Grace and peace to my fellow strangers and pilgrims.

A very strange thing happened to me this weekend while visiting my in-laws.
This weekend, my family and I went to visit my wife’s cousin, a pastor, in a small Bavarian village here in Germany, who has been brow-beating us for years for not coming to see him more.  Well, we finally made it to his house, and, I must say, I enjoyed the visit very, very much.

My cousin-in-law is a most garrulous and big-hearted man, and he really has a heart for people and hospitality.  I have never eaten so well in all my life!  My wife’s family is from Angola/Congo, and both the Angolan and the Congolese are known for their hospitality (though I would have to give the slightest edge to the Congolese).

About an hour after my family and I arrived, my wife’s cousin received a visit from a member of his church. The man, let’s call him Pietro, said that he had been saved for about four years, and credits my wife’s cousin for leading him to Jesus. Well, about ten minutes after he arrived, he begins to talk about how, back in March, he had led my father-in-law to accept Jesus as his Savior, when my father-in-law was then visiting us from Angola. I thought this very strange, because my father-in-law is a proud Roman Catholic, and each time I attempted to convince him that as a Roman Catholic he is on a collision course with the Lake of Fire, he rejected the notion immediately.

Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not implying that it was impossible for this man to do what I could not. What I am saying is that Pietro claimed to have merely given my father-in-law the Gospel, and that he accepted it outright. Now, perhaps such a thing is possible if the Roman Catholic has, at some point earlier, heard the Gospel and has been under conviction since that time. But experience has taught me that because the Roman Catholic thinks he is already a Christian, he will reject any argument that his religion is not the path to Salvation, and will, in all likelihood, reject anyone who gives him the Gospel message, because he thinks he is already saved. That Pietro did not, in fact, lead my father-in-law to Christ, is borne out by the fact that my father-in-law’s account of their meeting, which my wife recounted to me about an hour ago, was quite different from Pietro’s. If my wife’s version is accurate, then my father-in-law found Pietro’s efforts merely amusing, to put it charitably.

So, here I was listening to this man telling me how God “downloaded” (his words exactly) all this information about my father-in-law to him and how he used this information to bring my father-in-law to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, when suddenly Pietro exclaimed, “I feel like preaching.” “Then, preach on!” I responded. And this, he proceeded to do.

As he rambled, it was clear that Pietro thought himself a prophet of God, and he inevitably told me that God had a word for me. Take note of what this “prophet” told me. He told me that, though he could see I was saved, it was not enough to just be saved: I had to “do something” with the gift that God had given me. I merely listened, saying nothing about my ministry and evangelization activities. He then invited me to pray with him that God would use me in a way that he never has before. Because prayer is a good thing, I consented, but not before praying silently to myself for the Lord to protect me from any demonic activity. Joining us in prayer was my cousin-in-law, and before long, the two men were on their knees in the center of the living room. I had been seated across from them on the sofa, and I soon rose and got on my knees in front of the sofa. The only other two people in the room were Pietro’s wife and another lady from their church congregation, the latter seated on a love seat to the right of me and the former seated to my left on another chair.

The tempo of the prayer began to pick up, and Pietro was working himself into a frenzy, his voice rising almost to a shout, when suddenly my cousin-in-law starts to pray in what many believe to be tongues. Now, at this, I became someone agitated. I am violently allergic to tongues, which do not edify anyone but the utterer, because they cannot be interpreted. And I start to wonder why I had consented to this foolishness in the first place. I nevertheless played along, hoping that at some point, it would end, and I could eat at last, as my wife had just brought me a hot plate of food, which was supposed to have been taken as a polite cue to end the madness, but, instead, was totally ignored.

About ten minutes into his fiery oration, I start to notice that Pietro is using some alarming terminology in his prayer. He starts saying things like breaking strongholds, delivering from bondage, “Free him,” “Loose him,” and things of that nature. It was then that I realized that this was some sort of deliverance session. This man was trying to cast a demon from me!

When I realized what was going on, I rose to my feet, only to find that Pietro had already risen to his. So, while my eyes were closed and I was on my knees, Pietro had risen to his feet and was, effectively, praying over me. I started for the door, but, unsure of my cousin-in-law’s role in this, and not wanting to offend him, I turned back and decided to, in as charitable a manner as I could muster, reject the spirit of this prayer. And I do this, praying aloud to the Lord Jesus, and reaffirming Him as Lord, and rejecting any notion that I need deliverance from any thing, and rebuking the spirit that had taken over the proceedings. As I spoke, according to my wife, who had remained at the rear of the room after bringing me the plate of food, both my cousin-in-law and Pietro fell completely silent, except for an occasional “Amen.” Satan bowed the knee to Jesus.

When he had regained his composure, Pietro ended the prayer, and immediately denied that he was trying to cast out any demon from me, saying that he was merely praying for me to be filled with the Spirit. Because I didn’t want to argue with him, and because I was hungry, I didn’t argue with him, but noted in my spirit that this is not what he said we were praying for. He merely had to ask that I be filled with the Spirit, if that is what he really wanted to do, avoiding a long, tedious, and pointless dissertation. What this man did not know, was that I was filled with the Spirit when I rejected his activity, and that it was the Spirit, respecting my host, that kept me from rebuking this man more severely than I did, because I certainly wanted to.

