Delivered from Arthritis and Morphine Dependence

DAVID: We have a good friend here from Tucson, Arizona: Darvin Paape. We've known Darv I guess about three years ago when we first heard from him. By the grace of God I was on Access TV and shared some things with Darvin and he contacted us and I'll let him tell the story. He's going to go back and tell you a little bit about himself and share what the Lord did for him. He fought the good fight of the faith. This wasn't an instant miracle. Some of them the Lord wants us to have the experience of fighting the good fight of the faith. It's a good experience in that when things don't happen instantly and you've gone through a battle like this, you don't just throw up your hands and give up like a lot of people do. They have very little endurance. But Darvin endured for some time and, boy, he conquered some enemies. It was a deep hole he was coming up out of and we just thank God for his testimony. Darvin, share your heart with the brethren.

DARVIN: I guess I should start out by saying I started in an apostate Lutheran Church back in Minnesota as a young boy and we never studied the Bible. That was kept from us. The minister didn't want us reading it. I ended up being excommunicated from the church so I left Minnesota and moved to Colorado and from there to Oregon. I was pretty much walking in sin most of my life and I was living in southern Oregon, in the mountains, and developing some property there. I was building a house and had forest fires all around us. So I got into clearing the land around there. Trying to keep the place from burning down. I injured my elbows and for about three years I was crippled up. I couldn't pick up a shirt or my coffee or a hammer or anything. Both my elbows were injured. And so for three years I didn't go to a doctor. I didn't really trust doctors and I thought it would just get better. After three years it started getting worse. It started spreading. The pain started spreading to every joint in my body. I went to a lot of doctors and ended up in Portland being diagnosed with rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis and from there I couldn't get a doctor to help me.

The government would take the doctor away. They would offer him a huge cut in their malpractice insurance if they wouldn't dispense any narcotic pain relieving drugs and then they'd drop me. I was literally dying from the chronic pain, it was that severe. So I left Oregon and moved to Tucson, Arizona to try to find a doctor. All my friends back there in Oregon were betting I'd never get out of town alive and I got a guy to drive a U-Haul truck and pull my little truck behind it and drive me to Tucson, because I couldn't drive. I got there, ended up in a motel on the edge of town with my little dog Toy at the time, a little Shih Tzhu. I was too sick to do anything else, so I started working the telephone. I needed to find a doctor and the first phone call I got I found a doctor that would help me. And after a couple of years he went into a hospital, so I got another doctor. From there I ended up living 10 years in Tucson, trapped in an apartment. For like 8 or 9 years I was on 650 mgs of morphine a day and which steals your memory, it steals your life, it cuts you off from the world. You don't dare let anybody know what you're doing, what you're taking.

DAVID: That's a super dose, isn't it, Darvin?

DARVIN: It is.

DAVID: 650 milligrams. Wow.

DARVIN: I had no idea at the time what morphine was about and later I found out. I have a daughter that's an ICU nurse and she tried to give me the perspective on it. She said when they bring someone out of an operation, they give them, like, 1 or 2 milligrams of morphine, so 650 mgs a day is a lot of morphine. And I just figured, well, I had a lot of pain. But it cost a lot of money and for 10 years I was trapped with this. Well, I know God was watching me. This curse I was living under, this arthritis and everything, and he was watching. He knew I was trapped. I'd never read the Bible and I didn't know what any of this was about and I didn't have a future. I was just more or less trapped there. And one night he put a message in my mind: I needed to read the Bible. And so I started and I started doing what the Bible told me and got the forgiveness. I stopped reading for three days to figure out everybody I needed to forgive in my life. And I continued reading it and from there God led me to David Eells. I caught a part of his Prophecy Club series on Access Tucson, in Tucson, Arizona, on television, and now that led me to him.

