A Man From Far Away

It was uncanny. Amazingly uncanny. A handwritten note describing a dream that she had about two years earlier. It was dated, it was crumpled, it was out of sight, fallen down behind a drawer in her desk where we were fortunate to even find it. She had forgotten the dream. But as she read it she remembered it vividly. And as Danny and I read the dream we were stunned to see that God had prophetically foretold two years earlier the very situation we found ourselves in at that very time.

The written account of the dream was this. “Last night’s dream seemed too real. Everything too detailed. I mean the feelings. Oh well. Here I go. I grew up, but I had an illness no one knew about, and it wasn’t noticed till I got older. This man who discovered it had left because people were dying in another place. So these other doctors tried to help, but couldn’t do anything. I was getting sicker and was hurting. Then this one guy came from far away to help. He helped me for a long time. He was kinda attracted to me, but didn’t know why. I was afraid to like him because I knew what was going to happen, and I couldn’t imagine that. He was twice as old. I did get better and was learning how to make others better, with the similar sickness, from the doctors that helped me. Then I started helping him and we hurt a lot but like it. I think we were married. It was like we together make one whole, smart, perfect.”

She was sixteen years old, a sophomore in high school. She was very bright, and a promising athlete. She had started coming to our youth group a year earlier and accepted Jesus as Savior. She began to manifest problems, and came to our youth intern for help. She was cutting herself, having poltergeist happenings in her room, seeing apparitions, and missing classes due to trance-state wandering about. She was demonized, but it took awhile for us to figure that out. We took her to many different counselors and psychologists, seven in all, while slowly beginning to probe and try deliverance. Demons manifested as we prayed and rebuked. But the problems increased. She had to drop out of high school; she was in trance so much that she was seldom in class. Threats were written on her mirror in blood. I became desperate for help. I called everyone I knew in ministry and leadership. One Christian school teacher, Mike, knew someone in California who he had watched doing deliverance a few years earlier. I called him to ask advice. His name was Danny.

Danny agreed to drive to Portland to assist with the girl’s deliverance. Carefully he helped us to see and understand the nature of her problem. We went to her bedroom, with her mother to help, to look for any and all objects that might have demonic power over her. After a very thorough search, after collecting a box of things to burn, that’s when we found the letter, the dream letter.

That dream became powerful in the girl’s deliverance, for it was God’s prophecy of the very deliverance that we were in process to accomplish. She did get well. Danny made several trips up from California to help with the deliverance. He was 35 years old.

Oh, and about that line in the dream account, about marriage. We always blushed about it, and ignored it, because it was inconceivable. But wouldn’t you know, even that part came true. They fell in love, eventually got married, made their home in California, and have four children.

“I am God, and there is no other.... I make known the end from the beginning.... I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.... I summon, from a far-off land, a man to fulfill my purpose. What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.” (Isaiah 46:9-11)