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NEEDHIM
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“Witness
of God”
December
2004
Contributor Patrik Popp pictured with his wife,
Lucia,
Nataly and little Patrik
Recently, I
felt an urging that I should not keep to myself anymore what God has
done in my life and to tell it not only verbally while witnessing to
unsaved people, but that I should submit it in writing. My name
is Patrik, Milos and surname is Popp, we live in Czechoslovakia.
When the Russian army occupied my country, Czechoslovakia, I ran away
to Sweden so I would not have to live under communist dictatorship
again.
There I had a friend who worked as a scientist in a group investigating
elementary particles. Sometimes he took me with him, so I could
see how they do experiments. After experiment those scientists would
meet in cafe shop to discuss those experiments and conclusion that
could be done. When I asked them about the reason for some things that
were impossible to happen and yet they did happen (for example,
particle that had passed energy barrier which they cannot pass), they
answered that there is a spiritual world, and God interacting with
physical universe. I was surprised to hear they believe in God, and
since I always loved adventure, diving, traveling - learning and
experiencing new things, I thought it would be great to be able
experience those spiritual worlds too.
Sometimes I went with my mother to the Catholic church, not because I
was a Christian, but because it was a sort of cultural thing, and Czech
emigrants would meet each other there and talk after preaching. From my
visits of Church I got an impression that Christians only talk about
those spiritual things but that they experience nothing and they said
that only after you are dead will you see and experience what they talk
about.
That was not anything for me.
Then an Indian guru arrived in our town promising that he could show us
God, that we would hear God and experience His presence, and that was
something different! I went for this. At initiation, I did see
some supernatural light and heard some noise, which they said was God.
Even if there was no evidence that this was God, I thought at least I
had experienced something supernatural there. All Christians I
had met with before were only talking about God, but there was no
supernatural sign at all that they would be connected with God. Because
all disciples of Jesus did experience and perform supernatural acts, I
thought that I was on the right way to God, and that Christians were
not.
After about 10 years of Hindu or Buddhist meditations, I could see some
negative changes in my friends who also did these
meditations. Some of them started to be a sort of apathetic
and some started to have explosive anger for even smallest things that
their girlfriend or wife would say. Soon some of them ended up with
meditation psychosis in the mental hospital, and one girl made suicide.
A girl whom I brought to this meditation was sitting one day in her
kitchen when she saw how walls and ceiling were coming on her to crash
her and heard voice of guru talking to her. She was clever enough to
understand that "meditation psychoses” is a spiritual thing that needs
a spiritual cure, so she ran to the ecumenical bible school in our town
Göteborg. After Christians prayed to Jesus and laid hands on
her, she was completely free. When I met with her she told me she
had seen how Jesus was healing sick people who would come there on
crutches and many other miracles. I went to this bible school to check
it out.
My biggest need was that I was longing for God and wanted to have some
encounter with Him. The second need was that after an encounter with a
car on icy road I had very complicated fracture of knee that doctors
operated on for two hours. They told me there was nothing more
that could be done with it, and that I had to avoid some sports and be
careful. The knee was getting worse and worse each year.
When I got to the Bible school, the Preacher said that Jesus died to
take on Himself our sins and also our sicknesses so those of us who
were sick or had pain should go forward so they could lay hands on us
and pray to Jesus so He would heal us. I went forward and they laid
hands on me without asking what was wrong with me and prayed with
strange languages. I asked Jesus to heal my knee and felt some sort of
weak vibration in my whole leg. After this my knee was healed. This was
a proof that our guru did not have so much insight in spiritual world
as he pretended, since he was saying to us that Jesus is dead and
therefore He can not help us any more, but here I have asked Jesus in
Czech language to heal my knee (so even this Swedish pastor who prayed
for me did not know what my need was) and Jesus answered by healing me.
Even after I found out that not only is Jesus alive but there is a way
to experience His power and presence, I still did not want to give up
meditation.
The director of Bible school told me that meditation is from the devil,
which I did not believe, but he said also that those two powers which I
experienced in meditation and in Bible school are of opposite nature.
That was something I had to think about, since when I tried to do
meditation after Jesus healed my knee, I did experience some sort of
conflict.
I decided that I would get everything what those Christians had and
experienced, either everything or nothing. To come once each week
to church and say some prayer and not experience anything, to have no
power of God but only theology was not for me. I decided I would
stop meditation for 20 days, then starting again and see if there would
be any difference.
After 12 days without meditation I did not want to wait any longer, so
I did meditation and got out of my body to some sort of world where big
balls of light were trying to crash me and I felt a terrible presence
of evil. I wanted to get out of there, but I could not, and in this
moment I remembered an article from a daily newspaper written by a
doctor from a mental hospital who was describing meditation psychoses.
He wrote that in addition to the meditation psychoses that my friends
had, there are also such that the patient is laying as dead for months
and years and does not respond any more. I understood this was going to
happen to me, and that my body would end up in some mental hospital,
but I would stay in this horrible mental place. So I started to shout
Jesus, Jesus, take me out of here. After a second I was brought back to
my body and after this I did not touch meditation any more.