I ended up contacting him and I ended up joining the Unleavened Bread Ministries, Unleavened Bread Bible Study on the Internet at Americalastdays.com and I've been following that faithfully ever since. I made Sunday and Wednesday the most important days of my life. David was able to show me so many things, teach me so many things that I never knew. I got to know so many things out of the Bible that I didn't know anything about. I was praying to get away from smoking cigarettes. I'd smoked for 45 years Camel straights, and I was taking a county-state program in Tucson to quit smoking and got down to a couple of cigarettes a day. I kind of stumbled there and I got sick and didn't get back to that class for a while. In the meantime David called me one day. I'd been studying about healing and what the Bible says about it. I wanted to make a prayer just to be delivered from smoking and he seemed to just know what has happening. He asked if I had forgiven everyone and I told him I had. And he said, Well, let's pray. And he made a prayer of unity and a prayer of faith with me right over the telephone and asked God to deliver me from the addiction to nicotine and smoking. He asked God to heal me from rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis and to heal my eyes. And I received these. I received everything. I haven't smoked a cigarette since that day. The pain was gone. The healing of my eyes hasn't been manifested yet. That's something I need to work out where I need to be in agreement with the Word. That's all that is.

And that's part of the reason I came here to Pensacola. So suddenly I didn't have rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis anymore. But with this healing that's when Satan came after me. It's like I'd been walking in sin for so long. The Devil looked at me and just smiled because he knew I was his man. I knew nothing about the Devil. I didn't know he really existed. But as soon as I was healed, I went up on his radar and he came after me with his demons and first thing he did was give me the illusion or deception of withdrawal from morphine. Actually, I was healed of everything and here I start going through this withdrawal for trying to get off 650 mgs of morphine. I ended up fighting back and forth between faith and what the medical world was telling me what was going to happen to me If I didn't do this. I was going to have a heart attack and die or whatever; and I battled back and forth. I kept trying to just stop. I just quit taking the medicine and then I'd get real sick and I'd get back on it again and then I'd just quit taking it and just throw some of it away. And I made a real short abbreviated kind of withdrawal from it, but it took two-and-a-half months. I lost 7 pounds.

I was real sick by then and that's when Satan's demons came after me. They came at me in the form of rheumatoid arthritis again. And I knew nothing about demons. These were words and thoughts that I'd seen written. To me Satan was this old guy in a red suit with a pointed tail and a pitchfork. Well, he isn't; he's a spirit. He's an evil spirit, so are his demons, and they can come into your body. Satan first he gave me this illusion or deception that I was on a withdrawal from morphine and I went through all that and it wasn't even necessary. That got me very upset, very upset at Satan. Then he came at me with two delusions that I was dying and he came at me like he was the Lord, and I thought I was talking to the Lord but I was actually talking to Satan. I really believed I was dying. I got to the point I was writing letters and I was afraid to run up to the mailbox and mail them, because I knew I was going to drop dead on the way back or something. I knew I was going to die. This was all a deception. And in the middle of the second deception I thought I was dying, David Eells called me on the telephone and just blew that deception right away.

DAVID: We decided you were being lied to, right, Darv?

DARVIN: You bet. You bet. I was just very upset; I was real uptight at the Devil and I never realized how real he was and that he is a spirit that can come into you, and he is good at deception.

DAVID: Well, plus you really didn't have a background in the Bible.

DARVIN: Right, I didn't.

DAVID: Darv was telling me about his Lutheran pastor one time. He'd ask him questions and he'd get mad at him because he didn't want him to ask any. He didn't want to answer any questions or maybe he couldn't. I don't know.

DARVIN: Yeah, he wouldn't. All he'd say is, You have to have faith! That was his answer to everything. And, hey, I was young and full of questions and I couldn't get anything from him. He did not want us reading the Bible, you know.

DAVID: So basically, Darv, when you took the step of faith of getting rid of your medicine, the symptoms started coming back, right?

DARVIN: Right.

DAVID: And then you had to wrestle with that, and so gradually, even though you went back on your medicine, you gradually started weaning yourself off of it.

DARVIN: Right.

DAVID: Then fighting the good fight of faith as you did that.

