The following is a story I copied from a book1 I recently read about a few Christians living in Communist Romania in the 1970’s and 80’s. In the era of communism they lived under great persecution and poverty. As Christians they could not hold any jobs paid by the government, which was most of the jobs available. So most of them subsisted as farmers. Reading the Bible was a crime, and holding church meetings was always a risky affair. The author of the book was a Baptist minister, Dumitru Dudumon, who was tortured and thrown into prison for smuggling Bibles into Russia and into his own country. He eventually was banished by the communist government, ending up in the U.S. He writes that miraculous events were common place. This is just one of his stories:
“We traveled about 9-10 hours by train. Arriving at the local pastor’s home, his wife greeted us. “Welcome!”. she said.
“Is your husband home?” I asked.
“No, my husband is working in the pasture and will be out there for some time. Would you like to come with me?”
“Where are you going?” I was very tired from the train journey, but curious about her mission.
Right now I’m preparing to visit a woman who has cancer. It would be good if you would come with me so you can give her a word of comfort. She is so ill, we are expecting her to die any time.”
“Of course I’ll go with you!” I answered. We left together immediately to visit the woman whose name was Lidia Moga. I had never met her before, and had never in my life seen anyone more visibly ill. Lidia was lying in her bed – so thin that there was really nothing left of her but skin and bones. She had not been moved off that bed for six consecutive months.
Lidia had six young children and lived in obvious poverty. Her husband worked far away and was only able to return home on the weekends. The house was filthy. the little children were far too small to help with the work. Now and then a Christian Sister would come and clean. The sight and stench of the place were appalling. Anna, the pastor’s wife, asked me to wait outside until she tidied up the place a bit.
When I entered and approached Lidia’s bed, I said, “Peace of the Lord to you, dear Sister.”
“Same to you,” she murmured. I could hardly hear her voice.
“Sister has anybody prayed for you?”
“Yes, they have,” she answered very weakly. “Many times they have anointed me and prayed for me.”
All at once the Lord showed me that she was filled with doubts. “Well, what do you say? If I pray for you, do you believe you will get well?”
“No,” she quickly responded. “No, I don’t believe.”
“God!” I prayed silently in my heart. “God, can’t You give a gift of healing to a mother of six children? Hallelujah! I know You can!” Suddenly I felt a surge of spiritual power. “If you don’t believe,” I burst out, “I’ll believe in your place! In Jesus name I command you to get out of bed!”
“Thank you Lord, for healing me!” she cried.
When I finished my prayer I looked around. Sister Lidia was not in the bed anymore! Instead she was on her knees by the door thanking God for healing her. Gone was her feeble voice. She was yelling at the top of her lungs, “Thank You God! Thank You God!”
Even if you don’t completely believe this story, (as Mormons we tend to discount any miraculous stories of people who are from other religious backgrounds) you have to admit that such healings are possible, and should be possible if you believe in Christ and the scriptures. If you can believe the author of this story and other stories that he writes about in his book– miracles and healings becoming common place and frequent– why, if we are covenant people, do we not see miraculous healings like this taking place amongst us all the time? Sure, we hear stories of miraculous healings, but they are rare. How many of us can say that they have placed their hands on someone with cancer or prayed for them and seen them healed instantly? Or how many times have souls been brought back from the dead through prayers and laying on of hands?
I have a theory about that: its because we don’t expect miracles.
It seems, from what I have learned and observed, we don’t have a tradition of faith in our culture, like these Romanian Christians exhibit. Most of us have not been brought up to believe in miracles like that, except what we read about in the scriptures or hear about happening to others. Our faith resides in doctors and hospitals and miracle drugs that we have at our disposal. Where we have miraculous medical cures, the Christians of Romania 40 years ago had only their faith and maybe some traditional herbal remedies. The way we seem to approach miraculous healings is by assuming we can always fall back to medical cures if our prayers and priesthood blessings don’t pan out. Or we seem to think that God would rather we suffer then heal us. That is why Elders lay hands on sick souls and declare in all sincerity, “If it be God’s will, you will be healed!”. What it really comes down to is this: they do not have a relationship with the Lord, and so, not knowing the will of the Father, they say something safe. Faith has a difficulty finding a foothold in such a philosophy.
When I have discussed the lack of miracles in our lives with others I hear comments like, “But we do experience miracles! The Book of Mormon is a miracle! Having a living prophet is a miracle! Or having faith to not be healed is a form of miraculous faith.” Give me a break….If we truly are believers then these words of Moroni would describe us, but they really don’t, do they?
And these signs shall follow them that believe: In my name shall they cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mormon 9:24)
“And these signs shall follow him (William Law)– he shall heal the sick, he shall cast out devils, and shall be delivered from those who would administer unto him deadly poison; and he shall be led in paths where the poisonous serpent cannot lay hold upon his heel, and he shall mount up in the imagination of his thoughts as upon eagles’ wings. And what if I will that he should raise the dead, let him not withhold his voice.” (D&C 124:98-100)
When Moroni writes that “they shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them” , could that apply to man-made poisons or viruses? Would that make us immune to Covid? Hmm…
What is holding us back from experiencing the out pouring of the Spirit and the Powers of Heaven? What law is it that we are not obeying, upon which the blessings of miraculous healings and protection from pandemics are based? (D&C 130:20-21) Does it follow that we are not following the law upon which those blessings are predicated? Should we be spending our energies and time in pursuing a relationship with the heavens rather then running after things that are perhaps too worldly? Do we need a fundamental change, even a dramatic shift, in the way we approach spiritual things? I ask these things not as an exercise in rhetoric, or as an accusation to others. I ask them all the time of myself. What am I missing that I don’t experience all of these things all the time. I keep thinking that I should be seeing the signs that follow a group of people who consider themselves “chosen” and set apart.
