After sending yesterday’s blog last night (morning your time) we went to the hotel restaurant to eat. Before we ordered Moses got a call from the pastor of the church where we had our first conference, the day we arrived. A couple days after we left some American pastors came with Bibles to give out and went to the school in town and started giving them out. They were attacked by a large group of Hindus who tore up the Bibles, beat them up and had them put in jail. Some of the local pastors who had been at our conference went to the police later and ask to have them released so in the middle of the night, when no one would know, they released the American pastors.
In case you wonder about us, we never ever do anything in pubic. I quietly move from one church to another to minister. We like to walk through the streets like tourists (I am on a tourist visa) and talk with the children and people there. Since the outdoor baptisms I did several years ago we haven’t done anything like that. At the same time another American pastor doing baptisms (but announcing them publicly) was removed from the country. We did ours quietly in a canal and small lake, but won’t do that again, either. Everything is very discrete and out of the public eye. After all our purpose is to train and support pastors, not evangelize in public.
On the better side of the news, Moses also received a phone call from the pastor of the Dalit slum church we were at Saturday night. The children are still very glad we came – Americans coming to the slum to see them is more than they ever imagined!!!!! Better yet, two of the women we laid hands on and prayed for have been healed. He thinks their ailments were demonic (very common here) and with the demons gone they were physically OK! Another victory for the Lord – Praise the Lord for that!
By the way, the pastor mentioned above, whose church we used for the first conference, said a lot about how blessed everyone was from the conference. All the pastors report that. Words like “best ever” an “life changing” are used to describe it. We start the first day with me talking about what God expects of pastors, closing with the importance of making their wife there #1 sheep. Alan then does the second session on Biblical marriage. I then do a session on the Rapture and then the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and our rewards. It is wonderful to teach those truths to hungry hearts hearing this for the first time. Day two I continue the prophecy theme by going over the Tribulation and Second Coming of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords in Revelation 19. The fourth prophecy session is about the millennium and eternity. What a joy and privilege it is to share these truths day after day – Jesus’ glory and victory ring out loudly in these messages.
Then comes the best part, the close of every conference. I use Mark 5 about the man in Gadarenes to teach about spiritual warfare, closing with a group prayer for deliverance and then my prayer for deliverance for all of them. All I can say is that it is powerful, yet that word falls far short. I feel God’s power so strongly I think I will explode if He pours any more of it into me, but He does. That shows me His power in setting these people free. It is thrilling, exhilarating, amazing, wonderful – just a taste of heaven inside me. Afterwards I am drained. My hands shake and I can’t even hold a pencil for awhile. What a privilege to be a channel for the victorious power of God Almighty! I am beyond tears at how wonderful and powerful the experience. And I get to do this at the close of every conference year after year after year! You should hear the testimonies of the people after the session is over! Moses translates them for me. What a time of praise and worship we all have! God is certainly the victor here!
Hebrews 11:35 Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36 Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37 They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.
Continue to pray for the pastors and Christians in India as you started yesterday. Pray God would continue to use and bless our conferences. Certainly the enemy is well aware of them and it’s only God’s grace that sustains us in this area where Satan rules so strongly.