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Publisher:
Whitaker House Stock Status:
Available Description: Table
Of Contents From the first moment she crossed through the doorway into that building, she sensed that there was something different about the place. A hovering of darkness, as it were. Something she could not define, but knew was there. She knew also that it was something that she had never experienced before. Rebecca is a doctor. She was just entering
Memorial Hospital for the first time to begin her
training in internal medicine. She had finished medical
school the previous month and had now moved away from
home really for the first time in the 30 years of
her life. She had no idea that the tragedies she would
see in that hospital would forever change both her
and the course of her life. The brooding darkness
she sensed in her spirit seemed to be watchfully waiting
. . . waiting. Suddenly it would strike, plunging
Rebecca into a series of events that would test to
the utmost her commitment to her Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. After the initial medical care was done, the patient stabilized and then transferred to the Intensive Care Unit, Rebecca looked for the police officers who had brought him in. They had little to say other than the fact that this was a kidnapping case. They had found the body and at first thought he was dead. They refused to talk about the incident any further and left quickly, mumbling something about having to file their report. Everyone else in the E.R. went on with their work as if nothing unusual had happened. No one seemed particularly surprised or upset about the condition of the patient. Again, Rebecca felt overwhelmingly that brooding darkness. She was greatly puzzled and concerned, but was, herself, quickly caught up in the pressure of the work at hand. Nothing in her background could possibly have prepared her for the shock of that young pastor's testimony of what -had happened to him prior to coming into the Emergency Room that night. She did not know that the next blow would come to one of her own patients who was very dear to her. But first, let us trace the training the Lord gave Rebecca to prepare her for all that was to happen. Rebecca had the tremendous privilege and blessing of being born to faithful Christian parents who prayed daily for her. She had accepted Jesus as her Savior at a very young age, but knew nothing about a personal walk with Him. She was raised in a very tight and narrow religious group and was not permitted to form friends or interact with anyone outside the group. She was rejected both within the group and without - mocked and ridiculed at school and by the other members of the religious group; she grew up very lonely. She also had much illness, spending her childhood in and out of the hospital. Then as she got older, she was discovered to have an incurable and debilitating neuromuscular disease. But her loving parents provided stability in her life and their prayers surrounded and protected her, no doubt keeping her from entering the occult world that snares so many other young people with similar backgrounds. During the first year of medical school she came to the point of finally committing her life to the Lord in all areas, making Jesus the master in her life as well as Savior. The four years of medical school were an intense struggle because of the neuromuscular illness and also because of the lack of fin lances. During those four years Rebecca learned to trust the Lord, to walk with Him day by day, to hear Him speak to her in her spirit, to follow His guidance, and to experience His provision for her every need. Before medical school she had been a Registered Nurse for seven years. Then, as a result of the Lord's powerful working in her life, and a whole string of miracles, she left nursing, returned to school and then on to medical school. At the time Rebecca entered Memorial Hospital she knew absolutely nothing about Satanism or of Elaine, a powerful witch who lived near by. Rebecca never dreamed that her walk with Christ in that hospital would cause such shock waves in the spirit world that the forces of darkness would become enraged. She became involved in a titanic struggle as Elaine, one of the top witches in the U.S., led an organized attack by many witches using all of their powers and skills of witchcraft to try to kill Rebecca. The internship year is the first year of training that a doctor receives after graduating from medical school, if he or she is going to specialize in something. It is by far the most intense year of training, and the most frightening one. It was no different for Rebecca at Memorial than anyone else except that she was constantly aware of something so strange but undefinable about that hospital. No one else seemed to notice it, including her few Christian colleagues. From the first she found an overwhelming atmosphere of hatred, back-biting and Fighting within the whole department, and indeed, within the whole hospital itself. It was an extremely cold atmosphere. This on top of the tremendous physical and emotional pressures of the year were