By: General Deborah Green
PRAISE GOD! Today we are marching forward in the Lord. I said, we are marching forward in the Lord. You know I’m literally amazed when I receive letters from radio listeners, and they say, “I’ve been listening to you for so many years,” and they’ll name the number of years. And “I’ve listened to every broadcast,” and blah, blah, blah. And you know what? They’re not doing anything for the Lord, so they’re not marching forward in the Lord. And I think, “Well, why are you listening if you’re not getting motivated and getting into action for Jesus Christ?” Because, you know, we are meant to bear witness of the truth. We are meant to be His witnesses withersoever He sends us, wheresoever He positions us. We are not just meant to sit back and hear good stories from other people that are witnesses. Because God wants each and every one of us to be aggressive for His Kingdom, aggressive to declare Him, aggressive to live for Him, aggressive to be witnesses of the goodness that is found in Him, and most of all, aggressive to witness for the fact that He is our salvation, that He is our mercy, that He is our deliverer. Why? Because that is why Jesus gives us everything that He gives us, that we can bear witness of the truth. And yes, if you’ll bear witness of the truth, you will be persecuted, you will be hated, you will be rejected, but you will be accepted by the Father. And how important it is that we seek to please the One who has called us, the One who has purposed us, the One who has given us life. And we are in part 7 today of a series entitled “The Necks of Our Enemies”, and this is one of the lessons that we learned through this experience that God took us through.
We took a journey, a very long journey, by vehicle; we went through much rejection, we went through much hatred, we went through much, how shall I call it, separation from the brethren. And it was God that brought that about to teach us how important it is to please Him. Because you know, when you are pleasing man, you are not pleasing God. We cannot serve two masters. We cannot serve the opinions of man and serve our Living God. We have to make a choice who it is that we will serve, and when we align ourselves with God’s side we have many things in our favor. We have, for one thing, the acceptance by God the Father; we have the presence of the Son; we have the in-filling of the Holy Ghost; we have the angels who keep and protect us likewise. And when we choose the opinions of men over here, we have recognition from the world, we have acceptance by men, we have hatred of us by God, and we have separation from the Lord. So we have to evaluate what it is that we desire.
Now if we are living in the flesh realm, in carnality, even though we may think we are spiritual, we will automatically gravitate to this covering-the covering of the approval of man, the acceptance of man, the “arm of flesh”. If we are living in the Spirit realm, there is nowhere we can go, except to this covering [of Spirit], because this is the covering of Zion, this is the covering of ruling and reigning in Christ Jesus, this is the covering that is acceptable to the Father.
You know, there are many Christians, they have the false imagination that they are spiritual. But you know, when you are tested, you find out that you are not spiritual because you want to have man approve you. As long as we are looking for man to give us approval, we are carnal, and not yet spiritual. Can I hear an “amen”? Amen! It’s true. But when we are determined that we will please our Father, we have been transformed from carnal to spiritual, and we can remain in that place of being spiritual, as long as we will seek the approval of our God all of our days.
You know it is a good thing to test your own self, to let God put you in a situation, to let God bring up a trial, to let God bring up an ordeal and see what it is that you run to. Do you run to fear? Do you run to cringing and, you know, worrying about what somebody’s going to do to you, about what somebody said against you, or about what somebody thinks against you? Or do you run to God and fall down on your knees before Him and petition Him?
We can imagine that we have arrived to the upper realms of God, and all the time, every time God tests us, we run to the arm of flesh. God does not want us resorting to the arm of flesh, but God wants us to stand in Him, knowing that He is able.
Now in this series of messages, we have been going over a missionary trip that God had General James Green and myself to take many, many, many years ago. And when we took that trip we found out what it is to stand for God. And you know, although I can tell you again and again and again of the rejection that we faced from other Christians, I can at the same time tell you again and again and again of all the many marvelous, wonderful things that God did for us. So you see, if you want this over here [God’s approval], you are not going to receive this [man’s approval]. If you want the approval of man, you are not going to receive the approval of God. If you force yourself to desire the approval of God, not only will you receive His approval, but you will receive His miracles, you will receive His mercies, you will receive His keeping hand over you that will astound this flock over here that’s huddled together, living in fear, living in doubt, living in unbelief, and living in falsity. Why? Because God favors those who will believe in Him. Amen!
