The Day Satan Called: A True Encounter with Demon Possession and Exorcism
196
The Day Satan Called: A True Encounter with Demon Possession and Exorcism
196eBook
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Overview
Out of Christian love he and his wife invited a young lady who was demon possessed and the member of an active satanic network into their home. They prayed the sinner's prayer with her and believed that they could help redeem someone who had witnessed and experienced unimaginable rituals and abuses.
What happened instead were death threats and the loss of their home as a sanctuary. Voices. Threats. Objects falling and moving. Strange visitors and callers. A loving church falling into turmoil. And yes the voice of Satan. Every day was filled with the dread of nightfall. Once you've invited someone filled with demons that aren't leaving her into your home what do you next? Where do you send her? How do you protect yourself and your family? What do you do after she's finally gone but the demons haven't left?
This is the account of a terrifying and incredible phenomenon. But ultimately, it is a testament to the power of God's love, even over evil spirits.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780892968992 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | FaithWords |
| Publication date: | 10/11/2011 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 196 |
| Sales rank: | 879,199 |
| File size: | 891 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Day Satan Called
A True Encounter with Demon Possession and ExorcismBy Scott, Bill
FaithWords
Copyright © 2011 Scott, BillAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780892968985
Chapter 1
The Call
It was the week before Halloween in the fall of 1988. It figures. Isn’t that the time you would expect a story like mine to begin?
Actually, I wasn’t expecting anything at all. For me Halloween was nothing more than a time for harvest festivals, passing out candy to adorable little kids who would troop up to the door in their cute little costumes, the occasional report of someone getting their car windows “soaped” or “egged”—but not a serious holiday with spiritual meaning. Other than some scary ads for movies on television, Halloween did not conjure up spooky feelings or dread. After all, I was a healthy, well-adjusted adult living in a flesh-and-blood world. Yes, I was a Christian and believed God’s Spirit lived in my heart. I believed in angels and even demons, but more on a theoretical basis than as something I would ever face and experience.
I was never so wrong about anything in my life.
It was a typical Thursday morning as I began my normal routine, which was to head to the production studio to begin working on announcements that would play during my segment on the radio. I was a midday announcer and production director for a radio station that was located in and part of the largest church in North America at that time. The day seemed normal; production work, phone calls, short meetings, and preparing myself mentally for my shift.
A little before 10:00 a.m., I remember shuffling all the stuff on my desk into neat piles and then heading down the hall to the main studio where I would interact on live air for the next three hours. We had a great news team that worked across the hall. As I opened the door to enter my studio I saw Rick, the news director, hang up the request-line phone. I was a little surprised that he was over in the main studio and that he was answering my phone. As my friend turned around and faced me, I saw that all the color had drained from his face. You’ve heard of people going white as a ghost. I’ll never again question what that means and looks like. I literally saw someone go white as a ghost. I was taken aback, and, strange for me, I was speechless. I wasn’t sure what to say to him or even what to ask him. Rick sat there and looked at me for a minute, visibly shaken, and then said loudly and forcefully that he had just talked to a demon on the phone.
This brought me back to my senses. Now I knew it must really be the Halloween season and someone was trying to play a joke on me. So I belted out a loud courtesy laugh, ready to give him kudos for his great acting job. He really did look scared.
Rick just looked at me and said again, “I’m serious. I just talked to a demon on the phone, and I don’t know what to do! We need to do something!”
Again I chuckled and told Rick that it was not real; it was just someone playing a prank. Besides, I wanted to ask him, how would he know that a demon had just called him on the phone?
But despite my protestations, Rick wasn’t joking. He continued to say again and again that it was a demon and that we needed to help the girl who was calling us.
As I noted before, I grew up in a very strict independent Christian church, and if there was one thing we never talked about, it was the spiritual world. Of course we acknowledged the Holy Spirit, but even He was portrayed as a rather subdued character. I love the church that I grew up in, but I have wondered if we shouldn’t have talked about spiritual warfare just a little bit. Spiritual victory was a matter of knowing God’s Word—areas that might lead you astray because they were more tied to emotions were not studied but rather avoided. Some ministers from my tradition would go so far as to say that demons, like miracles, were restricted to biblical times and didn’t exist in the present tense.
