Dear Friends,
The devil is no match for Jesus! If you have served the Lord for any amount of time, I am sure you have come to realize this truth. As an evangelist, I have observed this reality time and again. On my most recent crusade trip to Cuba, I saw Jesus consistently defeat the works of the devil and I want to tell you some of these stories.
Getting into the Communist country of Cuba is no easy task. Even with the recent changes that have been made to that country, it is still very much closed to the outside world. And as is customary in Communist nations, the government works quite hard to limit the amount of Christian evangelism in their country. In order to preach the Gospel in Cuba, the government must grant you special permission to preach.
As I tried to board the plane in Florida to fly to Cuba, I was told by Cuban authorities that I would not be able to preach the Gospel there. Upon hearing this, we prayed for a miracle. I contacted my family to pray and asked our contacts in Cuba to pray. Eventually the authorities told me that they would allow me to fly to Cuba but I would not be allowed to preach. But we continued to pray, and when I arrived in Camaguey, Cuba, a government official approached me and called me by name, giving me a visa and official authority to preach the Gospel! God had answered our prayer and the devil’s attempt to keep me from preaching in Cuba had failed!
As I began to minister around the country, I found that there were many more people who had been praying than I even realized. I ministered in three different cities during my time in Cuba. When I arrived in the smallest of the cities, Guaimaro, I was welcomed by a group of church members who were just about to walk throughout the streets inviting people to our crusade that night. I met the pastor of the church in this city who introduced me to the group. He told me, “This group of believers has been praying for a revival like this to happen in our country for years, some of us for decades. When we heard you were coming, we started to pray. For months we have been praying and fasting for you. We were told that there were issues with your visa and have been praying and we can see that the Lord has answered our prayer.” These people, whom I had never even met, had been praying for my arrival, and their prayers had been answered. The plans of the enemy were thwarted by the power of prayer!
It is no wonder to me that the devil tried to stop me from coming to Cuba considering the hold he has had on this country for so many years. And he had every right to be fearful because the work that occurred in Cuba was outstanding! In that same city of Guaimaro we had two outdoor crusade meetings. Now, considering crusade meetings make up so much of our ministry, this may not surprise you, but this was truly historic for Cuba. Our contacts in Cuba informed me that these were some of the first outdoor meetings in the country since T.L. Osborn’s crusades in the early 1950s, prior to the Communist Revolution. We held these outdoor crusades in two different cities in Cuba. The local pastors were amazed that this was happening because they had never seen something like this happen before. Once again, God was breaking down strongholds the devil has had in Cuba for decades!
Of course, the fact that we were simply meeting outside is not the significant part; the significant part is what was happening at these outdoor crusades (as well as the many other services we had throughout the course of the trip). There were so many psychological and physical miracles that occurred. One woman testified to being healed of schizophrenia. A man came to the stage carrying his grandson to testify that God had healed his back. Before we prayed he could barely walk, but now he could do much more than walk—he brought his grandson on stage and begin to lift him above his head to demonstrate his healing!
One of the most incredible miracles of all, though, was of a young woman who came forward to testify that Jesus had healed her of an incredibly painful problem. She had a bone in her hip that was out of socket and had actually punctured her skin. As you can imagine, this was causing her a great deal of pain. Yet, when she put her faith in Jesus to heal her, something supernatural happened: that bone that was sticking out of her skin went back inside of her and popped back into place, the skin on her hip where the hole had been had been completely healed and all pain was gone! Once again, Jesus had defeated the works of the enemy!
Of course, the greatest miracle of all is the miracle of salvation, and there was no shortage of those who came to Christ. I told one pastor in another city that 200 people had accepted Christ at one of our crusades. He practically fell out of his chair saying, “I pastored in that city for 5 years and never saw anything close to what you had in just one night!” This is only possible because of the work of the Lord! Each night people would come to the altars, many falling down and weeping as they accepted Jesus!
One miraculous salvation was that of a young woman named Arely. Arely is from Panama. Her mother had asked her to go on vacation to Cuba, and although she did not want to, her mother convinced her to come. Her mother, a Christian, had received a word from her pastor in Cuba that she would receive something great in Cuba. On Sunday morning Arely and her mother were walking down the street when they passed the Church where I was preaching. Arely’s mother wanted to attend the church and reluctantly, Arely obliged her mother. They sat in the pews listening to me preach. Arely was convicted by the message, and when I gave an altar call for salvation, Arely was one of the first ones up to the front. Her mother was overjoyed—she had received the great thing that had been prophesied to her; her daughter had been welcomed into the family of God!
As I said at the beginning: the devil is no match for Jesus! Thank you for your prayers and your giving. Together we are seeing national transformation in Cuba, for the glory of God!
Joshua Wagner