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Cambodia Trip Report, Part 3

Each time we prayed at site, S---- felt a release take place in the atmosphere over the place. S---- was well trained in a special form of martial arts known only to a few in the royal family. His training allowed him to develop what some call a sixth sense, but which is actually spiritual discernment. He can feel the atmosphere and know if it is troubled or at peace.

There are many killing field sites that he has been unable to visit or enter, because he felt the intense anger and pain in those places. In many places, thousands of men, women, and children were blindfolded and thrown down from towers to their deaths. Their blood has cried out to God for justice. In those days the purpose of the killing fields was to destroy the educated class, which was considered to be dangerous to the political system. Much of Cambodia’s educated class—more than 3 million—were killed so that the people could be more easily controlled.

Cambodia is a traumatized country, and the emotional scars are seen everywhere, especially at the places where people were being killed. The killers used many of the old castles/temples to do their murderous deeds, as these places provided towers where people could be cast off to their deaths on the stones below.

S---- himself has a friend who, as a young man, served as a guard at one of the sites that we visited. This is the site.

That friend now regrets his participation in these murders, because he is no longer brainwashed, but he remembers these things and has testified of what he saw. That particular site was very painful for S---- himself, and when he took us there, it was the first time that he had been able to enter the ruins of that temple. We walked around the side of it in order to enter the structure.

Brad took this picture of us with the newer Buddhist temple in the background.

Here is one of the main towers, as viewed from the other side. It is the tower from which thousands were thrown to their deaths.

From the ledge in this tower, we looked out from one side at the nearby Buddhist temple, which had been built more recently.

I suspect it was built in order to try to deal with the spiritual condition in the atmosphere around this older structure. However, innocent blood cannot be cleansed apart from the blood of Jesus, which alone provides the solution in the divine court. No amount of spiritual training or good works is sufficient, for all has been tainted by sin back to the time of Adam. Only the blood of a perfect Sacrifice can suffice—blood for blood, as the law demands. When we prayed and took communion there, he could feel the pain and anger dissipate around him. S---- and his fiancé participated in the communion.

As we climbed down, you can see the remains of the old moat that once surrounded this temple. It is now just a lake on one side.

After our prayer work, we walked back to the dirt road where we had parked the car, and we enjoyed some fresh coconut juice from the local fast-food restaurant, which had been built to serve tourists coming to that site.

As I said earlier, we drove west to Battambang after spending two nights and one full day in Siem Reap. We spent a week there as guests of S----’s fiancé and her family.

When S---- had arrived in Cambodia a few hours ahead of us on November 11, he discovered that he was formally engaged to be married. His mother (who lives here in Minneapolis) and his fiancé’s parents (who live in Battambang) had made the final arrangements while S---- was flying to Siem Reap.

S----’s father was killed decades ago in the killing fields of Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime, so he asked me to be his father and for Brad to be his brother. He had no other family for the engagement ceremony. We were greatly honored to play those roles, though we had no idea what we were supposed to do.

Yet we did take note that this adoption essentially gave us authority in our right to do spiritual work in Cambodia. As S----’s father and brother, we were essentially adopted as Cambodians, not in the official government records, but insofar as spiritual laws were concerned. Hence, even if S---- himself had not been with us, we could do all of the necessary work by ourselves.

By the way, I should note here that others came from other countries before and after our visit to pray for Cambodia. There is always something that foreigners can do, even without linking up with local citizens. Their work supplemented what we were doing, allowing us to do greater things in the spiritual realm than we could have done without them. (Intercessors came from the Philippines before we arrived, and one came from Singapore after we had gone.)

We are always glad that others share the burden of intercession and prayer. We praise God for raising up such people and for training them by actual experience. Of course, we are aware that much prayer has gone up to the throne of God throughout the past centuries as well. No prayer is lost, though often such prayers are put in heavenly storage for a future time.

In my next report, you will see the kind of humanitarian work that S----’s fiancé does. We accompanied her on some of her missions to various primary schools in remote areas, where the children are poor and often orphaned. I will also show pictures of their engagement ceremony. I do not have access to the pictures taken by the photographer, but we managed to take a few ourselves while participating in the ceremony.