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Supernatural Opposition
Bud Elford

Bud Elford (c. 1920s – c. 1980s) was a Canadian preacher and missionary whose ministry focused on sharing the gospel with Native peoples in northern Canada through the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission (NCEM). Born likely in the 1920s, possibly in Ontario, he grew up in a Christian family with a heart for missions, a calling that led him to join NCEM in the early 1950s alongside his wife, Marge. His early life included time in rural Canada, and by 1953, he and Marge moved west with their young son Roan to serve in remote communities like Buffalo Narrows, Saskatchewan, and Churchill, Manitoba, where he preached and lived among Indigenous groups such as the Denesuline. Elford’s preaching career unfolded in harsh northern settings, where he and Marge established mission outposts, sharing a message of salvation and building relationships with First Nations communities. His work emphasized practical faith and scripture-based teaching, often in informal settings like homes or community gatherings, rather than formal churches.
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Sermon Summary
In this sermon, the preacher shares a story about two stray cats that were let into a missionary's home. The white cat made a terrible noise and left, while the black cat stood up on its back legs and spoke in audible English. The preacher then transitions to talking about the mission work among the native people of Canada. He mentions an old Indian man named William Papanicus who was impacted by the Methodist revival. The preacher emphasizes the need for more evangelical missionaries in over 100 Indian and Eskimo villages that do not receive visits. He also shares a personal experience of encountering a ruling spirit in a native village. The sermon concludes with a reference to Revelation 12, highlighting the power of testimony in overcoming Satan.
Sermon Transcription
Thank you, Dr. Smith, for those kind words and for the opportunity of being here. I've appreciated it. We appreciate the emphasis that People's Church has on evangelism, the visible position you have in metropolitan Toronto, and the effective way you are fulfilling your part of the Great Commission. And my prayer is for you to keep on and do greater and greater things. And I think you've added a missing dimension by bringing Indian pastors in, because the Native Church that's coming into being in the north and across Canada today really have no one behind them to support them. Many of the young Bible students that come to our Bible school are first-generation Christians. They've laid their lives on the line, literally. A young Indian boy who is now in our Keewatin Bible Institute just last summer, only 20 years old, was out fighting fire with his friends, relatives, and they said to him at a break for supper, Bobby, how far are you going to follow the Lord? Bobby said, all the way, I guess. What do you mean all the way, Bobby? Well, all the way, he said. Well, you won't follow the Lord all the way. Most of our people go back. I'm going to follow the Lord all the way. They said, we'll see if you will, Bobby. They tied him to a tree. They took a shovel and heated it red hot in a fire and started bringing it up to Bobby's face and saying, how far will you follow the Lord, Bobby? He said, all the way. I'm going to follow Jesus all the way. And then they started singeing his hair and his clothing with this red hot shovel. Just at the moment when Bob wasn't too sure what they were going to do, the helicopter with the boss on came back, and Bobby was rescued. He's in Bible school today, all alone, the only one from his tribe, the Chippewan tribe. God is moving today among the native people of Canada, and I want to say a few things about them tonight and the mission that God raised up 44 years ago. I would like you to turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 13 for some scripture reading. And then I'm going to have prayer. And while you're looking for the place in the book of Acts, chapter 13, beginning at verse two, 130 years ago, an old Indian man by the name of William Papanikos in the Methodist revival that the Indians had in the 1800s was asked by the Canadian government to be the chief over the whole Winnipeg area. Old William Papanikos was a class leader out of Norway House, Manitoba. He said, give me some time to pray about it and to think. After he'd prayed and thought about it for a month, he came back to the governor of the Northwest Territories at the time and said, I have decided I cannot be chief for two main reasons. For one reason is I would have to give up my Bible class. The second reason is I might start thinking more of this world than I do of heaven. That's the kind of foundation the Indian church is going to be built on today, those old patriarchs. He had a beautiful life philosophy. His philosophy was this, make sure I get to heaven myself and take as many people with me as I can. Not bad philosophy. That's why the Antones sing so much about heaven. Indian people really sing a lot about heaven. They want to go there. I'm not so sure some white Christians are going to heaven or planning on it because they have so much stake in this present world. Acts chapter 13, while they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them. Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia. From there they sailed to Cyprus. And when they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed or preached the word of God in the synagogue of the Jews. And they had John to assist them. And when they had gone through the whole island, as far as Paphos, they came upon a certain medicine man. That's what a magician was. A Jewish false prophet called son of Jesus or bar Jesus. He was with the deputy, Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence who called Barnabas and Saul and wanted to hear the word of God. But Elimeas, the magician or the sorcerer or the medicine man, for that is the meaning of his name by interpretations, withstood them trying to turn away the deputy from the faith. But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, looked intently at him and said, You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? And now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you're going to be blind and unable to see the sun for a time. And immediately a mist of darkness fell upon him, and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand. Then the deputy believed. Let's pray. Father, I pray for the help of your divine present spirit that I might give forth this message tonight clearly in understandable terms that people may have open and receptive hearts and that you may be glorified tonight and accomplish what you wish to accomplish. In the mighty name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Paul hadn't gone very far before he met with two things, wonderful success, which was supernatural, and we've been talking about that for the last three Sunday nights, and supernatural opposition. Our brother from Poland has been talking about the opposition there, and God is able to turn the opposition into help. And I want to tell you something about the supernatural opposition and the supernatural power of God that's been manifest in northern Canada in the last 20 some years. It was 44 years ago that a rancher named Stan Colley and his wife came to Jesus Christ 45 years ago. They took one year of Bible school, tried to go to Africa, were turned down because he was 36 years old and had a family of six. He sold his ranch, sold his cows, loaded his family into a covered wagon with four horses pulling it, went up an old wagon trail until he came to the end of it, traded it for a scow with a five-horse motor on it, and loaded his belongings on that. It was October. The next morning they get up, the scow was at the bottom of the lake. They had to dredge it up, dry their clothing. By the time they got to Buffalo Narrows in November the 4th, the next morning there was four inches of ice on the lake. They had no church behind them. They had only a few people praying for them. He lived on fish and corn meal that first winter of 1940. That was 100 years to the month after James Evans left Sarney, Ontario and went to Norway House to begin the Methodist movement among the Indians that left the Cree people with a readable Bible in their language. It was on that foundation we built. 