DARVIN: See, I figured out my doctor kind of slid away from me at this point. She had new partners and they didn't want her to be treating me, and so she was kind of caught in a cross fire and she was at a point she was going to give me up. She didn't understand why I didn't want to take this medicine anymore and she did not understand Gods healing me, because she was a doctor. I tried sharing with her what happened one day and about faith and she kind of slid out the door to go write me some prescriptions. She just smiled and said, I've got my own beliefs, and she slid out the door. She didn't want to hear what I had to say, so that was the last time I saw her. Anyway, she was going to give me a schedule to go through withdrawal on and I never got that. I called her and she never called me back, and so I figured, well, now I know the Lord's helped me figure it out, because it wasn't anything medical. I was like shucking a 60 mg tablet of time release or extended release morphine sulfate generic for MS Contin. I was dropping one every week, which medically isn't possible. I've got a couple of identical twin daughters in Gainesville, Florida. They're nurses, and one of them, she's an ICU nurse, she was calling me and kind of coaching me on this thing. She knew I was really sick and she got me into a hospital and she kept telling me, If you ever do go to the hospital, I'm gonna come and take care of you, because they're gonna kill you. She's been working in the hospital long enough and she warned me of this all the time.

So anyway I was battling back and forth with this withdrawal from morphine. I was trying to just cast it away by faith and I kept going back and forth on it, having trouble. Finally I got to the end of it, I got so discouraged, and I realized that this morphine had stolen my memory and was causing me a lot of problems I wasn't even aware of so I just stopped taking it. I thought, Hey, I'm either going to die or I'm not and I don't care anymore. I didn't think God after healing me was going to let me die so I just stopped taking it and I waited. It usually took about a day before the withdrawals came from it and I'd start getting real sick but nothing happened. That was the end of the medicine. I didn't have to take it anymore.

DAVID: What else were you taking beside morphine? You told me the other day Valium or something like that?

DARVIN: Yeah, morphine and then I'd take Valium just because morphine and MS Contin is a stimulant. It's so you can be up and around and navigate and take care of yourself. But you need to take Valium or something to kind of let you sleep at night. But you're in a drugged state all the time and you live in fear. You can't let anybody know you're taking this medicine, you can't let anybody close to you. I never let anybody in my apartment for 10 years, just me and my little dog, just out of fear that some junkie would find out that I had morphine and then how long are you going to live? They'd be coming through the windows and doors and your life wouldn't be worth anything so you don't let anybody know. And plus the doctors lock you up. They force you to sign a contract where if you lose your medicine or it gets stolen, you suddenly don't have a doctor anymore. And where does that leave you? And that's how I spent 10 years of my life. God was watching all this and He gave me the Bible and called on me to read it and I did. I started doing everything it said and then he led me to David Eells and David showed me so many things. He showed me about healing and I ended up delivered from smoking and from being healed free of the curse.

DAVID: Ten years, right, Darvin?

DARVIN: Ten years.

DAVID: When I talked to Darvin about three years ago he was like a zombie. There wasn't any intellect there. I mean, he was a mess. And he was telling me a while back that his truck hadn't been driven in 10 years and after he got off all these drugs and started getting his mental state back, he had to actually get them to come and get his truck and overhaul it so he could drive it. And the longest trip he's made since then is over here, right?

DARVIN: Yeah, I got it to a real good mechanic and I explained to him it had been sitting there for 10 years while I was trapped and sick. I couldn't driver very far, I couldn't drive out of town. I was lucky to get to the doctor and back, because the vibrations just from driving, holding the steering wheel, pushing on the gas pedal, would set this pain off so bad. So the truck sat most of the time. This mechanic said the biggest thing was that in desert and the heat, everything rubber in it would deteriorate, and so he went through that whole truck and replaced the rubber. The engine only had 100,000 miles on it, so it had a lot of miles left in it. It hadn't been used, so I put new tires on it and took it to him and for about $1200 he went through that whole truck, replaced everything rubber in it, fixed the few little things that were wrong and tuned it all up. He said hey, this little old truck will take you anywhere and it did. I got in that little truck, I got it all loaded and took off in the middle of the night one night.