I stopped telling Rick that I knew he was joking, but I reminded him that it was the Halloween season, we were a Christian radio station, and that perhaps the newsroom didn’t get prank phone calls, but we got them in the on-air studio all the time. It was just some kid home sick from school for the day who was bored and getting into some mischief. I knew when I was home as a schoolkid I could get into this kind of trouble. Prank calls were a staple of my growing-up years. What a great place to call—a radio station. You couldn’t help thinking that maybe your crank call would make it onto the airwaves.
Rick ignored my disclaimers and insisted it was a real call from someone who was in desperate trouble; someone who was under the influence of a demon. I asked Rick how he knew it was a demon. Rick, who was growing more agitated and upset as we talked rather than calming down, said that he could tell it wasn’t a human voice.
Rick had my attention by now. If he was playing a joke on me, he had taken it way too far. I knew him well enough to see that he was truly rattled in a way I had never seen him before. I finally concluded that he really did believe what he was saying to me. But I had never known anyone who had claimed to have talked to a demon in person, much less on the phone. Not even the missionary from Africa. I wasn’t sure it was possible, so my mind was looking for other explanations of what Rick might have experienced.
Rick continued to explain to me that it was not a human that he talked to on the phone. He said that as soon as he heard the voice, every hair on his head stood on end. At this point I ran out of things to say. I knew Rick was sincerely scared, but based on my life experience, I didn’t believe he had just talked to a demon. Why would a demon call my request line, anyway? I was most certain there wasn’t a song in our library he would have wanted to hear.
As we stood behind the control board, at an impasse, I tried to lighten the atmosphere with another attempt at humor. Again I began to make fun of the call Rick had received. I was hoping my levity would settle Rick down and get him to think clearly. Though I had never seen him so upset and I was concerned, it was time for me to go on the air and Rick was just going to have to get over the call so I could get my job done.
The request line began to ring. Rick looked at me and pointed.
“Look,” he said, “you answer it and see for yourself if I’m making something up.”
While we had debated whether he had actually talked to a demon, Rick had told me that the call he took was from a sixteen-year-old girl named Lacey. She felt her life was in danger and was desperate for help. That’s when the demon broke in and said he would kill her if Rick tried to help, and seconds later the line went dead. This flashed through my mind as the phone continued to ring. I just stared at it. There was no answering machine, so it rang until you picked it up. I have to admit, now I was a little scared. Rick looked at me, maybe with a trace of triumph in his expression, as I stared at the blinking request line.
Finally I gave my head a shake, told myself it was no big deal, and answered the phone. Little did I know that by answering that phone call that day, my life would be changed forever. It was like opening Pandora’s box.
I picked up the receiver and said simply, “Hello?”
The voice I heard was weak, timid, and very scared. What sounded like a little girl began to talk to me. Rick, who had put his ear as near to the outside of the headset as he could, was listening intently. He looked at me and soundlessly mouthed, That’s her.
I asked who was calling and what I could do for her. She told me her name was Lacey and that she needed help. For the next few minutes Lacey told me things that were shocking and that I thought just couldn’t be true. She told me that she was living in a coven under strict watch and control. She described her life as if she were a prisoner. Being held prisoner by witches in twentieth-century America?
What I knew about covens came from literature and movies, but like the idea of present and active demons, I had never given any thought to them as something real. I read later that coven or covan is a word used to describe a gathering of witches or, in some cases, vampires. Vampires? I had watched some old Count Dracula movies in black and white as a kid. That’s all I knew about vampires at the time. Vampires weren’t the literary rage they became later through popular fiction authors.
I asked Lacey how old she was. She said that she was sixteen. After a pause, she told me the same thing she had told Rick: that she was very scared for her life. She went on to say the most horrifying thing imaginable. She said that she was to be sacrificed on Halloween and she didn’t want to die. I was looking at Rick with absolute disbelief as I talked to Lacey on the phone. A part of me was very frightened, but I also had a fleeting thought that this was nothing more than a pre-Halloween prank by a teenager who liked to watch scary movies. But listening to her speak, I knew this was not someone trying to pull a hoax on us. I put Lacey on speakerphone so Rick could hear every word, too.
