MY LIFESTORY
CHAPTER 1
I was born in the southern part of Angola.
My father is Portuguese; my mother is a descendent of the South African
settlers who moved into Angola about two hundred years ago. Being born
catholic, I’ve never been a practicing one, although I feared all things
Catholics normally do fear. I feared any supernatural thing – and God
happened to be a supernatural being to me – and just the knowledge of
anything supernatural would make me tremble. I couldn’t yet figure out the
difference between spiritism and God, witchcraft and holiness, or any other
evil practice and the things of God. For me, it amounted to the same thing,
and because I did not know anything about the things the Lord would do for
me, I would mix them all up in my little mind simply because of the fear of
them.
As a child I was very much alive, naturally
born naughty and had a special passion for soccer to the point of becoming
outstanding in it. At school I was naturally successful, not caring that
much about being responsible because I was never taught to be so. I used to
live pretty wild, just as a wild mountain goat, even though I had the most
loving father and mother who managed to do their best in raising me up. I
lived as if the whole world had just been created for me, wild in African
style, careless about life or any thing else, and as happy as can be.
My father contributed a whole lot to that
kind of free, enterprising spirit. He was the one trying always to make me
feel handsome and free. We were given our presents as rewards always for
some thing achieved, like passing school and such like things. I can recall
many happy moments spend on my father’s lap driving as well, and even
feeling like a handsome driver, though my mother was always alert showing
out some concern on her beautiful face because of these driving sessions.
So, up to when I was about ten years old, I have been a normal, happy and
healthy child. From that time on though, I started to experience some of the
many, sudden big changes my life would suffer in years to come.
In a sad Saturday morning, I was run over by
a bicycle on my way to the school soccer field. This first warning that my
life was on the verge of changing forever, took me to hospital, and ever
since, I kept visiting hospitals or witchdoctors, spiritists or whomever my
parents would manage to take me to. Even so, I can trace a powerful Hand in
all things happening to me ever since, both good and bad things, which left
their unmistakable stamp on my life forever. Even when in sin I was kept
living for the very purpose of meeting Him one day, just as would be
possible to happen to anyone really. But allow me to tell my story to you.
A few weeks after being run over, I started
to feel sick about something. I was taken to hospital by my parents and was
diagnosed to carry pneumonia. The young female doctor, who happened to
diagnose that horrible sickness on me, was doing her first year in hospital
as the practical year of her course. We were all surprised that she did go
consult some of her many books so she could be able to carry out the whole
consultation. That is how she managed to prescribe whatever she thought and
read would grant me a speedy recovery from coughing and bad spitting! The
biggest surprise however, was when we were given, at the nearest pharmacy,
all the things she had prescribed: it was close to a ton of injections and
medicine boxes. My poor mother almost fainted when she saw all the
pharmaceutical stuff I was to be treated with. A few moments of silent
reflection and of counseling between mom and mom, from self to self, was
enough to decide I was to be taken to a different doctor all together. It
had been clearly decided also that I would never stay at the hospital,
because my father did not trust them.
My mother has always possessed this natural
gift of knowing a ‘lot’ about medication herself, and that made her give a
good suspicious look at what she bought at the pharmacy. The amount of it
shocked her. So being, she hid half of it and the other half she took to
show the new doctor we were to see near our home. But surprise of all
surprises: this new doctor cut off half of the remaining half of the initial
purchase - I was commanded to be treated with less than a quarter of the
original prescription; the prescription was good the amount bad; but it
still happened to be too many injections in my own point of view. Yet, as
doctors and moms do always carry our best interest at heart, soon therefore,
I would be resigned to my poor luck. From there on my only concern would be
that each box of that medication meant a hole in my skin, and judging from
the amount of it, I could suppose I would just look like a fishing net as
soon as they had finished with me! To my best idea, the solution to all my
mom’s concerns would be so easy, if that would only depend on me: I would
just throw all that stuff away! I wouldn’t mind to cough as I did for a
while! I never thought something bad would ever happen to me! The whole
world belonged to me, and it would be just a question of time to get well
and not of injections and medicine! That’s how I would have looked upon the
whole matter, but I was left with no other option but to be fiercely made
full of holes all over my lower back!
For more than one month I did go to be
injected twice a day, as far as I can recall. I was so sore I could hardly
touch my waste. I felt miserable and had such impatience in recovery that I
could hardly wait to see the day dawn that I was to be allowed to go and
play with my schoolmates again, especially in the soccer field! I looked
forward so much to that day I was to kick a ball again, and to be given back
a normal life at last, I even started to think myself well and healthy so I
could be taken back to my old normal living. But my mom and family would
never believe me, nor allow me to go and run. I did what people do with
doctrines and things they wish for intensely: they start to believe a lie
because of some desired truth. Unfortunately, the normal life I desired
after would never make it my way again.
It was a Sunday afternoon and I happened to
be playing outside with my cousins. Slowly, I felt a rising pain on one of
the spots where I had been given those unwanted injections. It got worse as
time went by, and soon my complaint was expressed to my grandmother, in
whose home I had been staying because my parents were absent four hundred
kilometers south in a cattle farm we owned at the time. Things got worse, so
much so that towards the end of the day I was experiencing such unbearable
pain that none seemed to be able to know what do to help me out of it. Have
you ever seen a pig being slaughtered? That’s just how I would scream for
relief from the unbearable hell which happened to visit me in such an
unexpected manner. The pain was feasting on me, and soon it took a grip on
both sides of my heaps. I had to be taken to hospital, and, as if such
indescribable pain was not enough to be killed through, imagine who did I
see there to consult me! It was the very doctor who prescribed four times
more injections than those which I thought had put me in the hell I then
found myself in! Oh my, I thought, ‘that is the end now’.
I saw her going to consult her books again
even though that should not be that surprising at all. To me she a perfect
portrait of a bad witch consulting some wizard books to find the best way
she could use to exterminate me speedily and to make me scream. My parents
being away in that cattle farm in the Namibian border of Angola, left me
alone to convince a grandma she should not allow that doctor to consult
again and decide anything concerning my welfare – but there was none to
believe me when trying to tell them this was not a good doctor. I was
risking and asking to be slapped in my face if I said anything bad about the
doctor! And there came the expected bad news: I was to be injected on the
hot painful spots at my back right there! She called upon a male nurse as
the chief commander in charge she was trying to be, and ordered him to do
his job on me. She disliked me, I thought, that’s why she called upon a
stronger helper from her magical pit. How could she kill pain injecting into
the very sore spots? I screamed and screamed but to no avail. Surely, that
could not be that good a doctor, injecting on pain to kill pain away!
Afterwards I was taken home and put to sleep
upon my dear mom’s bed so I would feel better! At least there I would think
about mom, and nurture some closeness to her by crying on her pillow. I fell
asleep. After a while, though, I did wake up in terrible agony again. Once
more I was raced to the hospital where my worst nightmare ever was to
consult me again. The books said something once more and I saw two more
injections coming, one on each side. It was morphine and it did bring a
whole lot of mischief. But that would not be all, the worst was still to
come: the order came, which admitted me into hospital. My parents were not
there, so my poor grandmother and uncle would just consent to it afraid of
being the responsible ones to take me home as I was. I reminded them my
father did not allow me to stay in that hospital when I was taken ill by
pneumonia, but that would be a useless effort – the doctor’s word was made
to prevail.
They took me in and I was just waiting for
the first slack moment in them, while filling all forms for admittance, so I
could run away from whoever was trying to imprison me there. The male nurse
held and put me on hospital trolley, because there were no vacant beds in
hospital - one more reason for them to let me go, I thought, but they would
just not listen! Not even Grandma! As soon as they left me unguarded, I
jumped off and aimed right to the nearest door, to run away as fast as I
could! But to worsen my nightmares, suddenly there was something wrong with
my legs for they would just not correspond to the command of my already
running mind. I did get to give a few steps forward though, but could go no
further than those because I was slowly going down. I found myself
struggling to be up on my feet again, but there was no way I would manage to
run away at all. The bad witch’s nurses lifted me up and put me on bed once
more.
I fell asleep at once. So deeply into sleep
was I carried that it seemed to me I was taken to the worst, most far away
place in the whole world. Late at night I woke up and could not get loose
from the grip of the leather belts I had been bound with to prevent a new
escape in case I woke up unnoticeably. I called for someone to help me out.
The bad witch’s male nurse emerged from darkness and lingered silently
through the half dark door and asked what I wanted. I think I lied to him
when I said I wanted to go to the toilet, because I believe I woke up
thinking to run away from there. He got me out of bed grumbling at me
because it seemed I could not move by myself. After a while he managed to
sit me up, took me out of bed and to put me on my feet. But, to the
amazement of all, an abyss sucked me in as if it were a black hole under my
feet. I fell to the ground and the nurse stood there looking at me,
bewildered in amazement and very shocked. He couldn’t believe what he saw
happening right in front of his eyes. After the shock was over, some people
came in I think, and they tried to put me up on my feet again but to no
avail - there was no way they could obligate my legs to correspond to their
best wishes. I was lame and nobody could figure out why.
There was I left to sleep, thinking I was
only having a kind of nightmare, which had been of a more real kind than
usual and which would pass away as soon as I woke up. Early the next morning
though, for each eye I opened up from that deep sleep which I thought was
giving me a terrible nightmare, two white-robed people would appear. I
called the attention of many people, so maybe I would be walking home now, I
thought. But no, surprisingly somebody came in with a huge needle in his
hand – it was more or less ten centimeters long. That thing was to be
stubbed in between my vertebra so that they could extract some liquid to be
taken in for analysis so they would be able to find out what was wrong with
me. The following days granted me no peace whatsoever, and I was forced to
feel over flooded with continuing bad happenings. Blood samples were taken
day after day; my whole body was searched and stubbed for a conclusive cause
for whatever had happened to me. No doctor would, however, be able to find
out what kind of thing or sickness did come over me so suddenly. For the
following years, even in South Africa, nobody was ever conclusive in stating
what had happened to me. Years later some doctor who did operate on me in a
South African hospital, did mention something about there being some slight
after signs of poliomyelitis, but no certainties were ever put forward.
Whatever it was, I was never to walk normally again, so whether these would
find out what had happened to me or not, all I wanted to do was I to be able
to walk normally again.
This is where a fight for inner survival
started off and to live on with me wherever I would be thrown to sojourn. I
started to live as if I had to “strengthen what remains” so my useless crown
would not be taken away from me somehow. The concern the face of all grown
ups around me showed off, which I was able to sense fiercely, granted me the
reasons I would use to face things as if nothing real bad happened around me
and that there was nothing but the unknown future ahead of me! I started to
fight unconsciously for a survival which seemed certain yet so impossibly
far away, not only in time but especially in achievement. I was dragged down
into a search of all soul resources I never thought I possessed, to obligate
them to serve me anyhow, somehow, because I granted myself no time to think
that I would not be able to attain to life as a victor only. It was as if I
knew instinctively I would be turned into a salt pillar if I dared to look
back towards something I had lost. Yet, I was just too blinded by effort not
to look to anything else but to survival-masked effort alone. I never saw
too far away ahead of me anyway – I was blind and lost and knew not why.
One day my mother lifted up my bed’s sheets,
in hospital, and she was suddenly angry: I was full of bleeding sores all
over my back because nobody did turn me over so now and then. All kinds of
uninvited guests were there to torment a hopelessly bed stricken body who
was now trying to figure a way out of a nightmare, a bad dream, by taking
refuge in flourishing imaginations. I thought I was to wake up soon from
some reality I never could fight off me. I was a soul bound to a suddenly
unmoving body, which could not correspond to my wishes any longer.
I was taken home, and nobody dared to
withstand my mom’s anger, seeing she was raging like a wild bear. There are
times a mother’s anger makes us happy. That anger backed me up and made my
desire to go home fulfilled. “I told you, Grandmother – I should have never
stayed here!”
Back to my room I could not even sit up in
bed. One day I fell down because of trying to sit up on my own. My whole
family tried to cheer me up though, but everybody could not but show off
that feeling of a sudden sadness concerning the whole event. I was
paralyzed. Their sadness would just glow out of all of them, no matter how
much they would try to cheer me up. But there was something which started to
glitter out of the eyes of my uncles, nephews and parents, once they would
not be able to hide sadness from their way of dealing with me. Everybody
started believing somewhere in this wide world there must be someone who
could make me well again. That’s how my father felt about it too, even
though he thought about doctors while all others thought about spiritism and
witchcraft. He started to spend a fortune in taking me everywhere he would
hear of somebody who might be able to heal me. And as soon as the hope in
doctors faded away, he started to take to African and white witchdoctors and
spiritists against his own beliefs, actually to anyone who was thought to be
able to enhance some kind of miracle upon my non-walking body. My father and
mother would spend so much time believing that at any time someone would
somehow show up to achieve the impossible – however contradicting, hope
abounded somehow. My parents were so amazing I cannot describe all they did
for my sake at this point of my changed life. But life was to be disgraced
only outside my imagination, for within it, I would still be running very
fast. I simply refused (up to this very day) to see myself as not being
normal – even in my dreams I was always either walking or running, it just
would not be any other way.
I slowly recovered all sensibility in my
legs, and soon I was walking on crutches. This was not what I desired to
have though, but the sudden freedom from bed these crutches granted me,
would take me to extreme efforts to recover my normal life back again. Soon
I would even try to play soccer in crutches and my nephews and some friends
would always have to consent to it so everybody would feel happily
comforted: me because I was a partner in their games, and them because there
would be a kind of compulsion to take me into their playing sessions. But
these uncared, unleaded efforts in such conditions to be back to normality,
damaged my whole body - some muscles developed more than others and my back
started to bow to the right side and to become somewhat twisted. I would
climb trees only with the efforts of my arms, jump walls - actually anything
my friends would do. There would be nothing my friends would do that I would
not try at, with the exception of the obvious impossibilities like running
and walking normally. I made it an obligatorily must to imitate everybody,
but most things would only be working out in my own mind alone! This
attitude of trying to surmount any kind of difficulty would carry me for
years and years to come. My whole life was a sudden challenge, it had been
turned into a daring adversary and there was no way I was to be defeated
ever – so I thought and hoped!
This is also where my unconscious search for
God started off, I think. There was a huge set backing disappointment on all
my hopes because no matter how hard I tried, life would just not return to
its normal way, the one I knew of any way. My parents would take me to
spiritists and witchdoctors, fake miracles bubblers, even to a priest who
did cause such an impression on me and on my poor father who did never like
to believe anything else besides the normal human side of things. I recall
how we did go to this priest who did claim to be an amazing miracle worker.
Everybody did mention things about him all over the country at the time,
saying he could perform great miracles in the name of Jesus. Even though my
father has never been a believer openly, he consented to go there together
with some other people who did turn to be our friends because they, like me,
were looking for some kind of cure for their individual maladies.
