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The spirit world is real! Evangelist Daniel Kolenda shares his experience preaching at a Gospel Crusade when what the enemy meant for harm
, God intended for good. There is a battle between good and evil but in 1 John 4:4 we learn that “...He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”
It was a warm night in West Africa. The vast crowd in front of me stretched as far as the eye could see. It’s a surreal sight but something that has become as normal to me as a pastor’s church congregation. The air was hazy with an orange hue as our portable stadium lights on the crusade field filtered through a thick veil of dust kicked up by hundreds of thousands of dancing feet and the ever-present harmattan. As usual I was preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. If memory serves me well, I was preaching about the blood of Jesus that night and the power it has to save, heal, and deliver.
A well-known witch doctor in the region was visiting that night. She was famous because it was said that her curses had the ability to kill their victims. I didn’t know all of this at the time, but later the local pastors gave me the details, which they were familiar with. One pastor said that he was personally aware of nearly a dozen people who had died after coming under her curse. As you can imagine, people were terrified of her and her dark arts.
She had come to the service that night not to hear the gospel but to put a curse on me, the evangelist, and to kill me right there on the platform. Now, you might wonder why someone would want to do such a thing to a nice guy like me. But the truth is she was not the first witch doctor to hate us, nor will she be the last. We are bad for their business. Whenever I come into a region where voodoo and animism are practiced, both of which are quite common in West Africa, I confront these demonic systems without hesitation. They bind many people in darkness and fear. Sometimes the locals will not even dare to utter the name of local demonic spirits or curses out of fear that they will come upon them. I defy them with utter contempt. I will often get a list from the local pastors of the names of these spirits and their curses, which are all well known to and held in fear by the people, and I read them aloud from the platform and break their power in Jesus’ name! The people often gasp at first—amazed I didn’t die on the spot. Then they rejoice in freedom as we burn idols, fetishes, amulets, charms, and all witchcraft juju that people want out of their lives and homes.
I tell the people that once they belong to Jesus, they don’t need to be afraid of any demonic curses. Jesus Christ has the power to protect them and to provide whatever they need. Witch doctors go out of business as a result of losing all their clientele to Christianity. In one city the local witch doctor had large stones at his house that were said to have magical powers. People would pay him to stand on those stones and hear what they believed were the voices of their dead ancestors. But after our gospel crusade this witch doctor was angry with us because his stones were no longer “speaking”! I have seen on several occasions how the witch doctors themselves have become Christians and surrendered their juju to be burned, confessing Jesus as Lord!
The woman who came to the meeting to kill me, however, was apparently on another level. Even the pastors acknowledged her power. But I didn’t even know she was in the meeting. I was just preaching Jesus as I always do. She stood off to the right side of the stage, out in front of one of the two massive towers that suspend our line array speakers. She had brought some strange charms to conduct her business. While I was preaching, she began to conjure some curse to hurl against me. Suddenly—and this is when I became aware of her presence—she let out a bloodcurdling scream and fell to the ground. There she lay, writhing like a snake and foaming at the mouth. I ignored her. With a crowd of half a million people or more, I wasn’t about to stop to address one demon. Hundreds of thousands of people were listening to the gospel. I kept preaching. But we have a team trained to address such occurrences. They carried this woman behind the platform to a tent we had set up for deliverance. We call it “The Snake Pit.”
The deliverance team cast the demons out of her, and she came to her right mind and received Jesus as her Savior.Then they brought her to me on the platform, and she shared her story with me as the massive crowd looked on. The people gasped when they saw her, knowing very well who she was. Even the local pastors on the platform seemed uncomfortable. She told me how she had come to kill me. She told me that when she went to put the curse on me, she was suddenly struck to the ground. She told me how the demons had been cast out of her and she was free. Then she told me how she had surrendered her life to Jesus as well because, in her words, “Jesus is more powerful than my witchcraft.”
This is the reality I live in. I often encounter people who are demonized. I have seen things that would give grown men nightmares (and actually have). If you don’t believe demonic spirits are real, I guarantee one trip with me would change your mind. One thing I know for sure. The spirit world is real. Angels are real, and demons are real. God is real, and Satan is real. We are in the midst of a cosmic battle between good and evil that has been going on for millennia and continues to rage all around us. Some people prefer to ignore it and pretend the visible world is all there is, but no Christian is justified in having such a worldview. The Bible is absolutely clear that the spirit world is not only real but even more real than what we can see. The spirit world is where the battle is raging, and all followers of Jesus need to be sober and vigilant.
©CfaN The Ministry of Evangelist Daniel Kolenda
