By: General Deborah Green
PRAISE GOD! Today we are marching forward. This is part 8 in a series entitled “The Necks of our Enemies”, whereby we are finding out that as we continue in God, as we obey God, that God will give us the necks of our enemies.
Now we are accustomed to thinking of enemies as people or as peoples. But actually enemies are demon forces, they are spirits that oppose the will of God. And yes, those enemies can be in people, and Satan can use people to oppose us as we strive to enter and continue in the will of God; but we must remember that we don’t fight against people, per se, as much as we fight against principalities and powers.
And so in this series of messages, which is a review of a missionary trip that General [Jim] and I took 28 years ago [i.e., at the time of this teaching-now about 32 years ago.-Editor], we have been finding out that God does give us the necks of our enemies again and again and again as we believe in Him.
The last time we stopped our message, we were about to be arrested, our truck was going to be arrested likewise, and we were going to be taken into custody when we had reached a destination in Columbia where we had entered the country illegally-not by our choice, but because we were dropped off there by a pirate ship that had promised us that they would take us into Venezuela. But they didn’t take us there, they took us into Columbia, and dropped us off at a pirate port. So we had found our way to a town there; we were striving to get out of the town and get to the border, and we were taken into custody by the police.
But before I get into the aspect of that, I want to say one thing, and that is, Psalms 124. It says, “If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, now may Israel say; If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us: then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us” (vv. 1-3). Now we find out that as we look to God, that it is God who is our preservation and our strength; it is God who keeps us, not only from evil men, but from forces that seek to beset and to destroy.
And one thing that I want to make note of, is, during this entire journey, that we had no instances of malaria-and the mosquitos were terrible. My son, at one point, my 3-year-old son, had 200 mosquito bites on his head, on his face and his head. And he did not come down with malaria! None of us came down with malaria, although my husband and I had been quite sick the year before with malaria when we had been living in Mexico. And so we didn’t even have a reoccurrence of the old infection. We were kept by God Almighty.
And another thing that I want to make note of is that we did not receive any water-born diseases. And that is quite common in those particular countries, to receive water-born diseases, because the water is not-particularly at that time, the water was NOT-sufficiently treated; and when you drink the water, you run the risk of securing a disease. But God kept us from that likewise, and I want to praise God for that. Years later I read of some infection that boys can get from drinking the waters in those places, and it says that it completely ruins their urinary tract and they continually get infections and they cannot urinate, and on and on. I read that in a medical book when I worked at the hospital, and I had to stop and give thanks and praise to God. Because God, you know, kept all of us from getting water-born diseases. He kept us from getting parasites. He kept us from a lot of things that could have befallen us in our situation. So we have to rejoice that the Lord was on our side. Praise God!
Okay, going back to Columbia and facing the police. So when we faced the police that morning, they came to us and they said, “We want to search your vehicle.” And so we said, “Okay, please do.” So they searched the vehicle. Of course, we were in the front at the time, and they went through it, and they stopped at the white flour because we used white flour in those days, and they went through the white flour, and they smelled it, and they tasted it. I went back there and told them, “It’s white flour. You know, to make bread, to make tortillas, to make food.” So anyway, they put it back and they went through a few other things, and finally, they got together with their captain, and he decided it was time to take us into custody. So he took us into custody and arrested us, arrested the children, arrested the truck-we were all under arrest! But he told us there was one place we could stay because they wanted to do a thorough and complete search of the truck. That means they would go up under the tires, they would go in the engine, they would go in, you know, behind the seat covers, in all the stuff, looking for drugs. So we said, “Okay, do what you will.” And so we were under arrest, but we were free to walk around and try to find something to eat and occupy ourselves.
So we kept going back to the police station to see if they were finished with the truck, and we kept witnessing to them about the Lord, and they began to tell us that it was nothing but a miracle that we had even made it through that desert area and got by those wild Indians, because he said they don’t get by there. And he continued to explain to us, the captain did, that those Indians are very savage and untamable, and that they [the police] are even afraid to go out there. So, he said, “You don’t know that it is a miracle that you got through there, that you are still alive.” Well, of course, we took that as a point to tell him more about Jesus, to tell him that it was God that did the miracle, to tell him that our Savior is able, to tell him that the God that we serve is wonderful, and on and on it goes.