used by the Lord to greatly increase her closeness to Him. She found almost from the beginning that there was an unusual resistance to the gospel. Over and over people with whom she tried to share Jesus would flatly refuse to even listen. In fact, within six months of the start of her training at that hospital, the hospital administration had all the Gideon bibles removed from the patient rooms and a memo was posted on each nursing unit stating that the hospital would fire, on the spot, any employee who was caught "evangelizing" the patients. Also, any minister that was coming to the hospital to visit patients was not permitted to visit with anyone except their own private parishioners, and, if the nurses found them "evangelizing" other patients they were to have them escorted from the hospital by security and asked not to return again. A chaplaincy service was not permitted, which was also unusual. Indeed, it seemed as if an effort was being made to wipe away any mention of Christianity within the walls of the hospital. Rebecca was first assigned to the intensive care unit and immediately was plunged into a whirl-wind of activities. She spent up to 120 hours per week working at the hospital. Because of this schedule she attributed the steady worsening of her physical condition to her exhaustion. Then the Lord began steadily laying upon her heart that she must go into the hospital early each morning to spend an hour in prayer before work asking the Lord for that institution and that city, that the gospel would be proclaimed and bear fruit. As she began obeying the Lord and praying each morning an hour before work, repeatedly she found herself compelled by the Holy Spirit to pray asking the Lord to restrain the powers of darkness in that place. Again and again she found herself quoting Numbers 10:35 where Moses said: " Rise up, Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered; and let them that hate thee flee before thee." She did not know why she was praying in this manner, and indeed sometimes thought that it was strange to do so, but over and over the Holy Spirit compelled her to pray in such a manner. As the Lord steadily increased the burden on her heart for the souls in that place she began to pray daily asking the Lord to permit her to stand in the gap for the hospital and the city, as in Ezekiel 22:30-3 1 "And I sought for a man among them, that, should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none. Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God." She was not sure just what was involved in "standing in the gap" but asked the Lord to use her if He could. During Rebecca's first few months at Memorial, God taught her a very valuable lesson in total dependence on Him in her medical work. Late one night a patient was admitted to the Coronary Care Unit with severe chest pain, high blood pressure and a possible heart attack. It was Rebecca's responsibility to examine the patient and care for him that night. He gave her a list of the medicines that he was taking and among them was a particularly good one to use for lowering blood pressure while simultaneously taking the work load off of the heart. He adamantly stated that he was taking a particular dose and Rebecca accepted his word. She elected to give him that dose in an effort to lower his blood pressure and to relieve the work load on his heart in hopes of preventing a heart attack. What she did not know was that that dosage is very dangerous to give unless she had herself gradually worked the patient up to that amount. One hour later, the nurses called her and told her that the patient's blood pressure had dropped very low, that he was in shock and looked as if he were dying. Pure terror and dismay overwhelmed her. She called her superior and told him about the situation and asked what could be done to reverse the effects of the medicine she had given. He coldly told her that she had made a stupid mistake and that there was absolutely nothing that could be done, except to see if the patient lived or died. No medicine was available that could be used to reverse the effects of the one she had given. He went on to add that he, too, had made a similar mistake as an intern and that his patient had sustained greatly extended damage to his heart as a result of that period in shock and had nearly died. Many thoughts were madly racing through
Rebecca's head as she walked down the lonely, dark
halls to the CCU (Coronary Care Unit) that night to
see the patient. Guilt and fear and self-chastisement
were uppermost amongst them. Cold sweat ran down her
back as she anguished over the fact that in all probability
she had killed the patient. Suddenly the Holy Spirit
showed her the error of the thoughts uppermost in
her mind. She had been thinking, "God made an