I wasn’t sure I believed Lacey lived in a coven, but I believed she was frightened for her life. So I told her how much we cared for her and that we could get her the help she needed. I told her we could begin working to get her into a safe house. It was at that point I almost wet my pants. At first it sounded as though she were gagging on something. But then I heard a voice that was clearly not human. I don’t have the words to describe what it sounded like. But like Rick, every hair on my body was standing on end. He and I looked at each other with eyes as wide as saucers. I had just heard the voice of a demon. Rick had been telling the truth.
You might wonder, if I had never heard a demon speak, how did I know I’d just heard one? All I can say is, when a demon speaks to you there is no doubt in your mind that you are in the presence of evil. It’s more than the sense of sound. Every part of you experiences it physically and emotionally. Your mind does a somersault and both sharpens and blurs; your heart races but feels like it might stop; you can feel a palpable presence of evil tingling in your knees and elbows; your breathing becomes very shallow; a heaviness settles over your thoughts.
This is what I experienced—and it was something I had never experienced before. The sound literally took my breath away. In some cases, as I was soon to discover, the temperature in the room feels as though it has dropped to near freezing. That didn’t happen, but there was no doubt this was a real spiritual encounter.
The demon stated that he was going to kill Lacey and there was nothing we could do to save her. He triumphantly stated that she belonged to Satan. He told us to stay away from her or we would suffer the consequences. Lacey came back on the line in tears, asking what was happening to her. She begged us to help her. My head was spinning. Lacey would speak and then the demon would break in to tell us we could not save her. Sometimes he would scream and yell curses and blasphemies at us.
Again, please remember I was never taught much about the reality of demons, much less how to deal with a demon. I was clueless. From the recesses of my childhood memories I did remember something the missionary who had spoken at our church had said. He told us how a Christian can bind Satan in Jesus’ name. So I did what I thought would solve the problem. I yelled into the phone with as much courage as I could muster, “In Jesus’ name, you must go! I bind you in Jesus’ name.” I’ll never forget the response. It was not what I expected.
The demon, in a very quiet voice, said, “__ you, I am going nowhere.”
Maybe I hadn’t said it with enough conviction. Maybe it took more than one time to work. So with a little more courage and in an even louder voice I repeated, “In Jesus’ name, you must go! I bind you in Jesus’ name.”
I received the same response from the demon on the phone. That was my very best effort at spiritual warfare.
We had drawn a small crowd of colleagues to the studio by this time. Sad to say, there wasn’t anyone else around who had any more of a clue of what to do than I did. I didn’t realize at the time that Satan will test you to see if you really know your power is in Christ alone. I learned firsthand and quickly that he will intimidate you and put a fear in you so that you believe there is nothing you can do.
In this case it worked.
Lacey hung up on us but called back just a little while later. This continued all day on Thursday until late in the evening. The phone calls would last for five minutes or so. I would talk to Lacey, then the demon, and the phone would go dead.
On one of her calls Lacey shared with me that when she was younger, the coven she was in had sacrificed her baby. I was stunned and incredulous, which I didn’t think was possible after all I had already heard from her. She explained that she was a “breeder,” and the witches used her and other young women to bear children so they would have babies to kill and even eat during certain satanic holidays. She told me she was born to be a breeder. She had not been allowed to go out in public and had never attended school.
We later discovered she had no birth certificate or other government identification so there was no record of her existence, much less of her having been pregnant or having a baby. I was horrified by everything she was telling me. I may not have believed in demons or satanic activity before, but I did now. I was terrified, but I am not the kind of guy who gives up very easily on people. And I wasn’t going to give up on Lacey—though if I knew then what I know now, I might not have kept picking up the phone.
That was the day Satan called. I wasn’t ready for it. Maybe it’s not possible for anyone to be prepared for a jolt like that.
But God was present and working in and through me, despite my limited knowledge and feeble faith. So I resolved that no matter what, I would continue to pick up the phone. And with God’s grace, I did.
Chapter 2
Today Is Not That Day
That first day I sat on the edge of my seat in the studio, phone pressed to my ear, all day and all evening. It felt like a watch vigil—everyone waiting anxiously in the studio for the next call from Lacey and the demon.