100 years after James Evans went to Norway House, you couldn't find one Indian Christian in the entire north country. When my wife and I went north in 1952, we knew of three Indian believers in the north. Two of them were Tommy and Helen Francis. That's all been changed. The Northern Canada Mission today has missionaries from the Yukon right to Labrador. We have a couple prepared to go up into Labrador, into that great needy area. We work with 18 different language groups, including the Inuit of northern Quebec. We work in one of the most expensive mission fields in the world. Some of you people who think that old clothes and Sunday school offerings will run an Indian mission need to take one trip to Sudluck, Quebec. It'll take you quite a bit of your month's pay. It cost our field director, Carol Hill and his wife $2,800 to visit our fields in northern Quebec. You can fly to Singapore and back for that price. Gas is some places $12 a gallon and we fly three 185 aircraft to try and reach our people. We have a little printing press, nothing like the one that our brother has. But you know, when I saw those pictures, I was thinking of ways when I could go over there because every time I hear a missionary presentation, I want to go. Because I told God in a slit trench, I'd be a missionary. I was thinking that my son maybe could go over and print over there because he's the printer out in Prince Albert. It's wonderful that God is opening the doors that no one else can go open. Jesus said in Revelation chapter three, I sat before you and opened door. God can open the doors. He's opened wonderful doors. And today we have a Bible school that nearly all the Indians that are leading in the Indian churches today have graduated from that little Indian Bible school at Lac La Biche. They're undergoing tremendous struggles today. Young people come to those Bible schools and they have relatives at home working hexes upon them. They have fetishes in their baggage that has to be taken out. We have them phoning long distance from the reserves in the villages saying, grandpa just died. Come on home. The baby's crying for you. When nothing like that has happened, they are undergoing terrible stress to go to Bible school. The Indian people have faced something far greater. And I want to take the time tonight to share with you some of the supernatural opposition that our mission faced for about 25 years before we started getting a breakthrough. The Native Evangelical Fellowship, which is an Indian, the first plenary Indian denomination of Canada, received its charter in 1970. Bob Thompson helped get it through Ottawa. They now have around 36 Indian churches. Some of the largest are in Moose Factory Island, just straight north of here, where they'll have up to 300 Indians in a service on a Sunday morning. Let me tell you something. They just finished building their own brand new church building. It cost $62,000. When the last nail was pounded in, the building was paid for. And they had enough left over to support a missionary for a year. Maybe we could learn something about them, about church building, couldn't we? That's an Indian church in northern Ontario. Well, when our mission began, it was organized in 1946, we started sending missionaries to these villages. We had several things against us. First of all, no one talked English. By the way, just a few statistics. There are over 2 million natives in Canada, including Eskimos. That's roughly 10% of our Canadian population. There are perhaps 5,000 or 6,000 Christians among this great number. They are on reserves and on villages. They integrate into our urban life. They participate in our sports. They work with us. They sin with us. They have fun with us, but rarely any of them attend evangelical churches. They have to be reached as a cross-cultural item in the Canadian mosaic. And our mission has been raised up by God to do that. Well, when we started sending missionaries to these villages, a few things were apparent. First of all, they were nearly all baptized by some formal church group. They had been baptized as babies. Second thing, we realized that there was a strong overriding power at work in their midst from the sources that are dark, from unclean spirits. Although the Catholic priests and some of the Anglican clergy would not allow the Indian people to practice their drumming or their fetishes or their witchcraft openly, natives told us, we do that back in the bush. And I explained to you two weeks ago how the Pope has just taken the cover off that, and at Fort Simpson they now have said, we have the imprimatur of the Father to practice Indian religion alongside our other religion. I want to share with you tonight some illustrations of just what happened in those early days, which is largely now transferred to the Indian church themselves. Frightening things happened. Missionaries would be flown into these villages, and we didn't know what was happening because we did not know yet the truths that they learned in the Welsh Revival that we are opposed by principalities and powers and dark powers that exert themselves through being placated and worshipped and accepted by human beings. And the native people had never given up their Indian religion. They call it Indian medicine. It came about by fear. We have some pretty tough missionaries in our mission. Carol Hill is our eastern field director. He was a lumberjack. He was attacked one time by three big native fellows, he and another fellow, and they were able to hold the three of them on the ground and preach the gospel to them. He is the kind of a fellow that was a lumberjack in Maine when he was nine years old. We have another man who can grab two by fours in his hands and just squeeze them and chin himself like that, or chin himself or do push-ups with one arm. He's a man who went down the Mackenzie River and captured a caribou live and tied it up and brought it back to a chief who said, you can't shoot caribou out of season. He said, I didn't shoot it. I tied it up and brought it back to you. We have men like that, but those men were no match when it came to the powers of darkness. Carol Hill came to me at one conference in Peace River Bible Institute, and he said, I don't know what's wrong, bud. He said, I'm scared of the dark. I can't go outside my house in the dark. I'm scared. I said, Carol, there's only one thing to do. Leave your flashlight inside. Leave your gas lantern inside. Go out on the darkest night and say, I belong to the light. I belong to Jesus Christ, and I stand against the dark spirits in this village. And he said to me, when I did that, I heard a rustling. And he said, I'm not afraid of the dark anymore. Now this had to happen on many of our stations. Ron Knightley, the fellow that chins himself, we call him one of our Goliaths. He and his wife were working with the Dog Rib Indian tribe down the Mackenzie River at a place called Fort Wrigley, just a little village. The Dog Rib people are notorious for their medicine making. They put hexes and curses on each other that really wipe them out. I mean, they do. Carol and his wife were there with their family of boys, five boys, and one night a girl came into the cabin, their little log cabin, and she sat in a chair and started to rock back and forth. A little while after that, Ron felt sick and he passed out on the floor. Marjorie, who was a registered nurse, thought he was having a heart attack, and he said, pray for me. So she prayed for him, and he recovered, sat up in chair. Then he passed out again. She prayed for him again. It happened the third time. Finally, Ron said to the girl in the chair, is somebody making medicine? She said, yes. We hired, these were slave Indians, we hired the Dog Ribs to make medicine against you, to get you out of the village. So they put her out of the house, they had a cleansing prayer in Jesus' name, and Ron was fine. And then they came and said, you got to move out of town, we're afraid of you. Ron didn't have a dog team, he used to walk around the north, and any time when they see somebody walking without a dog team, 20 years ago, they thought it was a spirit. So Ron was really upsetting the tribe. They said, you got to leave town. Ron says, I want to take my house with me. They said, you can't take your house with you. It's