Hi John,
Jim said you were asking about what happened to the Saudi guys in Salem yesterday. I was on a team with Fotios and Barry when a Saudi Harvard professor M- in psychology came in with a friend Ma-, an MA student in business. M- said that he had been in the gathering for a spiritual reading last year and this year he brought Ma- who had just arrived in the US. We first gave Ma- a spiritual reading. Unfortutely Barry and Fotios treated both guys like new age people, talking about the Creator in front of these Muslims. M-, the prof, said to Ma- 'they mean God' but Barry and Fotios did not pick up on it and kept talking about the Creator. They both got very good words for Ma-: they saw him as a royal person who takes good care of others. Ma- said that he doesn't like to be higher than others. We could not understand why that was a problem for him so there was a pause. Then I asked them straightaway if they were Muslims. They said yes. I said that we both believe in Jesus, except they call him Isa al Masih. M- said 'yes but he is a prophet for us but not for you Christians'. Fotios said 'he is the son of God for us' and then the conversation went on another topic. Ma- also asked if there was a spell on him as he has many enemies who are into black magic. (At this point it should have dawned on me that Ma- was afraid of being a royal person as this would attract the jealousy of his friends, or the evil eye or whatever but I only realized this hours later). Fotios said that he saw that Ma- was well protected. Ma- said that that that makes sense as he has had the impression since age 5 that there is some being from another dimension standing behind him, protecting him. Fotios and Barry tried to tell him that that is the Creator who wants to have a relationship with him, and that Ma- can take the initiative to make contact with him. I was afraid that this would affirm them in their belief in Allah so I became more and more nervous. Ma- said that he could see I wanted to say something. So I said that, according to the Quran Jesus will judge the world, so he is very important, so he can protect Ma-. I did not get any further. I'm not sure if I got the order right here, was I first or was Fotios first? Anyhow, I regret that I not having said that the person protecting him was Jesus in my view but on the other hand I cannot disagree with Fotios in front of them. I was also too slow to react because I was intimidated by the idea that I was talking to Muslims. We gave M- also an encouraging word but made no spiritual connection. I will just keep praying for them.
I learned from this that on the one hand I should not be intimidated and take more initiative, but on the other, I don't think we could improve anything as we were trained to help ex Catholics and new agers but not muslims as they are so rare. If you were to train us for Muslims as well the training would take a few more days... Besides that, we cannot correct each other in front of the clients, can we?
Thank you for your training and for leading us. We enjoyed the outreach very much and learned a lot.
Blessings,
Nelleke
Here's a little description of my last two sessions, which were such a blessing to me.
- JJ
Last Two Ministry Sessions, 2010-10-31 (around 9:00- 10:00 PM)
Team:
April (leader)
Dennis (with red headscarf & moccasins)
Jim Johansson
1) To M- & J-
M- was coming back after getting prophecy last year because he got such accurate revelation last year. He definitely wasn’t disappointed this year in that department. I have seen by now a lot of accurate revelation, but the accuracy and confidence with which things were delivered here went beyond anything I had seen, and really left me in awe, both by Dennis and April.
April described very accurately J-'s personality, even noting that “someone with horns” (M-’s costume) teased her about some to these characteristics. Basically she was very childlike and starry-eyed.
Dennis described M- in great detail, how everything he does is focused on the future, at the expense of enjoying the present, and how he could correct this. Everything was extremely accurate and detailed.
We did a “spiritual encounter” for both of them. J- felt tingling and some heat. M- got some revelation, seeing a forge, and something being built, and some other things.
In the end M- revealed that he believed in the Norse gods. April talked some about this, apparently ineffectively. I wished I had asked him, “You’ve seen that the God of the Bible can give you accurate revelation, and solutions to your problems, showing that he loves you. Could the gods you are now following do that for you?” Unfortunately I didn’t ask that.
2) D-
D- was quite a case, and quite a gift from God as my final Halloween experience here. He apparently slipped by the screeners, and suddenly just plopped himself down in the chair in front of us when the previous couple got up. He talked very much, and obviously used it as a defense mechanism as well. He turned out to be an ex-con, and he clearly had the ex-con ways of both manipulation and looking for someone’s tricks in everything, not trusting anything you say, always looking for your “angle”. He knew AA inside and out, plus NA (narcotics anonymous). He was using come-on language with April, which she of course ignored. He got up to walk away, when April called out to say we really wanted to do a reading for him, and he came back and sat down again.
April told Dennis to go first, apparently knowing he had something. D- jokingly asked, “So, are you going to tell me about my future?” When he saw how burdened Dennis was to give the word, he said, “Don’t worry, if you see me going to jail, I’m used to that. I’ve been there many times.”
Dennis told him, “I’m not going to tell you about your future, but about your past.” Then he said, with an obvious emotional struggle, “This is totally outside of what we do, but I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway. When you were a little child, someone beat you brutally. You can do all the AA you want, but until you deal with this, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Finally D- was caught by surprise, and sat briefly with his mouth open. It turned out even worse that stated. After he had done something naughty, his grandmother told him to come to her, promising that she wouldn’t do anything to him. When she got a hold of him, she beat him bloody, to within an inch of his life. So she had betrayed his trust as well as nearly killing him.
Dennis told him that he would have to forgive his (dead) grandmother. Very surprisingly, D- was not only willing, but seemed to do it quite easily.
About that time, the Spirit came very powerfully on me, in a slightly different experience than I had ever had. It was like a freight train passing thru me, headed for David. As soon as I was about to say something, April said, “Jim, I think you’ve got a word for D-”.