This entire time members of the staff at the radio station and church where we were located joined me around the phone, praying for this little girl who told us she was going to be sacrificed on Halloween. Between hang-ups and interruptions from the demon, I would ask Lacey questions about her surroundings, trying to figure out her location. It felt like I was searching for a drowning child with my eyes blindfolded.
She didn’t know street or place-names, but through describing landmarks and a process of elimination, we finally figured out what nearby city she was living in. After a particularly fruitful round of questions, one of the church staff members thought he had her location pinpointed.
He and a few friends ran to the car, ready to race to a nearby town so they could swoop in to rescue her. We were all exhilarated. Adrenaline was pumping. Even those of us who stayed behind felt as though we were in the car with them. The end of this emotional ordeal was coming to a close. Talk about a change of pace at the office.
But euphoria quickly gave way to an exhausting tedium.
What started out as a rescue adventure proved to be a wild-goose chase. Every time the rescue team got close to where we thought Lacey was, she would describe a new location, a new landmark. What was going on? Was she confused? Was she being moved to new locations because others were aware she was on the phone with us? Did she not really want to be found?
You may have already wondered how someone in near-captivity could have so much access to a telephone. Looking back, it is easy to see that some things didn’t add up. Not only did she have constant access to a phone, but she seemed to be constantly on the move. (This was the pre-cell-phone era, so it’s not likely someone trapped in a house or out on errands with her captors could have unlimited and secret use of the phone.)
All I can say is there was such an urgency and such a bizarre vibe surrounding all this, none of us were able to slow down and figure out that maybe this little girl’s intentions were not totally innocent and that she was perhaps making us out to be fools. After all, this had gone far beyond a church or Christian radio station prank, innocent or otherwise. We knew we were dealing with malignant evil, but at this point, we never suspected it might be coming from Lacey.
For seven or eight hours, we asked her questions about her location and did our best to communicate with the searchers. This turned into a monumental logistical task. The search-and-rescue team had to stop to find a pay phone constantly, turning their efforts into a stop-and-start haphazard run through a maze.
The demon knew what we were trying to do and would interrupt my talks with Lacey to taunt me. He told me that he would move her every time we got anywhere close to her. He said we would never find her. He thought this was funny and would laugh hysterically. It was late Thursday night and our team was nowhere close to locating Lacey. Then Lacey’s phone calls stopped. What an anticlimactic end to a heart-pounding, breathtaking day.
Driving home that night, I was trying to figure out exactly what had just happened to me. Questions swirled around in my mind. Could I have really talked with a demon and someone who was being held captive in a coven? Had we lost Lacey for good? And even if we found her, would we be able to save her life?
I prayed myself to sleep that night.
As I drove to work on Friday, the same questions bounced around in my head like a rubber ball in a concrete room. I wondered if I would ever talk to Lacey again. Was she gone forever? My world had been shaken.
I arrived at the office early. The phones were being carefully monitored. No calls from Lacey. My day almost began to feel normal as I strode down the hall a little before 10:00 a.m. toward the main studio to start my on-air shift. But the closer I got to the door, the more apprehension and anxiety I felt. I shrugged the feeling away and entered the soundproof room and took my seat. I wasn’t behind the control board more than a minute when the phone rang.
Could it be Lacey? Suddenly afraid, I allowed the phone to ring a few extra times before I found the courage to pick up the headset. I had made a commitment to see this strange conversation through to the end, so I answered.
“This is Bill Scott.”
What I heard was that pitiful little girl, pleading and crying for me to help her, to save her life. My heart was broken at the sound of her sobbing.
The pattern from the previous day resumed. I would talk to Lacey, the demon would cut in to scream at me, and then the phone would go dead. How I managed to do my show while this drama churned and spun around me, I will never know.
Throughout the day Lacey told me of abuse she had experienced, from giving up her baby for a sacrifice to being sexually molested. Could all the things she was describing have really happened? Did this kind of coven actually exist? My natural doubts and skepticism were held at bay each time the demon would break in and scream, cuss, laugh at me, and speak all kinds of evil and blasphemy against Jesus Christ. I had never felt this kind of oppression, this level of evil directed at my life. Again, every hair on my body stood on end each time he came on the phone.
