Jim Rutz Tuesday: “How prayer vanquished real-life witch!”
Because you can never have enough Jim Rutz, here’s his latest column, called “From Basket Case to Boomtown Without a Dime of Aid” (and surprisingly, the title is not a reference to Jim’s mental state):
One of the worst places in the world was Kiambu, Kenya, a suburban district nine miles north of the capital, Nairobi.
“For years, their slogan was ‘Kiambu: We’re Still Better Than Toledo.'”
Up until 1989, it was the armpit of Kenya, a hellhole of 65,000 citizen-victims that became a shooting gallery at night.
“Yes, it was an armpit desperately in need of Jesus-Brand Deodorant.”
Besides the well-armed muggers, there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic after dark.
Since no one was walking around after dark except muggers, does that mean the muggers were mugging each other? Kinda takes the fun out of mugging if you ask me…
Kiambu had the full suite of city horrors: murder, robbery, rape, alcoholism, corruption ? and grinding poverty.
“But it was still better than Toledo.”
Nobody would put any money into Kiambu, so it was crumbling. Civil servants would bribe their bosses not to transfer them to Kiambu. On slow news days, Nairobi newspapers ran hand-wringer stories on the latest disaster in Kiambu.
“But no one in Kiambu could read, so they set the newspapers on fire and inadvertantly burned down the city. Then they were bombarded by swarms of killer bees with ‘lasers’ attached to their stingers. And just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse… Slithis attacked!”
“ROOOOOAR!!! SLITHIS… HATE… FREEDOM!!!”
But the most hopeless dimension of Kiambu was the spiritual.
Yeah, the constant rape, murder and Slithis attacks wouldn’t have been so bad if the town had converted to Christianity.
It was a stagnant pool of quicksand where souls sank without a trace.
“Have I mentioned that Kiambu was a depraved hellpool of armpit quicksand yet?”
Christian leaders in surrounding towns had written it off: “We preach, but people there don’t get saved.” Despite valiant efforts, no church had ever hit three figures in attendance. In such an atmosphere of unrelieved gloom, they might as well have erected a sign: “Welcome to Kiambu. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”
Jim, don’t abandon hope for your erections. They have drugs to fix that now.
Into this civic Inferno, God called a quiet young couple named Thomas and Margaret Muthee. In 1988, He led them back to their native Kenya, interrupting their graduate theological studies in Scotland. They were more than a little annoyed, but when God says move, you pack.
“And when God says pack, you move. He’s kinda funny like that.”
After a few months of itinerant ministry in Kenya, their stress level increased considerably when it became obvious that the Lord was calling them to settle in the very last place they wanted to be: the graveyard of every ambitious pastor, Kiambu.
Sounds like a job for Pastor Swank.
Their first priority was to figure out what on earth was the source of the trouble. After six months of research and prayer, it became obvious that it wasn’t economics or politics, but a person ? one oversized, 40-something woman named Mama Jane.
“She was kinda like Mama Cass, except she couldn’t sing and she ate babies. Villagers tried to kill her with ham sandwiches, but Mama Jane was smarter than her chunky American counterpart, and didn’t fall for their ruse…”
She was a witch.
“Burn her!”
Forget pointy hats and broomsticks, she was the real thing.
“Look, she’s got a wart… and she weighs the same as a duck!”
I’ll concede that the majority of “witches” are cranks and dabblers who possess no special powers at all. But in dark places worldwide, there are millions of exceptions, and she was one. Typically, witchcraft is evidence of evil, but there it was the source of evil.
Three factors convinced the Muthees of her powers. First, the top government and business leaders visited her continually, afraid to do anything without her approval.
She sounds like the Reverend Moon.
The keyword: fear.
This story: retarded.
Second, at least once a month, someone would die in a horrible traffic accident on the dusty little road right in front of her divination house, called Emmanuel Clinic ? though it wasn’t a clinic and had nothing to do with Emmanuel, the Christ.
You’d think people would learn not to drive in front of her goddamned house.
Third, she would come by the Muthee’s little church room at night and do her rigamajig, leaving ashes and cock feathers in the street.
So anyone who performs weird dances must be a witch, including the entire cast of Wendy’s Grill Skill and Mr. T’s Be Somebody or Be Somebody’s Fool:
At times, the struggling congregation of a few dozen were so demoralized that their singing would die out mid-song!
The prayer battle raged for months. Finally, one day, they raised their hands toward the “clinic” and prayed that God would either save Mama Jane or remove her from Kiambu.