So, in today’s message, we’re going back to find out that we were now back in Panama. We never even got out of there when we tried to run out on the coward’s route. But we were back in Panama again faced with “What will we do? Where will we go?” Basically, God had us in a vice. And did you know that many times God will put us in pressure? God will put us in pressure to make us do what He wants us to do. And we need to thank God for that, not resent it, not despise it, but thank God that God is merciful enough to keep us in the way. Because you know what? There are times when we cannot keep ourselves. There are times when we grow overwhelmed, overtaken, over-assaulted, and we think, “I will give up!” But thank God for His mercy, that He keeps us from giving up that we can go forward in Him.
So at this particular time, as I told you, we were going to an Assemblies of God church in the Panama Canal zone, where we had many interesting experiences with those that said they were saints and were not. And during this time there was a woman there that befriended my husband and myself, and she asked us, would we like to come and stay at her home for a few days? Now her husband was a lieutenant colonel in the military, so they had a very nice place provided by the U.S. government. They had everything provided by the U.S. government. So we went to stay with them.
Well, as soon as we got there, the husband set in to oppose my husband. And I’d like to read to you from Psalms 129. It says, “Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, may Israel now say: Many a time have they afflicted me from my youth, yet they have not prevailed against me. plowers plowed upon my back, they made long their furrows. The Lord is righteous: he hath cut asunder the cords of the wicked. Let them all be confounded and turned back, that hate Zion. Let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withereth afore it groweth up: wherewith the mower filleth not his hand; nor he that bindeth sheaves his bosom. Neither do they which go by say, The blessing of the Lord be upon you: we bless you in the name of the Lord.” So we see that those who hate Zion, in other words, those who are not willing to come under the direct sovereignty of God, that God judges them as wicked.
Well, when we were in this particular situation in this man’s home, he immediately turned on my husband, and began to attempt to convince my husband of the folly of pursuing the command of the Lord; and he claimed that he was a Christian, claimed to be a believer in God. Of course, he did have a liquor cabinet with with some you-know-what inside of it-whiskey-but we kept that notice to ourselves, that we had noticed that.
But anyway, as he was giving his great ungodly “godly” advice, he advised my husband that we should stay there in the canal zone because we were Americans: we should apply for a work visa, we should get jobs, because there were plenty of government jobs that were available, and we should buy ourselves a brand new van, and with that brand new van we should then go into poverty stricken areas, and show them what we had-show them that the blessing of God was upon us. We were told that we were “a disgrace unto the Lord” by this man because our vehicle was not new, because we were not earning a lot of money at that time in order to secure another vehicle, because we were not showing the prosperity that comes of being an American and a Christian. In other words, we were being taught another gospel. This man was attempting to brainwash us with another gospel-the gospel of prosperity, the gospel of Americanism, the gospel of selfishness, and on and on it goes. And actually, that gospel is taught in a lot of churches.
Did you know that when you are around poor people that they do not need to see your “riches”? And you do not need to flaunt in their face, that which they do not have. And yet this man was espousing to us that we should buy a brand new van and go that way, so that everybody would see that God was with us. Well you know what? I’ve got news for you: the riches of Canaan, that God had prepared for His people, were used. They weren’t brand new. They weren’t fresh off the assembly line. Nobody went in there with a construction company and quickly threw up all these cardboard houses for God’s people to live in, that no one else had ever dwelt in. And no one came in with a road-building crew and said, “Okay all these old roads are no good. We are going to make brand new highways.” See, all of that came in through man’s invention, but what God prepared for His people that was so marvelous was already used, and not only used, but used by the heathen. So the whole doctrine that you need a brand new vehicle to be in the will of God is a false doctrine.