wintertime and you can't move it. Ron says, we'll move it. They went outside the town, pitched a tent, and log by log, like Samson, Ron moved the house, put it back up outside the town. And that little town tonight have a new missionary couple in it. And there's a Bible study in the little town of Fort Wrigley on the Mackenzie River. Manifestations have happened. Margaret Howard, who is a brother-in-law to Melvin Graham and a sister-in-law to Betty Elliott, used to be with her husband, general directors of this mission. They were traveling in northern Quebec. The Indian population along the James Bay coast have a medicine man in nearly every family. They call them Mitt Dale, people with power. You walk into those villages and you can feel the power of darkness. They have the skulls of bears attached up for good luck, windpipes of geese, and all sorts of things. Anthropologists have filmed cigarettes in midair puffing away by demons and shaking teepees without a hand touching them. Margaret and Phil were visiting a place called East Main with our missionary Helen who is now married and living in Red Lake. She was there alone in that village. It's a Montagne village. Phil had to go over to the nursing station to sleep on the operating table. There wasn't any room in the little cabin. His wife bedded down for the night with Helen. And she was in Helen's bed and just as she was falling off to sleep, she saw a great black cloud coming at her across the bedroom. And she tried to say Helen, Helen, and she couldn't call her name. She was paralyzed. And then she said, what am I trying to call Helen for? She can't help me. And she called Jesus. And when she got the name Jesus out, the black cloud began to recede. And in that village, the spirits walk in the village. That's not Indonesia or Columbia. That's Canada. Not very many thousands of miles from here where missionaries from the Northern Canada Mission sit all alone in those villages and learn to pray. These things went on for perhaps 20 years. Things like attacks. When my wife and family and I moved into Brochet, we were the very first Protestant missionaries to move into that village. When we moved in, we moved into an old store. We knew the language. We could talk Chipewyan. So we were in well with the people. They'd come to our house night after night to sing. We'd sing in their language and share from the hymn book. We couldn't preach from the Bible because they were afraid we were going to put a curse on them. They'd run out the door if we used the Bible. So we preached from the hymn book. Mighty good preaching material in the hymn book. And we preached from the hymn book for maybe a year and a half. Well, we found a strange thing was happening. Night after night when the natives would leave, and we didn't have any furniture. We had some boxes that we brought our stuff in, some plywood boxes. And the natives used to sit on these plywood boxes while we played the guitar and sung. And my wife had a little pump organ. And as I would try to pray, maybe midnight or one or two in the morning, that first fall with a freeze up all around us, that's the place where we caught the fish, remember? And I found I couldn't pray. I was paralyzed. Night after night, I would just stand staring into space. I didn't know what was happening. Finally, I was reading in Moffat's translation from Proverbs, where it says that the harlot, her attending spirits are the shades. In the Hebrew language, the word shades is translated from rephame. Rephame is the Old Testament name for demons. And it said there in Proverbs that the harlots attending ones were the demons. That's why a harlot has her attractions. And I said, oh, maybe these people have attending spirits. I hadn't read Tertullian yet. And so I started to pray differently. I would say, I'd use the Indian name and I'd say any spirits that came in with that man, you can leave in Jesus name. Immediately, my hair would stand up on the back of my head and the air would be free and I'd be free to pray. Do you know how long we did that? Almost two years in that village. Well, we went over nearly every family in that village as they came to visit us. After a while, we learned we didn't even have to let them in. At night, we'd simply breathe a prayer and say, this house is open for angels, for the spirit of God and for physical beings only. All the rest stay outside in Jesus name. Now you may think that's a little strange, but when you're surrounded by this kind of fear, you get pretty practical. And we got practical. What would you do if you were sitting in a village where your family was the only white family and they spoke five languages and only one of them was your language and very few people talked it. And as you went to pray at night, you would hear knockings on the wall and you go outside and there was no one there. Well, it gets you praying pretty fast. The prospects of death wonderfully concentrate the mind. That's what Malcolm Muggeridge said. And I tell you, I asked an old missionary, Keith Bailey from the Christian Missionary Alliance, then teaching at Cass Lake Indian Bible School, I said, well, how long does this go on? He said, it goes on until you stop it. Ooh, that was a new trend. So I said, how do you stop it? He said, tell it to stop. And I can remember standing alone in that house with my wife and family in bed, sleeping on a cold winter night, shaking at the knees and telling the noises to stop. And you know what? They stopped. God is behind the weakest thing who belongs to Jesus Christ. You don't have to be Billy Graham. You don't have to be anybody special. You belong to Jesus Christ. You're in the family and all the authority belongs to you. Well, as the first year progressed, my wife got sick and had to go out. My oldest son got affection, Rowan, and he had to go out. My wife took our daughter, one-year-old Terry with him, and they went back home to Hamilton. And I was left there alone with a six-year-old son who wasn't great for praying. And, uh, I had some natives who were getting interested in the gospel. And, uh, one night I was standing with my back against the stove praying. I had, uh, I had freedom and I was praying. All of a sudden I heard a noise. This old missionary, Keith Bailey, had told me sometimes when you go into a native village, you will meet face-to-face the ruling spirit of the village. There are spirits, friends, that rule villages, principalities, and powers. Paul talks about them in Ephesians 6. And he said you will might have to meet the ruling spirit of the village. As I sat stood there praying with my back to the stove for some warmth and my six-year-old son asleep, I heard a strange noise coming down the chimney behind me. Then I felt myself palpably grasp around the chest so I could hardly breathe. I staggered over to a chair and I sat down, but I knew what was going on, thank God. And I'd already given Satan my testimony and said, I belong to Jesus Christ. By the way, that's what it means in Revelation chapter 12 when it says they overcame him by the word of their testimony. It doesn't mean your testimony in church. It means your testimony to Satan, telling him who you belong to. And I said this, Satan, okay, let's have it out. Jesus Christ sent us here and we might die, but we're not leaving. I resist you ruling spirit of Brochet in Jesus' mighty name. I belong to him. Flashed before my mind were all my sins. I said, yes, I used to do those things. I wasn't a very good guy, but Jesus washed me and made me new and I belong to his family and I'm sheltering in his blood. And guess who fled? Not me. We stayed there for four years and we got happy in that village and rejoicing. So we weren't afraid to go any place. In fact, I offered the priest to take his services when he was out on holidays. He didn't take me up on the offer, but he became a good friend of ours. And today he has tapes of our radio broadcast and he plays them in his church. He has our translation of the Chippewa gospel of Mark and the Catholic church has taken some of our hymns and put them in their hymn book. I have decided to follow Jesus and which is a radio theme song, How Great Thou Art. That happened in a village where we could have left in fear. Through those 20 years, about 250 missionaries came to our mission and left. They didn't know what was going on. Gradually the light began to dawn. Gradually we