I hadn't driven in 10 or 15 years. Actually, I'd been sick for about 15 years, but 10 of them I spent in Tucson. That was quite a trip to drive all the way to Florida through two big cities in Texas that are amazing. It was like a maze and everybody's driving at 75 miles an hour and I'm right in the middle of this bumper to bumper, it's elbow to elbow. Everybody is crazy the way they drive and I'm right in the middle of this trying to watch this number 10 East, stay in the right lane all the time and I just kept praising the Lord all the way. He's the one who brought me here or I wouldn't have made it. Me and my little dog Moses, we drove for four or five days to get to Pensacola without any problems. I had deputy sheriffs in Louisiana helping me when I'd get lost in different places. That little truck used one quart of oil all the way here and didn't have any problems.

DAVID: And you ran good, too, didn't you?

DARVIN: I did.

DAVID: The proof of not having arthritis was right there, you know, driving that car through all that.

DARVIN: I questioned whether I could even do it. I didn't know physically I could or how long I could drive or if I could drive all day long. I just had to get out and take breaks and walk my little dog once in a while and stop at a rest area and stuff and then get in and go again. I'd go through about a tank of gas every day and by then I'd just have to stop and rest. It was an amazing trip and the Lord was with me all the way. He brought me here or I wouldn't be here.

DAVID: I've listened to some of your questions and Darv's talked to a lot of the folks here too and he's had to close an awful lot of those loopholes that we talk about, all the questions that the Devil puts in your mind about why you can't be healed or why you're supposed to continue on. Any of them you can think of that you want to share?

DARVIN: Probably the biggest thing, like, out of the three things we asked for in prayer for healing, for deliverance from nicotine, healing from rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis, and healing my eyes. When I was born, my left eye was and my face was cut open and my left eye was kind of wiped out. I'd never seen out of that and when we were going to make this prayer for healing, I told David that I just needed my right eye fixed and he said, No God loves a challenge. He said, let him heal both of them. So, okay, I couldn't argue with that. I used my imagination and tried to imagine what it's like to fix my eyes, the condition they're in. I'm losing my sight in the right one and I've never seen out of left one really very well. When this combination doesn't work, your mind gets to where it can turn it off and you just see with your right eye, because that eye was 20/20. I just ignored the other one because it was too messed up. Anyway, the healing of my eyes was the only part that wasn't manifested, and that's simply because I need to agree with the Word and the promise. I just need to be in agreement to have my eyes healed. I mean, you have to think it, speak it and act on it, and I've been so involved with trying to follow the Bible study and to read the Bible and so many different things where I haven't been able to put my glasses down, because I need them to read and see things. But I'm going to take a little time out so that this healing of my eyes is manifested.

DAVID: Amen.

DARVIN: Yes, amen. I just wanted to share this. It was very upsetting when Satan came after me after this healing when all these things were new to me. I never had any idea these things were possible, you know, or what the curse was about.

DAVID: Would have been nice if your preacher would have told you that way back when, huh?

DARVIN: Oh, yes.

DAVID: You would have had a good life between then and now, maybe.

DARVIN: Yeah, and I know he didn't know anything about the Bible or faith or healing or casting out demons, and he was in the business which the Lutheran church is and that's making money. That's why God isn't found in a building that's built by man's hands anymore. And I was looking forward to making this testimony, because Satan came after me. He did not want God to have the glory for my healing and deliverance, and so he and his demons attacked me so many different ways. First they came at me in the form of arthritis and they flashed me so, because they read the wrong book; they didn't know the kind of arthritis I had and I could cast them out right at first. I'd fire right back them and they'd disappear. And they come back and sneak up on you when it gets dark and the lights go down and you turn the music off and you go to bed. Then they sneak up on you and they beat you up all night long and they're so real. You've just got to experience it to know it.

DAVID: And when you were coming off of those drugs, Did you experience a lot of delusion in that?

DARVIN: Oh, coming off those drugs, like going through the withdrawal?

DAVID: Yeah.