orderly universe where cause and effect take place Gently the Holy Spirit flooded into her entire being the sure knowledge that she was different! She was a child of the King! And, in so being, had a special privilege that the other doctor had not had. She had the right to ask God the Father, in Jesus' name, to correct her mistake. That was one of the many things for which Jesus had died on the cross. She abruptly turned and ran to the chapel and fell on her knees before the Lord and prayed earnestly asking the Lord to correct her mistake, laying claim to the fact that she was a child of the King and standing on Hebrews 4:16: "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need." She arose from her knees and went back down to the CCU. When she arrived she found that the patient's blood pressure had returned to normal and he was pain free! A new Electrocardiogram showed his heart had returned to normal. He was discharged two days later without any heart damage at all. Rebecca also learned to hear the Lord's guidance more acutely on an hour-to-hour basis. Time after time He would speak in that soft voice in her spirit, bringing a mistake to her attention before it could be carried out, or bringing to her attention something she had forgotten or overlooked, or something that she had read or learned about in the past. She learned to fast and pray, asking the Lord to reveal to her the key to the diagnosis of particularly obscure cases. She also learned to rely on the Lord to give her skill in her hands, and never performed any procedure on any patient without first praying and asking the Lord Jesus, the Great Physician, to put His hands within hers and guide them with His skill. In all of her years so far, the Lord has continuously been faithful and she has never had a serious complication resulting from any procedure she has done. About six months into her internship, just as Rebecca was again assigned to the intensive Care Unit (ICU), the young pastor she saw in the emergency room finally recovered enough to talk. Rebecca had followed his progress closely, constantly praying for him and was drawn by the Lord to frequently stop by his room to talk with him. One day he told her what had to the hospital. Bob was the pastor of a small Christian church in that city. He had become involved in ministering to some people who worshiped Satan. He told Rebecca that there was a very large satanic community in a town close by, and that Satanism was rampant in that state. He had, at the Lord's leading, been steadily bringing a number of these people to Jesus. They had turned from serving Satan and made Jesus Christ their Lord and Savior. He also helped them cast out the demons that they had asked to dwell in them to gain powers of witchcraft. The night Rebecca first saw him, he had been kidnapped by the satanists and taken to one of their meetings. He was taken up on stage in front of the group and tortured. They were in the process of nailing him to a cross when one of the members shouted out that someone had seen something suspicious and called the police. (The satanists had a police scanner radio and monitored all the calls.) Bob had passed out while being crucified and knew nothing more until he awoke in the hospital bed. Rebecca was astounded, she had never heard of such a thing. Perhaps this was the explanation of the brooding darkness she could feet in that hospital? The next revelations were quick to follow. As she started into her second rotation in the Intensive Care Unit, her uneasiness continued to grow. Each night she was on call, she had the responsibility for all of the patients in the critical care units. She began noticing as she really happened just prior to his admission was prayerfully working with the patients that there were many deaths which, to her, were unexplainable. There is normally an orderly traceable sequence of events in the illness and/or death of any patient. For example, if someone went into shock (low blood pressure) because he was bleeding somewhere, once the bleeding was stopped by surgery or whatever and the blood volume he had lost replaced by blood transfusions, the patient's blood pressure should not suddenly drop unless he started bleeding again, or developed some other complication such as an overwhelming infection. However, many of the patients Rebecca worked with would just reach a stabilized condition and then suddenly, for no traceable reason, take a turn for the worse. Their heart would suddenly stop beating, or they would stop breathing, or their blood pressure would drop to zero. Many of these died shortly despite all measures taken medically to save them. Rebecca followed up on the autopsies of many of these patients, and was even more puzzled when no cause for their death was found other than the original problem which had brought them into the hospital. The other problem which greatly concerned her was the frequency and content of what is called, in the medical field, an "acute ICU psychosis." When patients undergo the great stress of a critical illness, they are placed in an ICU (Intensive Care Unit) for a number of days, usually with the lights on 24 hours a day, monitors going, and no window to look out of. Because of this a certain percent will become disoriented and start to have hallucinations. (That is, see things that are not real.) However, in this hospital, the incidence of ICU psychoses was many times more than anything Rebecca had experienced in any of the several other hospitals she