PERU 2012 - Machu Picchu: Claiming the Inca Empire for Jesus

Aguas Calientes, Peru

Sunday, March 25, 2012

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Machu Picchu: Claiming the Inca Empire for Jesus

I feel blessed beyond measure that our team was able to travel to Machu Picchu, which is considered one of the "seven wonders of the world." We flew from Lima to Cusco last week and stayed two days in order to get acclimated to the elevation of 10,000 feet. From Cusco we took a bus two hours north, then hopped on a train for another hour and a half and arrived at the city of Aguas Calientes. We stayed at a nice hotel, but were only able to get a few hours of sleep since we were wanting to travel to Machu Picchu early in the morning in order to watch the sunrise over the ruins. So at 5:30 am we boarded another bus that would take us a half an hour up the mountains to Machu Piccu.

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The only word to describe the ancient city of Machu Picchu is breath taking. We were able to climb different trails in order to get different views of the ruins and also explored the ruins. As a part of our group package deal, we were able to take a guided tour of Machu Picchu. Our guide was a Quechua man who filled us in on the very interesting history of Machu Picchu as well as the Inca civilization itself.

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The city of Machu Picchu was discovered in 1911, and was most likely built in the 1500's. Machu Picchu is one of one hundred Inca sites, all which have a tremendous amount of importance to the indigenous people. Many people make pilgrimages to all one hundred sites, which represent one hundred constellations, and perform various rituals that are required. The Inca people worship the sun which they call, "Father Sun," and the earth which they call, "Mother Earth." Every morning the residents of Machu Picchu would welcome "Father Sun" with singing and dancing. Machu Picchu is the name of the large mountain overlooking the Inca city. No one really knows the name of the city. Within the mountains that overlook the city one can see what the people say look like a condor and a puma, both which hold spiritual significance both to the Inca and the pre-Inca civilizations. The condor was said to be the vehicle which would carry the spirit of the deceased to "heaven," and the puma represents strength, which marked the Inca empire. The Inca were hard workers, which enabled them to not be conquered by the Spanish until later in their history. In fact the Spanish never made it to Machu Picchu. There is the Inca trail which runs 84 kilometers to Cusco. This is significant because it helps modern historians understand better the relationship between the different Inca cities. In fact, in order to get messages from city to city, relay runners would be camped every two kilometers along this trail and hand off ropes made from different colors and with knots in various places, which the Inca would easily be able to decifer. Each Inca city, including Machu Picchu had a high priest who would never eat meat and had demonic powers to be able to know the past, present and future. There is even a hidden city called, "Paititi" which is said to contain ancient Inca gold. The Spanish took 1% of this gold on boats back to Spain, but 99% of this gold is still said to be hidden in the jungles. It is also said that the Inca guard this treasure and that anyone with the spirit of the white man can never see it. In fact, some of the tribes in these regions are still cannibalistic who kill and eat foreigners. In the midst of such darkness, there are many things in the Inca culture that we believe would be eternity in their hearts, yet have been twisted by the enemy. For example, the Inca use the rainbow flag and it represents their anticipation of the last Inca who will return someday to save their people. We were able to glean quite a bit about the Inca civilization from our Quechua guide.

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All of this insight into the Inca empire caused our team even more so desire to worship, take communion and in unity usher in the Kingdom of God into the region. And this is just what we did. We believe that the strongholds of the area were confronted as we pleaded the blood of Christ over the land. We sang together. One of our team members had a song that God had given her to sing at the top of Machu Picchu. She also heard from God that we should shout a call and response from Machu Picchu. It went like this, "Who enters the gates?" The response being, "The Lord strong and mighty! The Lord mighty in battle!" Our team linked arms and yelled this chant at the top of our lungs. As we did this, a security guard came and blew his whistle in our faces ordering us to stop. He said that we were yelling like crazy people. Full of laughter, we responded, "Somos locos por Jesucristo," or in English, "We are crazy people for Jesus Christ!" We saw the security guards heart melt with the love of Jesus as we hugged him and loved on him. What a great way to end our day at Machu Picchu. Heaven knows the full extent of what took place as our team gathered in warfare prayer on behalf of the indigenous people who have been in bondage for centuries.

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Christian Young