DARVIN: Oh, that's like turning your mind inside out. I mean, I was bouncing off the walls for two-and-a-half months or so that I was living in that apartment, I lost 50 pounds and then I lost 7 more pounds. I wasn't eating, I couldn't think straight, I couldn't concentrate, I couldn't remember anything. My family was all nurses and they're all around me and yet they had no idea what was happening with me. My sister had heard that something had happened with me, but she didn't understand or believe or have the faith that you could be healed with a prayer over the telephone, none of them believed what was going on or came around. And when I got through withdrawal from morphine, it kind of troubled me that none of them were aware of anything that was happening to me.

DAVID: That could be a blessing, Darv.

DARVIN: Yeah.

DAVID: You know how family, especially worldly family, don't know how it works. They're going to try to give you every reason to go the way of the world. The Devil will use them to give you every reason why you're going in the wrong direction.

DARVIN: But I weathered through it. Fighting with those demons, I was so sick and so weak and ill at that time and it got to where -- I couldn't sleep at night; these demons were attacking me every night and keeping me up all night. I just got to where I was falling asleep while I was trying to eat or trying to feed my dog or study things on the Unleavened Bread Ministries site. I'd fall asleep right in the middle of taking notes. I'd wake up and they would be halfway through this hour-long program, my notes stop and I'd be -- and it was all over and I'm sitting there, I gotta do it all over again. And so then I cheated for a little bit. I started taking three 10 mg Valium night and then the demons would leave me alone and I got about four hours sleep. And I did this just long enough so I could build my body up, get enough food in me that I could get a little strength back again, and at the same time I started reading the Bible.

I know on the Bible study David had said that Satan and the demons hate the gospel. Well, I didn't know what the gospel was, but I figured it out. It was the first four books in the New Testament. And I thought, if Satan hates it, I love it and I better start reading it. I had talked to David about it and he said it wasn't my physical strength, it was my spiritual strength that I needed to fight the Devil, and I needed more of the word in me. And so I started reading the Bible. I started with the New Testament and the gospel, and I went to Acts, and then I just continued from there. And at the same time I was studying things about demons on old Bible study things that David has on his web site and I was going through them one at a time, taking notes on them, going through every one of them, because I needed to know what I was dealing with. I'd never fought with demons before. I didn't know they were real. I was kind of on an island by myself there. There was no other believers around me. I didn't have a relationship or any fellowship with anybody else. All I had was the Bible study. So he had the elders contact me and different people contacted me. Different saints from around the country contacted me on my computer to encourage me and to give me energy, you know, to fellowship with me and pray for me and give me strength. All those things together is why I was able to get through this. I got enough of the Word built up in me and I got my strength back. And I know when I first started trying to cast out these demons, I was yelling very loud at them. I would get very upset. Well, my neighbor upstairs moved, my neighbor next door moved. I think I was being a little too vocal. So then I kind of calmed down.

DAVID: Maybe the demons were leaving from all the other houses too.

DARVIN: I just kept reading more and more of the Bible and studying everything about demons and stuff and how the disciples cast out demons long ago. And then finally, it got to where I was sitting at the table one evening and I'm thinking, you know, I've got to deal with this. I've got to cast them out. And I'd listen to David on the Bible study. He said you can't argue with them; he said, you just gotta take the authority and command them to leave and then go on about your business; just ignore them. They have to leave. And so I'm sitting there and I just whispered it. I didn't yell it like I used to, I just whispered. I said, In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave. And then I went on from there --

DAVID: You didn't want to scare off anymore neighbors or run the demons out of the whole neighborhood huh.

DARVIN: I was trying to be real quiet. I didn't want to bother anybody anymore. You know, they think you're crazy if you're commanding out demons. And so I just sat there and I just whispered it and then I walked off into the other room and I got busy doing things. And after while I got to thinking about it and, hey, they were gone. They left. I didn't have to yell at them, I didn't have to repeat it. You get enough of the Word, enough of God's Word in you and you have the power. It powers you and you have the authority. You can cast out demons and they have to leave. And you don't have to argue with them or yell at them. You can whisper it and just once and they go.

