Death Bed

It’s only 7:45 in the morning and this is the condition of my day?  Really?  Dirty dishes from yesterday are still piled on and around the sink.  The unmade bed is loaded with clean, waiting-to-be-folded laundry.  Freshly washed laundry is waiting to be hung on the line.  Supplies which came in late last night as Stephen returned from a three-day stay in Freetown are scattered about in boxes, bins, and bags waiting to be sorted and put away.  Dennis is on the veranda trying to explain to Stephen how he can justify begging food from us when he’s done nothing to help himself or his family.  We gave him a bag of rice (110 pounds).  Fresh produce from Freetown is in various piles needing whatever sort of attention.  There’s about eight pounds of bananas from our garden, ripe and oozing, that need to be put in the freezer for use in banana bread. A dead chicken who passed in the night from acute fowl cholera is laying in the basin which became her deathbed – in the bathroom; her convulsions and vomiting throughout the night were horrible.  I’ve only been up about one and one-half hours having way over slept.  The death pains of my poor chicken kept me awake till early morning hours; more out of despair than the noises themselves.  My chicken nursing skills weren’t enough to save her life.

And now I, myself, am rapidly descending into a furious anger.

At 7:30 Joseph came up to relay the news that Elisabeth’s mother died at 5:00 this morning.  I knew she had been sick but she refused to go to a doctor in Bo preferring to stay with the traditional healer – the witchdoctor.  We even offered to help with expenses for her to go to the doctor.  But that’s not the source of my anger.

For four days we’ve been listening – all day and all night – to the Pentecostal church holding its “revival” meeting.  Here’s a bunch of money-hungry, status-grabbing, self-loving, carnal “Christians” who may or may not be saved, who like to call themselves a Bible believing church, who vociferously reject the teaching of the truth freely offered to them, and who claim to have the apostolic signs including healing.  And less than 50 feet from their church is a Muslim woman who is on her own deathbed.  The skills of the witchdoctor weren’t enough to save her life.

To rub salt into my wounded heart Joseph confirmed my suspicions.  Emmanuel, the “preacher,” who lives here in town, knew the woman was sick, knew she was dying, knew she was a lost Muslim headed to a Christless hell for eternity.

Attempts of Elisabeth and others to witness to her mother have fallen on a hardened heart.  Tragically, early this morning she went the way of the lost.  And tonight Emmanuel will hold a “healing” service as the grand finale to his week-long show in the flesh.  Apparently the death Elizabeth’s mother didn’t fit his schedule.  I would relish the opportunity to ask him why he didn’t just quietly go to this dear woman’s house and heal her so she could hear the Gospel one more time.  But that would also be done in the flesh, so I won’t.  Besides, we both know the answer already.

Instead, I’ll gather all of this bottled up sorrow, frustration, and anger and channel the energy into getting the house in order.

Then, tomorrow, Stephen will use this sad circumstance as a teaching opportunity for the students in the Bible Institute, the proper venue for exposing the lies and heresies of the Pentecostal  church to hearts which will receive the truth.