Maybe there are some people experiencing and performing miraculous healings that are common place to them. Maybe we, and I speak generally, don’t see miraculous healings because we haven’t yet learned how to perform them. Duduman writes how the Christian congregations that he ministered would gather and fast and pray together regularly. He wrote about fasting for ten or twenty days regularly. He constantly talked and prayed to God and listened for an answer. He assumed that God would hear and would answer, and then he acted upon the answers he received immediately. Their faith in being able to draw down the powers of heaven to act on their behalf, in a way, puts us to shame. The Lord honors everyone who puts their trust in Him. Its as simple as that.
In my own life I have come to realize that seeking daily companionship of the Spirit becomes a higher priority then reading blogs about how bad this or that church is or debating about principles and doctrine. I have discovered how difficult it is to be consistently on the track because I have decades of exposure to American culture ideals filtering my reality. Reality, or our perception of reality, colored by what we have been taught and what we have lived by since we were babies, is awfully hard to see without the filters of culture. Joseph Smith did say that it (Salvation) was a great work of mental exertion and Paul wrote that salvation comes from working it out with fear and trembling. Overcoming the world is not easy, nor was it ever meant to be easy.
In closing I want to include another event that Pastor Duduman writes about. After becoming converted to Christianity he began ministering to people. “Not long after I gave my heart to God, He began using me. People were coming to Christ. Some were being healed and others were filled with the Holy Ghost. Much of what God did was through much fasting and prayer. God was at work, and the enemy didn’t like it.” He reports that his wife started having problems with her eyes; she started going blind. “God,” I cried out, “I gave my life to you and now my Maria can’t see. Why?”
He took her to a doctor who told him that she would never see again unless God healed her. It sounds like it was just the doctor’s way of saying that there was nothing he could do for her. Duduman took her to many other doctors but they ultimately could do nothing for her. “Little by little I became very despondent. Before long I couldn’t preach. I couldn’t pray. Seeing my despair, my father came to me and I began to weep, pouring out my agony and heartbreak over Maria.”
“I’ve let you go your own way to see what you would do, Son,” he told me with kindness flickering in his blue eyes. “Now, why don’t you try my doctor?”
“Who?” I asked.
My father simply said, “Jesus.”
“You don’t understand!” I raged. “Everyone is mocking and laughing at me saying, ‘Can’t you see that since you became a Christian your wife became ill? The medicines only make her worse.’ I don’t know what to do!”
“Dumitru, don’t listen to what people say to you. You believe in a great God.”
“Well, what AM I supposed to do?!”
“We will fast and pray and believe God together.” More than forty of us joined together in fasting and prayer. A few weeks later a Brother named Vasile Munteanu came on his bike from about 30 kilometers away to see me. He said, “I was on my way to a prayer meeting, but the Holy Spirit told me to come and take you with me.”
Dumitru asked his wife if she minded if he went to the prayer meeting. She replied saying, “Go, but pray for me, too.”
The village was on the Russian border and difficult to enter because of the check point where everyone was searched for Bibles being carried into Russia. As they rode along they wondered how they would get through, but they were not searched. “When we arrived the service the pastor said, “Welcome brothers, the Holy Spirit told us you were coming, so we prayed for your protection.” Then the pastor said, “What is your name?”
“Dumitru Duduman”
He said “Brother Duduman, the Lord told us that your wife is sick and today he is going to heal her. I have had a vision of a blond woman with blue eyes, lying on a table. A man dressed in white was beside the table preparing to operate on her eyes.…This is what the Lord says, Brother Duduman. ‘I have listened to your prayers and I have seen your fasting. Beginning today, your wife will be able to see'”
Dumitru rushed home to see his wife who he found waiting for him at the gate to their home. “I ran to Maria. Looking into her eyes I could see that they were as clear as the day I married her. I fell on my knees and gave God thanks.”
Dumitru concludes this account by writing: “This was the first lesson I learned after I came to the Lord – and it was a critical one for my continuing walk with him. It was this: whenever we pass through problems, we should immediately call upon God. No matter what our circumstances, this is the kind of relationship that He wants with us – for He knows that this instant dependency can only bring us closer to Him. I tried to fast and pray more, because I believed that in so doing, the Lord would give me more power to do His work.” (Bold script is by the author, D. Duduman)
If we are ever going to participate in Zion we are going to have to shed all of our Gentile thinking, all of our American cultural values, and we will need to suspend our disbelief in a total acceptance of spiritual things. That is why the Lord will be merciful to us by taking away everything we have depended upon for our security and our lively hood. Before we ever step foot in Zion we will have to become totally dependent on Heaven for everything.
- Dumitru Duduman, Through the Fire, Without Burning, second ed. 1992. pp 20-23.