DAVID: It's the authority, not the voice, right?

DARVIN: You bet. And they know when you have the authority, because it comes to you through the Word of God.

DAVID: They know when you know you have the authority.

DARVIN: Right. See, and I had so much input to where I finally knew I had the authority and, hey, this was warfare. I had never imagined these things were possible, but when you get caught up in it, you get an attitude. This is warfare. And Satan comes at you and starts doing these things to you, and he was hurting me real bad for awhile there. I knew that word but for a while I had no idea what it meant. I do know what it means now. It's like a twisting your whole insides. They'd do this to me for like seven hours at night some nights to where at first I'd get confused; I didn't understand what was happening. Like they were beating on me with bamboo sticks and at the same time I was getting twisted inside and all over and at the same time they were doing this arthritis trip with my legs to where it was like they were almost breaking my legs. And I'd just barely get a prayer out asking God to stop them from hurting my legs in the name of Jesus Christ and BANG, He stopped it. And then it continued on till morning and eventually I got an attitude. It is warfare. David gave me the idea. He helped me. He called me to see how I was doing. He knew I was in trouble and he gave me the cues I needed and the different helps I needed and I did everything he said and it worked and I escaped.

Just before I made this trip here, I went to the barber shop. I wanted to get my hair cut real short, because I have an '88 Nissan pickup with no air conditioning as hot as it was. I thought, wow, we're going to be playing thunder road and I'm going to have the windows down so I wanted my hair short so I didn't scare everybody and we could stay cool, me and my little dog Moses. As I was walking from my truck and into the barber shop, these demons come back and my left hand started getting all cramped up and doing these weird things. I knew what it was and as I walked back out to my truck, because I forgot my glasses I said, In the Name of Jesus, By His Stripes I Am Healed. And that's all it took and they were gone. They disappeared. They test you every once in awhile to see if you're paying attention or see if you really believe in the Word. And all I have to do is say something. They would come back and do this at the grocery store right when I was at the checkout counter. I almost said something really loud and vocal in commanding them to come out and I just controlled it till I got outside. And they could feel the energy in me; they knew what was in my mind to where they disappeared just like that.

DAVID: You know, Darvin, I think arthritis demons are stupid.

DARVIN: They are.

DAVID: There is an evil intelligence involved in this. This is not just a sickness and this is obvious, you know? I commanded it out of my elbows and it went to my shoulders and it was both sides the same. I thought, now, you know, that's not possible naturally. Did it do the same thing with you?

DARVIN: After I'd hurt my elbows and after three years I just thought if I rested, they would get better, and after three years all of a sudden it started spreading. It went from my elbows into my wrists. And for some reason, I don't know why, but I marked it on a calendar and every time it moved somewhere else, I marked it. And later I wrote those notes down. I had all those timings exactly when it went into every part of my body. But it went step by step through into all the joints in my whole body.

DAVID: And at the time you really didn't believe in demons, right?

DARVIN: I had no idea what demons were.

DAVID: Well, when you think back on it, don't you realize now that that was a real evil intelligence? I remember when it went to my shoulders the last time. I just said, No, you aren't going anywhere else. In the name of Jesus, you go. And that was the end of it. It was gone. But it gave me an experience of dealing with that. And you know what? I've commanded arthritis out of a lot of people. It seems like to me one of the easier demons to run off in some cases.

DARVIN: Right. But arthritis can manifest itself in so many different ways and that was my first cue that this was a demon and they read the wrong book, because the arthritis I had, I didn't have gnarly fingers and the swelling and that kind of crippling kind of trip. I had a severe, chronic pain in every joint in my body, but they came at me with this crippled up hand and leg thing that's the standard medical world's interpretation of arthritis. When they started doing this thing with my hand, I immediately knew what it was, that this was some alien thing and they read the wrong book.

DAVID: It was a demon and he wasn't a smart one either.

