George Otis Jr.
George Otis Jr presents vivid stories of the transformation of cities
and regions in the two videos Transformation 1 and 2. This article about some of those cities is from Chapter 1 of his
book Informed Intercession.
For some time now, we have been hearing reports of large-scale
conversions in places like China, Argentina and Nepal. In many instances, these conversions have
been attended by widespread healings, dreams and deliverances. Confronted with these demonstrations of
divine power and concern, thousands of men and women have elected to embrace
the truth of the gospel. In a growing
number of towns and cities, God’s house is suddenly the place to be.
In some communities throughout the world, this rapid church growth has
also led to dramatic socio-political transformation. Depressed economies, high crime rates and corrupt political
structures are being replaced by institutional integrity, safe streets and
financial prosperity. Impressed by the
handiwork of the Holy Spirit, secular news agencies have begun to trumpet these
stories in front-page articles and on prime-time newscasts.
If these transformed communities are not yet common, they are certainly
growing in number. At least a dozen
case studies have been documented in recent years, and it is likely that others
have gone unreported. Of those on file,
most are located in Africa and the Americas.
The size of these changed communities ranges from about 15,000
inhabitants to nearly 2 million.
Given the extent of these extraordinary stories I have limited my
reporting to select highlights. Despite
their brevity, these abridged accounts nevertheless offer glorious “snapshots”
of the Holy Spirit at work in our day.
Readers interested in more details can find them in books like Commitment
to Conquer (Bob Beekett, Chosen Books, 1997), The Twilight Labyrnth
(George Otis, Jr., Chosen Books, 1997) and Praying witb Power (C. Peter Wagner, Regal Books, 1997).
One of the earliest and largest transformed communities of the
twentieth century is found in Mizoram, a mountainous state in northeastern
India. The region’s name translates as
“The Land of the Highlanders.” It is an
apt description as a majority of the local inhabitants, known as Mizos, live in
villages surrounded by timbered mountains and scenic gorges.
The flora is not entirely alpine, however, and it is not uncommon to
see hills covered with bamboo, wild bananas and orchids. The Mizos are hearty agriculturists who
manage to grow ample crops of rice, corn, tapioca, ginger, mustard, sugar cane,
sesame and potatoes.
But it is not farming prowess that sets Mizoram’s 750,000 citizens
apart. Nor, for that matter, is it
their Mongol stock. Rather it is the
astonishing size of the national church, estimated to be between 80 and 95
percent of the current population. This
achievement is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that Mizoram is
sandwiched precariously between Islamic Bangladesh to the west, Buddhist Myanmar to the east and south, and the Hindu states of Assam, Manipur and Tripura
to the north.
Before the arrival of Christian missionaries in the late nineteenth
century, local tribes believed in a spirit called Pathan. They also liked to remove the heads of their
enemies. But in just four generations
Mizoram has gone from being a fierce head-hunting society to a model community
– and quite possibly the most thoroughly Christian place of comparable size on
earth. Certainly in India there is no
other city or state that could lay claim to having no homeless people, no
beggars, no starvation and 100 percent literacy.
The churches of Mizoram currently send 1,000 missionaries to
surrounding regions of India and elsewhere throughout the world. Funds for this mission outreach are
generated primarily through the sale of rice and firewood donated by the
believers. Every time a Mizo woman
cooks rice, she places a handful in a special ‘missionary bowl.’ This rice is then taken to the local church,
where it is collected and sold at the market.
Even the non-Christian media of India have recognized Christianity as
the source of Mizoram’s dramatic social transformation. In 1994 Mizoram celebrated its one-hundredth
year of contact with Christianity, which began with the arrival of two
missionaries, William Frederick Savage and J. H. Lorraine. On the occasion of this centennial
celebration, The Telegraph of Calcutta (February 4, 1994) declared:
Christianity’s most reaching influence was the spread of education ...
Christianity gave the religious a written language and left a mark on
art, music, poetry, and literature. A
missionary was also responsible for the abolition of traditional slavery. It would not be too much to say that
Christianity was the harbinger of modernity to a Mizo society.
A less quantifiable but no less palpable testimony to the Christian
transformation of Mizorarn is the transparent joy and warmth of the Mizo
people. Visitors cannot fail to observe
“the laughing eyes mid smiling faces,” in the words of one reporter, on the
faces of the children and other residents of Mizoram. And nowhere is this spirit of divine joy more evident than in the
churches, where the Mizo’s traditional love of music and dance has been
incorporated into worship. The
generosity of the people is also seen in their communal efforts to rebuild neighbours’
bamboo huts destroyed by the annual monsoons.
Eighty percent of the population of Mizorarn attends church at least
once a week. Congregations are so
plentiful in Mizoram that, from one vantage point in the city of Izol, it is
possible to count 37 churches. Most
fellowships have three services on Sunday and another on Wednesday evening (1).
The state of Mizoram is governed by a 40-member assembly that convenes
in the capital of Aizawl. Although
there are different political parties, all of them agree on the ethical demands
of political office in Mizorwn.
Specifically, all candidates must be:
·
persons with a good reputation
·
diligent and honest
·
clean and uncorrupt
·
nondrinkers
·
morally and sexually unblemished
·
loyal to the law of the land
·
fervent workers for the welfare of the people
·
loyal to their own church
How many of our political leaders could pass this test? For that matter, how many of our religious
leaders could pass?
In the mid-1970s, the town of Almolonga was typical of many Mayan
highland communities: idolatrous, inebriated and economically depressed. Burdened by fear and poverty, the people
sought support in alcohol and a local idol named Maximon. Determined to fight back, a group of local
intercessors got busy, crying out to God during evening prayer vigils. As a consequence of their partnership with
the Holy Spirit, Almolonga, like Mizoram, has become one of the most thoroughly
transformed communities in the world.
Fully 90 percent of the town’s citizens now consider themselves to be
evangelical Christians. As they have
repudiated ancient pacts with Mayan and syncretistic gods, their economy has
begun to blossom. Churches are now the
dominant feature of Almolonga’s landscape and many public establishments boast
of the town’s new allegiance.