One thought that kept working itself around my mind was that whoever had hurt this little girl needed to spend time in prison. I was beginning to feel anger, which was a good antidote to the prevailing sense of fear and dread I had experienced the previous day.
Beyond anger, to my pleasant surprise, the longer I dealt with this demon, the more confident I became. The Holy Spirit was ministering to me and giving me words and an authority I had never felt before. I have to repeat that I could never have done this had it not been for a number of people around me praying as I talked with Lacey and the demon.
At one point the demon, in a much quieter voice, asked me to go away and not try to help Lacey anymore. It was almost like he was making a request or asking a favor. I said to him, “You have to obey the power of Christ.” Everyone in the room was silent when the demon replied: “One day my knee will bow and my tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.”
We were nearly breathless. We looked at one another with a new confidence. We felt lighter and stronger.
Then he screamed, “But today is not that day.”
We jumped in our chairs and our heads jerked back in unison as a mocking laugh morphed into a pitch that sounded as if he was being tormented. The phone went dead again.
I stayed on the phone with Lacey that day as long as the line stayed open, while several teams went back out in cars, following clues and searching for her. This ordeal had been going on for only twenty-four hours, but we were beginning to feel fatigued and weary. It wasn’t just tiredness of body, but also of the soul. While talking to Lacey and battling the demon that would speak through her, what kept me going was the people coming and going and praying over me.
Susan, who worked at the church as a secretary, had an office just up the hall from where the radio station was located within the church. She had been home that day, but when she heard what we were experiencing, she called and said she would drive over as quickly as she could to pray for us and with us. She told us she had been involved in a number of occult groups years before. She had witnessed and practiced witchcraft before experiencing a dramatic conversion through Jesus Christ, she explained. Her heart ached for Lacey, and she wanted to help us rescue her in any way she could.
I told Susan that up to this point I had been unable to get Lacey to say Jesus’ name in the course of our conversations. Lacey just could not get that word out, even when she seemed to be trying. A few times it felt like she was getting close, but then the demon would break in once again, cursing, scoffing, and berating me and anyone else in the room. Each time he would emphatically say that we could not have Lacey and that he would not leave. Susan was confident that Lacey’s resistance and the demon’s anger were signs that she was taking very seriously the call to turn her life over to God through Jesus Christ. She said she’d come to the church immediately.
The fact that we would be joined with someone more knowledgeable on satanic activity than any member of the team was a confidence booster for us. I felt immediately better when I got word that Susan had arrived. Susan walked into the room during a particularly intense encounter with the demon. As she closed the door behind her, the demon got very quiet but didn’t break off the connection. It was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Usually such silence was quickly followed by the phone being slammed down. Susan looked around, sensing that we were in the midst of a big moment. We stared at one another. We could barely breathe; then suddenly yet calmly the demon spoke: “Susan, it’s good to see you again. We’ve missed you.”
I was dumbfounded. I almost fell out of my seat. No one from the small group gathered around me had mentioned Susan by name or even acknowledged her when she came into the room. Yet this demon knew she had entered the room and recognized her.
The blood drained from Susan’s face and she stared at the phone. She gave a little shake of her head, turned around quickly, and ran out the door, bursting into tears.
The sense of confidence I had felt burst like a bubble.
After Susan had some time to pull herself back together after the shock of hearing her name called out by a demon, she returned to pray with us and for Lacey. She was not going to allow Satan to defeat her as he had previously. Susan knew as a child of God that she had the power to face spiritual battle and win. I’m sure she also identified with Lacey and wanted to see someone else brought from the darkness and into the light of God’s love.
Even though the quick surge of confidence I had experienced with the word that we would have an experienced helper was dashed, we all began to feel a subtle but more sure form of courage. We began to understand that our success would depend not on the state of our emotions at any given moment, but on our confidence in God’s love and power.
New thoughts and questions joined others that were already racing around in my mind. Was this really happening? How did a demon talk on the telephone and how did this demon know what was going on in our studio? Were we going to win? Could we save Lacey?
Words seem inadequate to describe the way I felt. It is an experience that I would not wish on anyone. This was the most emotionally and physically draining sensation I have ever known.
