.
"The nearest motel," said Stan, and within ten minutes they had been deposited by the side of a rather ordinary looking building. They checked themselves in.
Stan collapsed on the bed without even taking his clothes off.
"I think I'd better 'phone home and tell them what's happening, don't you, darling?" asked Hanna. Stan nodded.
Kryztina, who was up late, took the telephone and spoke with Hanna.
"Will you all pray for us because we don't know what to do," asked Hanna.
"Yes, of course, dear, we'll get on to it right away," said Kryztina, slightly concerned.
"Can you call us back about 6 a.m. Helsinki time because right now we're going to crash out," said Hanna. "But ring us earlier if the Lord tells you to."
Hanna signed off and began undressing Stan for bed and the two eventually drifted off after setting their alarm clocks.
Kryztina awakened most of us at Kadesh-Naphtali a little before midnight and we immediately went into intercessory prayer for half-an-hour under Andreea's leadership. At the end of it Andreea looked up.
"No wonder Stan was confused," she said. "The Lord wanted him to fly to Gävle from Helsinki as originally planned but not tonight. He's to take the next flight tomorrow!"
"But why?" I asked. "What was wrong with the flight they were originally booked on?"
"I don't know," replied Andreea. "Only that he and Hanna weren't supposed to be on that flight."
Andreea called back immediately and after Hanna had talked it over with a half-asleep Stan, telephoned the airport and booked them onto the next flight to Gävle which was at the same time as the one they had deliberately missed.
From there on it was plain sailing for the couple. They dutifully boarded the flight to Gävle and returned home without incident. But Stan was a changed man when he and Hanna arrived back at Kadesh-Naphtali. He looked worn out, even depressed. The shine had gone out of his eyes.
I drew Hanna to to one side.
"What's happened to Stan?" I asked with a tone of alarm in my voice. "He looks absolutely terrible. What's the matter with him??"
Stan went off to his room, closed the door, and remained there for some hours in spite of a housefull of wives and children longing to see and talk to him. It was completely unlike him.
"I'm not sure," aswered Hanna. "He seemed happy enough to get on the flight home to Gävle but he was sullen the whole trip. He hardly spoke a word to me - he seemed to be staring right through the passenger seat in front of him as though he was somewhere completely different."
Andreea and Kasia joined in the conversation, to be followed one by one by all the others once they had gotten their little ones into bed and asleep. Though I know I should have waited for all of them so as to preclude the need to repeat everything, I just couldn't.
"He looks a defeated man," said Andreea earnestly. "It's as though he's been in a battle and lost."
Kryztina looked up with some alarm at her.
"Have you seen something we don't know?" she asked, concerned.
Andreea pursed her lips, started to turn away, but thought twice about it.
"If you know something then you have to tell us," said Sarah-Jane, who was as jittery as usual when the atmosphere is charged.
The others agreed and began to press her to speak.
"I don't know ... I'm not sure," said Andreea, hesitating again. "You see, I had a dream, but I'm not sure whether it's inspired or not. Stan says you have to be careful about dreams and ... well ... I'm just not sure. And if isn't inspired, it might get us onto a false path."
"That's fair enough," said Suszana sympathetically. "But why not tell us anyway so that we can ponder and prayer about it. Can't we trust the Lord to lead us as we've always done?"
Andreea looked into her elder sister-wife's eyes gratefully for her understanding. She had acquired somewhat of a reputation for 'spirituality' and didn't want it to go to her head and make her overly self-confident in case it lead to a spiritual fall. She knew how easy it was to flip over into the realm of the soul without even being aware of it. It was an easy thing to do and she had known people who had done so more than once, and sometimes with disasterous consequences. The power of the imagination was such that it could so easily lead to delusions of the mind. Only time and experience could teach a person where the power of the Spirit ended and that of the soul began.
"Well," said Andreea, finally plucking up the courage to speak, "I dreamed that I saw you, Hanna, and Stan in Tartu. You were standing outside a really impressive building with enormous white pillars ..."
"That must have been the university!" exclaimed Hanna excitedly. "That's exactly what it looks like!"
Andreea continued. "Well, there were four women with you - Elisa and the others, I guess - and also a large company of other people. You all seemed to be one group. I suppose that it was the Tartu Fellowship. Stan was talking and everyone was listening very intently.
"Around each person were little winged creatures, flying around their heads. Most of them looked like a combination of a human being and a dove, but some of them were dark and had wings like bats. They were fluttering around. Most of the people had white creatures, some had a mixture, and there were two or three who were completely surrounded by the dark creatures."
Hanna's jaw dropped. She knew exactly what Andreea was talking about.
"As Stan spoke, so the dark creatures began to flap their wings furiously and seemed to be shouting into peoples' ears. They created such a din that somehow the people couldn't hear. Sometimes a person with a mixture of light and dark creatures would slap one of the dark creatures hard with his hand and he would go flying off, only to return later. The light creatures seemed to be in warfare with the dark ones - at least around those people where there was a mixture of them - and sometimes the dark creatures would be driven off and sometimes they wouldn't. I could see that those who were surrounded by more dark creatures than light were distracted and stopped listening to Stan. Three people in particular were so covered in these dark creatures that to all intents and purposes their faces were hidden from sight."
"Those must have been the Satanists - but I thought there were only two in the Fellowship," cried Hanna in alarm.