began to see that we were up against principalities and powers. It wasn't enough to go to an Indian person and say to him, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Raymond sparkling eyes, one of our native pastors tried that one time with a friend of his on the good fish reserve in Alberta. And he said, why don't you come to Jesus? And he said, I would, if those guys would let me. Raymond said, what guys? He said, those guys standing right there. Raymond didn't see anyone. Some of the native people who are subject to spirits can see them. We don't see them, although we do feel strange sensations. Another one of our missionaries in Fort Chipewyan, Alberta had a Chipewyan fellow on his knees praying he's going to lead him to Christ. And all of a sudden the Chipewyan started to choke and choke. And he looked and there were white marks, finger marks on his throat. We're dealing with people who for thousands of years have given themselves to that kind of worship and they need help to get free. Just as in the Bible, the people in Goshen under Moses could not get free until Pharaoh was dealt with. Our mission had to first deal with Pharaoh, with the taskmasters, with the spirits that the natives knew by name. Well, when I started sharing this and Tommy Francis had just come back from Wocombe Bible Institute in Minnesota at the time, we started sharing this with the mission, and this is kind of heretical stuff. And I was hauled up before the board for false doctrine. Boy, that's not a very good way to start. And Mr. Cauley said, well, I don't know. He said, Satan is a defeated foe. I don't think we have to deal with him. Well, I said, all I know is that we dealt with him and we were free and we had victory. Mr. Cauley came back to me a while later and said, I have an apology to make. I went out after that. I was walking through a muskeg on my snowshoes and I felt eyes looking at me all from every side. And all I could think of was resist the devil and he will flee from you. And I finally said, okay, Lord, I'll resist the devil. Just let me get across this muskeg and up that jack pine tree. And he said, you know, I never made it. I had to get down on my knees in that muskeg and confess my unbelief to God and take my stand against the enemy. Dear friends, what I'm saying to you went on for almost 20 years. Strange and terrible things happen. Some I don't think you'd even believe. Where natives are transported through space up to a distance of five miles from one teepee to another at a Sundance. That's been witnessed by Barney LaSandra, who was co-authored that little booklet, The Bushmen and the Spirits. Let me tell you two other illustrations. Helen Heisey and her partner up in Northern Quebec had a couple of dogs. They were two single girls. They had no fellowship at all. And I think they were giving too much affection to those dogs. In fact, one time when we were there, we saw one of them kiss the dog. And I thought that was too much. So we told them that's a little inordinate affection. And I said, you're going to have problems. A little while later, her dog was killed. She found it dead. She buried it. And two weeks after that dog was buried, she came in from visiting. She smelled the dog odor in the house. That night when she got into her bed, she felt the dog crawl up on the foot of her bed. There was nothing to be seen. How would you like that happen all alone in a dark cabin? And you put the candle out and you were the only person there that believed in Jesus Christ. You better learn how to pray quickly. And our missionaries that stuck through those dark days learned how to pray and not to be afraid. Learned to tell Satan, back off. We belong to Jesus Christ. At this point, I'd like to advertise a book. That book is for sale out there for $1. You'll never spend a better dollar in your life. That's bargain price. It tells whom resist. You need it in your culture and in Toronto today. Our country and our land is going back to occultism as fast as it can go. We were holding a language school in Moose Factory, a Moose Factory Island at a place called Saw Pit Island where the mission house was. There were three or four people in the language school. They were learning coastal Cree. We had some Wycliffe people with us. And the people up the bay will put spirits on dogs and on animals. And those dogs will come and molest people. We went to check our trap line and all the traps had been sprung and all the snares were pulled and nothing in them. Sticks were in them and no animals at all. And the missionaries realized that spirit forces were at work along their trap line. And then came two cats to the door, a black cat and a white cat. And of course, the soft hearted missionary gals let them in. Why not? Two stray little cats. They came in and one even made a little toy for the cat. And this is what happened. Halfway through one of the language sessions, the white cat made a terrible noise at the door and left. They let her out. Terrible, unearthly sound. The black cat walked to the center of the floor and stand up on his back legs and started to speak in audible English. You don't have to believe me. That's corroborated by five of our missionaries that were there. I believe it. If a dumb ass could speak, why can't a dumb cat? Listen, friends, these are supernatural oppositions that came upon our mission for over 25 years. We would go up the coast and the moment you got on Austin Airways, bang, you'd be hit in the stomach with a football of fear. After a while, we realized only the missionaries were being attacked, not the fishermen or the businessmen. When Marge and I would return to our station at Brochet, 15 miles out of that village, we'd be attacked physically with a sickness in our stomach. We just simply announced our arrival to the unseen forces of darkness of that village and said, we're coming back. And I tell you, there's nothing wrong with anger at the powers of darkness. If you could see what Satan has done to those lost Indian villages in the north, I could take you to Portage-Lelache, a village with almost 5,000 Chipweyan people with not a single Christian, where every girl over the age of 13 is bearing children, where immorality, drunkenness, and Indian religion is the order of the day, and we have a missionary couple trying to live there under terrible pressure night and day. Apparitions of every sort, balls of fire surrounding missionary houses, visible figures walking on water and things like that. I'm not telling a fairy story. I'm not talking about something across the sea. The native population of Canada, including the Inuit, have learned to use the powers of darkness like scarcely you ever hear in any place in the world. Perhaps the Tibetan red monks can do equal things. The flathead Indians in the Rocky Mountains can walk upside down right across the ceiling. You ask Ken, he'll corroborate some of these things. We don't share them often, but I think, as we're talking about natives, that you need to know some of the things the missionaries have faced through the many years. Whom resist? The missionaries that stayed, stayed to be victorious in their personal lives. We had to get things cleaned up. You couldn't hide sin if you were against Satan. We learned to be happy, to sing in those places. I was going down a river one time with two miserable dogs. We had separated our dog team and I had the smaller half looking for ptarmigan and there were polar bear tracks all around me out on the Hudson Bay coast. And as I traveled along with my dog team, all of a sudden I felt like eyes were at me from every angle. And before that I would have been frightened, but I wasn't frightened. I simply said, look Satan, you don't own this country. You didn't make it. God made this country and God made me and I belong to him. And I simply started to sing, the barren wastes are fruitful land. The desert blooms with roses and he, the glory of all lands, his wondrous face discloses. You think I was scared? Are you kidding? Resist the devil and he will flee from you, not the pastor, from a little person that believes in Jesus Christ. And we learned to be happy. And an Indian man came into my house who had seen apparitions walking around his tent and he said, bud, I know you believe in these things. How come you and your wife can live here and you're not scared? I said, because we know somebody who beat them