I knew that I didn’t know what I was doing and that we were undoubtedly not handling everything correctly, but we were doing our best and we were going to fight for this girl who was going to die unless we helped her. Yes, I had finally come to believe her situation was real, not just in her imagination. How can you quit fighting when you know someone’s life is on the line? I couldn’t.
Day two of being on the phone with Lacey and the demon was going much like the first day. I was mentally and emotionally drained. We all were.
But to make our physical and emotional states worse, in addition to all that was going on with Lacey, we had to put the final touches on a huge concert sponsored by the radio station to be held that night. Our worship center would be filled with thousands of people in just a few hours.
I suspected our high visibility as a media outlet, as a large church, and as a Christian event center was the reason Lacey knew about us and chose to call us in the first place.
Throughout the day Lacey continued to phone my line, crying out for help. My heart was consumed with the thought of saving this young woman. Each time we talked I would tell her of God’s unconditional love for her. She had a hard time comprehending this. It was obvious from her questions and responses that she believed love was something given to you by others only when they wanted something sexual. When I told her God’s love and my love and the love of those praying for her had nothing to do with sex, she would respond that I was lying and trying a new trick to seduce her. Her life experiences had followed a very set pattern: She was treated badly most of the time, but on occasions when someone said they cared for her, they were always trying to get her in a better mood for having sex. Again and again I assured her that my friends and I who were praying for her loved her, and we didn’t want anything from her, sexual or otherwise.
I had never talked to or heard of anyone who had withstood as much abuse as Lacey described. Nobody who went through what she had could survive without mental illness. But there was no question in my mind that she was also possessed by a demon or many demons. I had never knowingly met a witch, and now I was talking to a girl who claimed to live in a coven, claimed to be a witch, claimed to be a priestess of Satan, and claimed to be intimately involved in a number of satanic rituals: cutting one’s own flesh, drinking blood from humans and animals, sexual rituals too disgusting to mention, and even human sacrifice.
My head continued to spin. This was a lot for a fairly sheltered Baptist boy to process in just two fast-paced and headlong days. But I wasn’t going to allow what I didn’t know or understand to cause me to give up on this young woman.
Late that afternoon Lacey asked me about the concert that was going to be held at the church that night. Obviously she was listening to our radio station. I held out little hope that she would actually come, but I invited her to be our guest at the concert anyway. I was willing to try just about anything that would get her away from her situation and the people causing it. What better place to meet could there be than a church? A holy place. If we could get her into our building, we might be able to talk to her freely and perhaps get her whatever help she needed.
I was surprised when she said she would come if she could. But I still didn’t think she would make it. If her situation was as chaotic as we thought, we could go to her, but how would she come to us?
Who knew that after all the frantic searching we had done over the past forty-eight hours that finally meeting Lacey in person would be as simple as inviting her to a concert.
The invitation set the stage for us to meet Lacey. But it was anything but “simple.”
Chapter 3
The Abandoned Building
It was now evening. It was hard to believe that I had been on the phone for a second day talking with Lacey and whomever and whatever else was inside her.
I knew from reading Scripture and hearing lessons and sermons growing up that King Saul had met with a witch before going to his final battle (1 Sam. 28:7). I knew that Jesus and His disciples cast out demons.
But never in my wildest dreams would I have anticipated personally doing battle with a demon. Maybe a missionary in Africa. But not Bill Scott.
However, that’s exactly what I had done all day while on the phone with Lacey. I was cursed at and ridiculed, but I soldiered on, quoting Scripture and relying on the power of Jesus’ name and the prayers of my brothers and sisters in Christ. The demon swore we would never save Lacey, which only strengthened our resolve. We had been given a supernatural love for a young girl we had never met that would not let us stop.
It was about an hour before the concert was to start. Based on previous events we sponsored, we were expecting more than three thousand people that evening and the parking lot was already filling up. Our church was a huge structure. The sanctuary alone was 150 yards wide, the length of one and a half football fields. Our custodial staff piloted riding vacuum cleaners in order to keep up with the demands of cleaning the vast building. The entire church campus was huge, which is very important to note in order to understand everything that happened next.
