9 February 2019 | Tampere, Finland [Andrew McChesney]
A light figure entered the room and chased out the dark figure.
Leena* abruptly turned to her friends, Timo and Anneli*, during a Bible study in her apartment in the city of Raahe, Finland.
“I have a bad feeling,” she said. “Let’s pray.”
The three university students sank onto their knees. At that moment, a tall dark figure burst into the living room and darted over to Anneli. The young woman reeled in horror as the dark figure tried to grab her. She acted like she was about to die.
Timo and Leena prayed more earnestly.
Then a light figure entered the room and chased out the dark figure. The dark figure stood by the door and tried to reenter, but the light figure blocked every attempt. After about 10 minutes, the dark figure gave up and left.
When peace returned to the room, the shaken students pieced together what had happened. Timo had only seen light and dark shadows streak past him on the floor. Leena had witnessed the exchange between the light and dark figures. Anneli would only say that she had seen a tall dark being.
Later on, Timo learned that the attack had unfolded at the same time as a suicide in a nearby home.
“That’s why I had that bad feeling,” Leena said.
Breaking her silence, Anneli acknowledged that she had practiced spiritism in the past and was harassed by evil spirits. God, however, was more powerful, she said. Alone in bed after the Bible study attack, she had seen the light figure enter her room and sit on the bed until dawn. The attacks finally stopped after she was baptized.
“Don’t Get Baptized”
It was the first time that Timo had encountered the great controversy between Christ and Satan up close and personal. It was not the last.
Timo, usually a sound sleeper, woke up one night with the sensation that someone was staring at him in the darkness. Then he heard a voice.
“Don’t get baptized,” the voice said.
Timo, a software engineering student, was preparing to be baptized into the Adventist Church. He peered into the darkness. He couldn’t see anything, but he could sense someone’s presence. He prayed, and the presence left.
The next day, Leena told Timo that someone had committed suicide near his home the previous night.
“Do you know what time?” Timo asked.
She did. It was the exact time when he had woken up.
The unusual warning didn’t stop Timo from being baptized, and he went on to become an Adventist pastor.
Suicide Attempt at Sea
His experiences with the supernatural and suicide didn’t stop.
One day, he and several other Adventist pastors boarded a ferry for an overnight trip to a pastors’ conference in Sweden.
That night, he was restless. After unsuccessfully trying to fall sleep, he felt a sudden urgency to pray. Almost as soon as he started to pray, he heard demonic laughter. The dreadful sound was indescribable, something like a maniac laughing. Timo sensed something bad was happening, but he didn’t know what. He prayed for two hours.
At breakfast, an older pastor approached Timo.
“What was going on with you during the night?” he asked. “The Holy Spirit told me to pray for you.”
He said he had been woken in the middle of the night and had prayed for Timo.
Then another pastor came to the breakfast table.
“You don’t know what happened to me last night,” he said. “I woke up and felt a huge urgency to go outside for some fresh air. When I reached the deck, I saw a man about to jump into the sea.”
The pastor coaxed the man back onto the deck and counseled him for an hour afterward not to kill himself.
When the three pastors compared the timing of their nighttime experiences, they realized that all three had occurred simultaneously.
Timo, now 45 and communication director for the Adventist Church in Finland, sees the three encounters with suicide and the supernatural as evidence that the great controversy between Christ and Satan is very real.
“It is taking place all around us,” he said. “The encouraging thing is Jesus has already won. We have nothing to fear. Even with these supernatural and terrifying events, Jesus still protects us. There is nothing the other side can do.”
Timo Flink says no one needs to be afraid as the great controversy unfolds because Jesus has already won.
This article was first published in Adventist Mission.
* Leena and Anneli are pseudonyms to protect their real identity.
tedNEWS Staff: Victor Hulbert, editor; Sajitha Forde-Ralph, associate editor
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