I do recall that we did ride in three
different cars: my father and I and a teacher of mine’s husband in his newly
bought car, and all the women in my father’s car, we all obeying some kind
of apartheid system which my father implemented jokingly. There was another
couple driving in a separate car, the man having lost his memory for some
reason I slightly recall had been some kind of accident somewhere. I was now
about twelve years old. The car my father and me were in was a recent
acquisition of its proud owner who manifested continually his contentment
with his newly bought car. We were to drive more or less 500 km to this
amazing priest. On our way, the proud owner of that Datsun 212 (I think!),
‘conceded’ my father the honor of trying out his newly acquired vehicle. But
as soon as my father had his grip on the steering wheel, something strange
happened which shocked its owner: my father said there was something wrong
with his new car! The poor man could not believe it, for my father said that
there was some kind of problem with one of the wheels of the motive of his
pride and contentment, or some other steering problem he could not account
for. He could guarantee that the car was so now and then willing to go off
the road. The man made it a point to see for himself whether this amazing
thing my father was saying about his new car was true or not, seeing he had
been driving for so long without noticing anything specially wrong with it
at all. The man gripped firmly on the steering wheel and nothing happened –
it was such a sight just to see the relief on his face as soon as he
concluded that the pressure moved to whom criticized his automobile. My
father was now the one to be shocked at his remark that there was nothing
wrong with it, and that there was no other reason for these statements he
made. Another change of seats took place upon the request of my father and
the people in the other cars were left to guess what was happening between
them. And to the amazement of all there was this sudden pull upon the
steering of the car forcing it out of the road. “I told you”, my father said
somehow relieved, seeing he did not seem that happy about having people
think he had been inventing – and there was this man convinced at last that
there was a slight problem with the new toy of his. But, we came to find out
later that it was no mechanical defect at all, and that to the relief of
that poor owner!
We arrived at this town of which I cannot
recall its name now, just in time to attend one of this priest’s spiritism
performances. There was a strange man outside who, I suppose, was attracting
people to the site by turning his eyes so that we would see only the white
part of them while he was having them wide open and lying on the ground of
the courts which were used to bring about some of the so-called miracles of
this priest. He would fall in the green grass of the porch of that house,
and lied down on strange positions having his feet under him while lying
down on his back. My father and I went in against my father’s will, seeing
he disliked these kinds of supernatural things. But because he was to carry
me in, he could do nothing else but obey mom.
The two of us sat down on the floor right in
front of the priest who had been installed on a long bench, having two women
on each side of him. They were facing us and there was an open space in
between. I recall thinking I was looking into the very eyes of someone who I
guessed was a saint of some kind, by the fame we heard of about this small
man dressed in the traditional black costume of a Roman Catholic priest. As
he started to mention some kind of prayers I’m not able to recall at all,
suddenly one of these medium women fell down in the open space between us
and the bench they sat upon. She was fierce and red eyed, spiting anger all
over. The priest put one foot on her body and she lay down respecting the
authority of that foot on her. The demon, which possessed this poor woman,
was real and shocking: there was no lying about it, as was the case of the
man outside, maybe. The priest called upon the spirit and commanded him to
tell all why he’d come there and what was his business all about. He
answered in screaming anger that he would love to be able to kill the little
boy and his father who were sitting there in front of him. I think she did
not look our way at all, seeing she was only looking submissively to this
amazingly calm priest – I suppose her hands were not allowed to move either.
Somehow I guessed this demon was talking about my father and me and the
directions of her raging, red eyes took once she was given permission to do
so, confirmed my fears and my heart started to beat faster. But I thought I
shouldn’t fear at all, seeing I was in the presence of a holy man! But,
there was I, amazed at this thing that somebody who had died long ago,
wished to kill me since birth for a reason I would never know! This is what
I believed at the time, seeing I did not know anything truthful concerning
these occurrences. I know today from the Bible there is no such thing as
people coming back to this living world from where they are for sure, after
they die. These were fallen angels alright, trying to impersonate some dead
person somewhere.
The priest lifted up his foot from on her
and commanded the spirit to show out whom he was referring to. This
possessed woman got up so rapidly and went straight to me and my father. My
heart jumped up into my mouth and I started to fear for my life. She beat my
father so hard on his face, with such rage glittering from her, that my poor
father wouldn’t even dare to slightly react to this. He was stoned and
surprised. The priest yelled at the demon so he would go back under his
foot. Then an amazing statement was done through the mouth of the poor
unconscious woman with a man’s voice. The demon laughed with screeches from
hell, mocking at my father for the happenings on the way there. It said my
father was so foolish as to think there had been something wrong with the
car, it being he trying to kill us on the way there, so we would not get
‘where we could be helped’. (Mark just how this demon was trying to make
people believe in this evil priest to bind them altogether! This was a way
of making people believe in his devilish powers as being good – this had
been a handsome piece of marketing done for the devil and his ways, granting
credibility to this priest’s work by the words ‘coming there to be helped’.
The demon was playing the role of the bad guy here, so the priest could go
on entangling people with evil practices by playing the role of the powerful
one, thus robbing people from their peace forever by spiritism). It said it
tried also to kill me time and time again but unsuccessfully. I’m not trying
to grant credibly to these devilish statements, because the devil loves to
lie, either it be through truth or not – all I’m trying is, as far as I can
recall, to state faithfully from my recollections, all those things which
happened right there in front of me. I know now these demoniac powers are
real and that they are there to deceive only, either through truth or
through any amount of blunt lies, whether they do good things or not! So,
whether these statements were true or not, it remains evil and will surely
bring hell into people’s lives now, and the lives of people into hell,
later, after death – all about it smells as sulfuric as the very smoke of
hell.
Afterwards my mom took me to see this
strange priest, seeing my father refused to get himself more involved with
things he had always been refusing to believe to be there, it is, life
beyond our sight; he did not want to involve himself any further into
something he would not be able to explain ever, without going against his
beliefs and misconceptions about life. We went into the local church where
the priest was ‘counseling’ whoever would go there to be seen by him. He
took a huge key out his pocket and said some kind of silent prayer upon me
while using it by crossing it (up and down, left and right) over my body,
just as Catholics do their things. He said he was closing my body against
bad spirits or something like that. We were also counseled to buy a bottle
of some liquid the priest prayed upon so I would drink from it so now and
then, when at home. I never came to taste it! Back home and for a long time,
we did not talk about anything else but this occurrence, my father being
quiet enough about it so he would not have to talk himself into something he
resented knowing about, especially after having been beaten by a woman
against whom, he said, he could not respond in the same way! I think he
thought these people used this kind of cover up so a woman would beat a
defenseless man for once!
Besides this, I was taken all over to visit
strange people at strange sites but never do I recall having my father go
with us but only to traditional doctors and healers again. My mother though,
would be taking me everywhere she thought there could be somebody able to
heal me, doctor or not – especially when my father was not around. But the
hope of seeing me walking again would be fading away like a cloud does in a
desert during a hot sunny day. At a certain point, as hope was slowly taking
shapes of resignation at my fate, only my parents would still believe some
miracle would still be possible. But, within me, I developed this strange
way of fighting for survival, now accepting realities as enemies and not so
much as unreal things anymore, now imagining myself out of unwished
nightmares, and sometimes fighting my way out of them. For me, it did not
matter just how hard it would be to carry out something – I would try all I
could to survive within the realm of a new view of normality. I lived each
of my days dreaming my limitations away by facing them with a strange
confidence of being able to overcome them all somehow, but mostly by
disregarding them as impossible obstacles – I would try anything out which
would make me be better than others, or even just feel better by lying to
evidence. I hoped within there would be nothing that I would not attempt at
to allow me to look at myself as somebody normal and healthy again, as
confident as I have always been. As I’ve said before, I recall that even in
dreaming at night I never saw myself as a non-walking person. I would always
be running faster than all, jump higher than all and even fly away from
enemies who would run faster than me and from whom I would not be able to
run away – I would just fly away from them all and pass over them and mock
them. I always managed to escape from any kind of enemy my dreams would
bring about. I remember that even from my nightmares I did flirt a way out,
so much so that I would laugh at myself while waking up from them. However
amazing this might sound, this dreaming way of mine has been reality
searching all the time. I came to the point of sorting out things for myself
and sorted out that even nightmares were unreal mind imaginations which
should never scare me away, so much so that I found a way out of them
forever. I have never had one single nightmare ever again Because I would
tell myself (while having them) “Oh, they are just dreams – nothing much,
really”! That’s how I would not even be afraid of them anymore.
This kind of life searching through deep
hope and non optional deep dumpings and baptisms of myself into life
realities and truths concerning the things I did not love to look at from an
aware point of view, was bringing me unaware to the track of searching for
reality within, for truth above, something which eventually drove me to
Jesus in such a real manner I will try to describe ahead as accurately as I
possibly can. I feel I am given grace to be truthful concerning life issues,
so much so that the verse in the Bible that says “thou desireth truth from
within, oh Lord” was never optional to me – it became a daring demand to
look at truth as it is and not as me and people around would like to make me
believe it to be. I can say with my chest full of strength and truth that a
crumbling heart not denying truth concerning life matters, is never to be
denied salvation unto by this most amazing Lord I did manage to meet face to
face in a invisible way, but which left no doubts as to Whom came to stay
within and without wherever I would go, for “lo, I am with you always”, He
said.
I was attending school normally and the
classes I loved most were mathematics and moral and religion. I used to love
the religion classes because there was a man behind the cloak of a Roman
Catholic priest telling us some Bible stories I loved to hear. (I did feel
awkward though, attending church, seeing I never felt at home in that
environment which would never satisfy my inward, now inborn, thirst for and
after truthful things – what did happen here within a Roman Catholic
religion, did also manifest itself in the protestant churches I started to
attend later in South Africa, even though I would always agree to what these
latter ones would mention about the Bible). I could hardly wait for the
appointed day these Bible stories would be brought to us. I would spend much
time to calm myself down the night before I was to attend these classes of
Bible stories. I lived them inwardly, and ate them with such gladness of
mind that all minutes before these classes were always too long. I recall
the one about David and Goliath - I wouldn’t loose one single thing out of
it, and this one specifically I would always remember: even the details of
how this priest brought this amazing story to my hungry soul, his ways of
telling it, his arm movements of how David threw that fatal stone into the
forehead of the enemies of God, actually all of it I perceived and ate so as
to hunger for more the week after. I would go home wishing for that class
again and again. I loved this black man so much, I could hardly wait to talk
personally to him so he could tell me more and more of these stories and
maybe about the God of them. I thought that man would be so holy. Even
though I lived these stories within pretty much like children do with
nowadays stories, still I was so moved with the possibility of God being
real and amazingly good, seeing God Himself was the good guy in all of them
– this was hope in fact. But it did not last long because I found the priest
smoking a cigarette in his office.
He was sitting upon his table dragging smoke
in with such pleasure that it crushed down my heart to the dust! I don’t
know why I felt that way at all, seeing I did not regard sin as sin yet –
but I had such hope that this was to be the man who could tell me something
about God, that my heart broke with a strange kind of disappointment. I
would hardly recover from that fatal blow. For some strange reason I felt
alone in this world again, there being none to help me. I hoped God was real
after all, and there all my hopes in a living God crumbled down into a
mountain of degenerating disappointment. All my hopes were set upon
this priest and I felt he had betrayed me somehow. All of a sudden life
stopped making sense again and I was left to the idea that the God Who
helped David against Goliath was become a normal story after all, instead of
a real one. I had God in my mind close to a real being, and now He seemed to
have withdrawn to a far away fairyland I did not desire to reach anymore. I
eventually found God when I was over twenty years old but the reality I did
slip into from these stories would make me so unsatisfied with religious
worship and unless I could come to find God in a real manner, I would not be
able to bear to hear a lie again, nor would I consent to be lied to ever
again. From then on I always refused to believe any lie concerning God, and
unless God would become real to me I would just not give in to any given
religious ways. I found Him eventually, and this is why I am telling my
story to you, so you may know God is real. Maybe the Lord looked towards me
because of these kind of crushes and truthful disappointments of soul – did
you ever imagine God not leading, someone, anyone, into life eventually,
taking such anywhere in the world so one is to find Him? Even towards
children the word goes out like this: “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro
throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong in the behalf of those
whose heart is perfect towards Him”. There was none though, to tell me “be
strong, therefore, and let your hands not be weak”, and because of that I
struggled for many years to find Him and to know Him properly, as He is and
not as He is made to look like through the fainting, fading lives and
‘lights’ in church benches nowadays! I struggled either believing it was
possible or many times just refusing to believe any kind of lies again. I
believed and believed not at the same time, how that was possible I do not
know. Even if you are a pastor in any church, remember that there is still
time. Make haste to find God and stop arguing doctrinally while there is
still hope.
CHAPTER 2
THE WAR IN ANGOLA AND HOW I EVENTUALLY FOUND GOD
The war in Angola was just on the verge of hitting the southern
part of it, just where I lived. This was one more reason why my world was to
be evermore limited to my own imagination: there was very little in life I
would like to face openly. But even so, I managed to live through by
regarding at reality hoping to find a life somehow I knew nothing about.
But, anything coming my way, which did not fit into my capacities was turned
into a enormous Goliath I was to beat at any cost by imagining myself out of
it – that was never mistaking realities for what they are not; no, not at
all. Actually, I could not see life but as a continual challenge, which
would kill me eventually, unless I did fight a way out through it using all
I could calmly. Just as I always tried to find some manner to slip out of my
most stubborn nightmares, I also gripped upon life with such honor that I
could never explain just how it did happen. And now that the hopes in
finding a real God had been put down, I was becoming somewhat bitter in my
fight for survival. Everything turned to be a huge dispute between life and
death in my imagination, where I was trying to submerge as nothing else but
the only victor ever. I would go to school also thinking I would have a
daily challenge ahead and not a normal school day at all. All I did was most
times taken out of proportion and into an imaginary fight that was only
challenged to eventually become real somehow. I could not think I would be a
David seeing that pained my heart and hopes to think about a God who
possibly did not exist. But, even so, I have always been in a perfectly
normal world as far as my imagination is concerned.
But imaginations do also glance at reality to find its
counterfeiting, proportional feedings. So, soon I was to be taken out to the
real world with a mind full of solutions and surmounting capacities created
and forged only within fire and conceiving grips of the furnace of
unreality. I somehow started off to live abruptly believing all was normal
just as it were. This is what usually happens to children who are to adapt
to a newly forced lifestyle. My imagination was there only to make it
beautiful though, to give color to this most black and white picture I was
never able to escape from – and soon it turned to be a bloody picture
because of the tales of war I would hear from adult people. I often would
overhear people expounding how people would slay and shoot others out of
revenge and later for some kind of pleasure I would not be able to
understand.
In the beginning of 1976 that we headed towards the Namibian
border to prevent our death. But, as soon as we arrived at the border, we
were taken captive by the South African Army under the suspicion of being
spies seeing we were so late in fleeing from our homeland. We tried to tell
them that we waited till then just so we could see whether things would be
irreversible or not. But our fate seemed to be stamped with no turning back
possibility. The Lord was gracious to us though, and some of my mom’s family
members, who lived in Namibia being South African citizens, came to our
help. They proved we were South African descendants trying to flee from the
war into Namibia, and that we had family and blood bonds to the South
African settlers who moved into Angola more than one century before. With
some degree of difficulty, we managed to escape either from a turning back
to Angola or from being shot as spies – I can’t affirm firmly those were the
options, but I overheard grownups talking about it and mentioning having to
be killed for spying, and that, if we were lucky, we would only be sent back
to the bullets of stupid guns fired by devilish men. Eventually, all worked
out well and from there on to be considered worthy to staying in the country
was but a small step. Soon all of us were given permanent residence papers
with which we could go and live freely anywhere within South African rule.