And because Rutz’ God is a vengeful God, we can all guess how this is gonna turn out…
A few days later, it happened. After yet another “accident” at the clinic (three teenagers killed), the townsfolk rioted. “Stone her!” they cried.
I love how Jim thinks angry villagers rampaging through the streets and demanding public stonings are positive developments for society.
The police were called and barged into the clinic. Just past the reception room, they were startled to find themselves face to fang with a huge python. They pulled their revolvers and blew it to smithereens.
Is this a miracle or a Charles Bronson movie?
Mama Jane’s powers evaporated along with that snake. A few days later, she left town, and everything changed. In the next four years, there was not a single accident. (See the “Transformations I” video.)
Today, crimes in Kiambu are uncommon, especially rape and murder. You can walk the streets at night. Money is pouring in. Tall buildings are going up. People are happy, the population is up a third, and workers now bribe their bosses to transfer them to Kiambu.
Here’s a sample of this week’s headlines for Kiambu:
–“Cult Man Charged With Kidnapping.”
–“Kenyan Police Ban Opposition Party Rally Scheduled for 19 June.”
–“Officials Tell Tortured Pupil They Are Sorry.”
And here’s an excerpt from a recent article on the plight of Kiambu coffee farmers:
KIAMBU, Kenya ? The slow burn of rust has spread over Ludovick Karanja’s blue truck, a ten-wheeler with its axles on cinderblocks, a rotting shrine to the heyday of Kenya’s coffee industry.
“When times were good I bought a Land Rover and I bought that truck to haul my own coffee,” said Karanja, 60, gray stubble on his unshaven face. He earns just over $500 a year in coffee beans, he said, down from a high of $4,000 about 20 years ago.
“Now, I can’t afford the repairs on the truck, or even the gas once it’s repaired.”
Yeah, Kiambu sure is trouble-free, and it’s all because a bunch of police blew away a helpless snake.
OK, I’m getting a headache, so let’s finish Jim’s article:
The last time I saw Thomas, he told me his main problem was the need for an even bigger building to seat his many thousands of new Christians.
Moral: While big-bucks government programs may help some cities, we must stop pretending that religion is a peripheral luxury to real life. Real life is faith-based because reality is God-based. Real solutions start with the spirit.
“And you’ll never know about them until you buy my book!”
Yup. A genuine Swankian miracle here.
A woman is accused of witchcraft, primarily because she is influential in local politics and lives on an unsafe street. The populace tries to murder her, and the police destroy what was probably her pet. She leaves to escape the harassment. The city’s situation does not improve.
That’s…
That’s nothing to be proud of.
(I wonder how many accidents have occured on that street since she left? Some streets are just designed poorly)
Kiambu had the full suite of city horrors: murder, robbery, rape, alcoholism, corruption ? and grinding poverty.
Is even one of these “city horrors” absent from rural areas? Sadly, No!
Not that this would surprise anyone or anything, but pythons don’t have “fangs”. Teeth, sure. But fangs are those things snakes use to inject venom, and pythons just don’t work that way.
Rutz is a moron. Again, no surprise.
I must say, I also appreciate his ability to define someone else’s religion (“witches”, in this case, though I’m sure he can do it with Muslims, too) with a viciously false stereotype that leaves out pretty much everybody who actually *does* belong to that religion.
I’m going to take my cue from this and start insisting that *real* Christians have halos and wings, and anybody who doesn’t, is obviously just some kind of delusional Satan worshipper with no Jesus in their soul at all.
Holy SHIT! A Slithis reference! I’m glad you didn’t go for a CHUD reference because that would have been sooo 1999.
From my own life I can tell you that there used to be a lot of accidents on Wilshire and Santa Monica, but they stopped about the time Zsa Zsa died.
One of the most bizarre things about this is that Jim Rutz believes that the snake was the source of the witch’s power. Not only that, but neither prayer nor Lord Jeebus himself was able to overcome that power. Only destroying the snake allowed the woman’s hold over the town to be vanquished and the anticlimactic denouement to ensue. Proving that, if you have a choice, witchcraft rather than Christianity is the way to go. Thanks for the catechism lesson, Jim!
“it wasn’t a clinic and had nothing to do with Emmanuel, the Christ.” Maybe it was named after Emmanuel Lewis, AKA “Webster”. (According to the Bloodhound Gang, he’s the Antichrist.) What a putz is Rutz! (Can anyone translate the words on the SLITHIS poster that appear to the left of the creature?)
agrippacash, that woulda been funnier if Zsa Zsa Gabor wasn’t still alive. (It was her sister Eva, star of the delightful rural sitcom “Green Acres”, who passed away. Moment of silence please, for her and Eddie Albert.)