all up in a fight. They said, who's that? I said, Jesus. And he defeated principalities and powers and made a show of them openly. And we enter into that victory and we can live in the darkest places. We can live in joy. And I think, dear friends, our world is becoming a dark place to live in. And we learned one other thing. We learned to be effective. And people started coming to the Lord and not backsliding and not going back. And in the little church, it's a bigger church now, in Moose Factory Island, can you imagine a church that for 15 years there wasn't a single backslider? That's great for any church, but for a native church, it was amazing. Not a single backslider for 15 years. And they've sent all kinds of people to Bible school. Let me tell you about something else. Let me tell you about the supernatural help that God has given his people in the North, because God is there too. It's his land. He made those people. He made all cultures and he made cultures of redeemable material. And he intends to redeem all cultures and leave them intact and not destroy them as cultures. God did some wonderful things. In Round Lake, there was a Bible that the Methodists have left. Although the people weren't Christians anymore, they had the Bible. And when our missionaries first went in there, they said to them, how do we know you're not the wolves that are supposed to come in and destroy the flock in the end time? Well, they said, by our fruits, you shall know them. Well, they said, if your fruits are so great, we read in our Cree Bible that you're supposed to put oil on the sick guy and he's supposed to get better. Will you do that? Said, sure, we'll do that. But we didn't have any oil. Well, the pilot said, we've got some Shell motor oil here. And the Bible wasn't definitive at that point. It didn't say you couldn't use Shell or Esso or Mazola. And so they used Shell motor oil in Round Lake, Ontario, and they anointed a little girl who had been sick for two weeks. Remember, we're 200 miles north of a Sioux lookout with no roads. And this was in the 50s. And then they anointed a little boy with oil. And they simply said, Lord, you promised to heal these. And then they went back to their own cabins. And next morning, they were both healed, ate a bountiful breakfast. And the church began in Round Lake, Ontario, with over 75% of that village turning to Jesus Christ. And the Hudson's Bay Company came and said to the missionaries, something must be happening. The natives are all paying their bills. And the second thing that's happening, nobody's buying smokes anymore. And nobody's buying cosmetics anymore or cards anymore. They had to ship them out to another village. Hallelujah. God is doing amazing things. That's where they had the Bible for 130 years. But not all tribes have the Bible. In fact, the only tribe of our 50 different Indian languages that have the whole Bible are the Crees. Chipwins have the Book of Mark and the Book of Acts. It's not printed yet. We have a translation team working on it. The Inuit have the New Testament. And we're working with a group to produce a new life testament in Inuit because they read their Bibles. Let me read a poem. This is a prophecy that was given over 200 years, we figure, before the white man came. It's a prophecy about the coming of the white man that the Indians had from tribe to tribe and village to village. On an ancient night in the firelight, an old chief sang this score. From the rising sun will a white race come who will bring light to our shore. With the Book of God, they'll show his love. So prepare the tribes to wait. But the ones who came had a lust for gain and exalted crime and hate. So the old chief died and the council tried to find the reason why the prophecy of the elderly seemed lost and doomed to die. Then the small ones grew and their mothers knew that the spirits ruled the day. So they tied their wrists as the demons wished, since there was no other way. That's what they do to keep the demons away. And the hunter brave as a spirit slave burnt bones in the sweet grass smell. He found his meat when he took a seat in the sweat lodge in the dell. Then the soapstone pipe came to lose its light for the calumet had failed. Calumet is a peace pipe. For it brought no rest to the troubled breast or balm to the heart that wailed. We cannot see. It's growing dark, is the cry ten thousand strong. We've walked in fright in this starless night and we're tired of doing wrong. So the seer's tale seemed bound to fail and the council's fire is cold. The hopes are still and the passive will says the prophecy is old. Was the ancient song misread or wrong? Is there no great book of God? Did the lamb not come for the native son? Is there only hope, the sod? No, the chief was right and his message bright, was sent from heaven and true. But the task still waits and it's growing late and it hangs like an unpaid due. Now if hope was meant for the disconsent and lights and on its way, will God say well done to the faithless one at the dawn of the judgment day? Though time was long and the demon throng had caught and held them fast, for each tribe that has come from the bearing sun has redemption sprung at last. Time is nearly full and the grave sleds pull, the flathead or the carrier people pull their dead people to the grave on sleds. Two clans, three clans pull to the grave and one clan pulls back and the grave pullers always win. Time is nearly full and the grave sleds pull, but the book of light is here. Old age and truth, old age and youth, hear the way of truth and the harvest time is near. Now the native church bursts forth in birth, its ranks are growing fast and the chieftain's song that was stayed by wrong is to be fulfilled at last. Let the forest sing and the drum beats ring, telegraph this news abroad, let the clans emerge with a joyous surge and return the tribes to God. You can get a copy on the way out, they're back on the table. That was the prophecy given by Indian tribes, it was in the blood tribe, the flathead tribe and the stony tribe and a number of the western tribes that the white man would bring a book with him. When Bill Friesen went north of La Ronge where our Bible school used to be, he took, he was going to take his green Montego in his new life testament and the Holy Spirit impressed upon him to take his black Bible, Thompson chain reference and the old red Bible school truck and he did that and he went away up a hundred miles and was visiting native people. As the sun went down he visited an old man and the old man took a look at the truck, took a look at the black Bible and said, that's the way I was told by my great-grandfather that when the gospel came it would come with a man driving a red truck and a black book. Isn't that wonderful that God has given his prophecies? God has done many wonderful things. In the Yukon, in the 70s, God sent a blessed moving of his spirit among the Kutchin people. They are the people that live the farthest north, related to the Katchins in China, to the Lisu's in Burma. We have the Lushu's in northern Canada. A teenage girl had a vision, she saw the wind blowing on mail and as the wind blew people fell down and she told the vision to her grandmother who was a Christian who had prayed since the Dawson gold rush and her mother said, oh I guess there's going to be a Chinook blow on Mayo, Mayo Yukon's on the Arctic Circle. The little girl said, no grandma this was different, people were blowing over and when they get up they were different. She said, oh I think God's going to come and the Lord came to Mayo Yukon and my wife and I visited there in 1972 in a little house and it was in the 30th of September and 30 below zero with two feet of snow and there you could hear the singing all over town and then the white people didn't like it because the theater closed down and the bowling alley closed down and the bar closed down and they said to the mounted police, you got to stop those Indians from singing, they're disturbing our sleep at night. The Mounties said, I've never had it so good, I'm not going to stop them from singing because they're not shooting each other or throwing each other in the Yukon River anymore. We went there and they were telling stories about how they found Jesus. They said the Yukon Baptist missionaries told us about Jesus but we couldn't come, we were tied and each one that came had to be