So anyway, as time progressed, they found that there was nothing in the vehicle, so they un-arrested the truck, and then they un-arrested us. And then the captain asked us if we would return there, because we had explained to him that we didn’t have paperwork and we needed to secure our paperwork and we were trying to find out how to do that. And he wasn’t real sure which way to recommend us to go. So he said, “Well, go over there. And at the next place, go over there, and there’s a border office between Columbia and Venezuela, and maybe you can secure the paperwork there that you need, or else go to the border.” So we thought, “Well, we’ll just try both options. We’ll see what we should do.” So before we did that the man told us that he would want us to come back, if we would some day, and to hold a revival out there among those people, to see that those Indians got brought to Christ. Because they knew that there was a pirate port out there, but they were helpless to do anything about it because of the savagery of the Indians, and the fact that they could not get through that. So he encouraged us, if we would, to come back some day and minister Jesus Christ to those people, because, he said, “They will listen to you, because you got through alive.”
Well, about the time we were getting ready to leave that particular area, some fellows came in and they were driving a really beat-up old truck. And when they saw us, they started honking the horn, they started yelling, they started cheering, they started honking the horn again and we thought, “What is going on?” So I kind of looked at him, and I said like this: “Is it us you want?” And they said, “Yes!” So, they came over, and they kept telling me that they had “something that was ours… something that was ours.” And we thought, “Well, what do they have that is ours?” Well anyways, it turned out what they had was the ladder. They had found the ladder, and everybody knew that the ladder belonged to us because by that time we were celebrities in the area, because we came through alive. And so they were all excited that they found the ladder, and they gave us the ladder, and we were glad they found the ladder too, because it was pretty hard to scramble up the side of the truck to get our belongings. So anyway, we got the ladder and put it back on the truck, and then we went to wait at the border.
So we went to the Columbian-Venezuelan border and there was some kind of holiday at that time and the border was closed. So we waited there for three days for the border to open, and we lived in the truck for three days, and all the local people by that time-this is in another area-these local people set up the rumor that we were witchdoctors. I forget what they call the witchdoctors, but anyway, that’s what they were basically saying, is that we were evil people, and we were witchdoctors. Now why they thought that, because it was just my husband and myself, and two little children in the truck, I don’t know. But how were we to know why Satan spooks people, and what they imagine? So they told me that “They think you’re witch- doctors, and that you’re going to put a spell on the border people, and that’s what you’re waiting for,” and on and on. And I thought to myself, “No, we just want to get through the border, that’s what we’re waiting for.”
So anyway, we waited there for three days, and after three days, they said, “No.” They came and opened the border, and I went into the office and I said, “Here is the situation that we’re up against,” and they said, “No, you can’t do that.” They said “You’ve got to go over to this other office in another area, and then you have to see the Consulate (I forget if it was the Venezuelan or the Columbian Consulate) there and then they have to tell you what to do, and you can’t come through this border.” So it was after three days of waiting there in the hot sun, [and we had waited] because every time we’d ask somebody when the office was open, they would always say, “Just a little bit, by and by, and shortly, it will be open.”
One thing you learn about Latin American countries: never in your life ask anyone for instructions because everyone you ask will give you different instructions to the same place about the same thing; and never involve the time factor because they don’t operate on the same time factor, and that means, it could be mañana, it could be mañana por la mañana, it could be mañana después de la mañana, it could be never. So just don’t count on it, because it doesn’t work the way you think it should work.
So anyway, by much praying and seeking the Lord, we thought, “Well, okay, this one says we have got to go here, so we’ll go there.” So we went to this other office. Now I want to read you this one Scripture that pertains to this office. And this is in Psalms 18. It says in verse 29, “For by thee I have run through a troop, and by my God, I have leaped over a wall.” So we see that the psalmist is running through a troop by the power of God. Anyway, we went to this other office. Well, this office turned out to be a place where the poor Columbians secured their papers to go into Venezuela to work. Now Columbia, at that time, was poverty stricken, and that’s why they had, I believe, resolved that marijuana would be their great export crop. And they were very poor, very destitute. The people, for the most part, were skinny, at least in that area. And the Venezuelans were just the opposite as we found out when we entered into Venezuela. They were fat and nasty, and they had everything they could want. They were very rude and crude.
