Deliverance Minister
The
next day, I cleaned up the notes that I had scribbled during the call with
the deliverance minister. There were no red flags, but I did have a couple of follow up questions,
including about her husband. So I emailed her, thanked her again for the previous night's
call, and asked her if we could have a second call to follow up on
a couple of things. One of them was her husband. Since he is her head and Kristin
would be at their house, we wanted to have a chance to introduce ourselves to
him as well.
The deliverance minister took longer than before to reply but eventually agreed to a call that would include her husband.
When the second call began, I sensed, and I suspect Kristin did as well, that the deliverance minister's husband was less than happy to be in it. He had no questions for Kristin or me, his voice was apathetic, and he gave short, often one-word answers to our questions.
I then asked the deliverance minister if she could refer a few of the people she already has cast demons out of so that Kristin can chat with them and better prepare for what lay ahead. The deliverance minister replied that that wouldn't be possible as she protects the privacy of the people whom she has helped.
But they were Christians, so wouldn't they want to share their testimonies of deliverance to glorify Christ, especially to someone like Kristin who is suffering as they suffered until they came to her? The deliverance minister replied that no, she didn't know anyone who wanted to talk about it. Would it be possible for her to ask a couple of those whom she thought most likely to want to talk to someone like Kristin? The deliverance minister again said no and cited the need to protect their privacy. Kristin and I both looked at each other.
Before the second call, I had looked up the deliverance minister's address using Google Earth, and using the size of the car parked next to her house, found it - where she said her whole family lives - to be quite small. So I next asked her where in her house Kristin would be staying. To our surprise, there was a long pause, after which she said that she will ask their daughter to give up her bedroom. It sounded like she hadn't thought this through, so I asked her what she would do if her daughter wants to stay in her bedroom, to which the deliverance minister replied that her daughter will give up her room.
I then asked in whose room the other people had stayed when she cast demons out of them. There was again a long pause, after which we heard her husband ask her whom I was talking about.
The deliverance minister soon began to backtrack and said that no one had yet stayed at her house to receive ministry from her. When pressed, she also admitted that no one had yet been delivered from demons through her ministry.
After the call, which ended soon thereafter, Kristin and I sat on our beds in deflated silence. The deliverance minister's website, emails and the first call had gone so well, but she had lied through all of them. The question was, why? Had she simply been overzealous to launch her deliverance ministry? If so, had she been honest from the beginning and told us that she felt called and gifted for deliverance ministry, which she wanted to start by trying to help Kristin, and had she had the full support of her husband, her invitation may still have been accepted.
When I had zoomed out the Google Earth of her house, I had noticed how isolated it was, and that had raised another red flag. Kristin was raised and abused in a remote farm whose nearest neighbor was three miles away, and I had since read that abusers, Satanists and witches often live in remote locations. Did this deliverance minister have a more sinister motive and was she trying to lure in and harm people who already have been harmed?
In any case, given her deceit, there was no way Kristin could go to her now. It was late at night and we were deflated and drained of energy, so I shared a few words of encouragement and told Kristin to sleep it off, turned off the light, and lay down on my bed, but couldn't sleep. On the one hand, it felt like we had dodged a bullet, which was good. But I was overwhelmed by a sense of disappointment and suspected that Kristin felt likewise, if not more. The light at the end of the tunnel was no more.