I released this word, “God says he is going to grow you up into the full stature of the man he designed you to be.” I could barely choke out the last words with the overwhelming emotion that gripped me. I expected to see this freight train bowl D- over, but I really didn’t seem much impact on him. I repeated it to try and get him to remember it. I still couldn’t believe how he didn’t appear to be impacted, as it had totally penetrated my soul, and was still doing so an hour later.
After that April revealed that he had made some inner vow that kept him from getting married. It turned out he had done that in 11th grade after an unrequited love, and had dropped out of high school as a result. April discussed some psychological ins and outs with D-, showing, I thought, great insight.
Sometime in there there was more discussion of the abuse, and God gave me a second word; again I was very powerfully gripped by it. I delivered it, with somewhat less emotion than the first, but still it was very powerful in my soul. It was something like, “God says it ends with you. This generational curse of abuse ends with you.” (I motioned a horizontal cutting-off motion with my hand.) I then explained that he could get married with confidence, because now the abuse cycle was broken, and would not go on to his children if had had any. He then told us he had traced it back to his great grandmother; he assumed that it went back for many more generations, but he couldn’t trace it back any farther than her.
They led him to renounce that vow, and break the power of it. Strangely it turned out to be harder for him to do that forgiving his grandmother, but eventually he got there.
At this point Dennis suddenly says, “Now I’m going to reveal your future to you. You are going to be in demand to speak at AA meetings because of your powerful testimony. You will be travelling to different places to give your testimony.”
Several times D- showed he couldn’t believe what was happening, couldn’t believe April and I had just met, etc. His mind seemed to be wildly searching for some “angle”, and coming up blank. I trust eventually he concluded that there was no “angle” – we really were who we said, and were really getting revelation, and communicating the love of God.
Somewhere in all the talk, he had revealed that he prays to Jesus, but we didn’t explore where he was at spiritually beyond that while I was still there. Hopefully April and Dennis did more when I left. I felt I had to leave to get Byarta back home, as well as my wife, so I left D- in their hands.
From Dennis:
Hi, Phil. Here's a write up of a ministry experience I had on Sunday.
Wishing I was still in Salem hanging out with you.
It was late Halloween night and another successful, fulfilling season of ministering to people at Salem was just about over. The team I was ministering with at the time was just finishing up what seemed to be an effective session with two people, a couple. We had said our goodbyes, and they had no sooner stood to leave when a very animated man, gesturing and talking nonstop, came over and sat down, and began flirting with April, the lone woman on our team of three. April tactfully excused herself and walked away, saying she needed a short break, but would be back. The other team member and I (Forgive me, whoever you are, I forgot your name. You’re from the North Shore Bridge and you look a little like Brian McClaren) tried to engage the man in conversation. He never stopped talking in his nervous laughter kind of speech, and never stopped moving either. He sat, then he stood, then he was leaving, then he was walking back, talking nervously and waving his arms the whole time. It sounds like I’m describing someone on drugs, but I was certain he wasn’t. Eventually, he told us he had been shooting heroin prior to going through rehab. He told us how long he’d been clean, but I don’t remember what he said. Around ninety days, if I remember right. He also said he had spent much time in jail. All the while, he kept saying he had to go, he couldn’t stay.
April came back and sat down, and the monologue continued, with April interjecting as often as she could for the man to stay and sit. Eventually, he did sit, and we were able to get him quiet long enough to go before the Father for him. I immediately got a picture of him as a child and an adult was severely beating him. I didn’t feel the most prudent thing to do would be to just blurt that information out, so I asked Father what I should say to the man. He said, “Tell him you see him as a child and someone is beating him”. I decided that couldn’t be God, so I asked again and didn’t get anything. Experience has taught me that that means I need to do the last thing God told me to do. But I was wrestling with it.
April noticed I was agitated, and suggested I speak. So I said to the man, “I see you as a child, and someone is beating the crap out of you”. The man’s jaw dropped, and his eyes widened. He stared at me, and said, very slowly, “Woooooow!” He repeated it several times. He even said it backwards. He told us it was his grandmother who had beaten him, and that there had been a lot of blood, and he had been injured badly. April and the other man on the team got very comforting, loving words for the man. We all had tears in our eyes. We were able to demonstrate to the man how to release his grandmother by forgiving her, and to ask the Lord to forgive her also, which he did, in his own words.
As we continued to minister to him, he, in his own words, repented of a vow he had made as a child. He had earlier expressed faith In Jesus, whom he had met as a result of the twelve step programs he was using to get clean and sober. The man was transformed before us. His whole demeanor changed. The agitation was gone, the façade was gone. There was peace on his face—all over him, in fact. He talked about Jesus, about recovery, about plans for his future, about bettering himself. April told him about churches he could attend, including The Gathering. Before he left, he hugged us all—big, tight, bear hugs that lasted a long time. Only a few minutes before, he had not been a man you could hug—well, maybe April could have! He left, not with April’s phone number, but mine. He called me yesterday, which was Tuesday, November 2. He was still amazed at all that had happened, particularly that he had forgiven his grandmother. He had told friends about all that had happened, and his friends had not believed it. But he said, “I was there! I know what happened”. He said that the next day would be the anniversary of his grandmother’s death, and that he planned to go to his mother’s to see if he could e a comfort to her, and to tell her he had forgiven her.
Father, you are awesome! Thanks!
