In a powerful declaration, God promises that if those who are called by God’s Name, will humble themselves and pray, then God will not only forgive their sin, but He will heal the land (2 Chronicles 7:14).

This promise was literally fulfilled in a powerful way for a church in Germany, CBN reports.

Wera Forum, located in Duisburg, is today made up of a the main congregation and four satellite churches with a combined attendance of a 1,000 people.

Duisburg is located at the point where Rhine and Ruhr rivers meet. Its unique location resulted in it being home of the world’s largest inland port. With a population of a half a million people, it is Germany’s fifteenth largest city.

The church was started in the early 1980s by Alexander Epp, an ethnic German, who had moved to Duisburg from the former Soviet Union.

The former mechanic felt God wanted him to start a church to reach the city’s Russian German population.

As the congregation grew, the original building became too small and they purchased land to build a new church building.

However, the city immediately put up roadblocks and would not allow them to build a church facility. This forced them to reorganize as a religious non profit so they could construct a building on the site.

However, this is when they ran into a second problem. They were unable to get a bank loan for construction because the land was contaminated.

“We had the expert assessment done, and the assessment showed that we’d have to invest a lot of money to remove all this soil here,” Epp told CBN.

They didn’t have the money to replace the soil so instead the congregation met at the site and called upon God to heal their land.

After they had prayed the group paid for a second testing of the soil and it revealed that the contamination was all gone. But the banks still refused to provide a loan, so the group was forced to construct it as a pay-as-you go building.

But the church has not only faced government opposition but also accusations that it is a cult. This is due in part to it being one of the largest churches in the city. Some are suggesting that the church must be psychologically manipulating people for it to be so big.

These accusations have taken on a life of their own and has resulted in the church producing a video defending itself against these accusations.

But these suspicions may have even been behind a German police swat team, upwards of a 100 officers armed with machine guns, that stormed Pastor Epp’s home at the end of July 2025. It resulting in his nose be broken.

Handcuffed, Epp was then taken to the church building which was then ransacked and documents and computers seized.

The raid stemmed from the accusation by a former church member that Epp possessed an illegal weapon. The police went ahead with the action even though the former member admitted he had lied prior to police conducting the raid.

The police found nothing in Epp’s house or on the church premises or in the computers they seized that indicated wrong doing. So far the police have not apologized for what they did. They have also refused to compensate the church for damages to cars and the buildings.

Epp said that this shocking experience with the German police far exceeds any persecution he experienced while living in the old Soviet Union.

.As a side note, though Germany doesn’t have an official state church, it is one of the few countries in the world that levies what is referred to as church tax. It is collected as part of personal income tax. This tax which ranges from between eight to nine percent is collected from registered church members and then given to the church.