The others stared at her, not knowing what to say, for they had not been there. We had only received an outline account of the goings-on at Tartu on the 'phone which is one reason we all wanted to interrogate Stan so eagerly on his return.
"The scene changed and I saw two of the men with the dark creatures in some dark place and knew that they were plotting something evil. The creatures were whispering into their ears. Some flew off and then came back and whispered some more, as though they had been off to get some instructions from somewhere. Then I saw a huge angel of Yahweh come into the room - he was dressed in long loose-fitting white garments with a gold belt around his waste and without any sort of warning, struck one of the men a hard blow on his head, and he fell to the ground. At first I thought he was dead but I saw that he was just unconscious. I could see him breathing."
Hanna began to get very excited. "That must have been the Satanist who was taken ill and didn't come to the Sabbath meeting!"
Andreea loked at her keenly, happy to be getting an interpretation of real live events - to be making some sense of the dream.
"The other man, who was still standing, seemed very nervous, and it was obvious that the two were companions of some sort. He disappeared into the darkness, leaving his friend lying on the floor. The little black creatures were trying to revive him but he did not stir."
Andreea paused again, looking to Hanna to help her with the interpretation.
"Do go on!" said Hanna. "I think I know what's coming next!"
Andreea gave a weak smile and proceeded with her account again.
"The dream changed and I was in a small but very bright room filled with people. It seemed to be the same people who had been outside the large building with the pillars. There were only two people surrounded by the dark creatures but they didn't seem to know each other. They sat on opposite sides of the room. Stan was there, preaching. As he did the ceiling of the room seemed to open up and there was an enormous white light which got nearer and nearer to those who were assembled. All at once the little dark creatures started flying off - all, that is, except from the two men. People were falling on to their knees and crying. The door opened and some other people came in. As it did, one of the men surrounded by the dark creatures slipped out and disappeared, leaving the other one trapped in a corner."
"Yuri Gubarev," muttered Hanna under her breath.
"He seemed to be surrounded by half a dozen enormous white angels so that he couldn't escape. Stan came up to him, and the angels stepped to one side so that he could get into the invisible ring. He spoke very harshly to him, waving his arm and pointing his finger at the little black creatures who were firmly pressed against the man's head. One by one the black creatures flew off until they were all gone."
"That was when Yuri the Satanist was saved," said Hanna, as the rest of us gasped. "That was the day we were all filled with the Holy Spirit and started speaking foreign languages supernaturally!"
"Anyway, the dream changed again," continued Andreea. "This time I saw Hanna and Stan together with four women and two other couples standing by a building that I suppose was a railway station. You were all talking. And then I saw a man, just round the corner, not more than two meters away, hidden from view but listening to everything you were saying. His head was swarming with those little black creatures and I recognised him as the man who had slipped out of the meeting room. He was listening to everything you were saying."
A look of horror filled Hanna's face. "Oh no! We were talking about all sorts of things, including the details of our journey back home. That's when he must have learned about our flight from Helsinki to Gävle!!"
All eyes were on Hanna. Andreea broke the silence.
"Anyway, I saw the man run off and that was the end of the dream."
"Wasn't there anything more?" begged Hanna, wanting to know what might have happened to them had they taken the original flight home.
"No," she answered. "That's all I saw."
"But we must find out who that other man was," cried Hanna. "He must have been a satanist who not only escaped Yuri's fate but also the exposure of the satanists at the baptismal meeting! He could be in the Fellowship right now."
"But surely all the satanists worked together?" asked Suszana. "Why wasn't he known by Yuri and the other man?"
"What if he was the sick man?" asked Kasia. "I mean, the one who listened at the railway station?"
"I don't know," replied Hanna. "But we've got to warn Pastor Kuusberg that there's at least one other satanist in his congregation, possibly two."
We all grew alarmed. Hanna rushed off to the 'phone and spoke to Andrus Kuusberg about Andreea's dream.
"Yuri says that his Satanist companion, Alexandr Bogoyavlenski - the one who was ill the day the revival started - is still seriously ill and hasn't left his bed for over a week. The man Andreea saw at the railways station in her dream must have been the third Satanist, the one Yuri knows nothing about," said Hanna.
"Maybe he was from a different coven. Does anyone in the Fellowship know anything about him?" asked Isabel.
"Pastor Kuusberg says none of the members remember anyone going by the description Andreea gave, but then there were several visitors that day. And Yuri said there was only one coven in Tartu so he must have been from out-of-town, and so unknown to the other satanists locally," said Hanna.
There wasn't much anyone could do in any case. The third satanist had obviously left town, for no trace of him was found again. We speculated that somehow they had gotten to know of Stan's visit before he left Sweden and that he was probably sent from Finland, since it was at Helsinki airport, or just before, they had planned to intercept him and Hanna.
"Obviously we have to be very careful when we start talking about our plans and travel arrangements," said Hanna soberly. "Stan's always telling us to be careful what we say and to follow the Spirit."
"Yes," I agreed, "getting control over our tongues is obviously a high priority, especially with so much demonic activity around us and so many occultists and satanists. And we women have got to watch ourselves when others are around us whom we don't know well. It's not nice having to be on guard but we really have no choice."
Hanna nodded in agreement. If she and Stan had checked out the railway station better then there might never have been a scare at Helsinki. As it was, it had seriously unbalanced Stan, and they were all worried about him.