“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” (Acts 16:31)
Every time one of us appears before God, we bear on our shoulders and on our hearts the names of our families. It is the same as the priest in the Old Testament coming before God with the twelve stones on his shoulders as well as on his heart. As he would go before God, God would accept his prayer for the whole Israel. The same, when you come before the Lord, you represent your family as well as all those who God has ordained for you to bring to salvation. The power of prayer cannot be overemphasized. Every time you take someone before the Lord, you are in effect putting yourself in for that person and in the spiritual realms it becomes an offering, a sacrifice of a sweet smelling savour. In the old Levitical priesthood, the priest would smell the incense and lift it up to God. And so God calls it a “sweet savour.”
Many of us might wonder why it is that when God begins to work in a family, many of its members get saved one after the other. The answer is very simple. Satan’s kingdom is set up under different principalities, which consists of princes each with their own areas of rule. These princes further divide people into many categories, but the most important one is the family category. Every family is adopted by devils, or agents of Satan. These are called “family spirits”, or “familiar spirits”. They live and feed upon families so long that their traits are regarded by most families as just family traits. And so they are not even recognized by most of us as being demonic qualities. We would even boast of them as being our qualities. In my family we used to boast of our prowess in fighting. We would proudly look back upon our ancestry as being mighty warriors, when in truth and in fact, they were demon-possessed. Even the pride, which I find in families and nations, is nothing but demonic pride. Most of it has no real grounds; most of it (that we glory in) is what we should be ashamed of.
The first thing that happens when Jesus Christ comes into one’s life is that this satanic family possession is hit by the blood of Jesus Christ. Many of these spirits, which may have oppressed one’s family for ages, have not only been blasted by the blood of Jesus, but have been put out of action forever and cast into the abyss, from whence they will not return until Jesus comes to judge the quick and the dead. From this understanding, we can see then why it is that when one person in a family is saved, the whole family begins to be released. The battle does not stop there, but it goes on and on. With every victory that one wins over his basic Adamic nature, he is firing a dart or throwing bombs at Satan on behalf of his family.
MY SISTER
I was the first one in my family that got saved and began to cast our familiar spirits into the abyss. One day my sister and her husband were having a quarrel. She is a very verbose person. She said to me, “What am I going to do? This man is saying so and so….” I said to her, “Tiny, kneel down!” We call her Tiny. She knelt down, I laid my hands on her and said, “God, in the Name of Jesus, set her free!” She screamed! I mean, she made such a racket that the neighbors came running in and many of them who ran through the door got down on the floor and got saved. God started a revival right there! The demons that used to trouble our family were rebuked and sent into the abyss and she got delivered! I did not see the spirits going down to the abyss, but I believed it when I saw its effect upon my family. They did not have the power over my family as they used to have. After my sister got saved, her daughters got saved, too, and the whole family began to follow.
MY BROTHER FRANK
Very shortly after I got saved, I was burdened with the condition of my brother Frank. He was a wild, wild, fun-loving fellow. He was out in the world and cared for nothing. He was just carrying on. When I would see the man, it would grieve my soul. One day I said to God, “God, save my brother, Frank. I will not eat until he comes to Jesus.” I put my life on the line. “If that boy does not come to Jesus Christ, kill me, God,” I said. “My life isn’t worth living if Your Word isn’t true to me! God, exercise this blood covenant that you are talking about. If You don’t bring him in, then kill me! I give You seven days to bring him into salvation.” I was violent. I am not telling you to be that violent. It worked for me, but I think it was just that God had mercy on my violence.
You know, you cannot fool with God. You cannot say something like that if you don’t mean it. And you can’t mean it unless you have the spiritual energy for it. There is one level of energy on our level down here and there is another level up there! If a prince of Satan holds your family, you have to get up there to knock him out! You cannot stay down here and win up there! The frequency on which he operates and the powers that bind you or your family are on a higher level. If you stay down here and rebuke him, he doesn’t even hear you.
