Who is Free From Bondage Ministry,
and What do we Teach.
Who "We" Are:
Since publication of the Free From Bondage books, there have been significant numbers of people asking "Who is Free From Bondage Ministry". So it is time to let you know.
By the way, in the book "General Application of the Who Told You Principle. Repent and Overcome or Else......" there is already a brief description of how Free From Bondage Ministry came about. But let me give you the whole deal here.
My name is Marco Werkhoven. I was born and raised in The Netherlands in Europe (hence the grammatical errors in my writings, English is after all my second language). As a child I suffered ongoing health challenges, which on many occasions stunned the medical world. Severe allergies, bone diseases, asthma, ongoing bronchitis, immune system not kicking in during common childhood diseases, and the list goes on and on. To a point where doctors, during a 6 month spell of mono wondered if I had a hidden form of leukemia because my immune system was not kicking in. I even got Mums twice (!!). I think I can safely say I attended school only half-time. The other half of the time I was sick. In my teenage years I strengthened in my health, but was overtaken by an addiction to alcohol. Besides alcohol pretty much anything that I got involved in quickly turned into an obsessive and addictive involvement. Somewhere deep inside I knew it was wrong, but I could not stop myself. Accept for the alcohol problems. After three years of pretty heavy drinking on a too regular basis during my teenage years I stopped. But every day after that was a small battle to not slide back. And even though my health was somewhat better, I still struggled with severe allergies on an ongoing basis, that kept getting worse every year. They seemed to be less if I worked out to a level of exhaustion on a regular basis, so working out in any and all sports activities became another addiction very quickly.....
My parents were both raised Catholic, and continued that with my brother and I, but we all turned away from the church when I was about nine years old because of issues at the church that were very unrighteous. At that early age I already noticed that the people attending church did not always live how the church told them to live, and that the church was all too often teaching things that could either not be found anywhere in the Scriptures or could even be refuted by the Scriptures. So even though my parents continued their faith at home, I did not follow. In my teenage years I dropped God, Jesus and the Bible all together, seeing too many people claiming to believe but not living like it. I considered it hypocrisy to be affiliated with that. If that was religion, no thanks, not for me!
In 1994, Irene (my highschool sweetheart) and I moved to the United States of America to pursue our careers in the medical field. As I already found out during my education and internships, there were too many unanswered questions no matter how many answers the medical world had. In frustration, I searched for answers, but always lacking the core issue to which everything seemed to be related. As well conventional medicine as alternative channels did not seem to have any basic answer around which everything evolved. I kept digging and looking but without any success. It seemed that the more I dug, the more I realized that my quest for the core issue would not just apply in healthcare, but would apply in every area of life.
Due to a request from a very dear friend to get married in the most uncommon location, I decided to become ordained as a minister. I thought it was really interesting that everyone I mentioned this to, told me that I should do less in the medical world and do more as a minister. I laughed it off, since I had walked away from God, Jesus and the Bible in my teenage years. I know now that God had a plan for me.
In the early 2000's and beyond, my health, physical but also mentally, started to get more troubled than ever before. Allergies soared so that about 1/3 of my nights were like a battle to make it to the next morning. Days were bad. Bad enough that our doctor wanted to admit me to the hospital. But with the nights being dozens of times worst than the days, and me surviving those, I could not see myself suffering in a hospital bed. No treatment or medication, conventional or alternative, made any difference. I suffered from frightening heart arythmia which did not show up on a cardiac test, but I could feel my heart go haywire in my chest. I was addicted to a multitude of things one could think of, even healthy things and activities that I pulled into extremes because something drove me to do it. Every day was a battle to not give in to addictive substances and activities. Depression kicked in, and increased over time to an unmanageable problem. And from being in healthcare I did not want to get on medication for that since I saw too many people still suffering through the depression but now with an artificial smile, no better of than before (yeah, the commercials sound great.....).
And I knew that many of the things I did were wrong, but I could not stop it. The torment of pain and suffering would increase and increase if I tried to resist the wrong doing. And I knew that if I would give in I would be relieved from that pain and suffering for at least a while.
All this increased my quest for answers. But now being emerged in the mill stream of battling a health issue myself from the patient side, the frustration about the lack of answers increased. Starting in 2004 until spring 2009 conventional as well as alternative "healers" one after the other told me they were out of ideas. They could not help me anymore. By summer and fall 2009 I was feeling so terrible that I was not sure if I would get to see 2010. Not only was I in physical pain every day (although daytime was nothing compared to the torment I was going through most nights), but mentally and emotionally I was ready to finish life one way or the other. During the annual climbing trip in the Alps with my brother in the summer of 2009, I was trying to figure out how I could create a climbing accident such that he would survive but I would die. But my love for him held me from following through on my plans, knowing that he would never recover from a disaster like that. Back home I had several other plans to end life brewing in my head. The only thing holding me from doing that was the love I felt for my wife and son.