After three years I applied for SA citizenship and it was granted to me, and
this citizenship I keep close to my heart and bear with joy. If I were not a
pilgrim heading to heaven, the next thing I would cherish would be my being
a grand grandchild of a South African settler, besides being part of a
nation who challenged a world to find out what stayed overseas to which
Vasco da Gama belonged to also. But I love to be a single pilgrim heading
Home, and because of that I rest not until I’ve accomplished all for which I
was called to do for my Lord.
The first people to try to convert us to their beliefs in
Namibia were Jehovah witnesses, though. It is interesting to notice that as
soon as someone intends to set his heart to find some truth about God,
biblical tourists manage to arrive and appear at our doorstep from every
possible corner somehow. But I could not see fault in any person who talked
about God. My intentions were to find out all things about the Lord, because
I would love to meet Him face to face just to ask Him a few things. I
thought it strange therefore, that some Dutch Reformed Christians despised
them openly for their wrong teachings, they would say. My small mind could
not understand how a believer could despise somebody who was talking about
God. We were not used to that in Angola, and to have somebody talk about God
was amazing to me, unless they would be as that priest who crumbled my hopes
to naught.
Since the last person who said something about God to me, even
though I was part of a huge class, had been that poor sinning priest who
broke to pieces all hopes I had in an existing of God, I amused the
impression that this country that took us in with such great hospitality,
was a great country because they talked a lot about God in the streets! Even
though it had been strange to me to hear that, I started to regain all my
lost hopes that God would be real after all, and that maybe that priest said
the truth about David and Goliath and that there must have been some mistake
about my interpretation about it all. After all, it was just smoking, I
thought, only something for which my father, up to a point, would beat me up
if he would catch me doing it. These countries like Angola, actually all
Roman Catholic countries, are crying out to find out about God, but it
seemed necessary that I had to move into a country I could not understand
the language of, to hear about my Lord! Christians, please mark this because
the Lord of the harvest might not forgive you because of it! There are
people everywhere in this wide world of ours who would love to have someone
to pray with them and find God for sure, just while you and many others sit
back comfortably spending your God given time on earth to discuss football
results, worldly movies and such like things, and maybe spending your money
on beer while thousands would love to have a single Bible which they cannot
afford!
I was taken straight away to the best doctors we could find.
The only good thing about all this though, was that I never again consulted
witchdoctors and spiritists. It was decided that I was to go to a special
school in Kimberley (the most famous city of the last century because of its
diamonds and now because of its big hole all that digging left behind),
deeper into the heart of South Africa, about 3000 kilometers away from my
family. I was about fourteen years old, and it came as a huge blow to my
heart. This was to be the next irreversible life change which surprised me,
and like the others, I did not like its mood at all. My heart fell into such
degradable sadness, that I was never to be the same happy child again. I
felt abandoned somehow, but could never figure out by whom.
I picked up the habit of smoking when I was about six. I went
to this school full of hidden anger and sadness and there the teachers and
school directors warned me I was not allowed to smoke since I was but a
little boy. I rebelled and said my father felt sad about me smoking, but
since he had allowed me to do so, why would they try to impose something on
me? I became a mixture of sadness, anger, revolt and handicapped
limitations. The reason why my father consented me to smoke was that I had
always been strong-minded about it, (and I was fourteen years old already!).
Besides, my uncles talked my father into allowing me this vice because they
would argue that that was the only enjoyment I could take out of life. He
agreed I could smoke but that he wished so much I did not and that I would
grant him such a huge joy if I came to quit it one day.
In the beginning of 1977, I started school in Kimberley. That
year I quit smoking because I was so far away from home and I would like so
much to have my father feel happy about something he strongly desired. It
had been a way, to a certain extend, to be pleasant to a far away father and
so my own mind would find some rest by doing something I knew would be good
and well done at last. This is where I started to attend church. (I recall
having gone once or twice to the Roman Catholic church in Angola and being
so disappointed about the cathequese classes, for all they did was painting
Bible stories on books and collecting pictures about diseased saints, and
consequently no real God had ever been presented to me!) All students were
asked what church they belonged to, and seeing I was Roman Catholic, somehow
I pressed that upon all because it helped me not to have to feel to be
denying home and a tradition I actually never thought anything about up
until now. I felt homesick, so keeping my roots would perhaps ease up my
heart bursting feelings. Soon, though, I started to attend the Dutch
Reformed Church at the school grounds with my new mates, and especially
because to attend the Roman Catholic services I was taken by bus, alone,
into town. Everybody had to go to church on Sundays, those were the orders
from the school principal whom everybody obeyed. I thought that going into
town to attend services was too much trouble having a church so near. Still,
I could not yet design what the difference was between all denominations and
until very later on I did not come to conclude why there were so many
churches seeing there was only one almighty God I still had not been able to
find and talk to. I did not realize that the amount of churches there are
resembles actually just how many people are wrong instead of right, because
the more churches there are, the more wrong people there is.
For me, everything amounted to God searching eventually, and
all image worship, like spiritism and the like announced me the same message
up to then. My heart was far away from God though, and I so thirsted for Him
unknowingly, that I was confused about all my feelings. I started off by
thinking I had to know as much as I could about the Bible, and seeing we
were obligated by internal school laws to have personal time for praying and
Bible reading in our rooms twice a day, where none was to attempt to make as
much as a single sound, I managed to stand out and do better than all by
reading it properly. The more I read though, the more turmoil there was in
my devilish soul. The most stupid thing I tried at was to think that
knowledge was it, and that that would be the way to find God. I was carrying
it out as I did school work. Since I attended church regularly, none
inquired me about my soul’s welfare, so I was made to think everything was
all right with me and consequently I started thinking there must be
something else these people knew nothing about, for “they are as I am”, I
thought. Maybe this is what led me to God, after all, because I found out
that those who preached to me did not have more of God than me. The doubt
that there was something wrong with all the religious life I so fiercely
attempted at, dawned upon me because of the course of things, and especially
because I had become so aware of other’s religious life (which reflected
only my own!) that there was no ground for accepting things as dead as they
have been put before me. And this was a most trying time for all my inner
resources. I tried harder at Bible reading, but even if it had been to no
avail, somehow it managed to bring about a conception and stubbornness about
finding all about truth, that I was soon restlessly discussing with anyone
about all I read and understood from the Bible. Anybody in sin though,
dreams about things he cannot achieve, except when trying to fall asleep. I
imagined myself away from all, into a beauty and rich world where I could
afford to buy all. That’s how I decided to go and study computer science
after school.
I applied for scholarship funds and entered a university some
250 km away from there, at Bloemfontein. During vacations, even when still
at school, I was to be operated on my back, heaps and knees for the purpose
of correcting all that I had deformed in my body because of the careless
recovering of muscles. I spent all my free time in hospital, and managed to
visit my family only so now and then. It was difficult to recover from all
surgeries, so I had to be kept within school so physiotherapists could carry
on the work doctors thought best to undertake on me. This is where I started
to compete in swimming because we were obligated by school rules to have
some kind of sport as a part of our development, they said. I loved
swimming, so from there to sail in water like a seal was but a small step. I
recovered a whole lot of my physical capacities through that though, but did
not manage to walk unless with the help of crutches. At university everybody
talked about me because of the simplicity I undertook to sail forth through
life also. Most people either started regarding me as a normal person in
spite of my handicaps, or felt unwarily constrained to feel awkward when
with me because life was a natural thing to me as I was. Soon people started
to call upon me to motivate and care about those who happened to need
encouragement. But the enormous weight of their problems upon my already
packed shoulders brought about some undisguised heaviness of spirit within
that I thought I must look for God and find Him somehow. By now I knew a
whole lot about the Bible already and even taught in church meetings about
all I learned. I never read my Bible on my knees though, for I carried it
out as normal school work as if I was competing to know all. I never had God
Himself to teach me His ways. I was therefore carried into a tempest within,
which I could not still up. The confusion grew when I realized my pastors
did have the same turmoil within, and if less it would only be so because
they had made up their minds concerning Bible truths or just things they
took up as truths, and not because they had found God as they were
trying to put forth to others.
Because it is easy to be convinced by truth, people promptly
accept the gospel without finding the Jesus of the gospel ever, because they
are made to believe they are sinners and that there is a God somewhere that
forgives them anyhow. I was never made to see I was on my way to hell and
that the lack of peace within was to testify against me as soon as I was to
meet God in judgment day. In so being I never looked for the Lord as a
personal Savior from all rubbish I gathered within for so long, but and in
accordance with all I had been taught doctrinally, as someone who would
forgive me even without being changed from deep within. I was made to feel
secure within sin and that is why I never met the One I desperately longed
after. I sensed and came to know there was something wrong with all those
who preached the gospel to me because they never met my needs as to relate
myself with God. I was told to believe and go on praying and attending
church and work as hard as I could, study and even preach what I learned
from the word of God, and that it was it. I was so confused within that I
could never talk properly without arguing against my pastors upon those
Biblical truths I could not understand. I always sensed their lack of real
life was the very cause for them preaching so accurately about it, and that
they did not have life in themselves, somehow. I was not satisfied with any
of this. Besides, I could never point out what the wrong issue was and the
more I grew, the more I struggled to have inner peace. I never confessed my
sins one by one; I would only confess them generally just as the people in
church did. It would be enough to state we were sinners enough to be looked
upon by a saving God, they would say, as if God was obliged to love us and
accept us anyhow, anyway. To realize we were sinners would kind of obligate
God to look unto us. All things I believed were a mockery to the genuine
gospel of our Lord Jesus and the only things proving that was my lack of
peace, my lack of satisfaction within, unbelief and never able to agree with
whomever I knew did not live the life out which God promised. I knew not
what it was and how it looked like, but I sensed none around me had it
either.
The preachers I knew were very learned men, whom I came to
regard as of the Phariseen kind, who somehow always preached something and
proved another. I was so anxious about inquiring at truth that I withstood
most of them with any elementary truth of the Bible. None of those I knew,
found joy and peace at the Bible. These only grasped at it because they knew
it was truth all right, and unless truth is able to lead us to God Himself,
Jesus died for no reason at all, I would say. There was such a gap between
what I looked for and that which I was given to understand and commanded to
accept, that I was looked upon as a handsome rebel who they could not shun
off because all things I would have to say were facts indeed, which they
could never withstand and show out as wrong. To all who would answer me
through theology, I would point out normal living truths I could never see
in them. But, the only thing I needed was to realize I was the one who was
wrong here, even though I met with Pharisees everyday. I did not realize I
had been rebelling against the lack of life I saw in them and not against
the plain explanation of it. I’m just trying to summarize the turmoil that
broke out from within which had to be leading me to God eventually, or else
it would just destroy the rest of my life instead, surely.
I happened to share a room at university with a theology
student who cared very much about girls and many sorts of sinning that he
often said to me was not proper for him to do. But he even so did it because
God would forgive him anyhow, he would argue. He carried on sinning his way
out through life and I could be no more lost myself because of that. Somehow
I was made to believe that living for God was to be like my roommate and
that there was no peace left for all those who attempted to find Jesus.
There was my conscience rebelling at what I saw, and the spirit of
flattering pushing me into pleasing friendship up as a means to cultivate
faith. I mean that I was to cultivate man given love and worship because all
I saw at the time was about it. I recall one day turning my back on my
roommate eventually, because he had been bragging about playing around with
his girlfriend’s underwear and such like things. It was there that I
concluded that these people were godless and a real mockery to God. Besides,
I knew some other theology students who were smokers and lived with their
girlfriends without being married at all. I was forced to feel so displeased
and disappointed with all that which surrounded me, so much so that my
normal problems were seen only under a magnifying lens because they became
so insignificant to me in the light of the despair of my soul. I was bitter
and conceived lies of my own to fight life through. I could not hold on for
much longer. And by the grace of the Lord I felt the Lord was calling me to
preach the Gospel. I didn’t fight back against it because I was given some
soul rest by easing up the strain that had been put up within me. I gave up
computer science and went to Pretoria to study theology there, at the Dutch
Reformed theological school. It would have been a seven-year course and the
sight of it being so long broke my spirit. Right at birth this was meant to
die.
Eventually, I had made up my mind already that there was
something wrong with the people who clamed to preach about God and not with
God at all. So, it was decided and settled within that I would attempt to do
it, to find God, without looking at those who I concluded knew not the Lord.
I myself did not know Him, but I wasn’t considering it as a problem at the
time seeing I knew I would meet Him eventually. But as a habit forged in the
furnace of bitterness and pride, I would only point out other people’s
faults and never glance at my own unless it would fit into my discussions. I
was taken into preaching the gospel to the Portuguese community in South
Africa, and somehow met with Portuguese Christians in Pretoria for the first
time. I recall just how happy I was to read for the first time out of the
Portuguese Bible, my mother language. In my mind I thought there wasn’t a
Portuguese person who knew the Lord at all. I rejoiced so much at the sight
of this that for days on a row I felt as if in heaven. The love for the
salvation of souls drove me to that kind of joy, but I wasn’t aware of it.
At this point my parents had left to Portugal for a while
already, leaving me to feel all alone and lost among emotional realities I
could not cope with, nor cut through at the time, seeing that the word of
God could not yet separate between soul and spirit within me. The virtues
that we are to find in God were so mixed up with the suffering of my soul
that for a long time I could not but deny I was unhappy, and that I did
never find Jesus at all. Soon however, I realized I knew Him only from
hearing, even though many people attempted to make me believe that it was
not so. Besides, the joy of having people close by who claimed to have found
God, made me mistake soul with spirit, emotion with spiritual joy or
sadness. I found out I was outside God’s kingdom and reign and could not
find out why. It dawned upon me that I was lacking in grace and it made me
all the unhappier. Somehow I was sinking into a miry pit of which I could
hardly save myself.
I felt so unhappy in the theology school I couldn’t but quit. I
knew it was not God’s will at that point that I would study there to prepare
myself for His work. So, there was a calm relief as soon as quit and went on
to wait and see how God would do with my soul. For the first time I was
learning to wait upon the Lord I was so looking for. I longed to meet Him
face to face so I could deal with Whom I knew was greater and different from
what I had been made to believe. I was very much involved in Christian
activities in different churches and could not find any peace within any
kind of work whatsoever. The Lord was not in the fire, nor in the wind, nor
in the noises my soul’s breakout made to burst into my face. I was in such a
state spiritually that I could not grasp the truth, and could not reject it
either. I knew what truth was but knew not how it was. I never did
experience any kind of godliness within as the Bible promised, so there must
have been something very wrong somewhere. The more I looked after the
missing link though, the more tiring the search would turn to be. I fought
at life, lived in silent agony and could not cope with all I was lacking
within. I did not know what I did lack, nor if it were possible to have.
Therefore I took longer to find it than I should, but eventually I got hold
of my Lord and He took such a hold upon me that I could never get away from
His love again.