Almolonga is located in a volcanic valley about 15 minutes is west of
the provincial capital of Quetzaltenango (Xela). The town meanders for several kilometres along the main road to
the Pacific coast. Tidy agricultural
fields extend up the hillsides behind plaster and cement block buildings
painted in vivid turquoise, mustard and burnt red. Most have corrugated tin roofs, although a few, waiting for a
second story, sprout bare rebar. The
town’s brightly garbed citizens share the narrow streets with burros, piglets
and more than a few stray dogs.
Although many Christian visitors comment on Almolonga’s “clean”
spiritual atmosphere, this is a relatively recent development. “Just twenty years ago,” reports Guatemala
City pastor Harold Caballeros, “the town suffered from poverty, violence and
ignorance. In the mornings you would
encounter many men just lying on the streets, totally drunk from the night
before. And of course this drinking
brought along other serious problems like domestic violence and poverty. It was a vicious cycle.”
Donato Santiago, the town’s aging chief of police, told me during an
October 1998 interview that he and a dozen deputies patrolled the streets
regularly because of escalating violence.
“People were always fighting,” he said.
“We never had any rest.” The
town, despite its small population, had to build four jails to contain the
worst offenders. “They were always
full,” Santiago remembers. “We often
had to bus overflow prisoners to Quetzaltenango.” There was disrespect toward women and neglect of the family. Dr. Mell Winger, who has also visited
Almolonga on several occasions, talked to children who said their fathers would
go out drinking for weeks at a time. “I
talked to one woman,” Winger recalls, “whose husband would explode if he didn’t
like the meal. She would often be
beaten and kicked out of the home.”
Pastor Mariano Riscajché one of the key leaders of Almolonga’s
spiritual turnaround, has similar memories.
“I was raised in misery. My
father sometimes drank for forty to fifty consecutive days. We never had a big meal, only a little
tortilla with a small glass of coffee.
My parents spent what little money they had on alcohol.”
In an effort to ease their misery, many townspeople made pacts with
local deities like Maximon (a wooden idol rechristened San Simon by Catholic
syncretists), and the patron of death, Pascual Bailón. The latter, according to Riscajché, “is a
spirit of death whose skeletal image was once housed in a chapel behind the
Catholic church. Many people went to
him when they wanted to kill someone through witchcraft.” The equally potent Maximon controlled people
through money and alcohol. “He’s not
just a wooden mask,” Riscajché insists, “but a powerful spiritual
strongman.” The deities were supported
by well-financed priesthoods known as confradías (2).
During these dark days the gospel did not fare well. Outside evangelists were commonly chased
away with sticks or rocks, while small local house churches were similarly
stoned. On one occasion six men shoved
a gun barrel down the throat of Mariano
Riscajché. As they proceeded to
pull the trigger, he silently petitioned the Lord for protection. When the hammer fell, there was no
action. A second click. Still no discharge.
In August 1974 Riscajché led a small group of believers into a series
of prayer vigils that lasted from 7 P.M.
to midnight. Although prayer
dominated the meetings, these vanguard intercessors also took time to speak
declarations of freedom over the
town. Riscajché remembers that
God filled them with faith. “We started praying, ‘Lord, it’s not possible
that we could be so insignificant when
your Word says we are heads and not tails.’”
In the months that followed, the power of God delivered many men
possessed by demons associated with Maximon and Pascual Bailón. Among the more notable of these was a
Maximon cult leader named José Albino Tazej.
Stripped of their power and customers, the confradías of Maximon made a
decision to remove the sanctuary of Maximon to the city of Zunil.
At this same time, God was healing many desperately diseased
people. Some of these hearings led many
to commit their lives to Christ (including that of Madano’s sister-in-law
Teresa, who was actually raised from the dead after succumbing to complications
associated with a botched caesarean section).
This wave of conversions has continued to this day. By late 1998 there were nearly two dozen
evangelical churches in this Mayan town of 19,000, and at least three or four
of them had more than 1,000 members.
Mariano Riscajché’s El Calvario Church seats 1,200 and is nearly always
packed. Church leaders include several
men who, in earlier years, were notorious for stoning believers.
Nor has the move of God in Almolonga been limited to church
growth. Take a walk through the town’s
commercial district and you will encounter ubiquitous evidence of transformed
lives and social institutions. On one
street you can visit a drug-store called ‘The Blessing of the Lord.’ On another you can shop at ‘The Angels’
store. Feeling hungry? Just zip into ‘Paradise Chicken,’ ‘Jireh’
bakery or the ‘Vineyard of the Lord’ beverage kiosk. Need building advice?
Check out ‘Little Israel Hardware’ or ‘El Shaddai’ metal
fabrication. Feet hurt from shopping? Just take them to the ‘Jordan’ mineral baths
for a good soak.
If foreigners find this public display of f@iith extraordinary, Mariano
sees it as perfectly natural. “How can
you demonstrate you love God if you don’t show it? Didn’t Paul say, ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel’?”
The contents of the stores have also changed. Mell Winger recalls visiting a small tienda where the
Christian proprietor pointed to a well-stocked food shelf and said, “This was
once full of alcohol.” Town bars have
not fared any better. Harold Caballeros
explains: “Once people stopped spending their money on alcohol they actually
bought out several distressed taverns and turned them into churches. This happened over and over again.” One new bar did open during the revival, but
it only lasted a couple of months. The
owner was converted and now plays in a Christian band.
As the drinking stopped, so did the violence. For 20 years the town’s crime rate has declined steadily. In 1994, the last of Almolonga’s four jails
was closed. The remodelled building is
now called the ‘Hall of Honour’ and is used for municipal ceremonies and
weddings. Leaning against the door,
police chief Donato Santiago offered a knowing grin. “It’s pretty uneventful around here,” he said.
Even the town’s agricultural base has come to life. For years, crop yields around Almolonga were
diminished through a combination of and land and poor work habits. But as the people have turned to God they
have seen a remarkable transformation of their land. “It is a glorious thing,” exclaims a beaming Caballeros. “Almolonga’s fields have become so fertile
they yield three harvests per
year.” In fact, some farmers I talked
to reported their normal 60-day growing cycle on certain vegetables has been
cut to 25. Whereas before they would
export four truckloads of produce per month, they are now watching as many as
40 loads a day roll out of the valley.
