Expect the Wolves

It was near midnight when the phone rang and Pastor Jim Cymbala answered. A pastor in South Dakota was on the phone. He wanted the Brooklyn pastor to know God had laid the inner city on his heart and seemed to be directing him to bring his family to New York. Pastor Jim listened politely, then told him how things were there.

Jim and Carol Cymbala were just beginning the work which would become the great Brooklyn Tabernacle. In those days, only a few people were meeting, the finances were small, and both the pastor and his wife were holding down two jobs to make ends meet. That night, he promised the South Dakota pastor he would ask the Lord to direct their steps.

One week later almost to the minute, the phone rang again. “We’re coming!” the South Dakota pastor said. “My wife, two kids, and I are packing up and leaving for New York tomorrow!” The Lord had spoken so clearly to them, he said, they had no doubt this was what they were to do.

This surprising turn of events unnerved Pastor Cymbala. What are these folks expecting from him? He had no work for them and no place for them to stay. He had not invited them to come to New York and yet they were on their way.

He asked the preacher to call him when they got to New Jersey.

Four days later, the phone call came. They were almost to New York. Jim ran to the store and bought the cheapest steaks he could find. Relating this story in “The Church God Blesses” (Zondervan, 2002), Pastor Cymbala says, “We didn’t have much money, but we wanted to be as hospitable and gracious as possible.”

That evening the Cymbalas received the young husband and wife and two beautiful children into their home. Over supper, they listened to their plans to make their lives count for God in New York City. Jim writes, “I was too shy and inexperienced to ask about their former pastorate or how they were able to leave South Dakota on such short notice.”

Soon the question arose as to where they could stay. Eventually, Jim and Carol decided they could make them a bedroom on the second floor of the church. “It wasn’t much but an elderly lady lived up there in a tiny apartment and another church member lived on the premises with her daughter.”

During the Friday night activities at the church, the visitors met some members of the congregation. On Sunday, Pastor Cymbala introduced them to the church. “I noticed he had gotten friendly with some of the members very quickly.”

Everything was going fine. Or so it seemed.

Then everything began to unravel.


On Monday, Pastor Jim received a call from the woman who lived in the church with her daughter. “You have a real problem on your hands,” she said. “And it happens to be that visiting pastor and his wife.”

She had overheard the visiting minister criticizing the Cymbalas to members of the church. “The pastor’s family is living too high on the hog while not caring about the church members. Why, they’re even eating expensive steaks!”

Naively, Pastor Jim told the lady not to worry, thinking she must have misunderstood.

That night during his prayer and Bible time, the Holy Spirit seemed to intercede for him. “The odd thing is that it seemed my great burden was for me and not someone else.” Eventually, at 2 a.m., he went to bed.

The next morning, he arrived at the church around 9:30 a.m. and headed to the kitchen to make coffee. The visiting minister and his wife came in shortly after. Wanting to clear up any misunderstandings, Pastor Jim told them what the woman had told him. Was it true? If so, why would they say such things?

The preacher and his wife looked at one another, then he said, “Honey, maybe we should tell him now. What do you think?” She agreed it was time.

The man stood up quickly and whirled at Pastor Jim. “You’re through here, Jim. It’s all over for you and your wife.”

As the pastor stood there flabbergasted, the man continued, “You’ll never preach here again! God has sent us to take over and get things right!” Then, Cymbala writes, “they both started grinning and laughing in those low-pitched tones.”

Pastor Jim went numb. What was happening here? Who are these people — and what’s happening here in this kitchen?

But they weren’t through, not even close.

“Both of them stood up and began circling me — talking, accusing, and boasting, but all of it within a spiritual framework. Their personal attack was an assault like nothing I had ever encountered before. They proceeded to enumerate all the reasons why I had to leave and claimed that God had spoken very clearly to them.”

For the next few hours, they argued back and forth, the pastor trying to reason with them and respond to their claims. The couple told him of other church members who also felt Jim needed to leave and this couple move in.

When he checked, he found they were right.

“I was stunned. How could this couple have done all this mischief in less than a week? What evil power am I dealing with, anyway?” For a long moment, Jim thought of resigning the church and handing it over to them. Then something inside him strengthened.

He noticed both the husband and wife glaring at him with a devilish glee. At that moment, his desire to reason with them disappeared. For the first time he saw clearly what he was up against.

Jim Cymbala looked at the grinning couple and called out, “You devil!”

“Suddenly the man let out a horrible, loud cry and started running toward me at full speed. I had an instant to react, but I just closed my eyes and stood still.”

The man came to a stop just one foot away. Pastor Jim said, “You and your family are leaving right now, or I’m calling the police.” He could not help noticing that while he himself was weary from the hours of bickering back and forth, the couple still seemed fresh.

Now they changed their tactics. “Please let us stay,” they begged. Now they started telling Pastor Jim how much they admired him and that it would be a privilege to work alongside him.

“No! You have to go!” Jim said. A voice inside him kept warning him not to give in to their pleas for just “one more night.”

It took another hour to sink into their heads that they were being evicted from the church. Pastor Jim even helped them carry their boxes to their car. At last, around 4:30 p.m., they pulled away from the little church building.

He never heard from them again. But for the next week, Pastor Jim was exhausted and spent long hours lying on the couch in the living room.

Eventually, Pastor Jim Cymbala concluded that Satan had an inkling of the great church God was building there and was trying to put a stop to it. “Maybe he knew that former drug addicts, lawyers, former homosexuals, doctors, blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians would one day lift up their voices together to praise God for transforming their lives.”

“What Satan meant for evil, God in the end worked out for our good (Genesis 50:20).”

Reading that story in the Lifeway Christian Store here in New Orleans today, I decided I had to buy the book and read it all. I’ve been to Brooklyn Tabernacle and know first-hand what a powerful witness the Lord has built in that community through Jim and Carol Cymbala. Equally importantly, being a longtime pastor, I have also seen how Satan sends his underlings to undermine the church and undercut God’s pastor.

Readers in Richmond, Virginia, will recall the women who used to picket Grove Avenue Baptist Church, accusing Pastor Vander Warner of every cruel thing they could imagine. When the courts ordered the women off the property, they took their stands at various entrances with huge hand-lettered signs attacking this man of God. When he traveled to Europe to preach, they even followed him there. The Sunday I visited Grove Avenue, I noticed the women picketing before the worship service and they were still there when we came out. I walked over to one. “Ma’am, may I ask where you went to church this morning?” She answered, “The Lord revealed to me that I am the church.”

I did not spend long with this person. She was clearly dangerous.

In my own ministry, I have seen angry church members standing in the foyer of the church attacking my leadership and accusing me of every slanderous thing that came to their minds.

No one answering the Lord’s call should walk into this work na

2 thoughts on “Expect the Wolves

  1. A very good writing. Yes there are wolves among us in our churches and other places. Indeed we need people to be praying for Pastor’s of churches. Some years ago a friend of mine, who has gone on to his reward in heaven, related this story. He was traveling by plane to speak at some place. He also was fasting. Seated next to him was an individual that also appeared to be fasting. He got into a conversation with the man and found out he was an atheist. My friend asked him what he was concerned about that he was fasting. He said, ” I am fasting and praying that the devil will act and get every minister and his wife to separate and destroy their marriages.” The forces are in our midst to destroy God’s work. (I Peter 5:8)

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