I cannot recall how many years I yearned for the Lord and how
much I studied and learned to try and get hold of Him. Even the Greek and
Hebrew I learned at the Bible School seemed so empty to me, I could not do
anything else but feel unhappily against it. I was not able to understand at
the time why was it made so difficult to attain at simple things, why had it
been so hard to know the whereabouts of whom created heaven and the earth.
So, in this tiring and exhausting emotional state, I decided I would not
look for much longer without collapsing under a yoke of unbearable
heaviness. I met people who stated they had been filled with the Spirit of
God (in some cases it was true, but in some it was not, and unfortunately
so). The changes in the lives of those who found peace and joy for their
souls had been so remarkable that my heart yearned even more for the lord
Jesus with unquenchable thirst. On the other hand, the fake experiences I
saw happening for reasons I could never figure out, were also threatening to
my soul, therefore I was always cautious about all things. But nevertheless,
I was to trust the Lord in the midst of fire and fears, truths and lies.
I was selling door to door to sustain myself at university,
seeing that it was quiet expensive to study there. I could see the Lord
helping me in this because I did come across living people in such strange
manners which I regarded as miracles at the time, that filled my heart with
new hope. Through this I met people in whose door I knocked to sell, who
were living for the Lord at different spiritual levels. Some of these people
are still burning for the Lord and to them I owe some of what happened to me
in future years. One day, as I was going home in my old Mazda I bought
through prayer which the Lord had answered upon, I felt somehow constrained
to cry out unto the Lord as if it was the last time I would have the
strength to cry out. My heart melted with emotion and tears. I prayed, maybe
for the first time for the purpose of my salvation, inspired and
effectively. I could not go on living as I did, I thought. I stopped my car
in the entrance to the highway, crying and prayed unto the Lord of hosts. I
said something like this: “Lord I cannot go on like this, I’m at the end.
Whatever you have for my soul, to quench this thirst, give it to me now or
there will remain nothing of me to judge in your day. I cannot go on
believing against my own conscience I have you, lying to myself and hurting
my soul to death as is happening now. Grant me whatever you have for me – I
don’t care how it is and in what form it comes, as long as it is truthful
and from you. But tomorrow will surely be too late to grant it to me,
because I cannot go on one single moment without you within and without and
all over me”.
As I was praying thus, I felt my need would be granted to me by
a wonderful Lord who would come to meet. I cannot express in words how I
sensed and knew to have been heard, but I can assure you I was listened to
above and my soul could testify to that without any measure of doubt. For
the first time I saw when was doubt sin – not when we were lost, because
there it would be good to doubt, but sin would be to doubt then as we would
have had no reason whatsoever to do so. That’s how sure I was of having been
heard. There I was before my Lord being listened to and it was impossible to
deny at that – this is where doubt would be sin, nowhere else. I could not
even slightly think the Lord had not been there for I found I could not
doubt - I knew I had been heard, surely. Deep within there was such a holy
hope I cannot state in words and therefore I stopped crying, reluctantly
though, and moved on to the pension where I was boarding at the time. Once I
went to my room and took a shower, I wondered at the sudden lightness my
soul was going through. I found I could not go to sleep, though. I had to
insist and pray unto the Lord and settle this matter right there once and
for all! I somehow thought this was not settled at all, so I fell upon my
feeble knees and cried again unto the Lord. My wheelchair was on one side,
and on the left there was all my music tapes and hi-fi system; I was
unconscious of all surrounding me, actually I did not care about anything in
the whole. I sank into prayer and broke down all of a sudden. I prayed like
this: “Lord I cannot wait any longer for what you have for me. Come meet my
need now or I’ll die, surely”. I felt my soul breaking down for good and
feeling worthless in strength. As I sank my forehead in my bed, the Lord
Jesus filled me with such power and life I could not expect ever.
His life went through me over and over. Heaven had come down
upon me. I felt I was in the heart of heaven, in the presence of the most
powerful being in the whole universe. He was within, and at the same time
filled my whole room. I could talk to Him, praise Him and commune with Him
in such a sweet manner I could not believe – I couldn’t believe one could
ever experience to be so happy. I felt I could not live with such love – but
I did not care to die either. He went through me, over and over waving and
fanning His most wonderful love through my deepest being. I was alive, but
what made me feel so happy was that He lived too. What I went through here
was so wonderful I could never express in words. My Lord was there and I
experienced, lived and beheld Him in such an unconceivable manner I could
not describe.
Before I met Him, I feared there was a chance I would be
consumed or something the like. I was calling upon the Lord to come as He
thought best, His way, so I did not know what to expect. His holiness
brought fear within me, but just before I broke down, I said I would not
care what happened if I met this most Holy God. I was recalling the words in
Mat. 3:10: “and now the axe is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore,
every tree which bringeth not fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. I
indeed baptize you with water, but the one who is come after me is mightier
than I and shall baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire”. I came to a
point as to realize that if I was to die I would, but at least I knew there
was nothing else on earth I could live for any longer – there was nothing
worth living for anymore, unless the Lord would come and meet my deepest
need: salvation from deep within. This fear I experienced shows just how
much I believed the Lord would come and meet my hungry, desperate soul’s
need. But once He arrived and filled me, and nothing the like happened, and
there seemed to be a little rebuke to have thought what I thought about Him
– there He was and being like nothing I had ever expected. His love was so
real and so wonderful, I did not have to feign it any longer, I did not have
to talk about it anymore – I had it for sure, within and without. It went so
deep into that well of living waters as well as shallow – all parts of me
were in God and God in me! That love rent through me and I was so aware of
all things around me I could not recall any other time in my life my mind
caught up all about and around me so vividly. I was to feel and see the love
that was taking hold of me, of my soul and of my deepest being. The Lord was
there and I was part of Him forever. I realized I was in and in front of the
most powerful being in the universe, and still I was happy and as alive as I
could not possibly be. Oh, that God would meet you so, and then you would
surely know what it means to meet the most high God. Never again will you
guess and make yourself believe you are saved, believing things you know
only as truths and not having them as living truths! The words of Jesus only
thus make sense, which say “I came so you can have life, and abundantly”,
“rivers of living water” flowing out from within! I experienced that!
At this point I realized I could ask for anything and I would
be heard. My Lord was there, and even though I could not see Him, still I
could experience Him with such awareness that sight would never be able to
grant any better view of Him ever. He was more real than what eyes could
see. The Lord Jesus lives, I realized, and this is the very Lord Who said I
could ask Him anything and He would grant it to me on the spot. So I thought
to ask Him to make me walk, by healing me right there. I felt I met the same
Jesus who walked and healed in Galilee in ancient times, whom the blind and
the lepers would request and receive healing at free cost. I was still
speaking and a strong arm lifted me up upon my feet with such tenderness I
could not imagine.
I was standing upon my two feet, having been lifted up without
knowing how, really. I was aware of putting my hands upon my bed and lifting
myself up, but I cannot say why I went on my feet like that, with such
promptness and speed. As soon as I was up, I feared I would fall. I was
sanding but was afraid to walk; actually I found I would not move, I would
not walk at all. I thought the Lord must be saying something to me. And as
fast as I went up, I was put down again. Gently, I was put down on my knees.
The Lord was so sweet in putting me down, that I did not care I could not
walk. Somehow the massage went through me at this point: the Lord was
showing me He could heal me, only if it were His will. But for now I was to
go and testify happiness while in a wheelchair. This is the massage I
understood from it all. I did not care the less about it now that I had
finally met this wonderful Emanuel. For the first time the word Emanuel made
sense to me: God with was. There is no way this can pass through us without
being reality. There is no sermon that will ever supplant and substitute any
of this. Believing at it will never do: besides, having Him needs no
description because it is not possible to put in words what a hungry soul is
fed with in moments like these.
I could never say how long a time I spent on my knees. For the
very first time I was praying without having to think to be praying. I
needed not to think about it. I believe I spent several hours praying thus
and experiencing floods of love in and out. Time came that I had to stop
praying and go to bed, but I felt I was unwilling to let go, until I
realized that Lord came to stay. I was filled with the knowledge that He had
come to stay. That calmed me down and I thought it would do just as good to
go to bed, for He would never leave again. But just before I went to sleep,
I looked at the music tapes I kept near my bed. I recall thinking I would
never need any of those again. I stormed at it and broke all tapes in pieces
and pulled the bands out and destroyed it. I thought that if it were not
good enough for me, it would not be any good giving it away to anyone. There
was a whole pile of rubbish I put outside the door of my room. The next
morning everybody who passed by wondered what happened there, and I recall
saying things like, “well, the devil will not have any hold on me again. No
more adulterous music, no more rubbish into my ears; it is not good for me,
so it would not do any good giving this to anyone else”. At breakfast I
tried to explain to a Portuguese Christian friend what had happened to me,
but I found out I couldn’t. I mentioned about the cleansing I did in my
musical tastes, and he seemed to agree and support what I did. Never was I
able to love any kind of music again but good, sound gospel music, and even
so I am fond only of such as is not noisy and sings about things which
happen to be truthful and which makes sense and means something to me and
Jesus. No more adultery in the form of music was to separate me from my Lord
again. I know I did all this so instinctively I cannot say why I charged at
it. I know now why, and why it is sin to sing about sex and hatred and
jealousy dormantly and through unconscious beatings, but at that point I
could not say why I did that. All I realized was that seeing that it was so
wonderful to have my Lord nearby, as the main guest in the deepest heart of
my being, I should do away with all things that would and could displease
Him somehow. May God be blessed and praised for all this, and that He did
not try me by having me keeping sin within my walls so it would cause me to
stumble and fall in the near future. I did the same to all kinds of known
sin, within and without, in the following days of the new heaven I started
to live in from then on!
CHAPTER 3
LEARNING TO WALK
I happened to be called to preach the Gospel. Now I had found
God, as I knew He was and guessed He would be. What else could go wrong? A
whole lot! I started to walk a way nobody could tell me something about. I
never thought it was needed to nourish it with privileged holiness, the kind
one is to get from above. My heart burned for the Lord, yet I thought I was
not in need to do things as God intended them to be carried out. Soon I
started to mix up things in my soul and mind that sometimes would cause me
either to stumble or to be risen up again and again, depending on what way
and mood I carried them out. I knew I was not to touch sin ever again, and
if I did then I should do away with it on the spot. At this point I started
writing to people whom I recalled having done harm and wrong to, confessing
all to them and pleading them to forgive me. I used to use from my mom’s
purse when I wanted to furnish some funds for my appetites as a little boy,
so I ask my mom and daddy to forgive me all that stealing. To my sisters I
wrote asking them to forgive me because I used to beat them up often, and
quarreled with them. All people I could think of and of whom I could get
hold of, I would contact and plead for forgiveness. Even a girlfriend I had
while at school whom I purposed not to have sex with ever unless we came to
get married, I called upon and drove about 500 miles to see her. I asked her
to forgive me for all the lusting and desiring after her even if we never
came to do sex, but I found she had not a clue what I was talking about. The
life I found was precious to me, so I dared not hold anything back which
might come to hurt it ever again. In my mind, and thank God that it was so,
my heart had to be set heavenward and I was not able to take it for granted
that I was to believe everything was all right and I would go to heaven
anyway. And, if that kind of happiness was possible right here on earth,
imagine how heaven would be! The words “where your heart is, will your
treasure be”, made sense to me for the first time. The word of God opened up
to my heart and mind and I knew very well what the meaning of Mat.5:
20,23,24 were also, and that unless my justice exceeded the one of the
Pharisees I knew, I would never make it to the fullness of God. So, I put
behind my back all I came to know in church and had been taught by them, so
much so that sometimes I was somewhat loveless and unconsidering towards
them. I am pleading such to forgive me now, for I may never see them again
until we come to meet in front of the judging throne of God where our books
will be opened and say something about us and our relationships.
The most remarkable miracle happened to me though: I started to
have such understandings of the word of God that I would just know why Paul
wrote as he did and not only what he wrote. My understanding upon God’s word
was remarkable and profound and I would tremble at what I was given to
understand from it. I was overshadowed with wisdom from above and even
though I felt like David in Saul’s armor, or as if I was attempting to use a
sword too big for my capacities, still wisdom kept coming, rather flooding,
into my heart and mind. I experienced the truth of the words of Jesus Who
said, “When that Spirit comes He shall teach you all things”. I learned so
much, so differently from the school type of learning I had done upon God’s
word earlier, that it would take hold of my soul for good. I started to fear
the Lord with such holy fear and nowadays understand why it is said to be
the beginning of wisdom. It would cease upon my heart, the word would become
so crystal clear to me, so powerful, and I received with such joy that my
soul would just be revived and nourished with the Manna from above everyday
– yet I could not share it with anyone. It also burned my heart to be able
to share it with somebody, but the Lord would just not want it that way, and
as soon as I attempted to do so, I would be crashed down with disappointment
and sadness, having my peace gone. I could not understand why it so
happened. Not only would I not understand it, I would not accept such goings
of things and I soon found I was disappointing the Lord without knowing why.
Things would just go wrong and the more I would strive to do the ‘proper’
thing as best as I thought, the more it would burst in my face and humble
me, so much so that most of my words would fall to the ground and I was
started to be used by the devil himself with the consent of God so He would
pick me up again somewhat ahead. All things seemed to be working out against
my doings: but not wisdom though, the wisdom concerning the very word of
God. Therefore I could not understand why I was to keep quiet about it
rather than preach it out to the whole world. I know now, but then it had
been a struggling issue to me and a very trying matter to my soul.
This is where I understood the book of Romans, something even
which many theologians always have difficulty understanding. It was so
crystal clear to me that I marveled at it. I recall how I rejoiced about it,
just how wonderful it was for me to understand about justification, (to be
made just and not only justified in sinning), to be able to be dead to sin
and alive to God! The words “dead to sin” would mean so much to me I
wondered why I never heard anything about it in the thousands of sermons I
listened to during my whole life! I thought these must have been the most
precious words I ever understood from the Bible! I would exclaim with joy
“dead to sin!” over and over again and the more I would think and say it,
the more wonderful a revelation it would turn to my heart and mind. I feared
so much I would sin myself out of the Lord that this revelation came to me
as sweet as honey from above. It went so deep and had been such a revelation
to my soul that my mind found so great a difficulty to grasp all its
compounds and implications. I could not believe everything I heard for so
many times about being justified (made just and holy) never came to mean
anything to me at all!
I was the only one who knew about this I thought, and there the
devil came in again to humble me to the dust. Any given truth would make
pride erupt into sin, and I would keep the truth but could do nothing with
it – the Lord would just not have it so! There was always a mixture of gold
and clay that would surrender to naught any attempts to proclaim the things
that burned life into my soul and heart so dearly. But the common truth
about this issue of being dead to sin while in Christ, meant so much to me I
lived and digested in this truth for days and years on a row. It was
marvelous to me what the meaning of that word dead meant. It wasn’t just
dead, it was more then dead. It meant dead for good! In Christ I had to
accept sin as dead within and live victoriously forever after! Sin will
never able to claim my soul, “sin will not had power over my soul because
I’m in Christ indeed”, and now that I had been put in Him through that
baptism of fire, I could not resist the knowledge that it was so forever,
that my death to sin had been declared and that in Him it would always be
dead to me and I alive to Christ. For the very first time I grasped the joy
of the outbursting remarks of Paul in Rom 7:24,25: “Oh wretched man that I
am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through
Jesus Christ our Lord.” I understood what it meant that sin would kill
Christ within us, so sin was declared to die within. I had been saved from
sin, from ungodliness and corruption within as long as I stayed in Him! The
word about the vine flamed alive in my mind and heart, that if I were to
abide in Him and He in me I would bear fruit. “I was crucified with Christ”,
these words flamed life into me. I grasped now for the first time what the
words meant “everyone who confesses that Christ came in the flesh”. If the
Son would make me free I would be free indeed! Salvation was revealed to me,
I knew from then on what salvation was all about: it was salvation from sin!