Nicknamed “America’s Vegetable Garden,’ Almolonga’s produce is of
biblical proportions. Walking through
the local exhibition hall 1 saw (and filmed) five-pound beets, carrots larger
than my arm and cabbages the size of oversized basketballs (3). Noting the dimensions of these vegetables
and the town’s astounding 1,000 percent increase in agricultural productivity,
university researchers from the United States and other foreign countries have
beat a steady path to Almolonga.
“Now,” says Caballeros, “these brothers have the joy of buying big
Mercedes trucks -with cash.” And they
waste no time in pasting their secret all over the shiny vehicles. Huge metallic stickers and mud flaps read
‘The Gift of God,’ ‘God Is My
Stronghold’ and ‘Go Forward in Faith.’
Some farmers are now providing employment to others by renting out land
and developing fields in other towns.
Along with other Christian leaders they also help new converts get out
of debt. It is a gesture that deeply
impresses Mell Winger. “I think of
Paul’s words to the Thessalonians when he said, “We not only gave you the
gospel of God but we gave you our own souls as well.’” (4).
Caballeros agrees: “And that’s what these people do. It is a beautiful spectacle to go and see
the effect of the gospel, because you can actually see it - and that is what we
want for our communities, for our cities and for our nations.”
Despite their success, believers in Almolonga have no intention of
letting up. Many fast three times a
week and continue to assault the forces of darkness in prayer and
evangelism. On Halloween day in 1998,
an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 believers gathered in the market square to pray
down barriers against the gospel in neighbouring towns and around the world
(5). Many, unable to find seats, hung
off balconies and crowded concrete staircases.
Led by the mayor and various Christian dignitaries, they prayed hand in
hand for God to take authority over their lives, their town and any hindering
spirits.
How significant are these developments? In a 1994 headline article describing the dramatic events in
Almolonga, Guatemala’s premier
newsmagazine Cronica Semanal concluded “the Evangelical Church ... constitutes the most significant
force for religious change in the highlands of Guatemala since the Spanish
conquest (6).
The Umuofai kindred are spread out in several villages situated near
the town of Umuahia in Abia State in southeastern Nigeria (7). A major rail line links the area with Port
Harcourt, about 120 kilometers to the south.
Like most parts of coastal Africa, it is distinguished by dense tropical
flora and killer humidity.
It is possible, even likely, veteran travellers will not have heard of
the Umuofai or their homeland. This is
not surprising seeing that the kindred’s claim to fame has virtually nothing to
do with their size or setting. While their history does claim centuries-old
roots, the truly newsworthy events are still tender shoots.
Indeed the interesting chapter of the Umuofai story began as recently
as 1996. Two Christian brothers, Emeka
and Chinedu Nwankpa, had become increasingly distressed over the spiritual
condition of their people. While they
did not know everything about the Umuofai kindred, or their immediate Ubakala
clan, they knew enough to be concerned.
Not only were there few Christians, but there was also an almost organic
connection with ancestral traditions of sorcery, divination and spirit
appeasement. Some even practiced the
demonic art of shape-shifting. Taking
the burden before the Lord, the younger brother, Chinedu Nwankpa, was led into
a season of spiritual mapping. After
conducting a partial 80-day fast, he learned that his primary assignment (which
would take the good part of a year) was to spend one day a week with clan
elders investigating the roots of prevailing idolatry - including the role of
the ancestors and shrines. He would
seek to understand how and when the Ubakala
clan entered into animistic bondage.
According to older brother Emeka, a practicing lawyer and international
Bible teacher, this understanding was critical. When I asked why, Emeka responded, “When a people publicly renounce their ties to false gods
and philosophies, they make it
exceedingly undesirable for the enemy to remain in their community.” (24).
The study was finally completed in late 1996. Taking their findings to prayer, the brothers soon felt prompted
to invite kindred leaders and other interested parties to attend a special
meeting. “What will be our theme?” they
asked. The Master’s response was quick
and direct. “I want you to speak to
them about idolatry.”
On the day of the meeting, Emeka and Chinedu arrived unsure of what
kind of crowd they would face. Would
there be five or fifty? Would the
people be open or hostile? What they
actually encountered stunned them. The
meeting place was not only filled with 300 people, but the audience also
included several prominent clan leaders and witch doctors. “After I opened in prayer,” Emeka recalls,
“this young man preaches for exactly 42 minutes. He brings a clear gospel message. He gives a biblical teaching on idolatry and tells the people
exactly what it does to a community.
When he has finished, he gives a direct altar call. And do you know what happens? Sixty-one adults respond, including people
from lines that, for eight generations, had handled the traditional
priesthood.
“Let me give you an idea of what 1 am talking about. There is a local spirit that is supposed to
give fertility to the earth. The people
of the community believed this particular spirit favoured farmers who planted
yams - an old uncle to the potato. A male
from each generation was dedicated to this spirit to insure his blessing. When this priest was ready to die, he had to
be taken outside so that the heavenly alignment could be undone. He was buried in the night with his head
covered with a clay pot. Then, a year
after the burial, the skull was exhumed and put in the shrine. These skulls and other sacred objects were
never allowed to touch the ground. Of
course, sacrifices were also made from time to time. This was the way of life in our community for eight
generations.”
When the minister finished the altar call, the Nwankpa brothers were
startled to see a man coming forward with the sacred skull in his hands. Here in front of them was the symbol and
receptacle of the clan’s ancestral power. “By the time the session ended,” Emeka marvels, “eight other
spiritual custodians had also come forward.
If I had not been there in the flesh, I would not have believed it.”
As Emeka was called forward to pray for these individuals, the Holy
Spirit descended on the gathering and all the clan leaders were soundly
converted. The new converts were then
instructed to divide up into individual family units - most were living near
the village of Mgbarrakuma - and enter a time of repentance within the family. This took another hour and twenty
minutes. During this time people were
under deep conviction, many rolling on the ground, weeping. “I had to persuade some of them to get up,”
Emeka recalls.
After leading this corporate repentance, Emeka heard the Lord say, ‘It
is now time to renounce the covenants made by and for this community over the
last 300 years.” Following the example
of Zechariah 12:10-13:2, the Nwankpas led this second-phase renunciation. “We were just about to get up,” Emeka remembers,
“and the Lord spoke to me again. I mean
He had it all written out. He said, ‘It
is now time to go and deal with the different shrines.’ So 1 asked the people, ‘Now that we have
renounced the old ways, what are these shrines doing here?’ And without a moment’s hesitation they
replied, ‘We need to get rid of them!’”