And so I started fasting. I didn’t eat any food or drink water for seven days. The covenant I made with God was that He should save my brother that weekend. Right or wrong, this is what I did. My seven days were up on Saturday and so on Saturday I traveled to the city of Kingston to take him to a convention where I fully well decided he should be saved. When I got there, he was nowhere to be found. I went to the meeting and had a wonderful time, but Frank was not there. I said to God, “Oh God, I have to repent for using such force. I wanted Frank to be saved and he did not get saved. You did not seem to agree with me.” However, Sunday morning Frank came in and said he was saved. He was telling me how it happened:
Saturday night he went on a job with a social organization to look into the behavior of Pentecostal churches. They wanted to know what was wrong with those people, why was it that they were talking in tongues? Obviously, psychologically there must have been some fault and so they wanted to know what the fault was. Therefore, they sent Frank as a reporter to this Pentecostal church. He went in with his notebook and was taking notes on the people’s behavior being such, because of some kind of psychological imbalance.
He said he did not know what happened, but he found himself at the altar without his notebook. He didn’t go up there consciously! He was lifted up and taken there. He honestly didn’t know how he got there! When he picked himself up, he was at the altar with the “psychological disease”. I don’t know if he ever found his notebook or not, but he got saved by force. Praise be to God!
MY FATHER
My greatest story of the mercy and the love of God is the story of my mother, my father and my brother Hugh. My father was an engineer who loved fun. He was a fun man. He would be making jokes all the time; just having fun. He wouldn’t take anything seriously. He loved hunting and fishing and driving the train; that was all he loved. He was like that all through his life. God began to deal with him when his engine hit a landslide. The landslide came down on the train line when he was going at probably 50 or 60 miles an hour pulling a lot of cars behind him. The engine hit it, went up in the air and fell on its side on a bank. Not even one soul was hurt. Up until then my father had black hair, but the next morning his hair was pure white. And so for the latter part of his life, he was a man with white hair.
He loved to drink liquor, the hot Jamaican rum. He used to drive the train into the estates and bring out the rum that nobody could get. It was so hot that if you had put it on your skin, it would have burned you. If you had put water into it, it would have foamed and brought heat and it made the glass as hot as fire. That was the type of rum he used to like to drink.
It came to a point where my brother Frank and I prayed for him that God would save him. Then, he was on his deathbed and my brother went to him and said, “Are you all right with God?” He answered, “I’m not sure. I don’t know.” My brother said, “Do you know Jesus as your Savior?” He replied, “No.” “Would you like to?” He said, “Yes. Will you tell me about it?” And so Frank sat down with him and led him to the Lord. When his time came to die, he called my mother and my aunt and asked them, “Can you sing for me?” They began to sing a song my mother loved to sing, “I Come to the Garden Alone.” While they were singing, he said, “Sing it again.” So they kept on singing and he kept on saying, “Sing. Sing. Sing…” Then he was gone and we knew that God had taken him. Can you imagine that after this man spent all his life having fun, not paying any attention to God, God’s mercy was able to reach down to him and save him, because we asked Him?
MY MOTHER
My mother was the greatest woman I have ever known. She had seven boys and she would say to us, “You see your father. I do not want even one of you to be like him.” But she made us respect him. Oh, how we respected that man! We loved him! When he would come in, everybody was fighting over taking his boots off or cleaning them. When he was in bed (as a railway engineer he would come in sometimes only once a month), we would tiptoe so as not to wake him up. “No, no, no! Mama will fix you!”
