seeing me she screamed, rushed inside and slammed the door.

This happened three times, and each time I noticed she had adorned herself with more silver amulets and necklaces.

She believed that her power came from these trinkets and had clearly never come up against God and His Angels. She was shocked that they were weak against the Blood of Jesus.

Eventually, an elderly, ordinary-looking woman came to the door and I could see that she had intended to tell me to go away, however, something (God) changed her mind.

I entered the house and sat in the kitchen where I was blessed to see some shining Christian posters that the children had coloured in the previous Thursday night’s meeting.

 Dave’s testimony shows that:

1. God wants us to have insight about those we are ministering to. When ministering, or just talking to others, most of the time we have no idea what’s going on in their lives, in their homes, or in their marriages.Silent prayer contact with the Lord can give us the right words or even unexpected knowledge of what the issues are He wants to address. Visiting them can open understanding of their background.
2. God does not want us to be ignorant regarding the tactics of the devil. Even though we may have been lied to about the forces of evil, they still exist and have some power against those without God.
3. God clearly knows the future, and in this case what I was walking into. I needed those two angels!
4. God equips and protects those willing to obey and serve Him.
5. God empowers us to do what is needed to face the enemy; just think of a shepherd boy called David who went up against the giant Goliath.
6. God, who is in Christians, is far greater than whatever it is in the world that comes to hurt us in our relationships, our ministry, our faith and our beliefs. (1John 4:4)
7. God’s light was shining, even in that house of evil, in those posters I saw in the kitchen. If you are in any form of ministry, be encouraged that the light you shine, and the seeds you plant, are effective and successful in God’s timing and way.

Ivan Rudolph when in Rhodesia.

Shortly after Brenda and I became Christians, knowing that we had much to learn, we attended weekly teaching sessions in Salisbury Rhodesia, held by Pat Luffman of Youth for Christ. We found Pat to be an excellent teacher.

Then, during one session, Pat was agitated and his mind was obviously elsewhere. After a while he shared with us why. The previous week he had flown to South Africa and found himself seated next to a man dressed in black, who refused the free lunch offered to him by the air hostess.

“Don’t you like airplane food?” Pat asked, wanting to begin a conversation.

“I’m fasting and praying,” the man responded shortly.

 “I fast and pray to God myself,” Pat said.

“I’m not praying to God, but to Satan. We satanists are gathering in Johannesburg for a conference, and we will be praying against Christian ministers’ marriages.”

We were not as concerned as Pat was. At that time the figures for Christians who prayed together but later divorced were far fewer than the general population, and especially so for the marriages of Christian ministers, which seldom ended in divorce.

However, within a short time, we noticed a big change and heard of a number of the marriages of Christian ministers in trouble, some ending in divorce.

This shook us up, especially when Pat’s own marriage ended in divorce!

Could Pat continue in his ministry once divorced? An investigation cleared him of any personal blame and his effective Christian work continued, but that of some other ministers around the world fell apart when their marriages failed.

I was confused because I knew from an earlier experience at university that God was boss over Satan. But as I searched for answers, I discovered that, among other causes for divorce, God would only support ministers who were hiding sins just so far, after which they would experience His consequences for their actions. I found those sins could generally fit into the categories of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life (1John 2:16).

Ivan’s testimony about Pat shows that:

 1. God expects us as Christians even in this permissive age to work hard at preserving our marriages – that were entered into with promises that God wants us to keep. There are occasions where this becomes impossible or dangerous and my opinion is that God can release us from those promises, at an individual level. These occasions are rarer than most Christians suppose.

 2. God loves us but His plan is to mould us into acceptable members of His family, and that entails personal progress away from serious wilful sinning. If we continue wanton sinning, for our own development, He will remove any protections we may have encircled ourselves with.

 3. If we consistently behave outside of the will of God, He no longer protects us from Satan’s power and plans. In an unexpected way, Satan can become unwillingly a servant to God’s justice.

 4. God has no favourites when it comes to gross sin. A price will be paid, and the payment often begins in this world already.