To be crucified with Him so we could be raised to His glory in us! How
wonderful and free making a revelation that was to me! Freedom from
accusation would prevail at last, because there was no way the devil would
point a sin out to His Holy ones because they were put out of dungeons of
hellish grips of temptation, the captives were to be free as they were
indeed in Christ! I can’t express in words what went through me in these
days and months ahead. I lived, I rejoiced at this truth and revelation – it
had just been too wonderful to my soul to express in words!
Allow me to state something more about this issue of Romans 6,7
and 8. I knew from the word of God that I was to do away with all kinds of
sin, and instinctively I grasped that the Lord I met was a most Holy God and
therefore started to fear Him with a holy fear, so much so that I would
tremble just to look at sin even. In so being, I was found fighting
temptation, not only temptation, but also sin itself within. It turned up to
me to be always a matter and issue of life and death, and I knew the only
thing which would be able to deprive me from such life as I found after
searching so hard after it and finding it gracefully and with so great a
struggle, was sin. Any sin no matter how small it was, it became a huge
natural enemy of my soul’s life. I knew it was so, for it would nail that
Lord whom I so hardly found to the new cross within me. I instinctively knew
that the Lord would die within me all over again if I was to as much as look
unto sin to live, and the idea prevailed that if I was ever do as much as
glancing to sin, the Lord of my only hopes would be nailed to a cross of my
own anew, and that that cross would be the work of my very hands and not of
the Romans or Pharisees of old – I would be the only one responsible for His
new death within and for my own consequently. So, that’s how I understood
things from then on, and I was taught by the Lord Himself that the crap I
have allowed so now and then into my ears which would try through most
convincing, flattering words say that I was not to loose my soul even if I
sinned, was part of the “doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy”
(1Tim.4: 1). From then on I was put before a struggle of which this opening
up of the book of Romans was to put an end to by the freedom from sinning it
opened up to me in such a marvelous way. I suffered within to know how I was
to be clean and have a most shining heart constantly before the Lord. I
could not but know that “narrow is the way that leads to life and broad the
way which leads to death and destruction”. I was put before this most
amazing thing that with sin still breeding within, none was to be considered
as saved.
This kind of struggle went on and, as it is said in the book of
Hebrews 12:4, I was only to feel safe as long as I learned to resist sin
unto the point of bleeding, and if not so I would go to hell just as would
any Pharisee or killer in this wide world. But now a newly given hope dawned
upon me. As I learned from then on, this was the second best alternative I
ever had, to fight sin to the point of bleeding, for the Lord Himself said
“if your eyes makes you stumble pluck it off, for it is better to go through
life with eye than to be thrown in hell fire with both eyes where its worm
will not die”. But now it dawned to my mind that to be a victor over sin, it
would not mean that we would slack our guard against it, but that we were to
use heavenly weapons forged at the cross of Jesus especially for us. The
words of Paul “I’m crucified with Christ” meant so much to my now living
heart that I praised God for every moment on a row until it sounded as
normal thing to live with and through. It was at this point that the books
of that glorious writer Andrew Murray meant so much to my heart. For the
first time maybe I started to understand what the relationship with Christ
was to be and to mean. So, when I came to marvel at this that the Lord came
to save us from sin and that was why there was no more accusation against
His holy children rebuilt in Christ into His image, (and not from
accusations because we lived in sin somehow), I bewildered myself into a heaven of my
own. It was just too marvelous to see that the Lord Jesus was there to do
within me: to put an end to the struggle as described in Romans 7. The words
“for there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who
walk not after the flesh but after the spirit” and “consider
yourselves dead unto sin but alive unto Christ” became so flamingly alive
with meaning to me, that I thought I was in heaven from then on.
I knew sin would make me go to hell, so I could not know how to
account for the promises of God as to live as being sure of heaven, until I
was made to see that the Lord came to guarantee holiness within if we had
the Spirit for real, and that the ones “separating themselves were the
sensual, having not the Spirit” (Jude 19) and that the ones having the
Spirit did not have to separate themselves because they were separate in
themselves through the Spirit which they received. Why should one who is
separate from sin attempt to separate himself once again? Did Christ’s death
not mean anything more than that kind of acting? I grasped also why it was
so that “whosoever transgresseth… hath not God” (2 John 9,10), and that I
could be certain of heaven in Christ for He was able to keep me from falling
(Jude 24) and that unless I believed that He was the way to life, and not in spite of sin ever, I would die in my sins as would all
Pharisees! I marked how it was that we were to be presented “spotless before
(this marvelous) God in this present age” with “the life that now is” and it
was revealed to my soul that from then on no power in hell or in heaven
would be able to separate me from the Love of God ever again because
“greater his He that is in me than He that is in the world”. I grasped what
it meant. My holiness was so secure as long as I remained in Christ, that
there would be no way to loose sight of heaven as long as the Life I found
was to abide in my soul. It had just been too marvelous to see that, to
behold it that way. Why was I to believe a lie, believe I was clean feeling
the dirt all over my heart? I saw that the work within unto holiness was a
real work, a real achievement, and that I could say “made clean” with some
other meaning to it which I had never grasped before!
Salvation started to make sense now. I could so easily and so
accurately perceive and withhold the truth of Christ’s death and
resurrection that I would be marveled at God’s victorious grace. For the
first time the cross of Jesus made sense to me. I knew from then on that
Christ died so I could die with Him in the cross, and if I so died I would
also live with Him forever more! I could see myself dead, as dead a Christ
had been in the cross, and I stopped believing those words just as words:
they were so real I wondered why never have these been forth that way! How
could I have not understood and seen it so? It was so marvelous a salvation
indeed that I felt in heaven, lived as if I was arriving there at any moment
from then on! For the very first time I would profess Him to have come in
the flesh. That death was a real death, so why would Paul say “consider
yourselves as dead” unless it was so indeed? Was I to believe that without
it being true to my reality indeed? How wonderful a revelation that was to
my soul. To behold it was so great a thing to me I couldn’t have words to
praise the Lord about it. I was dead with Him and alive with Him! Praise His
name, because heaven was no more a faraway land which I would attain to
perhaps if I remained holy: no, I was given holiness through His death and
resurrection, such as would guarantee eternal life within me, such as was
the same as I would have it in Him forever and for His glory. Having it now
so abundantly, why should I think I could not have it later? I cannot
express in words what these texts meant to me at this point of my life, so
it would be good if all people would see and behold this truth, because
unless someone grasps it, faith is not to become a perfect way to salvation
ever. Mat 1:21 was so opened up to me and I couldn’t but give glory to God:
I was to be saved from all sinning. That is marvelous and that’s how
captives are set free at the word and life of the Lord Jesus. That is what
is all so wonderful about salvation in the name of Jesus. “what is
impossible for men, is possible for God”.
At this point I met people who were living in the midst of a
powerful revival in South Africa. Even though I was caught up in the midst
of it, I availed very little at it. I lived there for more than a year and
used the time to read my Bible through, up and down, and get acquainted with
truths from God, revaluing all I learned from it up to now. These
revelations of the word of God were so marvelous that I had to revalue the
whole of the word within me; so, I thought and rightly so, I should allow
the word I had in me from times of earlier learning to be revealed anew to
my understanding and mind and heart, having revalued all I knew and learned
before, allowing my all the more thirsty soul to have a new, pretty good
view on the genuiness of the cream of the word of God I had already read in
times before. I spent days and months on a row reading and praying, enjoying
my Lord. I understood why I had to feel but unhappy in those days of all
that forced labor in times of theology school – it had always been because
the Lord had so much more to give and teach than I could conceive. I also
read some books on Andrew Murray, Charles Finney, Wesley and so many others
as to get acquainted with different kinds of genuine workings of God in
different ages and people. The book on the revival in Indonesia by Dr. Kurt
Koch impressed me very much. I was pressed from all over about wonderful
workings of God, which magnified His name above measure that my heart burned
and I was so overwhelmed with things that I could not grasp that my time was
still to come and I cried before the Lord so He would hasten times. My
heart’s desire was to go to Portugal and preach the Gospel in the same way I
was given to see where I stayed and as I read. I couldn’t help but becoming
somewhat over anxious about things and started to do things on my own way. I
could but only be defeated by the devil as to be humbled to the dust of hell
when trying things on my own. I was made a laughing stock of all devilish
powers, and the Lord would somehow use it to bring my heart down from its
anxiety and from the throne it was trying at for such a long a time.
I was preached God should lead me into doing things, and I
misunderstood it somehow. I did not understand that the life is to lead us
but that we should be listening to voices speaking to us. Occasionally I
would hear the voice of the Lord, though, and would do things properly. But
most of the time I was taken out of my post because I was found listening to
some imitations (good ones though!) of the voice of the Lord I was trying to
follow into what I most desired. I was trying to charge at God’s will for my
life and couldn’t rest in it, waiting upon whom has all power still to give.
I was so now and then shaken to the very foundations of life and the grace
of the Lord would then just pull me back up again. I could not understand it
properly though, and did not look for guidance concerning this. It would
have been so easy if I just thought of humbling myself and seek help among
the many wonderful Christians I came to meet in that genuine revival. But
no, I thought I should find out things for myself, and the preaching I was
listening to was cutting and made me undergo terrible heart searchings that
the devil would try to bless himself! I was afraid to be deceived once again
and there I found the devil using truth against me. I found I was honest at
heart but proud and at loss at doing because of fears to go wrong. I could
understand to a degree what the words “to frame my doings to turn unto God”
(Hos.5:4), but would be humbled in most terrible manners which would take
away all my peace and joy. This trying time was there to purify also, but it
could have been somewhat different if I would just understand it that way. I
thought I was informed enough to proclaim that the Lord lived and tried it
in the proper way sometimes, but most of the time I would carry out things
wrongly. And when at loss I would just find out I was being used by the
devil to destroy what I had been trying to accomplish. I could state a lot
about this most trying season, but what matters most is that it lasted for
more than ten years and I was taken to and fro, to Namibia, afterwards to
Portugal and to Spain, until the Lord decided it was enough trying times and
restored my health back, just as He had done with Nebuchadnezzar related to
in the Book of Daniel. Of this I will try to synthesize ahead. I felt like
Moses living in the desert while having the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
with him, and being so trimmed up through that desert drying experience so
he would be made able to carry out God’s will once he had come to a point as
to regard himself as not being a man of words any longer. The meekest man on
earth must have been very proud once, thinking highly of his eloquence in
the wisdom of Egypt, being a Jew but not as his brothers – that was the
accusation upon him. It cost God forty years to have Moses just where he
should be.
But there have been blessed times in my ministry which God
blessed very much, of which I will give a single account. Once I was taken
to Namibia to visit my uncles and aunts who lived near the border of Angola.
At this stage the Lord was using me with some might, which I was not
acknowledging at the time. I endeavored to preach the Gospel to a Portuguese
community that lived there. I invited people to come to listen to the word
of God and was given the local Dutch Reformed church facilities to do so.
They had various churches there and I used the smallest one seeing people
would not be that many. I would find that only a few would be willing to
attend church, though, and of those none would really be converted but would
remain gospel flatterers. The word was not sinking down into their hearts to
change them from deep within. I was so sore at this and so burdened that the
Lord was found to have to listen to a most burdened caller upon His might. I
knocked so hard and spend part of that night crying and praying unto the
Lord. I was so sure the Lord could do it I cried. Somehow I heard the
Lord say “enough, I heard you; just wait and see the salvation of the Lord
coming!” I knew I had been heard.
For more than a week nothing happened. I remained waiting with
great expectancy. At last we heard that there had been a bomb explosion in a
near township more towards the border of Angola. A woman died who happened
to be a sister to one of the woman who attended my preaching regularly.
Because the Portuguese communities are so close together when outside
Portugal, the whole of Portuguese speaking Namibia was moved because of this
incident. It had been so strange that everybody talked about it. The woman
who was killed in the blast was a cashier in a supermarket. A few days
before she caught some people steeling a van full of goods from that
supermarket, and of these thieves some were her colleagues, I think. She
denounced them and they were caught. Out of vengeance I suppose, they
planted a bomb near her so she would be killed and so that revenge would
also hurt the owners of the supermarket. It was so strange because the
moment the bomb exploded there had been a soldier paying something at this
young woman’s post, and nobody, not even the soldier was hurt but she only.
The soldier did not even have as much as a scratch on him – the girl died
filled with broken bits of glass in her body. She was married to a man who I
met a this occasion and left a little girl of six behind. At this point I
was not so sure this was the way to reach these people through the gospel.
Somehow they needed someone to hold a funeral service and couldn’t find a
pastor or priest to do so. I offered to do it. They said they would accept
it, and there I found having to ask the ministers at the town where I
preached the gospel if they would not allow me to have the bigger church
seeing that many people would attend to the service. They agreed and there I
was playing the funeral pastor and giving the sermon to a broken hearted,
packed church. It was decided on my request that I would not do the ceremony
in the cemetery, and that I would confine myself to the preaching only.
I could not get to the pulpit with a wheelchair, so I got some
crutches somewhere and went up to the pulpit and talked my heart out to
them, seeing I was so fierce upon them all, not knowing what to say about
all this really, and almost cried on the pulpit with emotion at their former
refusals to come to God. I told them that it had been necessary for God to
bring them to church by someone else’s death. People were so moved through
by the preaching that some were converted and the husband and family of the
diseased is still living for the Lord to this day and it has been more than
fifteen years ago! The husband is preaching the Gospel occasionally because
he is a car electrician during the week. Some people there, though, were so
hurt by my words that they promised to kill me if they would happen to find
me outside somewhere. A bunch of bad remarks were also present by some
godless and careless opposers whom threatened to kill me if they got the
opportunity. I wasn’t aware of it until it was reported few days later
that there had been another bomb blast at a post office and that these who
threatened my life were injured in it but did not die. The rest of the
people and my family saw that this had been a warning to them and saw the
hand of God in it all. Later the husband and family of the diseased woman
went to Pretoria where I undertook to help them and where they joined the
local Portuguese church and later the revival movement which still burns in
South Africa. I don’t know how many people have been converted at this
point, but I thanked the Lord that He had undertaken to work through such
means.