had worked in, both as a R.N. and a medical student. Rebecca felt led by the Lord to take the time to talk to many of the patients about just what they were "seeing." Much to her surprise, almost all of them told her that they had seen demons in their rooms! Greatly concerned about all of this, Rebecca started mentioning the incidence of deaths and ICU psychoses in the medical conferences held with all the interns and residents each morning. Nobody else seemed concerned, or even to believe her. After her third attempt to discuss the problem she was called down to the office of the director of the training program and told to shut her mouth on the subject, that she was not experienced enough to know what she was talking about. When Rebecca pointed out that she also had ten years experience as a R.N. in addition to medical school, she was told that if she continued to create trouble she would be kicked out of the training program. Her morning prayer sessions took on a new intensity as she earnestly sought a revelation from the Lord as to what was going on. The first break-through came through one of her own patients. Pearl was an elderly black lady from the Southern United States who had been under Rebecca's care for about six months. Pearl was a very strong Christian and Rebecca had come to know her well and love her very much. One evening Pearl came to the hospital very ill and Rebecca admitted her to the Intensive Care Unit. The next morning as Rebecca went to the ICU to start making rounds the nurses told her that Pearl was having an ICU psychosis. Rebecca was somewhat startled, because she knew Pearl was a very strong Christian, a lady who had suffered much and didn't panic easily. As she went into Pearl's room she found her crying. When she asked her why, Pearl told her that if she did not transfer her out of the ICU that day that "that night nurse would kill her." Then Pearl told Rebecca about how the night shift nurse caring for her had come in and talked to her and told her that there was no need for her to fight to stay alive, that she could so easily be reincarnated into her next life. The nurse also told Pearl that she would call on "the higher powers" to come and escort Pearl into her next "beautiful life." When the nurse laid her hands on Pearl and spoke words of a foreign sounding language, Pearl recognized it to be an incantation. Pearl knew from her own heritage about voodoo and black magic and demons, and she declared that she had seen demons in the room. She told Rebecca that she was too weak to right anymore and if the same thing would happen tonight she knew she would die. Rebecca was astounded! She knew Pearl well enough that she didn't think she was lying and she was sure that she wasn't disoriented in any way. The nurse Pearl was referring to happened to be the nurse in charge of the ICU on the night shift. She was an older lady, pleasant, attractive and an excellent nurse. She was well organized, knowledgeable and saw to it that the patients got good care. She was highly respected by the medical staff and the rest of the nursing staff. Rebecca had always found her a bit cold and withdrawn, but had thought it was the pressures of her work load. She could not find fault with her work in any way. Rebecca knew she could not talk to any of her colleagues about the problem because they would all say that she was crazy. Neither could she accuse the nurse of anything because she had no proof. At that time Rebecca had very little knowledge of witches and almost no knowledge about demons. There was only one thing she could do. She took the problem to the Lord in prayer. Every spare moment she had that day was spent on her knees in prayer down in the chapel. (She always had the chapel to herself because no one else ever used it.) Late in the day, the Lord confirmed to her heart that Pearl was telling the truth. The Lord also commanded Rebecca to go and sit at Pearl's bedside all night that night as Pearl was too ill to be safely transferred out of the ICU. This was possible as Rebecca was not on call that particular night. What happened that night was to change Rebecca's life forever. As she sat at Pearl's bedside, not really expecting anything to happen, she felt direct demonic oppression as she had never felt it before. Helen, the nurse in charge of the ICU, did not come into Pearl's room at all that night. Rebecca felt an incredible unseen power coming against her. She felt as if there was a giant unseen hand trying to squash her into a little grease spot on the floor and as if some unseen force was trying to suck the very life out of her. She tried to scientifically reason the feeling away, tried to convince herself that it was just her own imagination, but none of this helped. She felt her body beginning to weaken to the point where she could hardly sit up. Pearl felt it too. So, she and Pearl joined hands, and Rebecca prayed quietly asking the Lord to cover them with a shield of the precious blood of Jesus. "And they overcame him [Satan) by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony. Revelation 12:11 |
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