Anyway, the Lord reminded us that morning while we were there, before I went into the office, we were praying in our truck, and we saw all these Columbians swarming outside this office, waiting for it to open, and we said, “Oh, we’ll be so glad when we get to Venezuela,” and along the way, the Lord had spoken to me and said, “I told thee to go to Venezuela, but I never told you, you would stay there.” And I told my husband that, somewhere along the way, and he said, “Would you shut up!” because it was very discouraging to hear those words. But again that morning, the Lord spoke the same thing to me: “I told you to go to Venezuela, I did not tell you, you would stay there.” Well, the Lord was preparing us for reality as opposed to fantasy.
Now what I’ve been telling you throughout this entire message is that we build up images of what God is going to do, and we write the end of the story, and we have it figured out in our minds that God will do thus and such, and many times, God does just the opposite. So, oftentimes in our immaturity, we get a spirit against God, we get angry against God, we think God deceived us, when reality is, we deceived ourself. Because you learn along the way that you better listen carefully to what God is saying.
So, as I entered into that office that day, my husband stayed outside with the children in the truck. The whole office was full of men, and they were shoving, and they were pushing, and they were shoving, and they were pushing. And I went up to the desk, and I said, “I need to see the man in charge because of thus and thus and thus.” She said, “Okay, have a seat over there.” I sat there, and I sat there, and I sat there, and all of these men kept pushing and shoving and getting their paperwork taken care of. And then more men would come and get their paperwork taken care of, and more men would come and get their paperwork taken care of, and I was the only woman in the office. I would go up to the desk, I would tell the woman, “I told you I need to see the man in charge.” She said, “Okay, have a seat over there.” I would go from one side of the office to the other side. She’d tell me, “Sit over there.” Then I’d go up again and register my complaint, and you know, every time I’d go up to the window, I’d have to go into this line of these shoving, pushing men, to get back up there to tell her I want to see the man in charge. She’d tell me, “Go sit over there.” So back and forth across the office I sat down. Now I don’t know why she did that to me, but it kept up for hours. For hours! And it was extremely hot. My husband and my children were in the car no food, no water that morning because we’d set out to get an early start-nothing.
So finally I saw that the man in charge was in an office that was down the hallway, because I caught glimpses of him from time to time. And there were guards in that place, because I guess he was a very important man, and you know, for some reason they had armed guards in there. They had about six of them who were guarding the hallway, and guarding the lobby; but mostly, they were guarding the hallway. So I just kept praying to God, “What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” So the Lord finally told me, “RUN!” And I thought, “Run?” He said, “RUN TO HIS OFFICE NOW!” So I jumped up, I ran to his office. As soon as the guards saw me running to his office, they drew their guns; everybody started yelling and screaming, they just went into all this uproar, and by that time I had gotten to his office. And I ran into this office, and he said, “What is it? What is it?” And all these guards come swarming in there because I had run through a troop. I had run through a troop, and I had gotten to where I needed to go, because God told me to go.
Now I would not do that on any normal day, my dear ones, because I would have been shot in the back. And it was only God’s protective covering over me that kept me.
But the guards came rushing into the office, and by this time I was pleading with the man, I was speaking to him in my pathetic Spanish, explaining my plight, explaining what was going on, and explaining how long I had sat in that lobby, and how I had been refused, you know, the chance to talk to him. And “Okay,” he said to all the guards, “Get out! Get out! Leave her alone. She’s okay.” So he sat me down, calmed me down, and he said, “All right, explain it to me.” So I did that, and by God’s mercy, he directed us what to do. We needed to take a trip all the way back to another part of Columbia and secure entry by the American Consulate, speaking with the Columbian Consulate, and granting us permission to be in the country. So this entailed the long bus ride to another part of the country, because by this time, we were not going to take the vehicle. For one thing, we would have been stopped along the way, every time there was a checkpoint, and it would have shown up that we didn’t have papers. So the man said, “The best thing for you to do is take the bus.” He said, “I will call the American Consulate there, telling them that you are coming.”
Now the reason we had to go to the American Consulate is, Americans had to petition the Columbians, via letter, to give us permission to stay in the country long enough to go to the next country. I mean, you talk about “red tape”, it was total confusion, and it was total-I mean, if it wouldn’t be God that was directing us, we wouldn’t know what to do.