released from a tribal spirit. God did amazing things and I don't have time to tell you them all. One of the things that he did, a woman got so under conviction for her sin that the mounted police in Whitehorse Yukon locked her up and thought she was insane. Finally they had to let her go. Her husband was towing her home in tow on a starlit winter's night. Finally Betty Smith looked up in the sky and says, oh that's what I need. He said, what a star? No, she said, I need Jesus, I need Jesus and she fell in a snowbank and she accepted Jesus Christ as her savior and when we were there, Betty Smith read the scriptures. She had never been to school a day in her life. She stood up and she said in very broken English, I thanked my father, he helped me read this book and she started reading Pauline epistles and rolling those long Pauline phrases off her tongue without an accent at all, reading from 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 and she read night after night and then she'd say with a broken accent, thank you Lord for helping me to read. God gave her the gift of reading. Johnson, Peter, the husband of the man in whose house they were meeting, said to his wife one day, we need music in our services. Before we came to God, we used to give our souls to the devil to learn how to play the violin or guitar and they'd learn overnight just like that. That's how they got their wives too. Some villages, 75% of the villages have been married through love medicine. Love medicine works in two ways, getting a woman or a man for one night or getting them for a partner. It's a terrible bondage of love-hate. You can imagine what happens when we go to teach Christian ethics and home life to people who have been married through love medicine by the powers of demons. There's a lot of help needs to be given to those people. Well Johnson said, we used to get help to play the violin from the devil. I'm sure my Lord is stronger than the devil. So he went to Whitehorse. It's 165 miles south of Mayo. He bought himself a great big accordion, 120 bass, and he brought it back to Mayo and he went back in the corner of his bedroom and he said, my Lord, we used to give our souls to the devil to learn how to play. I know you're stronger than the devil. I want to give my soul to you forever. Let me play this accordion. And when we were there, he was playing for every song with full bass accompaniment with his eyes closed and he had never taken a day of music in his life. Now you can do that in Mayo, but don't try that if you have a music teacher next door. And God blessed these people. And I forgot when I was supposed to stop. This morning it was quarter after, but I'm sure I went over. But I want to tell you this friends. There's still a great need. There are over 100 Indian and Eskimo villages that don't get a visit from a single evangelical missionary year in and year out. And I could take you in one of our airplanes and land you there. And you would say like one of our directors did, what does that? I feel, I said, that's darkness and that's in our land. And we need your prayers. I've heard a lot of your people's prayer group. I've heard a lot of your giving. Will you please pray for the lost native people? You can see what God has hidden in native people, the talents the Antones have displayed. There are talents locked in Indian people, Inuit people, and they were there under bondages. They need help, prayer help, and help to reach them. And God has put our mandate to do one thing, to bring as many Indian tribes as we can to heaven with us. Thank you. Would you please pick up literature? I think every one of you should get a copy of the Northern Lights. It's free. You can send in your name and get it free and you can read about what's going on. They're on the table. And pick up the rest of the literature too. I don't want to take any home. There's a little bookmark there you can put in your Bible. God bless you. I thank you for the opportunity we've had of being here. Thank you so much. We've really enjoyed being here during these past three weekends. And we just feel bad that this is our last service with you at this time. And we're also sorry we ran on Indian time. You know, we used to travel with Dr. Torrey Johnson. He used to introduce us in rather a unique way. He'd say, now there are several characteristics of an Indian. First of all, an Indian never talks unless it's necessary. An Indian is never in a hurry unless it's necessary. An Indian never smiles unless it's necessary. See what I mean? But an Indian eats like it was necessary all the time. And we live up to that, I'm sure. But here's a song we love to sing because this is so true of every one of us who know Christ as our Savior. We're just pilgrims passing through this life. Our citizenship is up there, and we're just on tour through this world. I'm on tour through this world. I'm just merely passing by. And all the things that I see somehow just don't satisfy. I assume my journey will be ended. And watch trumpet, it's gonna sound. Then I'll be leaving for paradise. I'm on tour through this world. This could never be my home. I've already built my palace right beside my master's home. And I can see the cloud coming. I can hear that trumpet sound. For this tour is nearly ended, and I'm resting homeward bound. Well, I'm on tour through this world. What I have is not mine. All the silver and the gold, I'm gonna leave it far behind. Well, I'm going to a city where the land is the line, where there is no death or sorrow, and they say there is no night. I'm on tour through this world. This could never, never be my home. I've already built my palace right beside my master's home. And I can see the cloud coming. I can hear that trumpet sound. For this tour is nearly ended, and I'm resting homeward bound. Yes, I'm on tour through this world. This could never be my home. I've already built my palace right beside my master's home. And I can see the cloud coming. I can hear that trumpet sound. For this tour is nearly ended, and I'm resting homeward bound. Oh, well, you know this tour is nearly ended, and I'm resting, I'm going home. All right, we can count the many days till Christmas, but we cannot count the many days till Jesus comes, because he could come tonight. But we're looking forward to that day when he shall come and call us away to go to be with himself. And here's a song that goes right along with that. You know, sometimes we get homesick for down here for our homes and friends and loved ones, but sometimes we kind of get homesick for heaven too. And that's what this song is about. I'm going home. Someday is the title. I'm going home someday. I'm going home to be with Jesus someday. I'm going home, and when I get there, I'm going to stay. I'm going to rest here inside the river of life. All my troubles will be over in the city of light, because I'm going home someday. Oh, Lord, I get so lonesome on the road. Well, now nobody else but you, Lord, will ever try to share my heavy load. Now, sometimes they like my singing, and then sometimes it's hard to say, but you know, I'm going home someday. Well, now I'm going home to be with Jesus someday. Oh, yes, I'm going home, and when I get there, I'm going to stay. I'm going to rest here inside the river of life. All my troubles will be over in the city of light, because I'm going home someday. Oh, yes, I'm going home to be with Jesus someday. Oh, yes, I'm going home, and when I get there, I'm going to stay. Well, I'm going to rest here inside the river of life. All my troubles will be over in the city of light, because I'm going home someday. Well, now I'm going to rest here inside the river of life. All my troubles will be over in the city of light, because I'm going home someday. Oh, yes, I'm going home someday. Well, it's great to be able to look forward to going home to be with the Lord. Know where you're going. There are those who come to us oftentimes saying, well, we know that you folk are Indians, and the Indians were in this country first. And I remember one lady saying one day, she said, I've often wondered, how did the Indians get here first? She said, you know, I'm sure there are others who would like to have been first in this country, but they didn't make it. The Indians were here first. How did you ever do it? Well, I didn't know what to say for a moment, and I said, lady, the only thing I can think of is that we Indians had reservations. Well, now you know how it was done. But here's a song we love to sing, and it goes right along with what the Apostle Paul said. