Interactions with God #29
This interaction is one of the strangest I have ever had. It will also require some background just so it makes some sense. As with most everything God does, these interactions can be for a number reasons, many of which we may find out later or never understand at all.
One of the more crazy things Ray taught was that there was a group of people that were the pinnacle of Satan's minions. These people were fully aware of what the devil was doing in the world, because they were in his “inner circle”. These people were supposedly powerful and very dangerous. He called them Queens. No, not necessarily drag queens, but many drag queens supposedly were. He said he was among that group at one time and that is how he knew they existed. Yes, it is nuts and it doesn't say much for me that I believed him.
OK, why would I believe something so absurd? Well, consider how many believe in the Illuminati thing? Or the skull and crossbones thing... I could go on and on. Is there some conspiracy really going on behind the scenes? Yes, but I would put that squarely on the shoulders of satan himself. I really doubt he has men and women in this world that he is “filling” in on his plans. He hates man after all doesn't he? Maybe some do know. Frankly, it doesn't really matter whether they do or not. Puppets or Players, they are still irrelevant to what God is doing, because God is the one that is in control.
So, these “Queens” were the commandos of satan's army of darkness. They were witches of the highest order. Yet, we believed we were the commandos of God, so they really were no match for us as part of Ray's team. Arrogant much? Sadly, yes...and stupid too. I was young. I was insecure. I watched to many super hero cartoons. I did believe it.
Yet there were times that I would run into someone who I “knew” was into witchcraft or satanism of some sort. More so than the transsexual Tarot Card reader in Austin. I can still tell every so often. It is not magic or any special knowledge or place in God's kingdom. No, it is simply the Spirit of God making you aware of something more. It is called Discernment. It is a gift of God just like Tongues or Prophecy.
I was in Austin, TX with Dave, the guy who owned the cabinet shop. We had built some really nice french doors for a hotel in Austin and we had brought them from Houston to install them. The project took a couple of days, so we shared a hotel room until the installation was complete. On one of the days, we took a lunch break at a local restaurant/bar only a few doors down from the Hotel.
The layout of the place was simple. From the entry way, there were tables on the left, a bar in the center and booths on the right. We picked a table on the left, toward the back of the restaurant. We were sitting there for a while, when I noticed a guy behind me sitting at the bar with his back to us. I got that strange sense that something was off with him. Dave as I said earlier, was a Charismatic Catholic so he was aware of the spiritual nature of some things. He did not really believe much in the evil side of things though. Odd, that one would believe that God could heal, because it says so in scripture, yet not believe that demons can possess even though it also says so in scripture. It is true that many Christians in our western culture think this way. They believe in a devil, but he only seems to operate on a global scale. Possessed people are just mentally disturbed people...it must be so... God has a way of correcting our misconceptions, especially if we are working to have a deeper relationship with him. This day, was for Dave more than me.
I had been talking with Dave about the reality of satan's kingdom for a while. Dave didn't put much stock in it. Basically, he thought I was nuts. I had told him about the stuff Ray taught, so much of it was nuts. Yet, he didn't believe any of it. Until that day.
We had our food already and in the middle of Dave taking a bite of his sandwich, I pointed out that the guy at the bar was into witchcraft. I thought he was one of these “Queens”. This would have meant nothing to Dave, except for the fact that once I said it, the guy at the bar suddenly turned around and looked at us. Yea, it creeped me out too. There was no way the guy heard us or saw me point at him. He KNEW I had just spoke about him, without ever seeing me or hearing me. He felt it somehow.
That alone freaked Dave out. Something weird was going on. The guy, immediately, got up from his seat at the bar and went to one of the booths on the other side of the room. He was in a darker area, but we could see well enough to know that the guy was watching us. This is when it got even weirder. Dave, who was getting more and more freaked out, kept saying “he is watching us!” “He knew we were talking about him!” “This is really weird!” Yea, a bunch of stuff like that.
Not much later, I finished my meal, and got up to hit the restroom. It was in the back of the restaurant behind the bar and over to my right. Dave was sitting with his back to it, while I had been sitting with my back to the front door. When I entered the restroom, I heard God's voice. “I am going to bring him in.” That was all I heard. I replied, “OK, but show him your Spirit when he gets here.” No, I don't know why I said that, I really don't, but I did say it. I was not even sure what that meant.
The bathroom was small. Upon entering the door, there was a sink to the right with a mirror over it. A stall was right in front of the door on the other side of the room. The urinal was over to the right of the stall and to the left of the sink. I had to pee, so I went to the urinal. As I stood there, the door opened and someone entered. Though my back was to him, I knew it was the guy, I could just feel it. The man who entered went straight to the stall and shut the door. They just stood there with the door closed. There was no other movement, no rustling of clothes or anything. He just stood there behind the closed door. I finished and went to wash my hands. Now the sink as I said was on the right of the entry door, so the stall was now a little behind me on my left. I looked in the mirror as I finished washing my hands and smiled. I KNEW something was about to happen. I then turned to go out the door, and while facing the stall in my turn, the door slowly opened. It opened only a couple of inches and then slammed shut again. I didn't feel or see anything, but clearly this guy did, and it scared him badly. I just left the room.
As I got back to the table, Dave was beside himself. He just could not believe what was happening. “That guy was following you!” “He knew!” “That is not possible!” I hushed Dave so I could tell him what happened in the bathroom. I told him everything. When I finished, the bathroom door opened. We both shut our mouths and looked. I watched this guy come out of the bathroom and take a couple of steps toward our table. I had never seen anyone who looked so shaken. This guy WAS shaking! If I remember right, he took only two or three unstable steps toward us when Dave made things even worse.
Dave, as I said earlier, was tall, 6ft. 7in., if I remember right. Dave also noticed something that I didn't. Dave quickly stands up, his full 6ft. 7in. height, points and then hollers “HE PEED HIMSELF!” Sure enough, the poor guy was wet down his right leg all the way to his knee. Once exposed to the entire restaurant, the man quickly made a beeline to the booth he occupied before I went to the restroom. Dave and I paid our check and left.
This really happened in 1986. Much later, in 1999, I found Dave living in Denver, CO while I lived in Phoenix, AZ. Martha and I had made a trip to the Denver area in order to visit some old friends that we met in NH. While there, we made an additional stop to see Dave and Mary Ellen's rather large family. I asked Dave to tell me the Austin story just to make sure I didn't embellish it any way over the years. He did and I didn't. It was the same story. Although, I said I really didn't know why God did it, Dave replied that he did. He told me about how he was really struggling at that time with trying to believe in the devil at all. He really didn't want to believe that there actually was some sort of spiritual battle going on. This event was a pivotal for him. Because of it, he knew that God had a very real enemy, and so did we.
We have nothing to fear from the devil or his people, because God is in control. We also do not need to go around being jerks toward them as our job is to win them not beat them. I have run into people that are witches, satanists and other groups like that many times since. If we handle it right, we can and should get into a very interesting conversation with them about truth, rather than scare them away. What happened in Austin was not the norm. It did serve a great purpose for Dave. Me on the other hand, it posed a problem, for it gave me some “evidence” that Ray was right...even though he wasn't. I was still deceived, and this event didn't help much. However, that change was coming, but as always, with God, timing is everything.