Having publicly renounced the covenants their ancestors had made with
the powers of darkness, the entire community proceeded to nine village
shrines. The three chief priests came
out with their walking sticks. It was
tradition that they should go first.
Nobody else had the authority to take such a drastic action. So the people stood, the young men
following the elders and the women remaining behind in the village square. Lowering his glasses, Emeka says, “You
cannot appreciate how this affected me personally. Try to understand that 1 am looking at my own chief. I am looking at generations of men that I
have known, people who have not spoken to my father for thirty years, people
with all kinds of problems. They are
now born-again!”
One of these priests, an elder named Odogwu-ogu, stood before the
shrine of a particular spirit called Amadi.
He was the oldest living representative of the ancestral
priesthood. Suddenly he began to talk
to the spirits. He said, “Amadi, I want
you to listen carefully to what 1 am saying.
You were there in the village square this morning. You heard what happened.” He then made an announcement that Emeka will
never forget..
Listen, Amadi, the people who own the land have arrived to tell you
that they have just made a new covenant with the God of heaven. Therefore all the previous covenants you
have made with our ancient fathers are now void. The elders told me to take care of you and I have done that all
these years. But today I have left you,
and so it is time for you to return to wherever you came from. I have also given my life to Jesus Christ,
and from now on, my hands and feet are no longer here (8).
As he does this, he jumps sideways, lifts his hands and shouts,
“Hallelujah!”
“With tears in my eyes,” Emeka says, reliving the moment, “I stepped up
to anoint this shrine and pray. Every
token and fetish was taken out. And
then we went through eight more shrines, gathering all the sacred objects and
piling them high.
“Gathering again back in the square I said, ‘Those who have fetishes in
your homes, bring them out because God is visiting here today. Don’t let Him pass you by.’ At this, one of the priests got up and
brought out a pot with seven openings.
He said to the people, ‘There is poison enough to kill everybody here in
that little pot. There is a horn of an
extinct animal, the bile of a tiger and the venom of a viper mixed
together.’ He warned the young men,
‘Don’t touch it. Carry it on a pole
because it is usually suspended in the shrine.’ This was piled in the square along with all the ancestral skulls.”
Soon other heads of households brought various ritual objects-including idols, totems and fetishes-for
public burning. Many of these items
had been handed down over ten generations.
Emeka then read a passage from Jeremiah 10 that judges the spirits
associated with these artifacts.
Reminding the powers that the people had rejected them, he said, “You
spirits that did not make the heavens and the earth in the day of your
visitation, it is time for you to leave this place.” The people then set the piled objects on fire. They ignited with such speed and intensity
that the villagers took it as a sign that God had been waiting for this to
happen for many years. When the fire
subsided, Emeka and his brother prayed for individual needs and prophetically
clothed the priests with new spiritual garments. Altogether the people spent nine hours in intense,
strategic-level spiritual warfare.
Emeka recalls that when it was over, “You could feel the atmosphere in
the community change. Something beyond
revival had broken out.” Two young
ministers recently filled the traditional Anglican church with about 4,000
youth. And in the middle of the
message, demons were reportedly flying out the door! Having renounced old covenants, the Umuofai kindred have made a
collective decision that nobody will ever return to animism. “Today,” Emeka says, “everybody goes to
church. There is also a formal Bible
study going on, and the women have a prayer
team that my mother conducts.
0thers gather to pray after completing their communal sweeping.”
(9).
In terms of political and economic development, good things have begun
to happen
but not as dramatically as in Almolonga. Still, there is evidence that God has touched the land here much
like He has in the highlands of Guatemala.
Shortly after the public repentance, several villagers discovered their
plots were permeated with saleable minerals.
One of these individuals was Emeka’s own mother, a godly woman whose
property has turned up deposits of valuable ceramic clay.
For years this searing valley in southern California was known as a
pastor’s graveyard. Riddled with
disunity, local churches were either stagnant or in serious decline. In one case, street prostitutes actually
transformed a church rooftop into an outdoor
bordello. The entire community
had, in the words of pastor Bob Beckett, “a kind of a nasty spiritual feeling
to it.”
When Beckett arrived on the scene in 1974, Hemet had the personality of
a sleepy retirement community, a place where people who had served their tour
of duty came to live out a life of ease (10).
Having achieved most of their goals, people simply wanted to be left
alone. Though a fair number attended church,
they had no appetite for anything progressive, much less evangelistic. Spiritually lethargic clergy were content to simply go through the
motions.
But things were not all they seemed.
Underneath the surface of this laid-back community was a spiritual dark
side that was anything but lethargic.
“We discovered,” said Beckett, “that illegal and occult activity was
thriving in our community.” It was a
rude awakening.
The Hemet Valley was fast becoming a cult haven. “We had the Moonies and Mormons. We had the ‘Sheep People,’ a cult that
claimed Christ but dealt in drugs. The
Church of Scientology set up a state-of-the-art multimedia studio called Golden
Era, and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi purchased a property to teach people how to
find enlightenment.” The latter,
according to Beckett, included a 360-acre juvenile facility where students were
given instruction in upper-level transcendental meditation. “We’re not talking about simply feeling
good; we’re talking about techniques whereby people can actually leave their
bodies.”
These discoveries got Beckett to wondering why the Maharishi would
purchase property in this relatively obscure valley and why it would be located
in proximity to the Scientologists and the spiritually active Soboba Indian
reservation. Sensing something sinister
might be lurking beneath the town’s glazed exterior, Beckett took out a map and
started marking locations where there was identifiable spiritual
activity.” Noticing these marks were
clustered in a specific area, he began to ask more probing questions. “I began to wonder,” he said, “if there was
perhaps a dimension of darkness I had failed to recognize. 1 didn’t realize it at the time, but I was
led into what we now call spiritual mapping.”
The deeper this rookie pastor looked, the less he liked what he was
seeing. It seemed the valley, in
addition to hosting a nest of cults, was also a notable centre of
witchcraft. And unfortunately this was
not a new development. Elderly citizens
could recollect looking up at the nearby mountains on previous Halloweens and seeing them illumined by
dozens of ritual fires. In Hemet and
the neighbouring community of Idyllwild, it was not uncommon to find the
remains of animal sacrifices long before such matters became part of the public
discourse.