Now I do want to make clear here that nobody noticed what was going on with me. Yes, my beautiful wife Irene knew I suffered with the ever increasing allergies. Although even there she did not know to what extend I battled through many nights. But even she was not aware of my daily battles against addictions, the depression and my thoughts to end it all. Ending it, just so that I could be free from my pain, my suffering. Yes, I played the part really good..... Nobody knew.
However, beginning of summer of 2009 a good friend, who knew about the tip of the iceberg of the allergy issue I was dealing with since he noticed my physical problems during daytime, referred me to the Bible for answers. He gave me a recording of a sermon that addressed healing through Biblical principle. I thought it to be a pretty basic message, but a light went on in my head: The missing core issue that I had been looking for all these years!! Apprehensive but looking desperate for an answer, I picked up the Bible and started reading and studying. Only to find that the frustrations that drove me away from the Bible as a teenager were actually very clearly laid out in the Bible. How people acted, lived, suffered or prospered, was laid out for me in the Bible, indeed showing me the core issue that I had been looking for for all these years: A spiritual warfare between God and Satan, and how we are right in the middle of it. We, as God's most precious creation, are Satan's ultimate target for the warfare. And I, by not believing in God and Christ as my rescuer, was by default choosing Satan. Giving Satan and his demons a right to torment me however they pleased.
Taking that as the basis for studying God's Word brought me to a complete new understanding of the Bible. The message behind the stories so to speak. So at the start of fall 2009 I started praying and asking God to heal me. Nothing happened. I asked again. Again nothing. I kept at it, but nothing changed. Meanwhile I kept studying the Word, understanding that it wasn't God coming up short that I wasn't getting healed. I read that God's people were being destroyed for a lack of knowledge. And I was for sure being destroyed, so I clearly lacked knowledge somewhere. But I understood by now that my only way out was through Christ.
Digging through the Lord's Prayer I suddenly understood something very important. Christ was using a sequence for a reason. We worship, we repent, and then we get delivered. I realized that asking for deliverance without understanding my sin issues and repentance from my heart was asking God to do for me what I was not willing to do for Him, others and myself. A direct violation of Christ's two great commandments.
So I pulled out all the plugs and started studying the Word to understand my sins, my dis-obedience towards God. The Bible was tellIing me to repent and overcome. To cast my care upon Him. That I needed to cleanse myself from all filthiness. And in order to do that I needed to, as David wrote: Have my sins forever before me. Could I become cleansed by myself? No, impossible! I needed Christ for that. Only through Him could I be forgiven and washed whiter than snow. Only through me being in Him could I gain authority over Satan and his demons. But I realized I could not repent and overcome or cast upon Him what I didn't understand to have going on inside of me. I needed to take ownership and responsibility of my sins in my heart. Only then could I follow him with my heart, and not just with my mouth.
Just after Thanksgiving 2009, being home alone, I felt a deep desire to pray for someone whom I knew needed help beyond what the world could offer. But less than fifteen minutes into that prayer an overwhelming message came back. It was time that I prayed for me, myself. Using all that I learned, I prayed. Walking around our livingroom screaming, sobbing on my knees, shaking and crying as a sweating heap on our living room floor, I could feel as if a warm hand reached down into my chest and ripped out all that was evil. Painful yes, and yet so good. It was so overwhelming that I could not comprehend what happened to me. Within an hour and a halve I was delivered and healed from all that was about to kill me.
When Irene came home that afternoon the first words out of her mouth were "What happened??", because she could see that there was a change in me.
Am I completely free of everything? Compared to how bad it was, I would like to say yes. Although since that fall day in 2009 I do still have some mild seasonal allergies when the famous juniper blooms. A sting in an eye from time to time, a runny nose on a few days. I did pray for that, but I feel God is leaving this with me as a little warning sign. Like how Paul has "A thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, attached to him, lest he exalts himself". A little sting, a little sniffle to let me know where I was, what He has done for me, so that I dedicate everything I do to Him.
I am alive today and can tell you this because He saved me. And I enjoy being alive, with my lovely wife, my fun son, and my God, my Christ!!