I wanted to help the people the way those pastors did, who prayed for
me with power from Jesus, so I asked how they got this power. They told
me it was when they were baptized with the Holy Spirit. So whenever
some preacher said he would pray for those who want to be baptized in
Holy Spirit, I ran forward, they prayed for me and nothing would
happen. First after several months and many prayers one servant prayed
for me and I felt as if some ball of fear was coming up from my stomach
to my mouth and she said now you got it, and reason why it was so
difficult for me to be baptized was that all the dirt from meditation
had to get out of me first.
The next day when I prayed for my friends Jesus was healing them.
I started to go to Church where we had a pastor whom God has used even
for healing cancer. After each preaching he would call those who were
sick, or needed any prayer forward and prayed for them. With youth
pastor from our Church and also some youth from other Churches we
started to go among criminals and drug addicts in places where drugs
were sold, and Jesus was there doing miracles, and healing, saving
them. Those people were not interested to listen to us in the
beginning, they were even aggressive, but when they saw Gods’ power in
action, it was quite different. Prostitutes who were beating our girls
in the beginning were later on almost fighting between each other,
because each wanted us to pray for her first.
They have seen that our God is a living God by those healings He did
among them. Then I sailed to Canary Island to preach among
hippies who lived there in caves and were deep in New Age, occult and
drugs. Soon the group of saved people was formed since Jesus showed
them with his Power (not only my words) that He is really alive.
After about one year I ran out of money so I went home to earn some
more, so I could serve God again among those hippies. At this time
communism fell in Czechoslovakia, so I sold the boat on Canary Island,
and with that money I went to Prague to serve God there.
In Prague I met people from Harvest International who were traveling
around in old buses with tent preaching and praying for the sick, so I
went with them for some years . We have seen thousands and thousands of
people to come to Jesus and to be healed. God’s power was so strong
there that when I saw some person who could not walk properly or move
hands, I was glad that people in tent could see God’s healing power in
action, since majority of those people Jesus healed completely or they
got considerably better. (In west only few people were healed, not
majority) Than some businessman paid me to go with them to Thailand, to
translate business. I stayed there for several months and could do
evangelization with local pastors or preach in the church, since
business took only few hours in week. Then I got invitation to be a
pastor and also invitation by US missionary to work with him with boat
ministry, which I preferred most.
I told them I would need a wife to live in Thailand permanently so I
went back to Czech republic to get one. When I came to Prague I asked
God to send me a wife to the Methodist Church, which I planned to visit
on Sunday. On Sunday I went to Church and at the tram station I saw a
nice girl with beautiful eyes. So I told God I would like a girl like
that, and also to give me courage to talk to her. He gave me courage so
I gave her Christian tract and invited her to that Methodist Church
behind the corner where I was on way to. She told me; she was also
going to that Church, she was only waiting for her father.
She came to Church, gave me her address, 3 days later I asked her if
she would mind living on a sailing boat or in a simple hut in the
jungle, and she said she would love it. Therefore I asked her to marry
me and she said yes. 3 weeks after I met her, we got married when my
pastor Gösta Öman come to Prague. I think it is normally much
better when people know each other a longer time before they get
married, but I wanted to get back to Thailand soon. A long time after
that, she admitted that she was praying to God the same week as I did,
telling Him that she does not want to be alone any more, asking Him to
send her a husband who is older than she and who likes adventure
a lot, to that Methodist Church ( where she normally does not go - and
neither did I) that Sunday.
Back in Thailand we were happy to see how God was doing His miracles
and saving people. For example, once we were asked to pray for an
old man who fell from a high mango tree and broke his back so he could
not walk and doctors said they could not do anything for him anymore.
We prayed to Jesus for whom there are no hopeless cases, and next day
he told his daughter that in the dream he heard a voice telling him he
is healed now and can go to WC by himself, but he was arguing that he
could not walk. When he woke up, he went to WC by himself and his
daughter said he was not so much surprised that Jesus healed him, but
what surprised him very much was that God of foreigners can speak such
perfect Thai language.
After about one year we came back to Czech because my wife was pregnant
and we did not have money for delivery of the baby in Thailand.
Now we are living in Czech republic, but not in Prague any more since
we were flooded away from there 2 years ago. We have 2 children,
9 years and 1.5 years old.
I know how important prayers are. I would like to ask for
your prayers for us. Occasionally I travel into Prague to preach.
Recently I was preaching in a student dormitory there about Yoga and
Christianity, and 3 students were saved. There was a witch there,
who was also in the last meeting I had there, and who took some printed
materials I was giving out. She said she was going to take them
to a special witch shop to ask them what they thought about the
materials.
From the past I know this might cause attacks. Once when I witnessed
about Jesus and His power to some devil worshipers, they said to me:
"we will see who is stronger " and within 2 weeks I came close to death
twice, once by car, the second time by falling from my boat. Both times
God saved me miraculously. I also know that prayers are the basis
for spiritual protection, and if there were not people praying for me
during those times, perhaps I would not have survived.
Patrik Popp
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