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. I will glory in the cross. I will glory in the cross. Not of words or tell you of good deeds, For naught have I done to earn his grace. All glory and praise shall rest upon him. So willing to die in our place, I will glory in the cross, In the cross let his suffering all be in vain. And I will weep no more for the cross that he bore, But I will glory in the cross. Trophies and my crown, My robe that was stained with sin, Are all that I had to lay at his feet. I was unworthy to eat from the table of life, Until his blood made provision for me. And I will glory in the cross, In the cross let his suffering all be in vain. And I will weep no more for the cross that he bore, But I will glory in the cross. So I'll cherish the old rugged cross, Till my trophies at last I lay down. And I will weep no more for the cross That my Jesus bore, But I will glory in the cross. Hallelujah! I will glory in the cross. Where my Jesus died, Well, I will glory in the cross. I wonder what's going to be one of these days to meet our Savior face to face. I think so many times what a joy I've had of being here in this life and serving the Lord like Dr. Paul said for many, many years. I received this year, 1984, the 1984 Chief Award which was bestowed upon many dignitaries that you know and love. I felt it a real honor because I've been serving the Lord and singing for 53 years. And I've been lined up with Dr. Billy Graham who received it, and Andre Crouch, Gloria, and Bill Gaither, and Dale Evans, and Roy Rogers, and a lot of other dignitaries that you perhaps have heard of. And I was given it this year for 53 years of singing for the Lord. And it was a great honor, but you know, my, more than ever, as I sing this song, I will glory in the cross, I realize when we get to heaven, not a one of us are going to be able to say I got to heaven because I did this much or I did so, this so. But you know, it's because of what Jesus did for us on Calvary's Cross. That's why we're going to make heaven our home and why we're going to be together with Him throughout eternity. One of these days, real soon, I'm looking forward to the skies breaking open and we're going to see our Savior, our Chief of all Chieftains, the Lord Jesus. And we're going to walk down streets of gold. Listen as we sing this great Southern song, Streets of Gold. Well, I am looking for the day when I'll see Jesus and His blessed face I shall behold with the saints of old where the path will then be cold when my feet touch the streets of gold when my feet touch the streets of glory when I travel my last weary mile will He hold my trembling hand as before the Lord I stand will He say my child well done and proud of life you now have won when my feet touch the streets of gold Now if by chance some happy morning you should miss me now don't you weep for me because I'm gone I'll be at the feet of the one who died for me when my feet touch the streets of gold when my feet touch the streets of glory when I travel my last weary mile will He hold my trembling hand as before the Lord I stand will He say my child well done and proud of life you now have won when my feet touch the streets of gold when my feet touch the streets of glory when I travel my last weary mile will He hold my trembling hand as before the Lord I stand will He say my child well done and proud of life you now have won when my feet touch the streets of gold yes when my feet touch the streets of gold shine gold shine gold well if by chance some happy morning you should miss me now don't you weep for me because I'm gone I'll be at the feet of the one who died for me when my feet touch the streets of gold when my feet touch the streets of glory when I travel my last weary mile will He hold my trembling hand as before the Lord I stand will He say my child well done and proud of life you now have won when my feet touch the streets of gold when my feet touch the streets of glory when I travel my last weary mile will He hold my trembling hand as before the Lord I stand will He say my child well done and proud of life you now have won when my feet touch the streets of gold yes when my feet touch the streets of gold shine gold shine gold there's a song titled he did it all just for me oh the Savior died on the cross that I might live he shed his blood for the atonement of my sin he hung in shame to all the blame he suffered pain oh praise his name he did it all he did it all just for me on the cross he died in the tomb he lay and the sword was thrown away but then he rose triumphant over death and the grave and he lives forever more who would love the Savior had for you and me our souls were purchased there at Calvary the price he paid was much too great oh how I wish I could repay he did it all he did it all just for me on the cross Jesus died in the tomb he lay and the sword was thrown away but then he rose triumphant over death and the grave and he lives forever more I know he does he lives forever more oh yes he does he lives forever more thank you so much well let me first thank all the folk here at People's Church for their prayers and their support in the past years without you folks we wouldn't be able to do very much in Europe because we are enemy's territory and the enemy is fighting hard but we are very happy to tell you that the Lord is conquering and we were happy to be able to help our Christians our fellow brothers and sisters during 82 and 83 with food medicines and clothes and thanks to all the Christian aid that came in and we also are rejoicing that God has supplied our needs to get bigger presses and since this year we are actually printing big professional stuff we are actually printing color work like we have here and of course the breakthrough and it's on a little track that we are bringing anybody wants you pick it up in the back breakthrough into Poland and for the first time in 32 years of my ministry we are able to penetrate communist country with 8 tons of scripture I had problems of all kinds I can tell you stories for hours here how we try to get into Eastern Europe with Bible sometimes a dozen sometimes more but it was very difficult and then all of a sudden the doors swung open and we were able to take in just 2 months ago almost a truckload 8 tons of scriptures and when I was going to or coming here to Canada I had a phone call at midnight from Warsaw saying we have another permit for 25,000 of your New Testament bring them in while we are working almost night and day to get another edition of 25,000 ready we hope we can get bigger machines we are looking for another pressman if we had another pressman who can turn the big T.P. Miller 38 we can get 2 posts or 2 shifts and get more done right now it's taking us almost 3 months to get this one 25,000 of these done if we had 2 pressmen well we could speed up and maybe get it done in a month, month and a half so pray with us now that we get professional help to turn our machines I am also excited to announce to you something new you don't know about that your pastor will be coming to Poland next year we have invited him and he has accepted our invitation I wish I could invite the Indians to come and sing in Poland it would be tremendous but perhaps Paul Smith Dr. Smith will come in first make, penetrate, break the ice and then invite his friends to come on the next trip but you pray that now we are in the country we have penetrated now we would like to get conferences organized evangelistic services and so we need a lot of prayer for the coming days God bless you because missionaries are not allowed to live behind the iron curtain, we must find alternative methods for evangelism in communist lands there are two alternatives open to us for evangelizing communist countries, shortwave radio programs which reach behind the iron curtain and the second is through the printed page, Christian literature distributed to the people of Russia and Eastern Europe Slavic Gospel Association has been committed to evangelism and involved in ministries to communist dominated countries for 32 years now a miracle has taken place for the first time communist authorities have granted official permission for Bill to legally deliver 100,000 