From there I moved to an Afrikaans church and worked for a
while under the supervision of a wonderful minister of the Dutch Reformed
Church who had been converted through the winds of the revival. I had the
chance to testify in two different churches and people would break out in
tears, I was told. From there I attempted to reach the small Portuguese
community that settled there also and was able to bring some holy hope to a
few who were not Portuguese also. From there on I set off to Pretoria
knowing time had come for me to come to Portugal. I was living and preaching
on my own, so I had no means to sustain myself but those the Lord would
grant. I told nobody of my needs and I managed to live like this my whole
life up to now. Sometimes by working as the Lord would grant it; sometimes
by people who would approach me and give for the work of the Lord. I never
asked a thing, as far as I can recall, and nobody would even slightly guess
I was in need, if that happened to be the case. I had an old car which I
gave away to a young convert seeing the Lord had provided for me to reach
Pretoria and I needed not the money for which I would sell the car, even
though it would not be that much. The man who kept it was a young, wonderful
convert who was so eager to buy it and didn’t have the money to do so, so I
said that seeing the Lord provided for me I was giving him the car and set
off to Pretoria. When I arrived in Pretoria, it dawned upon me that I did
not have the money to go to Portugal. Yet I was confident that the Lord
would provide, seeing that it was His will that I should sail into the
darkest continent in the whole wide world, as far as it concerns the Gospel.
I had been shown I would now go.
It was then that a man approached me who heard that I was
coming to Portugal. He asked if I would bring him a huge amount of money to
bank it in Portugal, seeing I was allowed to bring a certain amount of it
because I was going away. He offered to pay all my tickets fees if I would
do that for him. I agreed and saw that as the providing of the Lord. On the
18th of December 1986 I flew to Portugal. From there I went to
Spain for a while to promote light there. And ever since I have been sailing
in the winds God has been providing for me. Nevertheless, I did go through a
terrible nightmare for a few years and was thrown out into darkness because
I couldn’t cope with the most trying time that came my way. About that I
will talk in the next chapter and relate how this wonderful Lord of mine
managed to call me back to His light, showing me just how far away from Him
we can derive if we do not keep looking for the star which shone since His
birth and even before, and which lead even most wise men so they would be
able to come from the east to a simple crip – it wouldn’t just work out
otherwise.
CHAPTER 3
PORTUGAL
As soon as I arrived in Portugal I was shocked with surprise
and astonishment. The idolatry was shocking, but the ways people looked to
sin, flirting at it, loving it and striving after it was worst. I new people
lived in sin and were idolatrous, but I did not expect that to be so bad in
the light of God. People would just do anything, pay any price, even put
forth their life as a ransom to be able to be entangled in sin’s grip. They
would pay to be living in sin’s courts continually. They would curse for no
reason as if it was a joking must for all. It looked nice to curse and mock
on God! The children would live the Latin way, doing as they wished, and
parents would have them to do as they wish seeing the parents would consent
to anything, which would allow them to have time to watch filth on TV. I was
so shocked I choked with the burden of it all. I tried to preach the gospel
right away and gathered a few children to read the Bible for them and get
them converted. But the burden was so great I couldn’t hold on for long, I
felt like dying and could but whisper a prayer up. Without faith the Lord
would not bless the work, besides God would that I be humbled with some
desert living before I was to go out and preach to the lost His Gospel in
the proper way. I could hardly understand that course of things. I went back
to South Africa to do a few things which remained unsettled there yet, and
as soon as I got back to Portugal, I made it to Spain where I joined a
church for a while which had their own views on how to save people and the
work there did not prosper as it should have.
Back in Portugal the burden and despair began to weigh more
heavily upon my feeble shoulders. I was working on my own, having no church
supporting me at all. I suppose that was no easy thing to do, but the Lord
was the one who would undertake according to His will, I thought. I carried
on for a whole while, maybe more than a year, and found out I was fainting
under the weight of despair and under the yoke of distrusting the Lord. At
this point I recall the Lord doing a few things to try to bring up my
believing in Him, like the healing of lady who suffered some severe arm
pains because of back problems. But the more the Lord did to bring me to
believing, the more I would become bitter and despairing under the yoke of
other’s sins, which slowly and somehow started to become mine also. I
thought I must go somewhere else to regain confidence and it was here that
the Lord took all support from me so I would stay where He thought I should
stay to believe Him. “Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, yet
do they imagine mischief against Me. They return but not to the Most High…
and consider not in their hearts that I remember all their wickedness, now
their own doings have beset them about; they are before my face” (Hos. 7:15,
2). I should believe Him anywhere in the world as I had promised Him before,
because God is unchangeable and does not swift according to circumstances.
Here I had a dream which I don’t know if it came from the Lord or the devil,
and which stated I would become so evil as to go into the world. I think
that was from the devil, but I’m not that sure about it, so I was startled
with fear and trembled at the mere sight of it turning to be so. The word of
God says that if we come to fear all the things the nations fear the Lord
will handle us over to them. In the Prophets we read, “don’t fear what they
fear”, but I could not unburden myself from it. There is a verse in Psalms
32:9 that confirms us to sin if we come to fear it. The words “lest they
come near unto thee” are remarkable and objective. It goes as follows: “I
will instruct thee and teach thee the way which thou shalt go; I will guide
with mine eye. (And now what matters!) Be not like the horse or like the
mule that have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and
bridle, lest they come near unto thee.” I found out that the
more I would struggle, the easier target I would turn to be for the darts of
the enemy. The words of Jesus that state “let it be given you according to
your faith” did easily become confirmed.
My life began to sink into deep sin and I soon found out I
could not keep my mind, my soul and heart from sinning. One year passed by
and another and another and I was so deep in sin I could not call back unto
the Lord. Every single day though, I could hear the Lord reason within me as
I was going against that feeble voice. At a point I started resisting it
because I could not stand to hear it and found I was so sore against the
Lord I tried to shut my ears and later started to storm against a Stephan of
my own mind. I started hating the fact that He had left me to rotten in the
world. I could not find out what had happened to me, and like Joseph, I felt
I had been sold into slavery and knew not why. I started to misconceive
things against the Lord and thought He was to blame for the thousands of
things that befell me. Slowly there started to develop a certain grudge
against the love of God and everybody I had been preaching the Gospel to
wondered why I never showed up again to build them in the faith and in the
word of God, as I was accustomed to do. I thought as long as I was in agony
I would not touch the word of God again, not even by reading it. This is
where the devil had his way freely on and in me. Soon I found I would cry in
rage against the Lord who I once upon a time loved so much. I reasoned
against the Lord and argued I had come to Portugal to save all these people
and all I got was a blowing up of my faith. I could not understand why that
was so, just as Joseph would not understand why he had been sold to Egypt.
But contrary to him I started to hate the Lord and lift my heart against
Him. I developed such a tenderness for the salvation of souls in the years
before I would not forgive the Lord for not opening the doors for the
salvation of all these people around me, and slowly that grudge built up
into a kind of rage which I cannot describe of what sort it had been. It
became such a mixture of both love and hatred and soreness, that I hardly
thought to try to define it. I just would not look in, and refused to look
up either. I could say at the time that the doors of heaven had been closed
for me, and the Lord would argue my eyes were voluntarily closed up to His
grace.
As time went by, I started to love sin seeing I couldn’t resist
it any longer. I thought the Lord was giving me over to it, and to this day
I cannot say if it was so or not. I suppose it was, but I can’t say that
much about it. I was taken into slavery and soon I found I hated the Bible
and could not look upon it without having a huge grudge against the Lord.
But for a long time I would never stop hearing the Lord calling me back to
Him. I could hardly mistake that voice and knew it meant to bring me to the
Love I started to hate from then on. The more that voice would call me, the
more I would beg it would leave me alone. It is here where I started to try
and show the Lord He should give up on me because I could not stand that
kind of love. I dared not throw my many Bibles away, but just to make a
point I threw a huge concordance away I was given by the Lord years before
with Greek and Hebrew alphabet in it from which I used to study the Bible
with a huge application and fondness. But as soon as I did that I couldn’t
help but having a full review from hence I had fallen. I cried deep, but
still refused to go back to the Lord, blaming Him for all that sadness and
mischief which had befallen me and crushed my soul so deep downwards
to such a pit of bitterness and revolt. I could do no more than blame Him
innocently, even though I affirmed He was the guilty One here. I was kind of
beseeching Him to leave me once and for all, so I could go and flow with
these people He was refusing to save, I recall saying. If they would not go
to heaven then I would just refuse to enter it myself, and the way to do so
was to go on sinning. But I found out that the more I sinned, the more
displeased I would be with myself, and remember thinking that I should take
care not to go overboard because of stupidity.
I calmed myself down as best as I could, and started to try to
ignore the Lord instead of going against Him. But that was never a way out
either, for the Lord remained the same and would call upon me incessantly,
and I could not have the smallest thought of humbling myself to do so. The
idea of going back to the Lord worked such shame on me that I thought it
would render itself impossible to go back to Him; hell would be an easier
way out, I started to believe. I don’t know what befell me really, because I
found I hated the devil more. I could not stand the devil, and thought
always he was a monster I would not even dare think of. The Lord says one
loves one master above the other, but I found I could not stand the thought
of the devil even though I could not love the Lord any longer – I opposed
two masters. For this reason I started slowing down on sin, because I hated
the devil. I do not know how it was possible because as for the Lord, I
could not have pleasant, ungrudging thoughts towards Him. I am not
describing all I did to get rid of my God because of grudges, a whole lot of
them, and I hope my fellow reader will try and imagine what went through a
small heart which was able of such great sins. This kind of sinning went on
for a long time and I started to mix up with girls and have sex with some.
There, I thought, now the Lord will surely leave me and will stop calling me
back! But no, I started to feel awkward and found I could hardly sin and
carry out sex and having pleasure out of it. I would even render impotent
sometimes. I then tried out going to casinos and make some money for the
Lord had taken all sustenance from me. I said maybe there is no God, so I
might be lucky and win something. But every time I was entering that kind of
devilish webs, which I hated really, I would hear God calling me back to
Him. I hated to hear from Him also and sometimes I thought the Lord was
unpleasant and nasty, and there he was being the opposite of what I thought
of Him. I hope nobody will mistake what I am stating here, but I know this
was so and therefore can freely bring glory to the Lord of my soul by
stating all this. When I was thinking the Lord would curse me because of
this gambling, He would just do the opposite and I would resent it more than
if He had cursed me forever.
I carried on like this for a long, long time because I would
have no more reasons to go back to Him. I started to flatter the idea that
God did not exist so I would not think of Him. I recall now someone who I
heard of that would do anything just not to hear the gospel. Every corner he
attempted at, there was someone preaching Jesus to him. He would change
places and go to another town and there he would find somebody bring him the
good news. He decided he would go on a boat and sail somewhere and thought
there, at last, nobody would be able to preach to him. As the boat set off,
there came someone with a Bible in his hand to bring him the gospel, and
from whom he could not get rid of until the boat would stop somewhere. This
is how I felt about things: there was no sin where the Lord would not
attempt to call upon me, where His arm would not attempt to reach me. In my
mind I nurtured the delusion that some sinning might kindle His voice away,
but to no avail and I found out I was mistaken. I went on like this until
the Lord got fed up with my stubbornness and started to be harsh on me. I
was told I was on my way to hell and there I would still hear Him and would
not stand it for one eternity to another. What way would I choose? For years
I lived in a hell of which I can hardly make a full account of! This hell
was in my soul, in my heart and in my mind, and it gave no rest to me not by
day not by night. Every morning when I woke up, the first thought I would
always have was to resist God because I knew He would be there calling upon
me – without noticing the first thought I always had to have was towards God
and that’s how my days started off for years on a row! This went on only
within me, because outwardly nobody would take notice nor have a single hint
about the struggle that was taking place within me. There was a cold war
going on within me with the menace of eternal dooming, but none would do as
much as sense it. I would just be too ashamed to have to explain it, so I
kept it as far away from the eyes of the world as I could. I recall someone
asking me once what my views were on religion and I just kept quiet and
could not answer back so I would not have to think about God! I made
friends and met people at this stage that never guessed anything about my
past and about all that was consequently happening in me. Later when I came
back to the Lord and told them my life belonged to the most high God, they
were so surprised they were shocked (even if it made them happy for my sake
because of the way I put it to all of them, for I made it a point to reach
all people with whom I dealt with, just to tell them about the Lord Jesus
and that my life belonged to Him forever so none would ever mistake anything
concerning me and myself, and to Whom I did belong and why I had been called
to live His life for: to save them, and so they would have it understood!)
I hope you will understand that I cannot mention all things
I’ve done while in such gross stupidity, agony and sin. The reason is that I
find it useless to fill up endless pages with rubbish. All I am trying to
put forth here is a state of mind through some idea of what coldness there
built up within my soul, so the grace of my beloved Lord will shine all the
more. I felt like Jonah, who could not go away from the Lord. There is no
sin from which the Lord will not call on someone to salvation, and I found
that the He would just calmly and caringly look at me as if there should be
no reason for me to do as I did – His love would just overlook my hatred and
call upon my redemption constantly, which I resented so much. I can state
thousands of situations of how the Lord would call on me to come back to
Him, because every single moment of all the years I lived, had been a
struggle and fight against the Him. His voice would be there calling and
calling without ceasing! I cannot recall one single hour or maybe minute
without hearing from him. Well, actually His voice would be a kind of
permanent asset within of which I would not be able to get rid of! I suppose
this is more than I think of grace, but I find there are no words that will
ever match or be able to engage to describe what and how far His grace will
be reaching, and that for eternity. I know He has called me to bring His
good news to thousands of people, so I must do it. Therefore He hasn’t given
up on me and He will surely accomplish all He intends through and with my
life. Was I worse than Paul? Unmistakably yes. Wore than Jonah? I can’t say,
but I pray and hope I will be able to do just half of what they did for the
Lord, even though I will not limit the Lord to that with my feeble views. I
feel the Lord is able even to save the devil if he just comes to abide
within His promises, but I cannot rely on that because of the devil’s heart!
CHAPTER 4
HOW THE LORD FOUND ME
As I went on living so, I came to a point where I could resist
no more, and could not help but stumble at grace. The only thing, which I
could not surmount at this point, was the shame I would have to bear upon
me, if I was to go back to the Lord, I wrongly thought. I had stated I would
never go back to Him, but in my heart I would unconsciously and without
being able to stop this kind of thoughts, think of coming back to God and
how it would feel like. I was amusing the thought of going back even when
saying no to it. It looked to me the shame I would be forced to bear was a
greater mountain than I would be able to climb. But, I was not thinking of
how strong and able the Lord Jesus is and will always be. He is so sure
about carrying out His work within – He moves like a most reliable clock
which does not step and click faster nor slower than time: it goes on always
in its own proper timing and unmistakably certain and sure of its beatings.
There is no way the Lord will ever stay behind or advance upon what He has
to do for us: His timing is accordingly defined to what He can do towards
certain moments of which we cannot think ourselves away from. I would find
myself getting fed up with my own sinning, seeing I did most of it on
purpose and not because I loved sin. There had been a time when I even
amused myself in it, but I could never have such a heart that would be able
to make me feel part of it. I would share in sin with many people, but would
just not be part of it within – people would sense that, and would think it
was just a kind of personality they could not ascribe for. This is a most
strange situation to describe on paper, but I hope the idea is put forth
well enough, for I find I cannot do it any better than this. I find this has
been the reason why Jonah himself had been forgiven – he resented sinning
and accusing the Lord for feeble reasons!
