There was once a man who wished to honor his deceased grandfather. His grandfather had hated and feared one specific group of people the most. He had had them tortured and killed, and deported their leaders, so the grandson decided to do the same. When the last of the ill-fated group rose up in rebellion against this heavy oppression, it was under the leadership of a 16-year-old boy. The man sent his army to lay siege to their stronghold and quelled the rebellion by massacring them all – men women and children.

40,000 Christians died that day. They were essentially the last Christians in Japan. But Tokugawa Iemitu wished to honor his grandfather even further. After all, it was his grandfather who had succeeded in uniting the islands of Japan into one great nation. He decided to make sure there would never again be a Christian in Japan. He forbade all communication with foreign countries and required every citizen in his land to register with a local Buddhist temple. No commerce or business was allowed without a certificate of the temple registration.

That was all he could do, but he still wasn’t satisfied. Man’s best wasn’t good enough for his grandfather, so he invited the spirit world to assist him. Tokugawa Ieyasu was declared to have been a personification of a god. The highest god – spiritual ruler of Japan. Amaterasu no Omikami. A temple was built to worship him, and lesser temples were erected all over Japan, so people could worship him without traveling far.

In this way, Amaterasu no Omikami, the ‘god who illumines the heavens’ was invited to rule Japan at the very outset of its unified government. Amaterasu, the demonic prince of Japan ruled over the princes of each island, who in turn controlled the authorities of each district. The cities were appointed head demons. Each city section and then each household were covered individually.

And so the web of control continues to this day. A web that was set up deliberately to shut out Christianity, and for which a 16-year-old boy, Amakusa Shiro and his 40,000 followers were sacrificed.

And what about all the people in the 360 years since that event? Most of them have been sacrificed to the demonic system, too. One by one they have slipped into an eternity of hopelessness and despair.

A few fortunate individuals have escaped. Perhaps Kiyokazu will be one of them. He was 16, too, when the devil tried to sacrifice him as well. His mother had just become a Christian. Kiyokazu was troubled. He had refused to go to school for most of Junior high. He had passed the test into High School, but quit attending after just two weeks. Perhaps the authorities in charge of his family sensed that he might see his need for redemption, and accept Christ as well, because late that summer his bicycle was hit by a truck, and he slipped into a coma with severe brain damage.

The church began to pray, and a month later he was released from intensive care. Two months later he came home from the hospital, but he was far from OK. The brain damage had taken away his emotional reserve, and he flew into violent rages that were dangerous to everyone around him.

Satan hadn’t succeeded in taking his life, but he was determined to take him, nonetheless. Kiyokazu got involved with a gang of boys who had dropped out of school. For the next three years he sniffed glue, got involved with girls, embezzled money, joined the Mafia, and committed every other crime imaginable. He had just started in on heroine when his friends turned on him and left him half-dead on his doorstep.

About that time his mother, who had been praying for him all along, changed her prayer focus. Up until now it had been specific. “Help him to quit the drugs. Quiet his violent heart. Etc.” She had come to the end of herself. Now she started to pray differently. She said, “God, there is nothing that we can do to help him. He is beyond our reach. I give him to You. You take over. Get a hold of his soul, and don’t let go. Lord, he is Yours to protect and rescue now, not mine. If he starts sniffing glue, or gets into trouble again, that is Your responsibility.” She didn’t start to shake anymore when he started to kick the walls in. She just continued to pray, and God gave her a great peace about the situation.

Kiyokazu was fed up with his unfaithful friends. He broke away from them. Stopped the drugs altogether, and asked the Mafia if he could leave. The violent spells grew shorter and shorter until instead of an hour of raging, they consisted of just one or two holes kicked in the wall. And then this spring, he gave his mother the biggest surprise of all. “I can’t believe all those people in your church would pray for someone who they have never met. I want to go and see what kind of people they are.”

So Kiyokazu started coming to church. “I have no desire to become a Christian.“ He told my daughter at a church picnic last week. “Every week I decide to never come back. But every Saturday, I find myself wondering what I will wear to church the next day. Yesterday, I even found myself asking my boss if I could have Sunday off to go to church.” Recently, he has stopped telling his mother, “I will never become a Christian!”, and started saying “It’s not like I don’t believe”. I talked to his mother today. She said over and over, “I would never have believed he would be like this today. I hardly recognize him from the violent demented mess he was a year ago.” I asked her if she felt it was God’s doing as a result of prayer, and she gave me a resounding ‘Yes!’

Lots of people pray for their children, and for others. What’s the difference? I feel there are two main factors. Others are praying also. Kiyokazu’s aunt in particular prays, not only for him, but for his mother, that she will be able to pray for him. Our supporting churches in the States are praying as well. Cumulative prayer is powerful! 360 years of oppression can’t withstand it! But sheer numbers and hours spent in prayer is not enough. The real change started taking place only after his mother surrendered the situation to God’s grace, power and wisdom. Simple trust and humility, and an awareness of our own helplessness in the situation is a must before God will move mightily on our behalf.

In a sense, that’s easy. 100 years of mission work in Japan have shown that there is nothing we can do to initiating a great awakening. First, the web of satanic power must be broken, and only God can do that. That’s why several of us have initiated the Free Japan movement. We want to invite as many churches as we can, both in Japan and all over the world to pray for God to bind satan and pour out His Holy Spirit, so that a great multitude of Japanese people will come to Christ. We want to meet from all over at the Toshogu shrine to ask God to break the great web that has Japan bound, and free her people to turn to Christ. We’ve chosen March 2004 as an initial target date. I know you are praying for Japan as well, but I can’t help but wonder what great things God would do if we all joined together to beseech Him in one great chorus for this nation. Will you join us? Check out Free Japan’s web page at (hopefully Bryan will have an address for us before this goes to the press). Or you can call or e-mail.

In any case, will you pray with us for Kiyokazu? His best friend just got out of prison in June, and his mother is concerned that the glue and drugs will start all over again. Pray that the devil will not have access to him until he has definitely accepted Christ as his Savior, and that God will use him to bring his friends in to the Kingdom as well.