Nor were cults the only preexisting problem. Neighborhood youth gangs
had plagued the Hemet suburb of San Jacinto for more than a century. When pastor Gordon Houston arrived in 1986
the situation was extremely volatile.
His church, San Jacinto Assembly, sits on the very street that has long
hosted the town’s notorious First
Street Gang. “These were kids whose
dads and grandfathers had preceded them in the gang. The lifestyle had been handed down through the generations.”
The danger was so great around the main gang turf that the police
refused to go there without substantial backup. “One time I was walking out in front of my church,” Gordon
recalls. “Three First Street guys came
up behind me, while four others closed in from across the street. They moved me to the centre of the street
and asked, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” It was a scary scenario.
“We were one of the first school districts that had to implement a
school dress code to avoid gang attire.
It was a big problem. There were
a lot of weapons on campus and kids were being attacked regularly. The gangs were tied into one of the largest
drug production centres in Riverside County.”
It turns out the sleepy Hemet Valley was also the methamphetamine
manufacturing capital of the West Coast.
One former cooker I spoke to in June 1998 (we’ll call him Sonny) told me
the area hosted at least nine major production laboratories. The dry climate, remote location and
‘friendly’ law enforcement combined to make it an ideal setup. “It was quite amazing,” Sonny told me. “I actually had law officers transport dope
for me in their police cruisers. That’s
the way it used to be here.”
Sonny cooked methamphetamine in Hemet from 1983 to 1991. His minimum quota was 13 pounds every two
weeks - an amount capable of supplying more than a quarter of a million
people. And there were times when he
and his colleagues doubled this production.
Most of the deliveries went to Southern California, Arizona or
Utah. Often the deadly powder was
trucked out of town disguised as 4x8-foot forms of Sheetrock. “It was fascinating to see it done,” Sonny
remembered. “Even the paper backing was
torn off afterward and sold to people in
prison.”
The spiritual turnaround for Hemet did not come easily. Neither the Beckerts nor the Houstons were
early Valley enthusiasts. “I just
didn’t want to be there,” Bob recalls with emphasis. “For the first several years, my wife and 1 had our emotional
bags packed all the time. We couldn’t
wait for the day that God would call us out of this valley.”
The Houstons didn’t unpack their bags to begin with. When the San Jacinto position first opened
up in 1984, they drove into town in the middle of summer. Gordon remembers it being scorching hot that
day. “We had our six-month-old baby in
a Pinto Runabout with vinyl seats and no air-conditioning. We drove down the street, took one look at
the church and said, “No thank you.” We
didn’t even stop to put in a resumé.”
It would be three years before the Houstons were persuaded to return to
the Hemet Valley. “Even then,” Gordon
says, “we saw it as a chance to gain
some experience, build a good resumé, and then look for other opportunities. God, of course, had something else in
mind. I remember him saying, “I have a
plan, and I’ll share it with you – if you will make a commitment to this
place.” And I’ll be honest with
you. It was still a tough choice.”
For a while, Bob Beckett’s spiritual mapping had provided certain
stimulation. Then, it too reached a
dead end. “The flow of information just seemed to dry up,” he
remembers. “That was when God asked if
we would be willing to spend the rest of our lives in this valley. He couldn’t have asked a worse
question. How could I spend the rest of
my life in a place 1 didn’t love, didn’t care for and didn’t want to be a part
of?”
Yet God persevered and the Becketts eventually surrendered to His
will. “As soon as we did this,” Bob
reports, “the flow of information opened back up. In retrospect I see that God would not allow us to go on learning
about the community’s spiritual roots
unless we were committed to act on our understanding. I now realize it was our commitment to the valley that allowed
the Lord to trust us with the information (12).
“Once we made this pact, Susan and 1 fell in love with the
community. It might sound a little
melodramatic, but 1 actually went out and purchased a cemetery plot. I said, “Unless Jesus comes back, this is my
land. I’m starting and ending my
commitment right here.” Well, God saw
that and began to dispense powerful
revelation. I still had my research,
but it was no longer just information.
It was information that was important to me. It was information I had purchased; it belonged to me.”
One new area of understanding concerned a prayer meeting Bob had called
15 years prior. Unable to interpret his
spiritual site map or a recurring dream that depicted a bear hide stretched
over the valley, he had asked 12 men to join him in prayer at a mountain cabin
in nearby Idyllwild. Around two o’clock
in the morning the group experienced a dramatic breakthrough - just not the one
they were expecting. Rather than
yielding fresh insight into the site map or bear hide, the action stimulated a
new spiritual hunger within the community.
Now that the Beckets had covenanted to stay in the community, God
started to fill in the gaps of their understanding. He began by leading Bob to a book containing an accurate history
of the San Jacinto mountains that border Hemet and of the Cahuilla Nation that are
descendants of the region’s original inhabitants. “As 1 read through this book I discovered the native peoples
believed the ruling spirit of the region was called Tahquitz. He was thought to be exceedingly powerful,
occasionally malevolent, associated with the great bear, and headquartered in
the mountains. Putting the book down, I
sensed the Lord saying, “Find Tahquitz on your map!”
“When 1 did so, I was shocked to find that our prayer meeting 15 years
earlier was held in a cabin located at the base of a one-thousand-foot solid
rock spire called Tahquitz peak! I also
began to understand that the bear hide God had showed me was linked to the
spirit of Tahquitz. The fact that it
was stretched out over the community was a reminder of the control this
centuries - old demonic strongman wielded, a control that was fuelled then, and
now, by the choices of local inhabitants.
At that point I knew God had been leading us.”
Bob explained that community intercessors began using spiritual mapping
to focus on issues and select meaningful targets. Seeing the challenge helped them become spiritually and mentally
engaged. With real targets and
timelines they could actually watch the answers to their prayers. They learned that enhanced vision escalates
fervour.
When I asked him to compare the situation in Hemet today with the way
things used to be, he did not take long to answer. “We are not a perfect community,” he said, “but we never will be until the Perfect One comes back. What I can tell you is that the Hemet Valley has changed dramatically.”
The facts speak for themselves.