At this point I found myself having to conclude that I hated
sin even if I forced myself into unwillingness against the Lord. (Let me
just state here and now that all this may be a stumbling block to whoever
would love to carry on sinning at the cost of their life, having my
experience as an excuse for their continual love towards sin. I found that
at least one person tried to do so on hearing about my story, and got
eternally lost as far as I know. This person thought he could attempt the
same thing for different reasons because he heard about my testimony as
would fit his interests, believing he could stay a while longer drifting in
sin, but was lost. I hated sin, people think they can do the same by loving
sin and such should not be surprised to find themselves in hell sooner than
they expect! Let the warning find your heart and there will no more be a
stumbling block in my words, which mean only to have Jesus’ throne of grace
be as high up as it can be. I suppose very few will ever find their way back
to the Lord if they ever attempt to do as I did for the love of sin).
Somehow I found out (and could not but resent it) that I could
not get away from the Lord no matter how far away I would attempt to think
my way from Him. In this I started giving up my resisting and thought it
would be useless to carry on in such doings, for the Lord would remain
ringing my bell even if I would go to hell. It would be unbearable to spend
eternity without being able to solve this huge problem. Here at this point I
received a newsletter from the revival site in South Africa, for they kept
my address somehow. I cannot recall what Uncle Erlo Stegen (the main
preacher there) quoted from the Bible in that newsletter, but it was
something concerning the work of God and how lovingly faithful He would
always be. I read it for the first time in years, and it was the first of
the word of God that I read in those years. It broke me down so that I
cannot describe what went through my desperate soul. The Lord said to me
then, I could come back to Him right away, because I have been spending my
time worthlessly in resisting stupidity. I cried like a baby and could not
see anything else but my sinning in the light of the love of God. It was as
if I marked my sin more and ahead of me there was such light that could not
but show out how stupid sinning was in the light of in the common sense of
that light. There was me looking to light and seeing my sin in between as
shameful as would be, and darker because of the light which shone on it. The
Lord called me and I thought I might just as well go back to Him now and
start all over again. But I couldn’t!
As soon as I started looking into all things I must go through
to retain those sudden fresh waters from above that were surely making
provision also to come soon, I thought it to be an impossible task to carry
out. I felt constrained and ashamed of all, especially of telling people I
was going to live for God from then on. Besides I started to look back again
and saw how the Lord did not answer my prayers upon saving people from
dooming and marked that it was the main reason in my mind why I had fallen
back and so far away from truth and from loving holiness. I started feeling
bitter again and said there was so much I would have to forgive the Lord
for; I thought He had been in debt towards me. I could not see why I was to
blame for all I had done. I could see I’d sinned terribly, but I knew it had
been because I did not accomplish through prayer and striving the very
promises of the Lord. I had gone into sin without loving it, and to a
certain extend it had been true. Can you see how Moses was blaming the Lord
for having to flee into the desert having such a powerful God? Afterwards
though, the Lord showed Himself more powerful in his behalf than he had ever
done with any man on earth!
For a few days on I could not feel to go back to the Lord
again. I thought there was too much pain in between for which the Lord was
not giving any explanation about, and I thought our relationship would never
be a normal one again since it was me who had to forgive. I’m not saying it
was so, I’m saying that I felt as if so. But my God was moved towards me and
my reasoning, and even by not answering any of my remarks as if there was no
more time to loose with feeble reasoning which seemed quite important only
to me, He came so near my heart and soul that I felt His love and presence
melting all ice within, as if I had been at the door of heaven without
entering it for reasons of my own. God was there and filled the place where
I had been. My heart trembled and the for so long unquenched thirst made the
rest for I longed so much for His love that there was but one thing to
compete with it: the love for the salvation of lost people around me. My
mind could not go away from that and I thought I would go back to Him if it
were for the sake of all these millions surrounding me. I cannot say why I
felt so, but I know this has been a great issue to me all my life long, and
I could not stand the fact that Paul and Peter of old would so easily carry
the gospel powerfully to thousands and there was me being conquered by the
world instead, and being so easily swallowed up into powerlessness!
A while later I thought it would render itself impossible to go
all the way back, again. The Lord thought otherwise though, and I sensed Him
trying to say that I was loosing precious time with fictioned reasoning. I
cried so deeply and could not withhold my heart from breaking down in
despair. I said, “Lord, if I cannot go back to you, I beg you, at least save
all these thousands of people on their way to hell”. I wept just like Joseph
had wept when he had seen his brothers. I cried out so loud I think it
passed through heaven and broke into the books of the Lord Jesus and it
became a written prayer in them. God’s presence was so powerfully there
embracing me I sensed there was a possibility I would still live for the
Lord if I only could see my way open to heaven after so much resentment and
paining grudging against the Lord. It may seem insignificant now, but at the
time I could not see my way through, for I felt terribly guilty and indebted
towards heaven and people. Besides, all my sinning was great issues to the
Lord Himself, and I knew I had to go back on all I did to restore the glory
of the Lord to its proper place. I thought my way back would be so
painful I did not resist falling backwards again. The Lord argued with a
loving no, and it was as if I could see Him crying with pain for my
lostness!
For the next few days I thought I would not go back to Him. I
thought I had been hearing strange voices and my heart fell back to its
normal fallen state all over again. I could not, I just would not. There was
a state of light fighting its way through darkness and I was in the dark
part. So now and then I would see light to be pleasant and sense it would be
powerful enough to withhold and keep me unto eternity, but I would fall back
again. I thought also the Lord would most surely save all these people I had
prayed for, so I did not care any longer if I would go to hell. But I had
been senseless concerning this issue, for the Lord showed me later how hell
would be like, except for the fire. I will try and recount the whole thing,
but allow me to precede that with the exposition of a most stupid state of
heart that was a real stumbling block for the Lord to get a full hold upon
my heart and full life. Things were so serious now I thought the Lord would
be angry forever at this point. But I did not care because I thought the way
back to Him would be as hard as hell itself. So, I cared little if hell was
what I would get for my not going back to Him. I did not know just how
foolishly I was talking and tried my way into unconsciousness and looking
into the future emptiness that awaited me ahead. The voice of the Lord was
more urgent as if He Himself was sensing the danger in which I was putting
myself into. I could never figure out what the unpardonable sin was to this
point, so I sensed that His more urgent callings and the urgency of His
loving voice meant something. But the devil was helped by me to hold my
heart from the only source of life there is and I was convinced to choose
the hell of fire rather, because the one I would have to walk back upon to
have my life fully restored to heaven, would seem just too unbearable to
me.
One night I went home and tried to go to sleep so that I would
not have to think about these things anymore. Then I heard a powerful voice
within my own soul, which I could not mistake any longer. Somehow and up to
now, I still supposed that the Lord’s grace would still be there if there
were a way to go back to Him, but this voice put an end to all that kind of
thinkings. It said, “tonight it will be your last day upon the earth, and if
you don’t come back to Me I will leave you for good”. I was so quiet within
I could not even answer back to that majestic voice. Moments passed by and
all I heard further was such silence that I thought I must be hearing
strange voices. And then something happen which, as long as I live, I will
not be able to wipe out of my own mind and memory ever. I can’t describe in
words how it felt, just how terrible this sensation was which went through
me. But before going on to describe that allow me to state something that
will enable me to explain it even better.
It is known how the Lord blew His life into the nostrils of
Adam. It is also known that the Lord said that from henceforth man would be
a living soul and even if life would abandon him he would still remain aware
and fully conscious of all from one eternity to another, for God created man
eternal. Now, what happened to me at this point was something like the
lifting up of that life away from me. I sensed that the life that had been
blown into the nostrils of living beings had left me. But before it left me
I heard the Lord saying, “Now I will show you how it feels to be in the hell
you so desire to be instead”. As I said, it is so difficult to describe this
that I will surely not be able to come even close to it. I lived in a 7th floor and had a window in my room. I felt literally life leaving my soul,
and the breath of God going away. That breath, which had been considered by
me as mine, as part of me, was being taken back to Whom it belonged all the
time. I felt so dead, so dead and so conscious of it at the same time that I
believe the feeling and awareness of that death is a whole lot worse than
all the pains of hellfire. I thought the fire in hell would be terrible, but
now I grasped for the first time what eternal death is all about. Hell is
just the place where we will spend it, but is not the eternal death itself
at all. To be eternally dying without coming to die at all, that is a
terrible nightmare! I was so conscious of all things around my lifeless me
that even the amount of its awareness surprised me. I felt dead, but not
only did I feel dead, I sensed and lived within a death which had me aware
of its deadness. And all of a sudden eternity doomed upon me, and I thought
that was it, I would have this thing in me for millions and millions of
years without being able to bring it to an end ever!
The words of God which said that eternal death was the reward
for the one who would reject eternal life, an eye for an eye, stayed in my
mind. I think I felt a little of what Judas Iscariot felt when he killed
himself. He could not bear the awareness of the death that befell on him
after going back to the Pharisees to give back those silver coins he sold
the Lord with. I know why he killed himself. I thought myself to jump out of
the window of my room so terrible was that awful feeling of being dying
without dying at all! I never had a single suicidal thought in my whole
life. But that awareness of death, of eternal state of being dying without
dying at all, was the reason why I made it to the window. For a moment I
thought to seek relief from it through physical death. There were no
barriers in my mind, I could think so fast and was so aware of what I was
thinking that I felt startled unto death by that also! The awareness of it
all! I would touch my body and I felt it myself, and could feel it shivering
in that pain of lostness. I could not cry, I could do nothing else but blame
myself for my lostness, thinking that it was all over and that I had been
such a fool as to put myself into this eternity without God! The fire of
hell would be the easy part of it all! The awareness of this death was the
worst part of it! And to think this dying would be eternal and without
ceasing would bring such unpleasantness within my whole being that I thought
that there would be nothing I could do to change it ever, something which
would surrender it more bearable. I cannot describe in words what I went
through in these awful moments and therefore will hope I have been able to
picture it out to you somehow, for I find that I am not describing even up
to half of its awfulness and unbearableness! These were small moments which
flooded like unbearable eternities.
It was here then, just before I made it to the window to throw
myself out to try some kind of relief from that awareness of such pitch
blackness, that I thought I had to stop and think. “Stop and think”, I told
myself, “maybe there is slight a chance because I’m not in hell yet”. I
turned to the Lord and said “Lord, let’s talk about it! I don’t care if I
can’t see my way back to you, because I’m pretty sure I will come to you
somehow”. The death I experienced was so silent I thought it was no use, but
I had to take my chance. And there it was: the promises of God! And then I
said “oh no, Lord, there is a way out of this, even if I were in hellfire I
would call upon you and you would be bound through your own promises to hear
my prayer”. I recalled how the word of God stated that Jesus had been
preaching to the dead during the three days of His death, and thought if
there had been hope for those, surely there would be even for me! I did not
feel faith, but sensed that I thought faith and that faith in the Lord was a
logical conclusion and thinking of truthful things about all the promises
with which He binds Himself to in words. I had the faith of a giant in me
and would not let go. I believe if I had been in hell the Lord would go
there for me. I cannot say how I did it, but I would change the whole world
and replace mountains and worlds today if I would just be able to experience
such faith here and now. It was a remarkable attempt to eternal life and I
knew the Lord had bound Himself to His own promises eternally: “whosoever
calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved!” It does not state where, so
it could be heard anywhere! That piece of promise was life to me, and it
brought me back to life again. I can say that I brought myself out of death,
a worse death than the one Lazarus has been in, because at that point all
life I lost came back to me and I felt such a relief I sighed so hard with
joy that I will remember that feeling forever and ever. I will not be able
to tell in words just how thankful I was at that point for the life God
breathed back into me. I could thank God for that life that has never been
mine, and which will surely be His own asset forever and ever, even if I’m
to be the eternal bearer of it. This normal life everybody has even sinners
who don’t think God exists at all. It came back to me and it felt like
heaven. I sighed with such relief from those pains of death, this normal
life felt like paradise. For how long I stayed enjoying this, I do not know,
but it felt so good to have life again, I would thank God for it even if I
knew Him not!
But that was not all, for the Lord would move fast, because He
thought and knew if the eternal life, the rivers of living waters would not
take hold of my life right there, I would get lost, surely. So, not only did
my life return to me, but also the love of the Lord Jesus was there knocking
at the door of my heart once again. I just said, “Lord, just come in please
and make my heart your eternal home. Stay there as you want for eternity and
never leave me again. I will not stand to live without you. I have been such
a fool to throw away such life as I could have been enjoying up to now”. I
sensed that even that awful living in sin and deceit was a far better life
than the death I was taken out of. And surprise of all surprises He came in
with such life as I have never experience before, as if He wanted to blow
away and blot out all remains of that awareness of the death which I have
gone through, and of all my past life. He wiped my mind so clean I was in
such a state as maybe are beings in heaven. His love went through my soul
and mind in such proportions that it was not to be compared to the first
experience of my real encounter with Him in Pretoria. It flooded in and I
rejoiced and tried not to cry out of thankfulness. I confessed all my sins,
as far as I could recall them at that point. I think I remained for hours in
that state of mind and the awareness of the eternal life He brought in anew
into the emptiness of that black hole in me, was so wonderful that I felt I
had been taken from one extreme of death to the other extreme point of life,
from a extreme point of hell to the most beautiful place in paradise. I had
such thankfulness for life within, that ever since I cannot but feel deeply
thankful for it eternally. I was so humbled, so deeply subjected to my Lord,
I couldn’t be but thankful to Him for what he gave me, besides what He had
given back. This was grace indeed and maybe for the very first time the word
‘grace’ made sense to me. Isn’t the Lord great?
As I said, I went back on all my sinning and brought them out
to the forgiving light of God. As I would confess this sin and that one, a
whole load would be literally thrown far away from me. I would feel
forgiven, know to be forgiven, and experienced peace, eternal peace. I felt
and experienced what those words meant which say, “as far as the east is
from the west”; so far away did He put my sins from me. I could not believe
how that would happen to me in such a loving manner. And because of that I
thought I should not take it for granted that the Lord went through so much
trouble to come and forgive me of all my sins: I must do a complete
cleansing of my soul, I thought, I should leave it spotless at His feet.
For hours I remained thus on my knees cleansing my heart and soul,
confessing and crying, having such joy and such thankfulness as to bind me
to the vine once again, that my mind would feel so relieved and forgiven I
would go from one glory to another. I marked that all my prayers were
answered on the spot and that the Lord was so gracious to me, as if He had
haste in getting me cleansed. And I would wonder, “what all those things
meant”, just as Mary did about her son Jesus.
The most amazing thing that I became aware of at that point was
a sudden storm of God’s word flooding into me. It was as the fowls which
fell in the camp of Israel in the desert – uncountable Bible verses stormed
into my hungry mind like abounding life and with such opportunity as had
been needed. For every situation and thing my mind brought up to the Lord
(for I decided to solve all things right there without leaving one single
doubt or problem to hinder me from finding my way back to salvation without
effort!), and I found the Holy Spirit answering through these verses, which
I had long forgotten. I did never think of those Bible verses for years, and
all of a sudden they were balking within my mind, flaming life into my soul,
decapitating every single doubt no matter how small these looked like. I
found that a small doubt would soon become a huge stumbling block because of
the feebleness of my heart and grounds. I recalled the earlier experiences
of trying to make it back to the Lord without being able to do so, and
thought I should not risk my life here again by leaving one single matter
untouched of which I was aware of, and guessed it to be a possible fountain
to a serious problem in the near future. I searched under every rock that
felt heavy and which brought deadness to the life I restarted to have
within, deeply within, should I say. That life was the very source of all,
and from there on I understood what it meant that Jesus is the life, the way
and all truth also. It was truly so, I stamped that truth forever in me and
I thought I would preach it out for as long as I had strength in me to do
so. And the Lord thought it better that I should go about it as wisely as He
could make me to be so.