I hadn’t spoken with Lacey for two hours. I didn’t know if she was going to come to the concert or not. Maybe she would change her mind. Maybe she couldn’t get free of the people who had such an iron grip on her life.
Everyone was on high alert for a young teenage girl who looked distressed. Not much to go on as a description, but it was all we had from our phone conversations.
Our staff was prepped and ready to meet her. The church security personnel were alerted to what was going on in case there was a confrontation. The decision had been made, wisely, to contact the local police, and they had officers present. People went through the motions of doing their part to make sure everything was perfect for the concert, but our minds and hearts were elsewhere. All that we could do now was watch, wait, and pray.
Finally the call-in line rang. It was Lacey. She told me she was close to the church. I could feel my heart pounding as I talked to her. I was now used to the inevitable interruption as the demon broke in. His pattern hadn’t changed. He cursed at me and blasphemed Jesus Christ. He scoffed at my weak attempts to save Lacey. He then said something that caught my attention even more. He said that his people would kill Lacey at the concert if she made it as far as the church doors. His people? What did that mean? Who were they?
He told me that witches had been summoned from all over the area to snatch Lacey before she could cross the threshold of the church. The demon kept repeating that Lacey was to be their sacrifice and that we would never save her.
We were prepared to meet a young teenage girl, not an assault of witches, armed police officers notwithstanding. To state the obvious, this was the craziest situation and moment of my life. No way could it get crazier. Right? I was wrong again.
The call ended, but Lacey rang back almost immediately. I asked her to describe her location. From what she told me I realized she was just a mile up the road at a local ice-cream shop. A couple of staff members dashed out the door and hopped in a car to drive over and pick her up. We waited almost breathlessly for them to return with her. But ten minutes later they called from the shop to report she wasn’t there. They had looked everywhere, including the women’s restroom. My frustration was mounting. Another false lead? Another wild-goose chase?
I talked to Lacey again briefly, but she hung up abruptly. That wasn’t the usual pattern. Usually it was the demon that slammed down the phone in my ear.
What did this mean? Had she been found by members of the coven? I was ready to explode. How could we be so close to finding her only to be thwarted again? Was our fight a lost cause? I didn’t have to wait long for answers to my questions, though it felt like a lifetime.
About thirty excruciating minutes later I received a call from an extension inside the church. I wondered who from the station or church staff would be calling me right now, particularly since I was keeping the line open for Lacey and everyone knew it. Had someone from the church found her? I answered the phone quickly. It was Lacey. No one had found her, but she was inside the church building. I would have let out a victory whoop, but suddenly she was screaming for help. Then the demon let out a scream of protest on the line. Knowing she was in a church made the demon’s voice all the more chilling and threatening. The phone was slammed down. Almost instantly, my line rang from another inside extension. I picked up. It was Lacey crying for help, quickly followed by the demon shrieking we couldn’t have her, and the phone again being slammed down.
This same unreal pattern was repeated several times. What in the world was going on? I picked up my phone yet again. But it wasn’t Lacey this time. The church receptionist wanted to know what was going on and why so many people from inside the building were calling me. I told her it was just one person, Lacey, the girl we had been trying to connect with.
She said, “Bill, I don’t think that’s possible. It can’t be just one person. Your phone is being called from different extensions all over the church building!”
Lacey was calling from one end of the church to the other end just seconds apart. She was calling from phones that were in locked offices. Remember what I said about the size of our church building? It would take a normal person five minutes to walk from one extension to the next. It was impossible for her to be calling from all these extensions seconds apart.
Once again—and not for the last time—I felt the hair on my head standing on end. I knew it was impossible for what was happening to be happening. But even the remaining skeptic inside me knew that I was not dealing with flesh and blood, but with spiritual forces, dark forces, and a power that was truly satanic.
While I answered my phone as quickly as Lacey could call it, I wasn’t the only one from our group who was busy. Someone came back to where I was working the phone to tell me that people had begun to show up at the entrance door of the radio station, asking the workers where they could find Lacey. Suspicious and on guard, one of our group leaders asked what this was about. He was told, “She is one of us and we want to take her home.”
Continues...
Excerpted from The Day Satan Called by Scott, Bill Copyright © 2011 by Scott, Bill. Excerpted by permission.
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