It was late morning on the day before we were to leave Sabah on our first visit to Borneo – a humid day that had brought sticky heat. One of our team members suggested that we walk down the hill from where we were staying to the kampong store and buy ourselves a cold Coke. “Things go better with Coke” was the slogan at the time.
As we were about to leave, a car pulled up and its driver, a young man in his twenties, got out and invited us to his kampong that evening to minister to the people of their small church. I apologised and told him that we had agreed with the overall pastor and his leadership that the team should stay together on our last night in the country.
“Alright,” said the young man, accepting the decision, “but how about I drive you to my kampong now and show you our church? It’s only three kilometres away.”
“OK,” I said, “and on the way back we’ll buy you a Coke.”
Fifteen minutes later, we turned down a dusty road and pulled up near a stile – they’re popular in Sabah – over which we climbed and made our way to a small wooden building. Inside, I was surprised to see more than twenty women and two or three men seated on rough wooden planks that passed as church pews.
“They have just finished a study of the New Testament book of Philippians,” explained our young guide, who was the kampong’s primary school teacher. I gazed around the room, which in size was no larger than the living room of the average Australian home. A small baby was sleeping peacefully, cradled in a sarong stretched between two of the plank seats.
The faces of those present showed the open, interested expression we had become familiar with over the past ten days.
“The Lord has put it into my heart to speak to them,” I said to our guide. “Would you ask the pastor for his permission?” The pastor, who was present, readily agreed and called in the church deacons. I wondered what text I should use. Then, looking around, I saw a large sheet of cardboard had been fixed to the front of the rough wooden pulpit. On it was printed a bible text: “Rasul Rasul 4:12.”
Two days earlier, I had been presented with a Dusan New Testament and had noted that “Rasul Rasul” was the Acts of the Apostles. Taking an inspired guess, I said to our guide, “Isn’t that the text that says, “There is no other name given by God among mankind by which we can be saved”?
“Yes,” he confirmed, “it refers to the name of Jesus.”
The Lord then spoke to my heart, and I turned to those present and said (through the translator): “The apostle Paul once preached at Athens and took as his text the words he had just seen on a memorial” “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.”
“I have a different text – Rasul Rasul 4:12.” For the next five minutes, I spoke on the power of the name of Jesus, and then said, “Now we will pray for the sick, and you will see the power of this name demonstrated.”
I will remember the next twenty minutes as long as I live. In that short time, ten of those present were healed miraculously – one a woman who fell to the ground under the power of the Holy Spirit and was saved and set free from demonic bondage.
A blind woman was struck by the power of God with such force that my brother, who had prayed for her, was thrown back two meters against the wall of the building. It took three men to hold up the woman as she staggered under the power of the Holy Spirit – touched in an extraordinary way. A man who had suffered a stroke and lost feeling in his left side was able to raise his arm above his head, unaided, after the team had prayed for him.
As we were leaving, I bent low to say goodbye to the woman who had been set free. Although helplessly under the blessing of God, she raised one arm and shouted joyfully, “PUJI TUHAN!” (Praise the Lord!) “PUGI TUHAN!”
We left the small church building and its marvellous Christian congregation, reluctantly. The whole ‘incident’ from start to finish – preaching, miracles of healing, exorcism – had taken less than thirty minutes. Climbing back over the stile, I thought of kampongs where the things that we had just seen could be repeated many times over – and with just as little effort on our part.
We walked back to the car, hot and sweaty but happy, now ready for that long, cold Coca-Cola. Then someone said what we were all thinking: “WOW! Things sure go better with Jesus!”