So anyway, to make a long story short, we cut short our visit to this lady. And so we were left with “Where do we go? What do we do?” So we took off from there, and we began to drive around, and we began to think to ourselves, “Shall we go to the docks?” Because this kept facing us: “Go to the docks! Go to the docks!” Of course, it was the command of the Lord, but we were too sick and dull and dumb to perceive that’s what God was telling us, because somehow we didn’t conceive that God would move that way. So as we were driving around, driving around, in different parts of Panama and Panama City and the outskirts, we were hit with a tremendous, tremendous rainstorm. I mean the rain came down in rivers, and pretty soon the whole roads were filled with water; and our vehicle was up from the ground quite a little ways, and pretty soon the water was coming in up under the vehicle because there were holes in the bottom of it (for air, of course, so we could get oxygen).
But there was water coming in the bottom of the vehicle, so my husband, trying to drive in this thing, became quite distraught, and he had just been under, as you know, the attack of the colonel, who did nothing and had all the advice. And so, because he [my husband] had been under that barrage and because of the, you know, weakness that he was under from the whole trip, he began to speak out things of negativity, and he began to put out doubts and unbelief and fear. And as he was doing that, in the middle of that storm, in the middle of all that water coming in and everything, our son, who was three years old at the time, spoke out, in this most clarion voice and said, “Dad, that is not the Lord. That is the Devil speaking through you.” That’s all he said. And you knew, I knew, that that was God speaking through that child. Because the child could not have spoken out that loudly and clearly, especially to his father over something like that, had not God empowered him.
And as soon as he said that, tears came to my husband’s eyes because he realized that it was Satan that was getting him to doubt our God, and that God spoke to our son at only three years old, and sent him the Word of the Lord. You think God cannot use children? God will use anybody that keeps their heart upon Him, and he [my husband] received the correction that was sent through the child, and we straightened out everything.
We pled with our God. We said, “God send us where you want us,” and God said, “Go park at the dock.” So as you know, we went and parked at the dock, and if you hear or read the first message in this series, you will find out what happened to us after we sat at the dock. But God provided a way, and we were given passage in a Panamanian vessel-I guess it was Panamanian. Who knows what it was!-that was going to Venezuela. They said they were going to take us to Venezuela, but what they actually did was take us to the Gulf of Venezuela and dump us off at a pirate port. But we did not know that when we trustingly entered into a contract with them that they would deliver us to our destination for a very reasonable fee of $500 (when to get on an American ship would have run a minimum of $7500 for a car; we didn’t even check the cost of a truck, we just left it there, walking away in disgust when we found that out).
So we chose to go that route, to go on that ship, as we told you in the first message in this series, that we had so many days [on that ship], my husband said it was 7 days-seven-days journey. And of course, it’s not a very far distance, but we had many storms, there was much unrest on the sea, and we were seasick during that time, unable to hold any food, and barely able to hold water. Of course, the children were able to eat their cereal that the cook stole for them and brought to them, and God kept us marvelously.
As we told you in the first message, the ship was full of pirates, which we did not know: cutthroat men, who wanted to kill us, rob us, and throw us into the sea. And we kept praying to the Lord, seeking the Lord, begging the Lord, and the Lord was our High Tower of Safety. We ran into Him, and we were kept.
So, in your imagination, you think, after you’ve been through something like that, and you reach the shore in safety, that surely at that time, God is going to have something just very gentle and tender and wonderful awaiting you. Well, when we had our vehicle delivered to the shore by one of these hook and hoist things, very primitive, and the vehicle was hooked up and was waving like this [back and forth], and it finally got deposited upon the ground, and we were escorted out to our vehicle by the captain himself, because he wanted to tell us how nice of a journey it was (of course, he had the $500 nicely and warmly tucked in his pocket), the captain said, “Well, I will even provide you with a guide. It’s one of my crew members that you can trust. He will take you into town. He will stay with you and make sure that you get done whatever you need done.” And he [the captain] said, “This guide will only cost you so many more dollars, and he’s my provision, he’s my best man, you can trust him.” So we said “Okay, we’ll take the guide,” because where we landed there were no roads, where we landed was a pirate port: it’s where they bring in contraband, where they don’t have to pay tax on it, bringing it into the country [illegally], and they can smuggle it in, they can sell it for great increase, for great profit; and it’s also where they load the ship up with marijuana.