Visibly slightly perturbed by what had just transpired, Pietro tells me that God’s word to me was that I need to humble myself more.  Because humility is a good thing, I received his words cheerfully, and that was that.

Now, after dinner, he continued to talk, and even to sing. I tolerated the singing because I don’t know that many songs and I could always stand to learn a few more. I even sang along with him. But after about 45 minutes, it was clear that my wife was completely sick of him. Later, his wife and my cousin-in-law made up some little fliers inviting people to his church, which they said they wanted to pass out at a small volksfest (block party) that was going on in town that night. My wife suggested that I bring some gospel tracts to distribute at the fest. I just happened to have a number of gospel tracts in my pocket which I had brought for just such an occasion as this, so off we went to the fest.

The fest was teaming with people when we got there, and I wasted no time passing out tracts to people. Following my lead, my cousin-in-law started to pass out his invitations. About ten minutes later, he asks if he can have some tracts, and I give him some, noticing that he placed an invitation inside each tract he handed out. Later, I told him that I could send him some tracts if he wants, and he refuses, saying that he doesn’t even know what they are all about. I wondered, therefore, why he would place an invitation for his church inside a gospel tract not knowing the message they contain.

Then I remembered that about two years ago, a man in my wife’s church invited me to go “evangelizing” with him. I was soon to find out that the man’s idea of evangelizing was, as was my cousin-in-law’s, passing out invitations to come to his church. Not two weeks after this event, the man left the church, and has never returned. It is said that he joined another church, because his former church offered him no opportunity for advancement. But my spirit tells me that he was told to leave that church, because he had accomplished there the mission for which he was sent.

I believe what is happening here is that Satan is trying to get me to endorse one of his false churches, by somehow associating that church with my evangelization ministry. Another proof of this is that my wife’s uncle, who is a pastor of a small congregation in Belgium, has asked me on at least two occasions to what church I send people after evangelizing them. Each time I have told him that it is not my job to endorse any church, as what church a person attends is largely up to him and the Holy Spirit. My job is to preach the gospel, not endorse churches. Ironically, he once asked me to send him some tracts, but, tragically, I was to find out that instead of passing them out, he used them as a Bible study tool, asking his congregants to look up the Bible verses and commit them to memory.

Back to my cousin-in-law. The next day, which was this past Sunday, my family and I visited my cousin-in-law’s church, and as soon as I entered the sanctuary, I noticed the following very disturbing object on the wall:

Friends, that is a dead jesus on that wall.  And a dead jesus is an emblem of the Roman Catholic church.  What is missing is the cross, which would make this object a crucifix, making it painfully clear what spirit is actually moving in this church congregation.  With or without the cross, however, a dead jesus is an abomination in the eyes of God, because those who crucify Jesus again and again by leaving Him on the cross, “crucify the son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame” (Hebrews 6:6).

I will tell you right now, that no church that has a dead Jesus hanging on the wall has any power, nor any victory, for the Holy Spirit will not step foot into that church.  I don’t care how much noise they make, how much they clap, how much they hoop and holler, and how many times they say the name of Jesus.  If Jesus is dead in your church, then Jesus is dead in your heart.

And the church service proved it.  I looked intently into the faces of many, and it was obvious that they were just going through the motions, especially the young ones.

And there was something else.  If you look at the second photo above, in the foreground, you will see a young German woman holding a baby.  That is the wife of the man I’ve been talking about.  Now, if you are a man, examine this photo closely and try to imagine if this lady were standing in the row in front of you, while you were sitting down. Honestly ask yourself if you would not be at least the slightest bit distracted.  If you are a woman, ask yourself if you would want this woman standing in front of your husband dressed this way.  In case you cannot imagine this, bookmark this page, because she directed the children’s choir and stood in front of the entire congregation with her back towards the viewer.  I taped the choir, because my cousin-in-law’s two daughters sang also.  On the closeups, I had to go to great lengths not to capture any “colorful” footage, but on the zoom out, it is still evident.

There were at least two other women in the congregation who wore similarly tight pants and the effect was the same.  When I pointed this out to my wife, her response was that a saved man has no business looking.  I told her that a preacher was a man before he got saved, and doesn’t stop being a man because he is saved.  Many preachers have had their testimony destroyed because of some woman in the congregation.  And oftentimes it started with a look that was precipitated by some tight worldly pants that have no place in the house of God.  

My wife used to dress like this in church also, and when I would tell her she should not dress this way, she would get angry and say that I was old fashioned.  Eventually, I just stopped going to church with her.  Occasionally she will still dress this way, but she will wear a long shirt or a shawl that drapes down over her backside.

One more thing: at the close of the church service, a man got up and sang a song.  As he held up his hand, I could not help but notice that his fingers formed the familiar Cult of Mary hand sign.  

It is possible that it was unintentional, but under the circumstances, it may very well not have been.  So at the end of the day, Rome was at the bottom of the whole thing, as if I didn’t already know that.  

I’m not going to say what I believe all this means.  If you are of any discernment, you already know.  One thing’s for sure: Satan is a liar.

Be encouraged and look up, for your redemption draweth nigh.

The Still Man