Cult membership, once a serious threat, has now sunk to less than 0.3
percent of the population. The
Scientologists have yet to be evicted from their perch at the edge of town, but
many other groups are long gone. The
transcendental meditation training centre was literally burned out. Shortly after praying for their removal, a
brushfire started in the mountains on the west side of the valley. It burned along the top of the ridge and then arced down like a
finger to incinerate the Maharishi’s facility.
Leaving adjacent properties unsinged, the flames burned back up the
mountain and were eventually extinguished.
The drug business, according to Sonny, has dropped by as much as 75
percent. Gone, too, is the official
corruption that was once its fellow traveller.
“There was a time when you could walk into any police department around
here and look at your files or secure an escort for your drug shipment. The people watching your back were wearing
badges. Man, has that changed. If you’re breaking the law today, the police
are out to get ya. And prayer is the biggest
reason. The Christians out here took a
multimillion-dollar drug operation and made it run off with its tail between
its legs.”
Gangs are another success story.
Not long ago a leader of the First Street Gang burst down the centre
aisle of Gordon Houston’s church (San Jacinto Assembly) during the morning
worship service. “I’m in the middle of
my message,” Gordon laughs, “and here comes this guy, all tattooed up, heading
right for the platform. I had no idea
what he was thinking. When he gets to
the front, he looks up and says, “I want to get saved right now!” This incident, and this young man,
represented the first fruit of what God would do in the gang community. Over the next several weeks, the entire
First Street family came to the Lord.
After this, word circulated that our church was off limits. ‘You don’t tag this church with graffiti;
you don’t mess with it in any
way.’ Instead, gang members
began raking our leaves and repainting walls that had been vandalized.” More recently, residents of the violent gang
house across from San Jacinto Assembly moved out. Then, as church members watched, they bulldozed the notorious
facility.
Nor are gang members the only people getting saved in Hemet
Valley. A recent survey revealed that
Sunday morning church attendance now stands at about 14 percent - double what
it was just a decade ago. During one
18-month stretch, San Jacinto Assembly
altar workers saw more than 600 people give their hearts to Christ. Another prayer-oriented church has grown 300
percent in twelve months.
The individual stories are stirring.
Sonny, the former drug manufacturer, was apprehended by the Holy Spirit
en route to a murder. Driving to meet
his intended victim he felt something take control of the steering wheel. He wound up in the parking lot of Bob
Beckett’s Dwelling Place Church. It was
about 8 o’clock in the morning and a men’s meeting had just gotten
underway. “Before I got out of the
car,” Sonny says ruefully, “I looked at the silenced pistol laying on the
seat. I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God,
what am I doing.’ So I covered it with
a blanket and walked into this prayer meeting.
As soon as 1 did that, it was all over.
People are praying around me and I hear this man speak out: ‘Somebody
was about to murder someone today.’
Man, my eyeballs just about popped out of my head. But that was the beginning of my journey home.
It took a long time, but I’ve never experienced more joy in my
life.”
As of the late 1990s, Hemet also boasted a professing mayor, police
chief, fire chief and city manager. If
this were not impressive enough, Beckett reckons that one could add about 30
percent of the local law enforcement officers and an exceptional number of high
school teachers, coaches and principals.
In fact, for the past several years nearly 85 percent of all school district
staff candidates have been Christians.
The result, says Gordon, is that “Our school district, after being the
laughing stock of Southern California, now has one of the lowest drop-out rates
in the nation. In just four years we
went from a 4.7 drop-out rate to 0.07.
Only the hand of God can do that.”
And what of the Valley’s infamous church infighting? “Now we are a wall of living stones,”
Beekett declares proudly. “Instead of
competing, we are swapping pulpits. You
have Baptists in Pentecostal pulpits and vice versa. You have Lutherans with
Episcopalians. The Christian
community has become a fabric instead of loose yarn.”
Houston adds that valley churches are also brought together by
quarterly concerts of prayer and citywide prayer revivals where speaking
assignments are rotated among area pastors.
“Different worship teams lead songs and salvation cards are
distributed equally among us. It is a cooperative vision. We are trying to get pastors to understand
there is no church big enough, gifted enough, talented enough, anointed enough,
financially secure enough, equipped enough, to take a city all by itself. Yes, God will hold me accountable for how I
treated my church. But I am also going
to be held accountable for how I pastored my city.”
One fellowship is so committed to raising the profile of Jesus Christ
in the valley that they have pledged into another church’s building
program. To Bob Beckett it all makes
sense. “It’s about building people, not
building a church. In fact, it is not
even a church growth issue, it is a kingdom growth issue. It’s about seeing our communities
transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
For years Colombia has been the world’s biggest exporter of cocaine,
sending between 700 hundred and 1,000 tons a year to the United States and
Europe alone (13). The Cali cartel,
which controlled up to 70 percent of this trade, has been called the largest,
richest and most well-organized criminal organization in history (14). Employing a combination of bribery and threats,
it wielded a malignant power that
corrupted individuals and institutions alike (5).
Randy and Marcy MacMillan, copastors of the Communidad Christiana de
Fe, have labored in Cali for more than 20 years. At least 10 of these have been spent in the shadow of the city’s
infamous drug lords.
Marcy inherited the family home of her late father, a former Colombian
diplomat. When illicit drug money began
pouring into Cali in the 1980s, the Cocaine lords moved into the MacMillan’s
upscale neighbourhood, buying up entire blocks of luxurious haciendas. They modified these properties by installing
elaborate underground tunnel systems and huge 30-foot (10-metre) walls to
shield them from prying eyes-and stray bullets. Video cameras encased in Plexiglas bubbles scanned the
surrounding area continuously. There
were also regular patrols with guard dogs.
“These people were paranoid,” Randy recalls. “They were exporting 500 million dollars worth of cocaine a
month, and it led to constant worries about sabotage and betrayal. They had a lot to lose.”
For this reason, the cartel haciendas were appointed like small
cities. Within their walls it was
possible to find everything from airstrips and helicopter landing pads to
indoor bowling alleys and miniature soccer stadiums. Many also contained an array of gift boutiques, nightclubs and
restaurants.
Whenever the compound gates swung open, it was to disgorge convoys of
shiny black Mercedes automobiles. As
they snaked their way through the city’s congested streets, all other traffic
would pull to the side of the road.