So anyway, we get on this bus, and we’re taking this bus all the way back up there to Barranquilla, Columbia. And when we get on the bus, we’re sitting down there, and there’s a little old lady that gets on the bus. “Oh,” she starts talking to me, and she starts bragging on my “rubias”, my “rubias”-my beautiful children that are so blond-and was telling me how beautiful my children are. She tells me, “Where did you come from? Why are you on this bus?” And then she starts telling me about every American that has come to that area has had their throat slit. And she told me about one boy she saw, and she told me how beautiful he was, and she told me about his beautiful long blond hair: because in those days, it was hippy time, and all the hippies were migrating down there to get their dope. She told me about how beautiful his hair was, and she said, “You know, they cut his throat from here to here. Oh, so sad,” she says, “Oh, so sad.”
And she told me again and again and again of every American that had come there. She related what they were, who they were, and on and on and on she went, telling me of all these stories, these gruesome tales of these dead Americans. And my husband said, “Oh, what are you talking about, dear?” And I said, “You don’t want to know right now, honey, never mind.”
So I began to tell her that it was Jesus that was with us, it was the Lord that kept us, it was our God that saved us, and it was our God that kept us through the entry we had made into the country. And she just shook her head, shook her head, shook her head. And then finally she did the Catholic sign of the cross, and that ended our conversation. But it was one more witness of our God, that yes indeed, we were privileged to be alive, privileged to be alive.
Well, we finally reached our destination, and it was too late that night to see the American Consulate, so we checked into a reasonably priced hotel, and there we were able to witness to the son of the hotel owner, who was very hungry to know about the Lord. He came from a Catholic family, and we were witnessing to him, testifying about the real aspect of serving Jesus Christ as Lord and Master, knowing Him without the encumbrances of religion. And so he got so eager and enthusiastic about what we had to say, that he actually gave his life to the Lord that night. And we said, “Now you need to pray for your family that they’ll get saved,” because we knew he was going to be in for hell, being born-again in that Catholic setting.
But the next day we went to the American Consulate, and he wrote a letter for us and begged for our plight: in other words, he asked that the Columbians would have mercy on us. So we took that over to the Columbians and they stamped us a little entry into the country. Then we went back to the same border we had spent three days waiting at, and this time we got through.
Well, when we got into Venezuela, we were given a one-day visa, and to say that we had expected more, is the truth. We had thought that perhaps we’d stay there for ten days, for ten years, for ten months-whatever the Lord had in mind. But they gave us a one-day visa. So here we were in this rich, haughty country-because they had a lot of oil money in those days, and the Venezuelans were fat, and they were rude and they were crude, and they didn’t care where you came from, they didn’t care what you wanted, they didn’t care who you were, it was just “business is business”, and that’s it. Now, the Columbians were a different breed. They would listen to your story and they would listen to you declare Jesus Christ as Lord; and they would have somewhat compassion upon you in your condition; and whatever they had, they would share with you.
When we got it (the visa), we thought, “Now what do we do?” Well, from there, you know, we’re in this vehicle, and we didn’t know what to do, so we decided, “Well, if we go to another place, maybe we can re- enter the country from that way. Maybe they put this indictment against us because we came in from Columbia (and they had a spirit against the Columbians: they only basically used them as their slaves, you know, worked them at low wages and abused them and then sent them back to Columbia).” So we figured, “Well, maybe they got an attitude because we came in through Columbia.” So we decided, “Well, we’ll go to the island of Aruba,” which was-we didn’t know it—but it was a wealthy resort island off the coast. So we go and spend some money and get on this ferry, and it’s a three-hour sea trip-another sea trip, but it wasn’t as bad as the first one-over to Aruba.
Well, when we get to Aruba, they absolutely are going to refuse us any entry into the country. They said, “No, we don’t want you here.” They said, “How much money do you have?” So we told them how much money we had. At that time it was getting pretty low. And they said, “No, because if you come here and you are a foreigner, you have to have a minimum of $2000 per person, in cash, on your person, in order to stay in this country.” So they said, you know, “You can’t stay here. You got to go. You got to get out now.”