It took me a few weeks from the day I felt God ripping all that evil from me, that I truly started to realize what had happened. I guess it was just so intense, so "unbelievable" that it took time to sink in. And then I started praying: "You have done this for me, now what do I need to do for You??" And then the dreams started. The same dream every night, in detail showing me what He wanted from me. Books that would tell people about what I had learned about the spiritual warfare. Nineteen to start with, and He told me the subjects I had to touch on.
So I started writing. While I was writing, and for sure when I finished those first nineteen books, I felt a great apprehension to publish them. After all this is warfare. What if I had been listening to a spirit, just not the Holy One?? So I prayed again, and again at night I was told very clearly that Satan would never ask me to write things that would expose his warfare strategies....... In my prayer I had also included the question how I was going to be able to publish all these books. I did not have a money tree growing in the back yard. It was the next day that friends came over for dinner, and out of the blue the man of the couple starts talking about online publishing......... Thank you God!!!
Taking what I learned into the medical field (very carefully, to not loose my medical license over it), miracles happened all over the place. A few of these are listed in the book "General Application of the Who Told You Principle...... Repent and Overcome or Else......". I talked with friends and family, who related to finally understand. And I prayed and prayed. Then again at night in my dreams I was instructed to go to the next step, and this has repeated itself over and over and over.
And I can tell you Satan was not happy I did this. During writing of the book "General Application of the Who Told You Principle...... Repent and Overcome or Else......", I was subjected to seven nights and days of torment. Not able to wake up I was tormented with severe nightmares of all the terrible things my family would undergo if I continued to write. I had severe physical pains, and literally felt all night as if someone was sitting on my chest, choking me. I would trash in the bed all night. My wife, who normally is a light sleeper did not notice anything, although she did end up one night getting scratched really badly while my nails were neatly trimmed........ Daytime was normal when considering that kind of torment, as the torment disappeared as soon as I would wake up in the morning and I would pray. Within seconds or minutes the torment would disappear, only to return the next night to stay until prayer at waking up. However, during the day all major health issues that I had suffered from my childhood until now returned full force. All of this was also taken from me within minutes after prayer for the specific issue at hand, based on the research I was doing. Although sometimes it took hours of prayer to find the Biblical verses that would give the answers. It provided much information for the book though...... It was clear that someone was "Telling me...." to stop writing, but that God was there to see me through.
So who is Free From Bondage Ministry? Me, my wife, a few good friends that help either study or challenge me with questions. And of course my son. He keeps me on my toes. One evening a while back, when he had just turned seven (2012), I told him I loved him more than anything else in the world. He looked at me and said I was wrong. Asking him what he meant, he answered; "You should love God more, and God loves me more than you can ever love me". Wow!!!
The Theology:
We want to make sure that those following Free From Bondage Ministry understand why we preach what we preach. And why we do not necessarily agree with many other ministry practices out there.
The theology we go by is simple.
- The Bible is a book of war.
- This war is between God and Satan and is played out through God's most precious creation: us.
- We are helpless in this war without God and Christ on our side.
- Sins are our free will actions under the influence of evil, which can either be just by temptations or a literal "dwelling within" of demons, making us choose Satan's side in the warfare.
- Only through God and Christ do we have forgiveness of sin and can we be delivered from evil.
- Being forgiven and receiving deliverance does not make one immune to the warfare, and Satan will still do everything possible to win you back to his kingdom.
- We come to God and Christ through faith.
- Faith is pure if we devote our life to living as Christ (the Word) tells us.
- Living according to Christ (the Word) is only possible by understanding the Word.
- Understanding the Word includes understanding the warfare, our sins and our responsibilities.
- Therefore suffering during this worldly life as well as in eternity in torment from evil, and not receiving forgiveness and deliverance is rooted in our own lack of knowledge, lack of understanding sin, lack of repentance, and as Christ called it "Oh yeh of little faith", our unfaithfulness.
There are many deliverance ministries out there, all too often teaching and preaching things that cannot be found back in Scriptures:
- Demonic hierarchies (which have a 15th century origin).
- An understanding of Satan and his demons, even through "talking" with them (demons have thousands of years of warfare experience, are liars, and even Christ barely allowed them to speak).
- The use of the right words or techniques to cast out demons (which would place the power with the minister while all power lies with God and Christ).
- That a minister or pastor can safely and forever deliver someone from a demon (while the true deliverance is based on the true faith of the person, which someone other than God cannot determine).
- And the list goes on and on.
If it cannot be found in Scripture without speculating on the Word, manipulating it, leaving things out or adding things, then it is not of God. That type of ministry is Satan being disguised as an angel of light, dragging people into his pit. The advice: Believer beware!
Have a very blessed day,
In His services,
Marco