Peru Report #8: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 at 12 noon from Tacna, Peru
Dear Family and Friends:
This morning at 5:45 I was waiting in the hotel lobby for an angel (an elder of the Getsemani #1 church named Anjel). He didn’t arrive until 6:20 so I got a good start on my mile walk just outside the lobby before going with him to get Ricci, our translator, and visiting a lady in another part of town.
This lady is the mother of Edwardo who is in charge of the sound system for the church. She was baptized SDA many years ago when a teenager but says she was like the seed in Jesus’ parable that fell among thorns and was soon uprooted. She went back to the world and did many bad things. Satan has been telling her that she is lost because she went back on her baptismal promises. Lately she has been studying the Bible with Anjel and has attended some of our meetings. She is under deep conviction. What a privilege it was to share with her the Bible promises of forgiveness (1 John 1:9) and cleanliness and to explain to her how Satan does his work. He leads us into sin and then tells us that we are too bad for God to save. After all, God threw Lucifer who became Satan out of heaven with a third of the angels when they rebelled. So, how can God take back into heaven someone who has been such a sinner?
This little mother named Dola has been under torment from Satan over it. She looked so sad. Also she has a job working for a Mormon who will not let her have Sabbath off. She has bills and is a single mom, so her case seemed hopeless. I shared with her how much God loves each of us no matter what we have done and that Jesus came to pay the penalty at Calvary for ALL of our confessed sins. Also, God is well able to care for all our needs (Phil. 4:19). He will be with us in all our struggles (Jude 24, 25). I shared stories including my personal life where God has kept His word on that. We visited until 7:45 and prayed together. In her prayer she opened her life totally to the Lord with tears streaming down her face. She is planning to be baptized this Sabbath and believes her new life will be a strong witness to her sister who is also studying the Bible with Anjel, and another son who is away from God just now. Her face broke out into a beautiful smile as we said “Hasta Luego” (Until later).
The meetings we are conducting here in Tacna at the little “makeshift” church with its small attendance and other inconveniences we have named, has been a rich personal blessing. Even though we have had a hard time getting together all the elements necessary for visitation (schedule, translation, punctuality), these personal visits with people in their very humble homes that end up in lives turned around and the new joy they show, are more than worth all that it takes to accomplish it. We know that we are just instruments in God’s hands to bring hope (esperanze) to them.
Another blessing is the stories we gather in the sharing time of some of our group. I say “some” because many, including Jeff Quam and the Mullins, are with the clinic group and leave immediately after breakfast to do their work there. So they miss this part. God is blessing them for their additional labors and sacrifices.
One story from Bill Tucker of Quiet Hour I plan to use in my sermon tonight along with one from my personal family. He was holding a meeting in an SDA church in Georgia some years ago and was visiting the Head Elder in his farm home. The elder, also named Bill, had lost his wife in death two months before. He told about coming in from the fields one evening and getting undressed for bed when his “wife” appeared and said she had come to comfort him and would come to do that as often as he needed her. The form looked like his wife, sounded exactly like her voice and knew things that the two had shared. Bill, the elder, said he wanted to reach out to her, but remembered what he had learned from the Bible that the dead are DEAD and not alive in another form. (Ecc. 9:5 and John 11 etc) That includes the soul (Ez 18:4). It is in the Resurrection that we get immortal life (1 Thess 4:16,17 and 2 Cor 15:51-54). So Bill said to the form, “Leave me, you are not my wife. You are impersonating my wife. Go and never come back.” The form continued to plead for him to reach out to “her”. Finally, Bill demanded: “In the name of Jesus I command you to leave me and not return.” As the form was going, Bill demanded again, “In the name of Jesus I demand that you tell me your name.” Just before the form faded he looked Bill straight in the eyes and said, “My name is Lucifer” and he was gone. My mother had a similar experience when her mother died and “appeared” in the form of her earlier life without the crippling disease that had plagued her for most of her years.
We have been warned in the Bible (2 Cor. 11:14, 15) that Satan and his angels can transform themselves and appear in different forms of their choosing in order to deceive and lure away from God. In India we were told that the Hindu gods are really the fallen angels that were cast out of heaven with Lucifer. What Lucifer wanted in heaven and did not get was WORSHIP. So he is trying to get it down here now. The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians that he didn’t want them to have “fellowship” with demons. (1 Cor. 10:20). Who gets the worship will be the final issue before the end of the world as we know it now. (See Revelation chapters13 and 17).
In other instances we have heard about, these appearances have offered sex to the bereaved and lonely spouse left behind following a death. This powerful bonding agent brings the disillusioned strongly under the control of the demon. Satan will use every means possible to delude and control any willing to follow him. In this time of New Age and other forms of Spiritualism, it is so important that we KNOW just what the Bible says about these things.
We have had other great experiences in helping people with their problems, but no time right now to tell about them.
Friday morning the Mission here plans to take 15 of us in a bus to visit the Petroglyphs around Tacna and some other things including the Indian Market. It should be interesting. Jeff and some others will miss it because they are going down to Chili across the border. Mary Alice and I are “chili enough” right here so will miss that trip.
In three more days after today (already half gone) we will be packing to leave for home. It will be a time of mixed emotions. We will be very happy to be home and catching up once more, but we will miss the friends we have found here. Who knows when our paths will cross again? We trust that we will meet again at least in heaven when the Lord returns to write “finish” on the hopeless and helpless conditions we see so often here.
With love,
Glenn and Mary Alice (Dad and Mom, Grandpa and Grandma)