After all this I slowly but surely turned my attention to the
second love of my heart, for which I thought I would exchange my life for at
any moment if it would help to attain to it: the salvation of lost people
around. That issue had been so precious to me that it turned to be a
stumbling block for my soul and I could not leave that untouched. I asked
the Lord if He would work as he did with Paul and Peter of old, because I
felt that if it were not so all would stop making sense to me again. The
Lord said yes, but that I should take care not to desire it so as to drive
me to unbelief and to hell again. Right there I started praying for people
who were in great danger of getting lost soon. I could see how they would be
dammed forever and for whom I should intervene for, putting things before
the most powerful God for whom nothing is impossible. I cannot say just how
wonderful it felt to realize and know how the Lord would answer my prayers –
not by immediate results but through such assurance within that I knew I
needed not take any more thought towards it from then on. I can relate one
case as to illustrate what I mean with this.
My brother started to have serious problems, (he thought
because he did not yet come close to death as passed through my door!),
concerning his work and little daughter. He quit working with my father for
they would disagree on many things concerning the work of the firm my father
owned at the time. His whole life started to move rapidly backwards and
usually people who are not able to trust the Lord, are taken further into
the imaginary blackness of their problems than anyone who slightly knows
that whatever happens there remains still the Almighty God above to help
them. In this state of mind he started to search for advice by consulting
witches and black powers of which kind I never inquired him about. The five
different devilish women whom he consulted told him the same thing
concerning his problems and said with unwavering certainty that the origin
of his problem was my mother who had gone to other white or black magic
powers to put his life upside down. Of course this was an orchestrated lie
from the bottomless pit and intended to destroy all those who once upon a
time had heard the gospel in a most saving manner and stumbled because the
one who brought it to them (me) did not manage to stay alive and living in
it.
My mother thought it strange that every time she went to visit
my brother there was such kind of heaviness of spirit against her in the air
and in people that stayed at my brother’s, that she could not stand it for
much longer without inquiring what had been going on. She decided that
enough was enough, and so she asked my brother why everybody, even my
brother’s in-laws, were so set to be deadly cold against her. That people
would dislike her, she would accept, she said, but that he would support
them in such doings she thought strange and unacceptable. This is where my
brother told his mom with his heart full of harming and killing bitterness
what the story had been behind all that coldness. She was so shocked she
could not believe her own ears and she thought she must be having some
terrible nightmare, a really bad dream. My brother talked to her as if he
gave full credit to what the five different witches had told him, saying
that those things would be impossible not to be true seeing so many
different people told him the same thing. My poor mom was deeply hurt
through this and could hardly recover from the pain and blow of it, and she
would do nothing else in future but cry her days out in bed filled with such
hopelessness and sadness within. She loved my brother so that she often said
he had always been her favorite son, and now she thought all these
happenings would just bring her soul to the gave. Her life started meaning
close to nothing in her own view of things, and her reasoning with my
brother to try to impress her innocence upon his mind, telling him about how
many times she had come to aid him with money and other things when he had
been in great need for, accomplished nothing but a cold response from him.
There was a worse response from all my brother’s in-laws, for they chased my
mom away from their sights.
This was one of the problems I brought to the Lord that night
where I did not only got at the doors of heaven, but had entered it for
good. I asked the Lord to bind those powers of hell and undo that whole
thing. But that would not be enough, I thought, so I asked that all people
whom this matter concerned would one by one humble themselves so as to come
and ask for forgiveness to my dear mother. And the Lord answered right there
and said it was granted. “But”, He said, “Tomorrow you must go to your mom
and tell her wisely everything will be alright so she might regain hope”. At
this point my mom did not know that I had come back to the Lord at all, and
upon inquiring, the Lord told me to tell nobody yet about my change of soul
and spirit, so He could use it that way to bring people to Him in a way I
was not to understand at the time. Besides, the Lord had a few unsettled
matters to fix with my father, for he had been boasting against me and my
faith and God, and therefore the Lord would love to deal with him
personally, seeing that if I went to confess my faults to them at that point
it would bring about a hardness within my father which surrender it
difficult for him to be saved at last. I agreed to that, when I saw the
wisdom of this reasoning, and without difficulty believed the Lord on
something I could not understand at the time. So, it was decided I would go
to my mom only and tell her she should not worry any longer, that all would
come out all right and that al of them would come and plead she should
forgive them.
The next morning, this was the first thing I did. As I got to
my mother’s house, she complained her heart out to me and I could see she
had been crying a lot. She would just not have any kind of motivation to
withstand against such murdering lies. I said, “Mom, do not worry about all
this. They will all come back to you and plead for your forgiveness – they
will come one by one”. I don’t know what happened to her at that moment, but
I could see her faced glowing with hope as she went on believing my words.
The power of God in form of conviction went through her, for those words cut
through all that sadness she lived with for so long and somehow brought her
back to life again. Those words were so powerful she was brought back to
life once more. When I saw that happen before my own eyes, I knew the Lord
had spoken and that glow of hope was confirming to me that He had spoken
indeed. I think she never cried about that again. I saw life and hope coming
into her, I cannot say how I saw it, but it was there – so much so that
there was an immediate response from her heart to it. She was not glad I
encouraged her, no; she lived and was resurrected from death through what I
said. She marked the words so, that she got on with her normal life
immediately, and for the first time in that month maybe.
A week later it started to happen. My brother arrived and asked
my mother if he could say something to her in private. He burst in tears and
asked my mom to forgive him for having believed witches instead of common
sense. The next day his wife came, and the next his mother in law. And all
the other in-laws but one woman, came to see my mom one by one asking her
for forgiveness in the same line of spirit. Isn’t the Lord amazing and
wonderful? I guess there is nothing impossible for Him indeed! And this is
one example of how the Lord would answer all my requests that night. Some of
them are still to come, but I have no reason to think they will not come to
happen soon, seeing all of them without exception are asked according to the
wonderful will of my beloved Lord?
Definite lines and lineouts were given to me as to how I should
handle all the things that seemed to be enormous mountains of painful
climbing towards my goal and the Lord’s also, so as to have my life spotless
once again, without blemish before this marvelous throne of holiness and
graceful achievements for mankind. I was given to know how to handle my
going back on putting right of all the damages I had caused to the worked of
God and to the souls of people. Just as David had received from the Lord
that pattern to build the temple, which he handed over to Salomon, I was
given a plain picture of how I would go about in rebuilding the walls of the
temple I had broken down in past years. I asked the Lord to grant me the
privilege to reach all the woman I have been messing with so I would bring
them the gospel and lead them to full salvation. It was granted. I asked Him
to lead me into such wisdom as not to be lost at what I should have to do
concerning life issues. It was granted and heard from above. Concerning new
friends I had made during my careless times, whom knew not I used to live
for God once upon a time, I asked and inquired the Lord about. I was shown
how I was to handle those matters as soon as I the Lord would grant me to do
so, that I should have no haste in trying to do all at once but rather do it
properly in such a way as would guarantee their salvation, and most of them
were not ripe enough to be brought to the kingdom of God, even though they
would to listen to my confessions and testimony. (All these things have been
confirmed in practice just as the Lord has shown it to me – so, that’s the
best part of it all, for the Lord always confirms His words). I was
shown I was not ripe enough at that point, either to give them a proper
account of truth in the very spirit the genuine gospel requires, and that
careless, hasty doings would not guarantee their safety from being burdened
in conviction without a light to lead them into proper salvation. I was made
bound to save myself from all sin first and above all. It was shown to me
that the gospel I had within me was too real and shocking for any mind that
did not fancy having a real God around knocking at their doors, for only an
imaginary God would do to most of them unless they would be prepared to have
such life as the Lord would be willing to give. I could mention hundreds of
things maybe, which were given me to know on how to fix all wrong I have
done in the years that have passed. One thing had been settled though, and
that would be that nothing would stay undone and unfixed and the Lord’s
promises, both the one’s I recollected from the Bible like flaming life and
those the Lord Himself would breath into my soul, would settle every matter
I would bring up to Him.
I will mention one more thing concerning an issue I think I
ought to pass on to you. My father had been very godless concerning the
issues of God in times when I came from South Africa. It had been years
before, but the Lord remembers sin forever. He even went as far as boasting
against the truths of the Gospel, stating, because of the disappointment my
kind of new life worked in his mind, that he would do nothing to help me out
for he said, he would like to see how my God would be helping me in the
midst of this desert called Portugal! I cannot say it was a kind of
persecution, but at the time it helped me down for I had great expectancy
upon his salvation and I have not been cute enough as to find the Lord’s
opinion concerning those boasting words which meant only to do harm to the
Lord Himself. At this point my father could be considered well off and
needed nothing else but to feel secure in riches and money. But, the Lord
showed me I should not even tell him as much as a single word concerning the
gospel and his sin, for the Lord would do it Himself face to face. I
believed Him, because the way the Lord had put it to me left me no margin
for doubts as to what the Lord would want to do and how He was to accomplish
it.
At this point the Lord Jesus not only started to bless my life,
but would open up the eyes of all people I knew which were many, to see how
blessed my life was and how light my spirit began to be. I did not think it
possible at times earlier that the Lord could use as much as normal living
to show people around that He lives, and I started understanding what the
Lord did through Israel to the rest of the world and why the queen of Sheba
would have such trouble as to travel so far to inquire for herself about the
rumors she heard concerning Salomon and his God in Israel. Everybody started
to move their eyes towards what the Lord as doing in me, not always knowing
it was the Lord Jesus doing all this Himself. Concerning my father, I had
started before to help him out in the office work of his company that
happened to be the apple of his money greedy eyes. I said I would not work
for a salary, with the same spirit as Abraham did refuse to have the kings
of Sodom and Gomorrah to think they had made him rich. He refused to accept
from the spoil Abraham got back from robbers who spoiled their goods. This
same spirit I was implementing upon my life and work, knowing that it was
the Lord who lifts up the needy and brings always down the proud, and not
our own doings. At this point I started to see things about my fathers’
company that were issues of great concern. My father was careless about the
way he handled money, for pride and deceit left him no option but feel safe
at nothing but the deceitfulness of self-reliance and deceitfulness itself.
I warned my all family about all this and to the course that
they should take to ensure a more proper working of the company. My whole
family, two sisters and respective brothers in law were working for huge
salaries doing half of the work I had been doing. They all resented I dared
to call their attention upon their mistakes, having me thinking I was not
doing the right thing to them all. But I could not understand their
opposition to my views, seeing they were so clear and logical. I could not
see that the Lord was undermining all their work through their careless
unthinking acting. Soon it worked that none of them would have as much as
talk to me about anything, and so I kept silent and out of all company
affairs.
One day there was a meeting between all family members of which
I have not been told about so I would not have to participate in it. But I
came to know about it and thought they were taking it for granted I would
know about the meeting and that that might just be the reason for not
telling me about it. But as I sat down around the meeting table and tried to
say something, I was cut off even before I could say something. I was being
sold out to Egypt again and knew not why. I went to pray in my closet and
cried my heart to God, feeling sad. I tried to read something out of the
Bible and there the Lord came my way and explained to me what had been
happening. The psalm I read talked so sharply to my heart I could not
mistake it for anything else but the very voice of God. It said the Lord was
throwing them into dry lands where later they would all come back to plead
for salvation at my table which by chance the Lord Himself would set before
them, and unless they would eat from it they would not be saved. So, I had
to be careful not to hinder God’s work by unbelief and things started to
struck them. Further I should not feel grudgy against anybody because this
was forged by the Lord for the purpose of the salvation of their souls from
deceit, and that unless the Lord would have me cooperate with Him wisely and
believingly it would surrender itself impossible to carry it out properly.
From then on I had no option but being wise about all the doings from the
furnace of God Himself.
I believed crying in pain at heart, and as the Lord would show
me, so I would do. I did not say a single word more concerning all of it
because I knew all was meant to die. I showed no resentment concerning
anything, for sin would not do. The Lord said also I should remember the
story of Joseph, and know I would make it my own. I recall in years before
crying out my whole heart with emotion at the reading of the story of Joseph
in Egypt, and now there was I understanding why. I know that it did talk to
my deepest heart, but could never understand why. There is a whole lot more
to it than my family problems, for the Lord saved the whole region through
Joseph, but that is something I would not like to mention here, seeing I
intend to write a separate book on that within a few years, God willing.
Things worked out so as to lead me the South of Portugal, to
Algarve, where I was to carry out the will of God about certain people I did
not come to know at all yet. I knew nothing about it at that point, but
allow me to skip this part of my story, so I should carry on unhindered to
tell about my father. More or less at that stage, he was given a huge amount
of work there in the place where I had gone to, and found out he could not
cope with all its problems. I stood him by having the Lord leading as things
would move on, and started to be asked to carry out things for him he could
not handle himself any longer, and for which nobody in the family was
willing to stand him by. I drove thousands of miles in the car the Lord has
given me to buy at a stage I had no money to show at all. (I told I would
buy it even before I could guess how, and the Lord so granted it to be done
seeing it had been His own doing and leading that achieved all that – and
everybody saw that and were perplexed at the achievement).
At this point my father even became sick for a while and I was
there just to be near him supporting and assisting him, seeing he was in a
pretty bad shape emotionally and physically. The Lord would me to stay
because he would need such support soon as none would ever be able to grant
but the Lord through me; he should know I was there instead of the Lord
Jesus and that would be both humbling and comforting to him. I could not
guess what was about to happen a while later. A few clients my father had
done work for, went into bankruptcy and owned him a whole lot of money. He
could not cope with all of it and as I learned he cried as a baby because he
could see there was no more hope left for all his company. Slowly he started
reducing workers and slipped down into working only with two people and
unable to pay any of his debts. That psalm came true up to now, and there is
still a part of it to be done yet, where I will have to be his Joseph seeing
he had boasted against God’s help. My whole family went down with these
problems and ever since I have been the one to aid them in many ways, even
financially, they knowing or just guessing sometimes, that my money is given
me by the Lord Himself, either if it be through work He leads me into, or
some other kind of thing I am to undertake to provide. Up to now I dared not
do anything but God’s will concerning work: I cannot move where the Lord
does not lead things my way or me into the way of things. The word of a
psalmist goes “my soul follows my Lord close by”, and “Behold, as the eyes
of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden
unto the hand of her mistress, so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God, until
He has mercy on us”.
I could mention a few more things concerning all the things
Jesus is doing to undertake and convince, and just how His words are
becoming confirmed according to obedience, silence and faith in Him, but I
will stick to these for now. I hope and pray I’ll be able to relate more
about God’s work and the gospel in Portugal. As soon as the Lord allows me
to do so, I’ll surely write some more things about it all. May God bless you
richly.
José Mateus