by Neal Banks

Created on: May 06, 2009   Last Updated: May 22, 2009

The office was small, over-lit by fluorescent bulbs. It was at the end of a short hallway, lined with linoleum tiles that were stained yellow with age and use. The only thing that was significant about the hallway was that it was behind a pair of wooden doors, which seemed in stark contrast to the rest of the antique mall. That, and the fact that there was a sign that marked it as a ministry office.

I drove over 200 miles that morning to be here in this office in a tiny suburb of Dallas. I had waited nearly two months for the appointment I had secured with the ministry team that would be meeting with me, a team that was known both locally and worldwide for what they called "oppression relief." The terms most commonly used by associates and recipients alike where healing and deliverance, and the ministry had been around since 1974. The minister in charge had been ministering for many years prior, until he realized that what he was called to do was far greater than simply teaching the Gospel.

He was going to help believers overcome supernatural strongholds.

Revelation 12:11 [KJV] says, "And they overcame him [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony:" I had read that scripture so many times, but like many of us have only envisioned that passage as something that was to come to pass in the final days. I hardly understood it in any presence tense, as it applied to my present life and present circumstance. The truth that the scripture is more than simply the inspired Word of God but also the Living Word of God, as it says in Hebrews 4:12 [NIV]: "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword." I was beginning to understand that today, as I strolled through the double wooden doors, across the linoleum tiles and through another door with a small, smudged window into the ministry office.

More fluorescent bulbs and a beige carpet that was worn through from being shampooed one too many times. Just inside the door was a large desk with an even larger man sitting behind it. If I had not already had several phone conversations with this man, I would have been intimidated when he stretched his thick arm and his baseball-mitt-sized hand toward me. "How are you doin'?" he asked me. "A bit anxious," I said. "I've been getting real nervous the last 72 hours," I told him, "and the shivers have been constant despite the heat." He smiled and I could see the Teddy Bear smiling through the burly, gruff exterior: then he

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