Drivers who defied this etiquette did so at their own risk. Many were blocked and summarily shot. As many as 15 people a day were killed in
such a manner. “You didn’t want to be
at the same stoplight with them,” Randy summarized.
Having once been blocked in his own neighbourhood, Randy remembers the
terror. “They drew their weapons and
demanded to see our documents. I
watched them type the information into a portable computer. Thankfully the only thing we lost was some
film. I will always remember the death
in their eyes. These are people that
kill for a living and like it.”
Rosevelt Muriel, director of the city’s ministerial alliance, also
remembers those days. “It was
terrible. If you were riding around in
a car and there was a confrontation, you were lucky to escape with your
life. I personally saw five people
killed in Cali.”
Journalists had a particularly difficult time. They were either reporting on human camage –
car bombs were going off like popcorn - or they were becoming targets
themselves. Television news anchor
Adriana Vivas said that many journalists were killed for denouncing what the
Mafia was doing in Colombia and Cali.
“Important political decisions were being manipulated by drug
money. It touched everything,
absolutely everything.”
By the early 1990s, Cali had become one of the most thoroughly corrupt
cities in the world. Cartel interests
controlled virtually every major institution - including banks, businesses, politicians and law enforcement.
Like everything else in Cali, the church was in disarray. Evangelicals were few and did not much care
for each other. “In those days,”
Rosevelt Muriel recalls sadly, “the pastors’ association consisted of an old box
of files that nobody wanted. Every
pastor was working on his own; no one wanted to join together.”
When pastor-evangelists Julio and Ruth Ruibal came to Cali in 1978,
they were dismayed at the pervasive darkness in the city. “There was no unity between the churches,”
Ruth explained. Even Julio was put off
by his colleagues and pulled out of the already weak ministerial association.
Ruth relates that during a season of fasting the Lord spoke to Julio
saying, “You don’t have the right to be offended. You need to forgive.” So
going back to the pastors, one by one, Julio made things right. They could not afford to walk in disunity -
not when their city faced such overwhelming challenges.
Randy and Marcy MacMillan were among the first to join the Ruibals in
intercession. “We just asked the Lord
to show us how to pray,” Marcy remembers.
And He did. For the next several
months they focused on the meagre appetite within the church for prayer, unity
and holiness. Realizing these are the
very things that attract the presence of God, they petitioned the Lord to
stimulate a renewed spiritual hunger, especially in the city’s ministers.
As their prayers began to take effect, a small group of pastors
proposed assembling their congregations for an evening of joint worship and
prayer. The idea was to lease the citys
civic auditorium, the Colisco El Pueblo, and spend the night in prayer and
repentance. They would solicit God’s active
participation in their stand against the drug cartels and their unseen spiritual
masters.
Roping off most of the seating area, the pastors planned for a few
thousand people. And even this, in the
minds of many, was overly optimistic.
“We heard it all,” said Rosevelt Muriel. “People told us, ‘It can’t be done,’ ‘No one will come,’ ‘Pastors
won’t give their support.’ But we
decided to move forward and trust God with the results.”
When the event was finally held in May 1995, the nay-sayers and even
some of the organizers were dumbfounded.
Instead of the expected modest turnout, more than 25,000 people filed
into the civic auditorium - nearly half of the city’s evangelical population at
the time! At one point, Muriel
remembers, “The mayor mounted the platform and proclaimed, ‘Cali belongs to
Jesus Christ.’ Well, when we heard those
words, we were energized.” Giving
themselves to intense prayer, the crowd remained until 6 o’clock the next
morning. The city’s famous all-night
prayer vigil - the ‘vigilia’ - had been born.
Forty-eight hours after the event, the daily newspaper, El Pais,
headlined, “No Homicides!” For the
first time in as long as anybody in the city could remember, a 24-hour period
had passed without a single person being killed. In a nation cursed with the highest homicide rate in the world,
this was a newsworthy development.
Corruption also took a major hit when, over the next four months, 900
cartel-linked officers were fired from the metropolitan police force (16).
“When we saw these things happening,” Randy MacMillan exulted, “we had
a strong sense that the powers of darkness were headed for a significant
defeat.”
In the month of June, this sense of anticipation was heightened when
several intercessors reported dreams in which angelic forces apprehended
leaders of the Cali drug cartel. Many
interpreted this as a prophetic sign that the Holy Spirit was about to respond to the most urgent aspect of the
church’s united appeal.17 Intercessors were praying, and heaven was
listening. The seemingly invincible
drug lords were about to meet their match.
“Within six weeks of this vision,” MacMillan recalls, “the Colombian
government declared all-out war against the drug lords.” Sweeping military operations were launched
against cartel assets in several parts of the country. The 6,500 elite commandos dispatched to Cali
(18) arrived with explicit orders to round
up seven individuals suspected as the top leaders of the cartel.
“Cali was buzzing with helicopters,” Randy remembers. “The
airport was closed and there were police roadblocks at every entry point
into the city. You couldn’t go anywhere
without proving who you were” (19).
Suspicions that the drug lords were consulting spirit mediums were
confirmed when the federalés dragnet picked up Jorge Eliecer Rodriguez at the
fortune-telling parlour of Madame Marlene Ballesteros, the famous ‘Pythoness of
Cali” (20). By August, only three
months after God’s word to the intercessors, Colombian authorities had captured
all seven targeted cartel leaders - Juan Carlos Arminez, Phanor Arizabalata,
Julian Murcillo, Henry Loaiza, Jose Santacruz Londono and founders Gilberto and
Miguel Roddguez.
Clearly stung by these assaults on his power base, the enemy lashed out against the city’s
intercessors. At the top of his hit
list was Pastor Julio Ceasar Ruibal, a man whose disciplined fasting and
unwavering faith was seriously eroding his manoeuvring room.
On December 13, 1995, Julio rode into the city with his daughter Sarah
and a driver. Late for a pastors’ meeting
at the Presbyterian Church, he motioned to his driver to pull over. “He told us to drop him off,” Sarah
recounts, “and that was the last time I saw him.”
Outside the church, a hit man was waiting in ambush. Drawing a concealed handgun, the assassin
pumped two bullets into Julio’s brain at point-blank range.
