People held captive by fear
Little Samuel was normally a chubby toddler.
But there he laid in the local clinic, missionary Rachel Chapman says, a 20-month-old boy who was severely dehydrated and malnourished.
Samuel had a stomach bug for a month. He had been unable to keep food or liquids down for some time. “He was just skin and bones,” Rachel writes.
The doctors were able to rehydrate the little boy and fed him atole, a type of gruel made from blended grains. The next day, they took Samuel and his parents to a hospital.
Rachel says that Samuel’s parents are blankos, or “white ones.” They are part of a group of people who began claim some months back that they had received special revelation from God. This group taught that God was angry with the people and that was why there was no rain.
Soon after, one of these blanko men started to claim he was God. He told everyone that they must return to “natural,” just the way God created things. Soon many of the people, reacting out of fear and ignorance, began to follow this man.
They burned their beautiful, colorful clothes and wore only coarse, white linen. They got rid of many things—earrings, plastic buckets, metal corn grinders, shoes. They tore down tin roofs and put pine needles in their place. They burned mattresses and blankets, rejecting anything that is “modern.”
The Nahuatl people began to be threatened and charged fines if they consulted a doctor or used modern medicines.
Rachel writes, “Because of the downgrading in their living conditions, many blankos are sick, and disease is spreading quickly. Last week, a baby died. If Samuel’s parents had waited a few more days before calling on the doctors, he would have died, also.”
Rachel says that thankfully none of the Nahuatl people in the village where she lives have followed this false religion, but her heart is very burdened for Nahuatl people in other villages who have been deceived and are suffering so terribly the ravages of this deceit.
Rachel is still awaiting word on how little Samuel is doing.
But last week, she says, they were visited by a very distressed teacher from another neighboring village. The blankos had burned down the school of that village, along with all its books and the living quarters for the teacher.
It is very clear to her that it is ultimately Satan’s lies that are holding these people captive to poverty, ignorance, misery and sometimes death. She cites John 8:44, which says that Satan “has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him … he is a liar and the father of lies.”
“Please pray with us for the lives and hearts of the Nahuatl people,” Rachel says, “Pray that the One true God would draw these people to Himself and that one day they would know that Truth and be set free.”