God told me that He was going to save my mother. I asked Him for her and He said He would save her. Then, one day I was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and He came to me and said, “Give up your mother.” I was holding on to her. I kept asking the Lord, “Lord, let her live.” She was 87 and got hurt and was dying, but I was holding her back. And so God said, “Give her up.” I didn’t ask any questions, I just said, “Yes, Lord. Take her.” Almost immediately the message came that she had passed away. But how did she pass! My sister and others were standing around her and all of a sudden my mother asked, “Do you see Him?” They said, “No, we don’t see Him. Who is it?” She said, “It’s Jesus. He’s standing right here. He’s holding my hand.” She began to testify of Jesus saying, “What a wonderful God this is! And I have never served Him!” (Of course, none of us is worthy.)
MY BROTHER HUGH
My brother Hugh was the worst one of all. He was an engineer, but at the same time he was a gang man doing with his gang a lot of bad, terrible things. He was a gunman and everything else you can imagine. The Lord called me one day and said, “Go to Jamaica and talk to your brother. Tell him about Jesus.” You have to understand, this brother was like a stone wall. He wouldn’t talk and nobody bothered him, because he was just wild. However, I went to him and said, “Hugh, the Lord sent me to tell you about Jesus. Do you have the time?” He replied, “Yes,” and sat down. For two hours I talked to the man, told him about Jesus and told him what Jesus had done for me. He never flinched a muscle, he just sat down looking at me. After I was finished, I said, “Now, I know better than to ask you to pray with me. I want you to go and pray by yourself and accept Jesus,” and I left. I went back to the United States. A couple months later Hugh was poisoned and started to die. He couldn’t talk and died in a very short time. I said, “Thank you, Jesus.” Why? For I believed God. I believed God! I hadn’t heard anything about his salvation. Nobody heard. No testimony. I just believed Jesus.
Then one day I finally asked God, “Lord, what happened to Hugh? I know You must have saved him. You promised me You would save him so You must have saved him.” Immediately, I looked around and I found myself in a vision. Hugh was sitting beside me and he was smiling. I told him, “I wanted to hear from God what happened to you.” You see, people talk about dealing with the dead. I don’t deal with the dead. I only deal with the living. The only time I deal with the dead is when I am rebuking a demon. Hugh told me the whole story.
He thought he had a stomach problem and got some antacid from the doctor, but all of a sudden he realized he was dying. He said he tried to talk and couldn’t, but he felt fire coming up at his feet. It was getting hotter and hotter and as he looked he saw himself sliding down. He saw a lake of fire bubbling down at the bottom and he was sliding right into it and couldn’t keep himself from sliding. He looked and saw our mother as if being on a cloud and beckoning him to come over. But he couldn’t come over. He was sliding down into this pit. He said at that moment he cried out to God. He remembered the Word of the Lord he had received. He cried out to Jesus Christ to save him and the angels came and lifted him out.
Somebody may say now, “Hey! You’ve had too much pizza! You had a dream!” Did I have a dream? I am going to give you the proof of the dream. One night I heard a demon coming. Demons always come to me and they get beat up. But this one was pretty strong, because he was making me know that he was coming. He was making enough sound and racket so that I could be alerted. Remember, if ever a devil comes to you, do not get up and feel that because you have rebuked ten thousand devils, you can rebuke him, too. But rather call to God and cover yourself with the Blood. And this is what I didn’t do. I was too happy to fight him, to rebuke him. So when the thing came, I opened my mouth in order to rebuke him but couldn’t talk, because spirits do have power to be able to reach out and hold you! You hold people with your hands, they hold you with power. The thing bound me up with power so that my tongue was heavy and my mouth couldn’t bring forth the rebuke. I was there struggling to rebuke it and my brother Hugh stepped right up and put his hand in between me and the spirit. As he blocked the power that was coming from the devil, I rebuked this thing! The thing said, “All right. Since you rebuked me in the name of Jesus, I will go,” and he picked up his equipment and went.
I am sure most of us have stories of how God has been moving in our families. This is no coincidence. We have the covenant with God and this covenant must be exercised. It cannot be assumed that it will work without exercising it. And so for those of you, who do not have the testimonies of you families being saved, be assured that they are in the making, for God will honor His word.