pictorial New Testaments these colorfully illustrated books are effective in evangelizing Poland today as Bill reflects back on his 32 years of exciting missionary work, he can't help but remember the many frustrations and trials like packing small quantities of Christian literature into a vehicle and trying to cross communist border checkpoints without discovery having his briefcase containing Bibles literally tied and sealed at the border by communist agents and sometimes having the Bibles discovered in his suitcase tied and sealed and often confiscated so the ever present question on Bill's mind was how would he ever be able to transport thousands of pieces of desperately needed literature into these communist countries when the guards confiscated even the few he tried to get in a dream was born in Bill's mind and a prayer formed on his lips Lord, help us print and deliver thousands of books and Bibles in 1977 Bill began printing he began with a small A.B. Dick 350 printer it only printed 4 pages at a time, yet with it they were able to print 10,000 books for hungry but this printer was too small to meet the great demand Bill bought a bigger press the R20 rotor printer was able to print 8 pages on a sheet, Bill used this press for 3 years printing thousands of books but every time he went into Eastern Europe, he realized that the hunger for the printed word was so great that it was impossible to meet the need even with this press once when Bill was in Poland he went to a church and saw many people surrounding a book table he asked who the people were he thought they were from the church it was told that they were people off the street they heard that the church had some Bibles and they were there to get one another time, Bill saw people standing in a line they weren't waiting to buy bread or meat they were waiting for a Bible and the Bibles were being rationed one per person these and other similar experiences convinced Bill that he needed a bigger press to mass produce Bibles and Christian books so by faith, Bill stepped forth first he cleared a garage to make room for a larger press and then when the garage was ready the thrilling day came when they installed the big TP Miller 38 God had at last provided the right machine but to get the right workers was another matter for much prayer God has blessed Bill and Sophie with 8 sons his son Paul put in all the electric wiring and breakers in the print shop his other son Daniel is what Bill calls a computer bug he spends nights learning and mastering the Apple computer word processor and typesetter today he's in charge of the prep department he prepares the sheets, does the paste of artwork, filming and burning of plates then there is his son Phillip he's the print shop administrator Phillip had a diving accident several years ago that should have left him dead or totally paralyzed but God worked a miracle in his life and today Phillip has no side effects from the accident another son Joel is a soccer enthusiast but he works full time in the print shop helping with various tasks, even folding sheets during school breaks and holidays son Johnny pitches in by stacking books and even Bill's youngest son Timmy is happy to lend a hand but the family is not enough to keep the operation going so God provided Bill with an excellent staff, a secretary who types and takes shorthand in German French and English Slavic Gospel Association missionary Lonnie Smith and his family arrived in France last year Lonnie had some printing experience but he is learning to be a professional through the experience in France he is in charge of the big machine the press is able to produce a full color job it takes one day to print 30,000 sheets in one color so actually it takes almost one week to print 30,000 sheets in four colors each pictorial New Testament contains a combination of eight sheets printing also involves folding God provided a man by the name of Gilles, he was a member of the Communist Party in France and very antagonistic to the Gospel then his children started attending Bible clubs for children when Gilles came to complain and talk with a Bible teacher he became interested in the Gospel he was converted and baptized on Easter and today he is helping print the Gospel for Communist lands the children's Bible clubs are the responsibility of Alan and his wife Dominique they also have been working with Bill in the print shop since 1977 God even provided help from the United States Larry and Linda Kaufman from Back to the Bible helped Bill for a short term Linda did the masking of the first sheets of the pictorial New Testament Larry is the manager of the printing department of Back to the Bible in Lincoln, Nebraska the production of books is complicated and time consuming after the sheets are printed they are stacked and folded ready for collating all the sheets have to go through the collator which is a slow process there is an urgent need for an automatic collator and gluing machine right now most of the work is done by hand the Lord provided a young man from Zaire who was seeking political asylum in France he has tremendous speed in putting the signatures or folded sections of the collated books in the gluing machine the edges are then cut off, glue is put on by rollers and the covers are glued on finally we have a finished product the pictorial New Testament in Polish ready for delivery Bill will never forget the historical day September 22nd, 1984 when they worked until midnight putting all the packaged boxes of books onto pallets at 6am they were working again there were 230 cartons each containing 120 books nearly 30,000 pictorial New Testaments at 8am the truck arrived it was a dream come true but it was also a miracle because God provided a Polish government truck directly from Warsaw God even provided two drivers from Poland, these men communists spent the night with Bill and his family in the morning before they left for Poland they each asked for a pictorial New Testament for their wives and children God works miracles on the way to Warsaw Bill met a woman who was a nurse she directed them to their next delivery destination she then introduced herself by saying I'm an atheist I don't believe in God but I don't believe in Communism either she asked for a pictorial New Testament and became so interested that she later got a Bible and a book at an evangelical church yes our God is a God of miracles He made it possible for 30,000 pictorial New Testaments and 7 tons of building materials for a church to arrive safely in Poland Bill Kapitaniuk and his wife Sophie have given their lives to serve our risen Savior you probably can't go to Poland speak the language or print literature but you can do it by providing financial support for the Kapitaniuk you see Bill is lacking nearly $1,000 in pledged monthly support that is one of the reasons why he is here Bill is still dreaming and praying he would like to see one million pictorial New Testaments reach Poland he would also like to provide literature and Bibles for Czechoslovakia Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union won't you help this dream come true? we urge you to become involved by praying for Bill and by supporting him and his family thank you for what you will be doing today
Supernatural Opposition
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Bud Elford (c. 1920s – c. 1980s) was a Canadian preacher and missionary whose ministry focused on sharing the gospel with Native peoples in northern Canada through the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission (NCEM). Born likely in the 1920s, possibly in Ontario, he grew up in a Christian family with a heart for missions, a calling that led him to join NCEM in the early 1950s alongside his wife, Marge. His early life included time in rural Canada, and by 1953, he and Marge moved west with their young son Roan to serve in remote communities like Buffalo Narrows, Saskatchewan, and Churchill, Manitoba, where he preached and lived among Indigenous groups such as the Denesuline. Elford’s preaching career unfolded in harsh northern settings, where he and Marge established mission outposts, sharing a message of salvation and building relationships with First Nations communities. His work emphasized practical faith and scripture-based teaching, often in informal settings like homes or community gatherings, rather than formal churches.