Indian Pastor Confronts the Demons

Joy- Welcome to our podcast series, ​“Stories From the Field.” I’m your host Joy Kita and with me today is Ron Pearce.

Ron- It is good to be with you again, Joy.

Joy-Great! I love this podcast because we get to hear all kinds of stories that you personally have heard from the field. So what do you have for us today?

Ron- Well, this is going to be one on the topic shall we say, of deliverance, demonic deliverance, and I’m going to tell the story as it was related to me by this couple and afterwards, I‘m going to try to explain it to you just a little bit more as to what goes behind these sort of stories so here we go. This was in India and this couple came in and they had just gone into a village to live and to start a church. There were no Christians in that village. A few days after getting there they started to notice something going on because they were on a street with 15 other houses and they were renting this because they couldn’t afford to buy a house and they went in as church planters, etcetera. So they go in and they rent this place but they started to notice something in all of these homes and that was that at a certain time of the day, the demonic spirit of the goddess that they worshiped, this demonic spirit would come down into a home, one of the 15, and possess usually the woman of the household, and would go into that woman and the woman would manifest demonic voices, actions, drop to the floor and writhe around, she would just become possessed and would manifest possession. This would last for, I don’t remember what he said but maybe an hour, two hours, something like that and then it would leave. All the families thought this is this goddess who would come and possess the person. God is in our midst shall we say. And so they would think this was absolutely fantastic. Well, the pastor and his family, they saw this and they thought, we’ve got to deliver these people from this.

Joy- They recognized that obviously.

Ron- Oh yeah, it’s very common in India as we are going to get to at the end as I describe this. Then all of a sudden he said we started to fast for 15 days and they would be fasting and fasting and fasting and praying and praying and praying and finally, on the fifteenth day something happened and these goddesses didn’t come anymore. In other words, there was a barrier that was put up through prayer and nothing happened. So the people were getting angry at this couple.

Joy- Because they wanted the goddesses to come.

Ron- Exactly, they wanted this and the pastor obviously knew he was helping the people and this was wrong. He started to get angry reactions, they started to throw stones at his house, and if I remember correctly they were breaking windows that were there, all this sort of thing.

Joy- So they knew that he was praying?

Ron- Yes because the timing of it as soon as he moved into the town all of the sudden no more manifestations and, therefore, they sort of picked up on the fact who is this guy? And he would have been witnessing to them I’m sure and all this sort of thing and he wouldn’t have been quiet about his resistance to this. So, therefore, they came at him and said, ​“Leave, get out of here.” But he had nowhere else to go. So then he starts to pray for another 15 days with his wife. In the midst of this, his wife became very, very ill and very weak and she couldn’t get out of bed. Therefore, it was hard with the children and everything like that to take care of the family and do what was necessary. So she was in bed and there was nothing going on. This one day she dragged herself up out of bed and she goes into the kitchen and when she gets there she finds that there is hot food on the stove that had just been prepared with all of the trappings of a meal. She goes to her husband, she knew the answer to this, and she says, ​“Did you make this?” ​“Well, no I don’t cook. I don’t know how to cook.” You know, it’s like me, I couldn’t start on it. So they found that the door outside had been locked, the windows had been closed, the door inside had been locked and they opened the door and nobody had been there. So they knew, and this is what he said, ​“They knew that an angel had come down and made them supper and that God was there taking care of their needs even while there was persecution from the outside,” they were praying and they were fasting, yes mom and dad but not the little ones. And so they were going through this and so after this whole thing happened on the fifteenth day again he said this happened, ​“All of a sudden the demons came back but they came back in force and they wouldn’t leave.” In other words, they would go to the homes of these people that had worshiped them, they would come down and for seven days they were writhing on the floor, they wouldn’t leave. And, therefore, this was scary for the people and this was sort of like God’s answer to prayer, so you want this? You’re going to get it and, therefore, they were in trouble. They were totally non-functional. So afterwards, what happened was the people came to him and said, ​“Can you release us from this? You’ve got to do something.” So he went and he would walk up to the gate shall we say, of their yard, or the perimeter. They aren’t Western type homes but sort of we’ll say to the gate. They would walk up there, he starts to pray and he starts to bind these spirits and they disappear. He goes to the next house and they didn’t even have to go into the house or even see the person. They would see that the demon would scream and go away. And this freed up the entire town and, therefore, many people started to accept Christ. Well, there is another part to this story. Not too far from here, there was a village of prostitutes and this was these prostitutes in this village, their livelihood, and it was a community sort of thing. Therefore, when the demons left this one village I was talking to you about, they went over to the prostitutes and they would be possessing the prostitutes and they would go through the same thing there. This meant that this whole village was in trouble and now they came to the pastor and said would you please come and free us too like you freed the other village. So he went into that village, prayed over the homes, prayed for the prostitutes, etcetera, freed every one of them. Well, almost all if not all of the prostitutes accepted the Lord and they came to Christ as well. When I left, I had heard the story they were at 15 families, when I left they were 100 families, and churches were started in these two villages. Here is the lesson, Joy. This is very, very common around the world because people get involved with worshiping demons through worshiping these other gods and in India, there are literally billions of gods. Everything is a god you might say. People will raise these graven images or these animals or these different things that they worship and they will call them gods and they will lift them up and give them control over their lives. Now I’m not going to go into a long deep thing on demon possession or demonology or anything like that, but I’m going to tell you this, that this is more common overseas than you could ever imagine, in various countries. Haiti is a terrible place for this.

