Many bad spirits have to leave

She was a young American woman who started attending our Oxford church. She told me she had been learning from one of the most important witches in New York, but I failed to believe it seriously. She soon put her faith in Jesus and her faith began to grow. But one night, she started speaking in a language which made me tremble and the atmosphere went cold.

My colleague and I had met this sort of thing before and tried to help her. But she smashed a glass and came to attack us with it. We made the sign of the cross and said, ‘You can’t come any further than this.’ Nor could she! It was as if she had hit a brick wall.

That woman’s problem was that she had allowed a very bad spirit into her life – just like the man in the story. We had the joy of seeing it go out of her in the name of Jesus, just as this man discovered that the power of Jesus had made him free.

And just as this man wanted to serve Jesus as a result of his freedom from bad spirits, so it was with the American woman. I met her later in the United Nations, a bold but gentle witness for Jesus!

King over evil forces

In the West, this talk of evil spiritual forces sounds crazy, but it can be terribly real. In Africa and Asia, everyone knows this, but in the West, we are mainly unaware of them. God has his spiritual helpers which the Bible calls angels. The Devil has his, too. And nothing but the power of Jesus can get rid of them once they have been welcomed into a person’s life. But Jesus is king over evil forces!