The Evil Creatures Who Fizzled
I hope I’m never closer to hell than I was that June day.
Fire-breathing, nostril-flaring, red-eyed dragons greeted us when we opened the door to the warehouse far up the Amazon River. Even though I knew these contraptions were man-made, evil radiated around our band of prayer warriors, creating chills deep in my soul.
Our guide proudly showed us the mechanics of each beast’s movements and the special effects the monsters could perform.
I couldn’t understand a word of his quick-firing Portuguese, but his passion for the creations didn’t need translation. He told us about the hundreds of hours he and his teammates sacrificed to create the lifelike monsters. And he affirmed his belief that his red team’s creatures would triumph over the blue team’s equally hellish designs.
Our little group had first traveled to Brazil to spend time with our missionary relatives. Besides encouraging them and praying over their ministry, we were to complete work projects around their church.
We expected a safe, comfortable visit, but God had other plans. Our small missionary entourage made the arduous line boat journey up the Amazon to Parintins just in time to pray against the town’s annual carnival-esque Festa do Boi (Festival of the Bull).
Bulls and celebrations don’t inherently prompt prayers for confusion and the intervention of good. But people came from surrounding villages and even faraway European countries to participate in the festival. And the town’s church always saw destructive effects. The festival generated a renewed interest in the work of demonic spirits in that jungle society.
For more than thirty years, the red and blue teams had prepared to wow the crowds and claim victory through an annual competition. This stemmed from a folk story about a pregnant slave woman who persuaded her husband to bring her the tongue of a bull to eat. After killing the master’s best bull, the loyal husband received a death sentence until his wife employed a witch doctor to resurrect the bull, thus saving her husband.
In honor of this legend, two families annually create bulls and parade them around the city. A singer accompanies each bull during its tour, proclaiming its dominance over the bull of the other family. Over the years the annual unveiling of the bulls on the third day has grown into a passionate event that attracts thousands of revelers.
We arrived during the height of their preparations. Because the celebration hinders the spiritual work of the local church so much, they asked us to leave our church building-repair projects and go pray against the festival.
So we traded our paintbrushes and hammers for Bibles and comfy shoes. We walked around the bull-shaped stadium where events would be held twice every day. As we walked, we prayed for God’s presence to overcome the darkness of the coming events.
During that week we walked.
We prayed.
We asked God to confuse the plans and send rain on the days of the event.
We pled for disagreement among the organizers and malfunction of all things technological.
As the days passed, the enemy knocked out our team members one by one. Sickness and hives plagued our group, finally leaving six of our original fourteen prayer warriors marching around the stadium. Rather than becoming discouraged, our strength grew as we recognized the reality of the battle we fought.
In the middle of our prayers against the event, the red team invited us to enter their sacred storehouse of preparation. We quickly accepted the opportunity to see what exactly our prayers aimed against, and that’s when I felt like I’d stepped into an annex of hell.
The inside of the building reminded me of a Hollywood movie set. The sophisticated animation and special effects produced from a sleepy jungle town amazed me.
After seeing the incredible work of the red team, we prayed even harder in our remaining days for God to glorify himself and weaken the grip the enemy had over the town.
At our appointed time, even as partiers streamed into the town, we boarded the commercial line boat, slung our hammocks around the top deck, and left the increasing rise of party fever, returning to the church and missionaries we’d come to visit in the first place. A week later we began our journey out of the Brazilian sauna.
But God had more for us.
I’ve often prayed for God’s intervention over unseen spiritual forces, yet rarely do I get to see His tangible answer. But in this situation, we did hear about God’s answer to our prayers.
On our flight home from Manaus to Miami, my sister Becky sat next to an American special effects producer returning from the Festa do Boi. He began telling her why he would never return to work on this project in the Amazon again. Although he had traveled to Brazil hoping to help the red team in a small river town, everything his crew touched backfired. Despite attempts to create an incredible display highlighted with special effects sure to wow even the soberest celebrators, nothing seemed to work.
Becky’s seatmate described his experience in Parintins as absolutely miserable.
It rained almost every day!
When they attempted to raise the naked woman float to her full height, she crumbled to dust on the ground.
A simple telephone wire caught the largest, most demonic looking creature with eerie glowing eyes, and he burned down before being able to breathe any fire out of his nostrils.
Fireworks ordered to arrive in time for the big stadium display never came.
Even though he specifically requested an air-conditioned room, this producer sweltered in a stuffy room without cooled air.
I sympathize with anyone sleeping in the sweltering heat of that jungle town on the equator without air-conditioning, but I rejoice over the way God frustrated the plans exactly as we asked. Just one man’s experience gave us a peek into the creativity God used to answer our prayers.
An evil creature catching on a utility line and burning to the ground?
We couldn’t have conceived such a creative way to stomp on the darkness covering the town.
God’s orchestration of Becky’s seatmate encouraged our short-term missionary group with a solid faith in prayer. We could have received emails reporting the news from our Parintins missionary relatives. We could have scoured the Internet looking for news about that year’s festivities. But God provided abundantly beyond what we could ask or imagine.
He spoke personally to us.
Maybe He could hardly contain His excitement over the victories accomplished in the town, so He directly shared the results with us.
Maybe He knew we needed to know specific details of those answered prayers to solidify our faith.
Maybe He longed for us to catch a glimpse of His glorious creativity in defeating the enemy.
Or maybe He simply knew His children needed to see a miracle.