We landed not in Venezuela, but we landed in the arid desert, seacoast desert of Columbia. We landed in a place that is inhabited by Indians who are not, what we call, civilized-the men wore loin cloths, and that’s it; the women wore black dresses and black paint on their faces, and that’s it. And the whole aura when we were off the ship and into our car was one of confusion and great darkness. And truthfully, we looked at the situation there: it was hot, it was dry, it was strange, it was desolated, and we looked at ourselves and we said, we wondered, if they would take us back on the ship. We didn’t know what we were doing, we did not know where we were going, except we were believing in our God. And we quickly had to put away any ideas of getting back on the ship because that was nonsense.
So we were there, and these Indians started swarming the truck, and our guide told them, “Get away.” Now we had one of those long seats that went across [the whole front inside the truck]. So my husband told me, “Get up here.” So I got in the front. The guide was on the outside shooing the Indians away. So, in the meantime, I was over here, by the door of the vehicle; my husband was on that side [the driver’s side]. As I’m there, and we’re deciding how we were going to get out of there, because in front of us is just a swarm of these Indians, a man comes up to me, and he pulls out a gun and he puts it right here, on my temple; and my husband had been looking the other way. And the man begins to speak to me, and he tells me that he wants all of our money, and that if I don’t give it to him, because he is the captain of the port, then…
Now if you could look at this place, it’s not a port. But it is a port in the illegal world. It is a port for the contraband, it is a port for the drug smugglers, it is a port for those who are in this illicit activity.
So he puts the gun there, and he tells me he wants all of our money and that if I don’t give it to him, I’ll get what’s in the gun, which is bullets. So my husband turns around very innocently and asks me, “What’s he saying?” And I said, “Well, he’s telling me that if we don’t give him all of our money that we won’t get out of here and that he will shoot me.” So my husband says, “Well, he’s not going to do that.” So we began to pray, we began to speak in tongues. By this time he had walked away because I told him, “You have to wait a minute,” so, he went away from us.
We began to pray, we began to put the blood of Jesus over the whole situation, we began to call on the angels, we began to cry out to God for mercy, we began to beg God to keep us, and we were resolved we were not going to give him what he wanted. And the Lord told me what to do: He said, “Give him $10.” The man came back. I handed him $10. And he told me, “Go on.”
So then the guide ran and got into the truck and we put him by the door and I got in the middle: I scooted over, and we started on our journey.
Well, it took us 12 hours to make that journey. It was through the most arid place-it was just desert land. It was up and down, up and down, because it was full of gullies and there were no roads, no paved roads at all-not even any roads that you could perceive. Because most of the marijuana runners brought their supplies down there on their backs because they are used to packing heavy loads, and they would get these huge packs of marijuana and they would run down through that territory with marijuana on their backs to put it on the ship and collect their money.
So anyway, there was a large number, as we learned later, of marijuana suppliers in the town that we were being taken to. And actually, the truth of it is that our guide was engaged literally to go forth and tell the runners that the ship was in. That’s what it was all about. But the captain tricked us into believing that we were being guided.
Anyway, we went there with this guide, and he was trembling in fear the whole time. He was crying, he was shaking, he kept telling me again, and again, and again, “Tell your husband ‘DON’T STOP!’ Tell your husband ‘DON’T STOP! Don’t stop along the way!” Because he said that the Indians there were so savage that they would mob the truck, that they would kill us, that they would kill him, and that everything would be taken. And he told me that again and again and again. He told me that crying, he told me that shaking, he had some kind of a big knife in his hand, he would not turn loose of the thing. He lived in fear.
Well, we had to stop a couple of times to go to the bathroom. The whole time we were stopped, he would just be in hysterics. Now this is the captain’s “best man”. So we kept going, and kept going, and kept going. We were praying the whole time. We were calling the truck “God’s chariot”. We were telling it, “Come on, God’s chariot, keep going! Keep going!” And it was a miracle there was still enough gas in the thing to keep going. But anyway, somehow we chugged along there and we would hit some hard spots, and we would pray, and the thing would charge forward. I mean all the way it was God who was in control.
