The Knocks, the Books, and the Wardrobe
We were speeding dizzily along the lanes of the Irish countryside, with its cozy thatched cottages dotting the landscape and its forty shades of green. I had recently asked Margaret, a beautiful, raven-haired, emerald-eyed “colleen” from Ireland to marry me. Now was “meet the parents” time. We had stepped off the plane in Dublin an hour before. My heart was pounding with trepidation, my body tired from international jet lag.
Her brother was driving and my soon-to-be spouse asked an innocent question: “How are Mom and Dad?” With his lilting Dublin accent, he intoned, “Ach, they’re in fightin’ form.” She had warned me about her passionate Irish family, who loved and fought with equal measure. And I was supposed to help convert them with my testimony of God’s gentle love.
When I arrived, I wasn’t prepared for the additional supernatural dimension of the fighting that was taking place under their roof. I felt like I needed to start with a long afternoon nap in order to be fresh and make a good first impression. I crept under a soft down comforter and immediately was in dreamland—until the loud knock at the door. I figured Margaret’s parents wanted to make sure I was comfortable, so I got up and opened the door. No one was there. Not to worry, I told myself, I’m disoriented from the jet lag and travel noise.
But the knocks continued to sound. And each time I called out or got up, no visible soul was present. I felt oppressed and even more fatigued. When Margaret popped her head in, I told her about the noise. She gave me the I-told-you-so look and went off to her own room down the hall, telling me to just sleep through the night and get up early and refreshed the next morning. Great plan—except for the event that was soon to occur.
I had finally fallen into a deep sleep when it happened. About 2:00 a.m. I heard what sounded like a nuclear bomb. My adrenalin soared as I flipped on the light. There, next to my bed, was the eight-foot by four-foot solid oak wardrobe that had been upright, now facedown, with the unfinished wood of the back producing a tabletop effect.
Margaret and her mother were fast on the scene. They both exclaimed in unison, “You poor thing” and, after realizing I was in one piece, we began to examine the wardrobe. The small legs from the foundation were solid as a rock. My future mother-in-law may have wondered what kind of preacher (that’s what she thought I was) had entered her home and what ill omens I might have brought with me. But she didn’t betray anything negative, and we used the facedown wardrobe as a table for tea and biscuits.
Later, I told Margaret that somebody didn’t like me being there, but it wasn’t her mom. She suggested we go two doors down to her room and pray against the spiritual forces creating the poltergeists. She said she sensed a word from the Lord that there were evil spirits all around out to attack us, but we need not fear because of His protecting presence. “Oh, and by the way, my aunt read tea leaves and palms in this very room, and my other brother did psychedelic drugs and has some bad books in the middle room,” she shared.
I quietly entered Margaret’s brother’s room and found that his reading tastes were similar to mine—before I became a Christian. Books on paranormal activity, Eastern religions, and occult philosophy abounded. He had long ago left home and the books were gathering dust. Margaret said we should burn them the next morning to purge the house for the sake of her parents. “And for me too. I’ve got to survive the rest of my stay,” I said. We then prayed again and bound all evil spirits, casting them out in the name of Jesus.
The next morning we gathered up the books, snuck out the side door, and created a small conflagration in the field behind the house. I figured if I got caught, I’d be packing my bag back to the States. Or maybe they would thank us for a fall cleaning?
The rest of that stay was peaceful and I slept like a rock, the crisp autumn country air with smells of peat smoke coming through my window at night. My future mother-in-law’s delicious breakfasts of bacon, eggs, white and red pudding, fried bread, mushrooms, tomatoes, and Harry Hogg’s plump sausages were there to fatten up the “beanpole,” as I was secretly called. Refusing a second helping was not allowed, and no one crossed Mom and lived a pleasant life afterward. She couldn’t quite figure me out, and later called me a Lutheran preacher because no one had ever seen a Lutheran in her Irish country village before. But as she lay on her deathbed in the hospital, she said I had the face of an angel. Though angel I am not, she may have seen a faint image of Christ within me, as I have seen in others who have modeled Him.
At times, God calls us to do a spiritual housecleaning before He begins new and powerful works in our lives. That housecleaning may be in our souls, our houses, or the environments in which we live and move and have our being.
The Lord was able to establish His presence in my wife’s Irish home and bring the adversarial strongholds under control, and both her parents and some siblings made commitments to Christ over the years. We had to continue praying and taking authority, even when later we were not present, in order to prevent, as it states in Luke 11:24–26, the unclean spirits, after leaving that house, from returning and bringing seven more unclean spirits to make their abode there.
We continue to have a spiritual adversary who is out to accuse and deceive if we wish to do the work of Christ; very rarely, that adversary displays his presence to us. But we need not fear because Christ has given us all power and authority over those spirits, in His mighty name.