Aruba at that time had been a Dutch island, and so they had their own set of rules that they went by; and they catered to wealthy foreigners, mostly wealthy Americans. They were trying to keep the drug-dealing element out of their country, and therefore, they had set in this stringent code that you had to have $2000 cash on you in order to stay in the country. So this kept up, kept up, and then finally a man that was working there, came out and said, “I will vouch for these people,” because he had overheard the thing going on for hours, you know, the bickering, and us presenting our case again and again, pleading for mercy. And the man came out and he said, “I will vouch for these people. I will take these people home, and I will keep them in my custody, and they won’t leave and I will vouch for them that they will be all right.” Now the Lord moved upon that man because he did not know us from anyone under the sun. He was a Catholic, but God moved upon him in compassion, and he said, “These people are my brothers.” That’s what he’d start telling them: “These people are my brothers, and I will vouch for them. I will keep them.” So it was an angel of mercy, literally, because by this time we were exhausted. My poor husband was at wits-end because he had driven this whole trip, and it was just a very trying experience. “Well,” they said, “Okay…okay…” So they said, “Tomorrow morning we’ll let you know.”
The first night we got there, before we could even go to the office-I’m getting ahead of myself-we slept in our truck and they told us, “Come back the next day.” The next day is when we met the man, and the man took us home that night and they (at the office) told us, “Come back the next day” again.
Well, that night, the first night that we were there, we had prayed to God that if God wanted us to stay in Aruba, if God was going to make Aruba the way that we get into Venezuela again, that God would make them have mercy on us. And we also prayed that if God did not want us there, that God would close every door. Well, by the next afternoon, we were sure that God was closing every door, and that night that we had spent in our truck, it was very hot, very sultry; the mosquitoes were horrifying, and my son collected more mosquito bites on his face. Now the rest of us had our share too. My whole legs were just covered in swollen puss-filled bites because of the poison that was in those mosquitoes.
So anyway, as we went home with that man, he gave us a room all to ourselves. He gave us privacy and he gave us an elegant dinner. He treated us like we were kings and queens. He treated us royally, he treated us as though he was the servant and we were the masters. And we just cried. When we got in the room, we just cried because it was God who was showing compassion and mercy on us after all of that hardship. Next day they said, “No, no entry. Get on the plane as soon as possible, and get out of here.” So he took us to the airport. We bought our tickets.
Now we were on the plane to Miami, Florida, because that was the only place in the United States that we had enough money to get to. Now Miami, Florida, was a huge-and still is-a huge city. We’d never been there in our lives. We didn’t know one person; we had no idea where to go. But that night, the night before we got on the plane, when we had been in the man’s house and in his room that he had given us to stay in, the Lord had spoken to me, and He said, “When you get to Miami…” Now he told me, “When you get to Miami…” and we didn’t even know where we were going. He said, “When you get to Miami, you go to the Salvation Army.” And I thought, “What does God want me to go to a thrift store for?” But I just shut my eyes, shut my mind off, and went to sleep. And then, the next day, we ended up, you know, flying into Miami. And of course it was one of these island jumping routes where they’d stop at island after island after island after island, all up through the Caribbean. And my son Joshua was really angry at the concept of a seatbelt and having to stay confined in his seat. And he kept getting up, and you know, taking off his belt, getting up, trying to walk around…getting up, standing up, and on and on, and finally the stewardess threatened to throw him off the plane, and that calmed him down because I told him, “Look out there at the window. See, there’s nothing out there. She throws you out of the plane, that’s where you’ll go.” So he calmed down, and finally we ended up getting into Miami.
Well, when we got into Miami, there was absolutely nowhere to go except to what the Lord had spoken to me. And of course, we didn’t even know what the Salvation Army had to offer in Miami, and so we prayed for a taxi, and I went out and asked several taxis how much it costs (for a ride). We didn’t have enough money to take a taxi, and of course the airport was like 20 miles outside the city. So finally I came across one taxi driver, and I said, “How much is a taxi?” He said, “Such and such.” I said, “Oh, too much.” He said, “How much do you have?” I said, “I have $20,” because I think the taxi was like $30. I said, “I have $20.” He said, “Get in. I’ll take you.” It turns out the man was a Christian. He was praising God, he was thanking God the whole way. He was another angel of mercy that God sent to us.
He took us to one Salvation Army. He got the information: it was the wrong Salvation Army because it was a men’s shelter. Then he took us to a family shelter. He turned us over to them, and from there God had great things prepared for us. God already had a dwelling place, a job, and all that we would have need of, prepared for us with the Salvation Army in Miami, Florida, only by the move of God. So God is able, God spared us. Many times God kept us throughout the whole journey and God gave us the necks of our enemies.