“I was waiting for him to arrive at the meeting,” Rosevelt remembers.
“At two o’clock in the afternoon I received a phone call. The man said, ‘They just killed Julio.’ I said, ‘What? How can they kill a pastor?’
I rushed over, thinking that perhaps he had just been hurt. But when 1 arrived on the scene, he was
motionless. Julio, the noisy one, the
active one, the man who just never sat still, was just lying there like a
baby.”
“The first thing 1 saw was a pool of crimson blood,” Ruth recalls. “And the verse that came to me was Psalm
116:15: ‘Precious in the sight of the
Lord is the death of his saints.’
Sitting down next to Julio’s body, I knew 1 was on holy ground.
“I had to decide how 1 was going to deal with this circumstance. One option was to respond in bitterness, not
only toward the man that had done this terrible thing, but also toward
God. He had, after all, allowed the
early removal of my husband, my daughters’ father and my church’s pastor. Julio would never see his vision for the
city fulfilled. My other choice was to
yield to the redemptive purposes of the Holy Spirit, to give Him a chance to
bring something lasting and wonderful out of the situation. Looking down at Julio I just said, ‘Lord, 1
don’t understand Your plan, but it is well with my soul.’”
Julio Ruibal was killed on the sixth day of a fast aimed at
strengthening the unity of Cali’s fledgling church. He knew that even though progress had been made in this area, it
had not gone far enough. He knew that
unity is a fragile thing. What he could
not have guessed is that the fruit of his fast would be made manifest at his
own funeral.
In shock, and struggling to understand God’s purposes in this tragedy, 1,500
people gathered at Julio’s funeral.
They included many pastors that had not spoken to each other in
months. When the memorial concluded
these men drew aside and said, “Brothers, let us covenant to walk in unity from
this day forward. Let Julio’s blood be
the glue that binds us together in the Holy Spirit.”
It worked! Today this covenant
of unity has been signed by some 200 pastors and serves as the backbone of the
city’s high profile prayer vigils. With
Julio’s example in their hearts, they have subordinated their own agendas to a
larger, common vision for the city.
Emboldened by their spiritual momentum, Cali’s church leaders now hold
all-night prayer rallies every 90 days.
Enthusiasm is so high that these glorious events have been moved to the
largest venue in the city, the 55,000-seat Pascual Guerrero soccer stadium
(21). Happily (or unhappily as the case
may be), the demand for seats continues to exceed supply.
In 1996 God led many churches to join in a collective spiritual mapping
campaign. To gain God’s perspective on
their city, they began to gather intelligence on specific political, social and
spiritual strongholds in each of Cali’s 22 administrative zones (a scene
reminiscent of the 41 Hebrew clans that once rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem). The results, stitched together like panels
on a patchwork quilt, gave the church an unprecedented picture of the powers
working in the city. “With this
knowledge,” Randy explained, “our unified intercession became focused. As we prayed in specific terms, we began to
see a dramatic loosening of the enemy’s stranglehold on our neighbourhoods.
“A few weeks later we used our spiritual mapping intelligence to direct
large prayer caravans throughout Cali.
Most of the 250 cars established a prayer perimeter around the city, but
a few paraded by government offices or the mansions of prominent cartel
leaders. My own church focused on the
headquarters of the billionaire drug lord, José Santacruz Londono, who had escaped
from Bogota’s La Picota prison in January (22). His hacienda was located just four blocks from my home. The next day we heard that he had been
killed in a gun fight with national police in Medellin!” (23).
In partnership with the Holy Spirit, Cali’s Christians had taken
effective control of the city. What
made the partnership work are the same things that always attract the presence
of the Lord: sanctified hearts, right relationships and fervent
intercession. “God began changing the
city,” according to Ruth Ruibal, “because His people finally came together in
prayer” (24).
As the kingdom of God descended upon Cali, a new openness to the gospel
could be felt at all levels of society - including the educated and
wealthy. One man, Gustavo Jaramillo, a
wealthy businessman and former mayor, told me,
“It is easy to speak to
upper-class people about Jesus.
They are respectful and interested.”
Raul Grajales, another successful Cali businessman, adds that the gospel
is now seen as practical rather than religious. As a consequence, he says, “Many high-level people have come to
the feet of Jesus.”
During my April 1998 visit to Cali, I had the privilege of meeting
several prominent converts, including Mario Jinete, a prominent attorney, media
personality and motivational speaker.
After searching for truth in Freemasonry and various New Age systems, he
has finally come home to Christ. Five
minutes into our interview Jinete broke down.
His body shaking, this brilliant lawyer who had courageously faced down
some of the most dangerous and corrupt figures in Latin America sobbed
loudly. “I’ve lost forty years of my
life,’ he cried into a handkerchief.
“My desire now is to subordinate my ego, to find my way through the Word
of God. I want to yield to Christ’s
plan for me. I want to serve Him.”
Explosive church growth is one of the visible consequences of the open
heavens over Cali. Ask pastors to
define their strategy and they respond, “We don’t have time to plan. We’re too busy pulling the nets into the
boat.” And the numbers are expanding. In early 1998, 1 visited one fellowship,
the Christian Centre of Love and Faith, where attendance has risen to nearly
35,000. What is more, their
stratospheric growth rate is being fuelled entirely by new converts. Despite the facility’s cavernous size (it’s
a former Costco warehouse), they are still forced to hold seven Sunday
services. As I watched the huge
sanctuary fill up, I blurted the standard Western question: “What is your
secret?” Without hesitating, a church
staff member pointed to a 24-hour
prayer room immediately behind the platform. “That’s our secret,’ he replied.
Many of Cali’s other churches are also experiencing robust growth, and
denominational affiliation and location have little to do with it. The fishing is good for everybody and it’s
good all over town. My driver, Carlos
Reynoso (not his real name), himself a former drug dealer, put it this way:
“There is a hunger for God everywhere.
You can see it on the buses, on the streets and in the cafes. Anywhere you go people are ready to
talk.” Even casual street evangelists
are reporting multiple daily conversions - nearly all the result of arbitrary
encounters.
Although danger still lurks in this city of 1.9 million, God is now viewed as a viable protector. When Cali police deactivated a large, 174-kilo car bomb in the populous San Nicolis area in November 1996, many noted that the incident came just 24 hours after 55,000