Joy- Because it’s not very common in North America.

Ron- That is what I’m getting to. We don’t see it here as much. It is here, there’s no doubt about it, but not in the same scale as it is overseas in many of these countries where this is a traditional thing that has been passed on and many of these world religions really envelop and embrace the demonic possession idea. Hinduism and, believe it or not, Islam too in a syncretistic way with their own religion can put these things together and, therefore, demons have great control over the lives of so many people. So when Christians like this pastor and his wife will walk into these situations many, many times, they will have to clean house. And I have heard these stories over and over again. It’s not something that is glorified, there is no ministry around it, they don’t write books about it, they don’t go on television and talk about it, they just clean the house when they would go into an area. Or if it came into it, they would stand against it. But they don’t make a big thing out of it and this is what I’m trying to tell people through telling this story. Many times we glorify, can give too much attention to this demonic activity both here at home and even around the world. That’s not the way the national church handles these things, not one little bit. They will go in, they will pray, they trust Jesus to clean things out and then they don’t talk about it anymore. It’s done and, therefore, their eyes are on Jesus, they glorify the Lord, they don’t give attention to or spend a lot of time in the darkness. They will cut through the darkness with the light and then the Spirit of God will take over and protect them after this.

Joy- And that obviously has many applications for all of us, not to spend too much time in the darkness, if any, and focus on the light.

Ron- That’s the thing. Some people are so enthralled with demons and blackness and darkness and all of these things, but their lives revolve around it. They look for it. Well, these people don’t have to look for it, it’s just there. This is why I’m trying to tell folks here in North America whenever I go, this is one of the things that is normal in the world, spiritually, some areas more than other areas, some hardly at all. That’s why this is how they handled it in India because they are mature about these things. Maturity means that you don’t play with toys all the time, you grow up out of toys. Well, some Christians are playing with demons like toys. That is not a mature way of handling this. The people around the world that I am telling you about are much more mature in the faith than many people here.

Joy- And this would be in a lot of countries because I think in Cuba, with Santeria and all of these different countries they focus on the dark spiritual arts much more.

Ron- It’s almost everywhere and it’s seeping into Western culture and society too. It’s not that we’re immune to it, it’s just the fact that it’s not as strong and the presence isn’t as strong here. I think because many countries have a Christian overview of life, they have grown up in Judeo-Christian ethics shall we say, and that is protecting many, many people from an onslaught like this. But other religions around the world are fertile fields for the work of the demons, as it was in Jesus’ day and he showed us how to handle these things.

Joy- I wonder, to go back to the original story, where he prayed for 15 days and he fasted and he saw results and then the miracle happened and I wonder if God did that because the demons came and stayed and if they hadn’t been so encouraged by that miracle perhaps they might have gotten discouraged.

Ron- That’s true, well, there’s all sorts of things that go around. The one thing when I travel around the world and hear these stories, the variety involved with how God does his work in the various cultures, in various parts of the stories, you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. This is like, when I go, like a smörgåsbord, this huge table of how God works and there is a variation all the time and it’s exciting just to watch and see how God does things. Like you’re right, the angel going down and making supper, where did that come from? It’s sort of like, I’ve never heard that one before.

Joy- And they must have needed that right?

Ron- Yeah, but God knows and he is going ahead of us and taking care of us and dropping hints. And this is the one thing, God never does something in our lives without leaving a footprint and that is why with all these other areas around the world with all the national stories that I hear, there’s always little footprints of how God or his messengers, angels in this case, were active in the lives of the believers. That is important to watch for the footprints.

Joy- Well thank you, Ron. As always it was a great, exciting story to hear and lots to learn from it.