Bill S., the use of an online Dutch translator and a rudimentary knowledge of German leads me to believe that the words on the poster are close to, “An escape of nuclear radiation creates a monstrous creature!” Pretty standard stuff, really. 😉
no church had ever hit three figures in attendance.
Is that paid attendance, or actual in the seats attendance? Because a lot of churches give away tickets and have all sorts of promotions to bump up the “paid” attendance numbers, but when you go, the seats are always empty.
And beware the bump that you get from public financing of a new church. Sure, the attendance soars the first year, but if the team isn’t saving souls, the fans just stop coming. It’s all about putting a winning pastor in the pulpit.
“It’s all about putting a winning pastor in the pulpit.” Which makes me wonder why there isn’t some kind of church equivalent to “Hooters”. You’d think that would draw a crowd of some kind. (Oh, and Matt C’s take on this story makes the most sense.)
Ahh, there’s no problem that can’t be blamed on a woman, is there?
I bet Emmanuel Clinic was a veterinary hospital, specializing in herpetological medecine… “They killed Mr. Huggles! Nooooooo!”
How did he know she was a witch? Why, she turned him into a frog! Um. He got better.
“But in dark places worldwide, there are millions of exceptions, and she was one.”
OMG! Did he mean what I think he meant?
Yes! Love to Seanbaby — he gets so little on the supercyberinterinfowebhighway.
Millions make up a small minority???!!! That’s an awful lot of people claiming to be witches then. Now if only we could get them to use their evil powers on the right people rather than the innocent towns people. I can think of a few politicians that could do with having some awful things happen to them.
Sorry Mr. S. I also enjoyed Green Acres, and could have sworn that they had both died. I actually have nothing against the still living (but less delightful) Gabor, and upon reflection believe that some left turn lanes were installed at the aforementioned intersection.
“The last time I saw Thomas, he told me his main problem was the need for an even bigger building to seat his many thousands of new Christians.”
He then went on to tell me he had a plan to accomplish this: he was good friends with a local attorney who represented an expatriate American family who was involved in a huge land deal there. Unfortunately, that family die in a horible automobil crash. But he have some acces to they Twenty million dollar US ($20,000,00). Howeve, local govermet oversight not let he remove money from bank unless he find surviving family members. After many attempt, he not found none. So he propose you let he trasfer Twenty billion dollar US ($20,00,000) to your bank account in USA. Then he have you transfer Fifteen million dollar US ($15,000,000) to he bank account and you can keep other five million ($5,000,000). Just send he you bank account info with sort code and routing, along with Twenty thousand dollar US ($20,000) processing fee. He then take care of everthing.
He look forward to you respond in this, and doing busness. Maybe you then do busness in the future. God Bless, my friend.
Why is it that these really great witch stories (and resurrection and miracle ones) always happen in Africa or Asia or Eastkabumfuk, Thailand, where there are only missionaries and no reporters? Could it be that the missionaries are attracting the baddies. Calling Father Merin.
Next it’ll be those damn flying saucers again. And we know where those come from!
Father,
there are stories when the clergy and believers get the ‘short end of the stick’, but they don’t get told often.
Case in point: My mom’s family is from China, and there is a traditional belief in what are known as fox devils, which are supernatural beings said to be able to mimic the form of man, except in their ‘hands’ and ‘feet’.
Anyway, it seems there was a missionary in a hotel at night in pre-WWII Shanghai, and the lighting system was so primitive that the lights had no switches, the generators getting shut off at 10 PM every night and thus, lights out.
Said missionary was in his lit room before 10 PM, and the conversation turned to fox devils. He said that he didn’t believe in them, and then the lights went out. In that room alone, nowhere else in the hotel.
The missionary allegedly threw his mattress out the window and declared that he wasn’t going to spend the night there.
I also have a great-grandfather who had his leg broken when he spent a night in a haunted house, I’ll have to ask one of my great-uncles, there’s still 4 or 5 of them left…….
hello i just want to tell you that we really love this church and we can not be coming there from chana and we just want you to pls try to come and establish on to chana so that we can be your church member thanks and try to mail me back we really love this church.
Hi. May be this is BAD, but is something different:
I have never imagined that people could be so rotten in this society. May God help this country.