At one point we hit a real hard, bumpity, jumpity jump in the road, in the lack of road, I should say, in the landscape. And we had a ladder that went up to the top [of the truck]. Well, the ladder fell off, and my husband says, “What was that noise?” And of course the guide yells at me, “IT WAS THE INDIANS!” And then I said, “No, I don’t think it was Indians.” Then, you know, he and I were arguing over whether it was Indians or not Indians, and the guy was yelling at me, “IT’S THE INDIANS!!” And I’m telling Him, “I don’t think so.” And then my husband, poor guy didn’t know any Spanish, said, “What are you talking about? What is it?” And I said, “Well, he thinks that noise was the Indians, but I don’t think it was the Indians.” And my husband says, “Well, let’s just stop and see what it was. Maybe we lost something from top.” So my husband stopped. So again the guy started crying, and he started begging me, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
So my husband comes back and says, “We lost the ladder.” And I said, “Well, should we go back and get it?” My husband says, “Yes, we’ll go back.” And the guy screamed out, because I told him, “We’re going to go back and get the ladder.” And the guy screamed out, “NO! NO! THEY’RE GOING TO KILL YOU!” So we decided, “Well, since we got this guy in the car, and we don’t want him to have a breakdown, we better just keep going, and God will provide us another ladder.” Of course, we had everything on top of the truck and no way to get to it, except climb up the truck. But by this time, who really cared!
So, we kept going, driving and driving, and finally we reached the town. Now that town is Maicao, south from the tip of the Guajira peninsula in Columbia. It’s in from that illegal port, and it’s a treacherous place also.
So the guide went in, and it was late night by the time we got there, and he went and put us into a hotel, for he came into the same room with us, and he assured us as we went to bed, “Don’t worry, in the morning we’ll take care of securing all of the paperwork you need.” Because, you see, we entered into Columbia as illegal aliens because we did not have visas to enter into Columbia and there was no consulate office at the illegal port. There was no American embassy, and there was no Columbian embassy. There was nothing except the captain with his gun.
So, he [the guide] said, “You go to bed. In the morning I’ll be here…” You know, he slept in the same room with us. He said, “I will be here and I will take you where you need to go. You need not fear, need not fear.” And of course, he was so elated that we had gotten through without the Indians killing us, he just kept congratulating us, and thanking us, and you know, on and on, and we told him, “It’s only God that did it. It’s only by God’s mercy that we got through.”
But let me tell you something quickly. Before we got off of that ship, the cook was led to Jesus Christ. The one who befriended us and showed his kindness and helped us with our children during that sickness, and the one that warned us of their [the crew’s] plot to kill us, I was able to lead that man to Christ. So praise God for that!
So anyway, we witnessed to the guide and told him, “In the morning we’re going to talk to you more about God.” And we told him, “It was God that did this. It was God that kept us,” and on and on. So, in the morning we woke up and the guide was gone. He’d slipped out on us in the middle of the night. So we went down to the hotel desk and we asked him [the man there], “Have you seen this man?” He said, “No, we haven’t seen that man.” We looked around to see if he left any of his belongings in our room. He left nothing. He had given us the ditch. He’d taken off, left us stranded, and there we were. So we were faced with “Where do we go? What do we do? Where are we? Who are we?” and “Dear God, what is next ahead of us?”
Well, little did we know, as we had slept the first time in many nights, in that hotel bed, that we were in for more adventure, and that we were not only in for adventure, but we were in for the first and only arrest that we have ever been under in our Christian life; and that, not only would we be arrested, but our truck would be arrested. And not only would we be arrested, but our two little children would be arrested. Now, one thing about the Columbian police force in that particular city: when they did an arrest, they did a complete job.
So we’ll continue in our next message as we come under arrest and we find out what it is to become prisoners as we are taken into captivity as suspicious ones because it is assumed that we are drug dealers. Now we found out later that police were correct in their assumption on one hand: we were the only Americans to ever be there that were not drug dealers. So they had a right to be suspicious of us, and we will find out the next time what God did in our behalf, and how God proved Himself a glory and an honor in that dishonorable place. Praise God!