DARVIN: Right, it wasn't or they wouldn't be doing that, because I had a different kind of arthritis. And I had been looking forward to this. I wanted to share this with the world so everybody would know the gifts that God has for them, the blessings and that he can deal with these curses. He can deliver you from addiction, from illness, from all these different things. He can heal you so many different ways. He can heal you of anything.

DAVID: Amen. And you know what? The experience you went through, Darv, has really been good for you, because you learned a lot that way. We've had people come here that were straight out of mental institutions or other places and were so heavy on drugs, they couldn't walk or talk and we just rebuked them and the demons came out of them and they were off the drugs the next day and, hey, no problem, no big deal. But you know what, they still had to go through with other things: The revelations that you got as you were getting your healing.

DARVIN: Right.

DAVID: You were fighting the good fight of the faith. You learned that you can't give up, you have to endure to the end. Right? All those lessons that you got are very, very valuable and will be in the days to come.

DARVIN: Right.

DAVID: So don't try to predict. When you claim a healing from God, folks, don't try to predict what God's going to do, because if he doesn't do it that way, you're going to be up a creek and wondering why didn't God answer the way I thought. Instead we know that God always answers, doesn't he? Because he's already answered. That's why He always answers; he's already answered at the cross. And, of course, we've got to endure in faith to see that come to pass.

DARVIN: Right.

DAVID: And you have another good experience that you learned a little bit about faith with your little dog Moses, didn't you? Tell them about the history of Moses there before you --

DARVIN: Right. I just forgot about that. I was just thinking I need to let everybody know that. A week or two after I was healed I had another experience. In past time I used to take my little dog Moses across the street and let him walk along the boulevard or in the gravel along the fence and do his thing so it wouldn't bother anybody in their apartments. And I'd walked down there and carried him across that street 100, 200, 500 times, whatever. One day I walked down there and the sidewalk was under water and I slipped and did a cartwheel and landed on my face between a couple of cars in the parking lot and he's laying there a little ways from me and I knew something was wrong with him. I got up and forgot about myself and picked him up and carried him across the street so I could get him out in the light. I set him on the boulevard there and I could tell he had a broken leg right away. His back right little leg was broken. I carried him back to the house.

It wasn't till the next day I finally realized the backs of my hands were all tore up. I had done this cartwheel and landed on the backs of my hands and kind of really did a number on them. And I don't know what happened to him. He must have flew out of my hands. And when I took him to the doctor and paid a lot of money, they fixed his leg. They put a plate in there, and then they X-rayed it later and when I came back they said it wasn't quite set right, and that plate had broken. And I'm thinking, well, they don't know how to use a screwdriver and a drill. And they tried blaming Moses for it and that wasn't it. But they had their money and then they didn't want to see Moses and me anymore. And so I had him on Rimadol because he had pain all the time, because they should have taken that metal out of there for one thing. There was sharp, broken metal in there and I just felt guilty about it that he was hurting. The fact that I was watching him favor that leg once in awhile and he was taking Rimadol just like I was taking morphine. And so I made a prayer. It just came to me one night. I prayed to our heavenly father and I asked him to heal little Moses, to heal his leg so it wouldn't be hurt anymore, so he wouldn't need to take Rimadol and so that leg wouldn't hurt him. Because I felt guilty about it. I was carrying him and hurt him. At the same time I had thought on Moses that little Brussels Griffins only lived about seven years, so I asked God to give him the miracle of long life, because I was afraid he was going to die on me, because he was about seven years old.

Later I found out, I read a dog book that said that they live about eight to ten years, but at the time I didn't know that, so I asked for these two things: To heal his leg and to give him the miracle of long life. And I made this prayer in the name of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus. Come the next morning is when I discovered that he had been healed. Originally when I got him the lady that bought him paid $700 for him as a little puppy. She raised Chihuahuas and she threw him in with this litter of Chihuahuas and it was like gladiator school and they were beating him up. They chewed on him, barked at him, and attacked him. He was traumatized about the water dish. And I figured these things out step by step. He was missing a lot of his teeth from fighting with them and he was traumatized. When I'd take him for a walk, he was the weirdest little dog I ever had. He was like taking a turtle for a walk. He was like he had gone into a shell because of the trauma he went through with those other little dogs. He didn't bark, he didn't relate to the world around him. It was like a slow little old turtle. I'd drop his leash and he'd just lay down and he wouldn't move, he'd just lay there. People thought that was really neat that he didn't run off or anything. Well, he wasn't relating to the world. He wasn't normal at all, but I didn't know what was happening with him.

When God healed him, when God heals anybody, he heals completely. He took all the trauma out of Moses from the time he was little with those Chihuahuas. Overnight the next day he turned into a little Brussels Griffin again, curious, intelligent, loose and moving around, getting into everything. I'd take him for walks and let him off his leash. We'd be walking through the apartment complex. He'd go up to every door. If the door was open, he'd walk right into the apartment. You could hear everybody go, Whoa! What's that? And he'd come walking back out the door again. He is real curious, you know, and he's a magic little dog now. And to see him delivered and free.

DAVID: What did you pray over him or how'd you pray over him?

DARVIN: It just came to me one night. I was sitting there and I just prayed to our heavenly Father. I asked him to go and heal little Moses, heal his leg, because it had been hurt, because it was hurting him and I felt guilty, because I was carrying him and he'd broke his leg and he'd been suffering all along and the doctors wouldn't do anything about it, he was taking Rimadol.

DAVID: So basically this was a side effect of that prayer that wasn't really prayed for his mind but his leg, right?

DARVIN: Right. And it was for that and the miracle of long life. And so I made this prayer one night and the next morning is when I saw that he was sleeping, so I didn't see him moving around or anything that evening and I went to bed and I never gave any thought about it and the next morning is when I saw he was a completely different dog. And other people around the apartment complex that had always seen him, I told them what had happened. I gave a testimony and told them I prayed to our heavenly Father and he healed him. And they were just bubbling over. They were full of smiles. They said, He is completely different. They'd never seen him like that. He's really a neat little Brussels Griffin again. And it touched my heart to see that God could do that to him. That meant more to me than my own healing, because I could see it physically in this little animal there in front of me that had been so traumatized and suddenly he was healed and became a happy little Brussels Griffin again. Gave him a new life.

DAVID: And you know God cares for animals. He heals animals as quick as he does humans. It's just the faith. Of course, we're the ones that are responsible for them kind of like we're responsible for our children or whatever. God goes on our faith, doesn't he?

DARVIN: I remember your son's parakeet, the mean one. You prayed for God to give him a new heart.

DAVID: He certainly did.

DARVIN: I love that testimony. I like animals. Those things really have an effect on me and I could relate to that because I saw what happened to Moses. So, you know, I listen to all these testimonies on the Bible study. And that's why it was important I come here. I wanted to give a testimony. I wanted God to get the glory. Because of Satan coming after me the way he did, I wanted him defeated and I wanted God to get the glory for my healing and for Moses' healing, that I wanted everybody out there to know how real it is. All you have to do is turn to him. You don't have to go to doctors, take medicine, go through all these changes and spend all this money. God doesn't charge you anything.

DAVID: You may be a zombie for 15 years if you do.

DARVIN: Boy. Or like my daughter says, If you ever go to the hospital, I'm coming to take care of you, because they'll kill you. And she knows, she's an ICU nurse. And she keeps telling me that every time I talk to her.

DAVID: And she really doesn't know the Lord, does she?

DARVIN: She doesn't believe in God and I need to go visit them. I need to try to change their minds.

DAVID: By the grace of God, right?

DARVIN: Right, that's it. I appreciate I was able to come here and share this with you.

DAVID: Amen. Thank you so much, Darv. That's a good testimony. Fighting the good fight of the faith, folks. Don't give up so easy. Sometimes the Lord wants you to endure a trial and learn a little bit of something about your enemy and learn a little something about the Lord, too, at the same time. And you know what Jesus said: He that endureth to the end shall be saved. God's the one that decides when the trial is over, doesn't he? So just endure, do what you're supposed to do. God will account it to you for righteousness.

Printer-friendly version