A TESTIMONY OF MIRACLES

 

 

I am writing this primarily for myself to remind me of the incredible miracles that the Lord has used to bring this reluctant Jew into His bosom. Why? I need to feast continually on the awareness of His love for me. Without these reminders, I find life to be too burdensome.

Warning: Please don’t be tempted to think that there is something wrong with your relationship with Jesus because you have never experienced such miracles. Instead, I had been so entirely broken after decades of depression, self-loathing, and then devastating panic attacks that I didn’t know if I could make it to the next day. I needed tangible proofs that God loved me to continue. When it was just a matter of the decades of severe depression, I had convinced myself that I could get through anything that life would throw at me. However, the advent of the panic attacks changed all that.

After returning from three years in Israel as a Zionist, my wife and I chose to live organically on a hill farm at the end of a dead-end road in Appalachia. One day, after she left for town, I had a life-threatening chainsaw accident. It was 1976, before chainsaws had been equipped with chainsaw guards. In my clumsiness, the chainsaw bucked back and struck me in the head. In terror, I lifted my hands to my skull to see if it was still in one piece, or if I would have to push the brains back into my head. When I did so, I saw that one of my hands was hanging half off with the blood squirting out like a torrential flood.

I was laying in a pool of blood, thinking that any moment would be my last, when suddenly, I realized that I wasn’t alone. I knew that God was with me, and I was filled with intense feelings of love, joy and peace. I knew that God loved me and that He’d protect me even if I died. I felt perfectly safe, knowing that even if I died, I would still be there with Him forever. After a miraculous salvation, this experience prompted me to search for Him, whoever He might be. I had been interested in God, but He was required to conform to my specifications. It was the first time that I had prayed, “God, I just need to know the truth of who You are!” Now, I was willing to encounter Him on His own terms. After a tumultuous several months, I was willing to accept Jesus as my Savior.

However, I was constantly afflicted with doubts. Could this NDE “encounter” merely have been the product of losing so much blood? Eventually, I dismissed this doubt. I began to experience miraculous confirmations that it was Jesus, whom I had met as I laid bleeding to death. For example, I had prayed, “Jesus, if this is all about You, then give me a sign.”

I needed to go to town to see my surgeon, but I could no longer drive my stick pickup truck. I therefore prayed that God would give me miraculous signs as I attempted to hitch-hike to the hospital.

When I got to the end of my dead-end road, the first car stopped, and the driver rolled down his window. For a while, he just stared at me. Finally:

• “I don’t know why I stopped for you. I’ve never stopped for any hitch-hikers.”
  

Finally, he kicked his door open, and we drove off.

Besides, I had had this almost identical encounter twice before. Ten years earlier, while I was studying for my finals as a freshman at UC Berkeley, I put my exhausted head down in my hands and closed my eyes. Some minutes later, when I lifted my head, everything was different. I was filled with an undeniable sense of love, joy and peace, which beckoned me to leave my arduous studies to walk in the night. I cried as I passed the passers-by. I loved each one of them. I even loved myself. Each road-sign seemed that it belonged just where it was, and every little item was connected, sparkling with purpose. I cried for joy hoping that life could always be this way.

As hard as I tried to hold on to this ecstasy, I couldn’t. I had been intensely interested in the occult, mind-over-matter. But the occult was clearly about learning techniques and applying rituals to plug-in. However, I had done absolutely nothing to bring about this experience! It was a complete mystery. It came from nowhere, and it didn’t seem to lead anywhere. It just left me with a profound sense that there was something out there far greater than the occult, something that made the occult look like a bag of dirty tricks. I therefore lost all interest in the occult but had no clue where to go from there. How could I regain this experience when I had done absolutely nothing to bring it on? It just happened.

Four years later, I was on a train, traveling from the north (Nahariya) to Tel Aviv. I was reading a story in the Jerusalem Post about a Californian who had an encounter with God. In response, he built a boat and brought his entire family to Israel. They had just arrived in the port town of Haifa that day, after a two-year journey. However, he had entered illegally and was being held in the Coast Guard area until a determination could be made about his entering Israel.

Meanwhile, I was passing through Haifa and decided that I had to meet this man and find out how he could be so certain that his God had called him to Israel to spread his Jesus dribble. Initially, I was told that I wouldn’t be able to see Mr. Harrison (I don’t remember his real name, but I’m hoping that perhaps his children might be reading this account.) because the Coast Guard area was off-limits to civilians. However, I found the stationmaster and explained to him that I needed to see this man. He then called the Coast Guard and got approval from both them and Mr. Harrison for my unusual request.

I spend the afternoon with this Gentile on his boat, as his wife and five little blond-haired children walked the wharf. I asked him a series of questions, mainly concerning how he could be sure about God and His will. However, he would merely answer me with Scripture verses. I complained, “You’re wasting time quoting Scripture. I don’t believe it, and therefore it’s meaningless to me,” but it seemed that that was all he was able to do.

After it got dark, I arose to leave. He asked if he could pray with me. I acquiesced. He had kindly spent hours fielding my critical questions. This was the least I could do.

Afterwards, I walked off into Haifa’s night, not knowing where I’d spend the night, but I soon realized it didn’t matter. I was once again – after four years – overwhelmed by my strange caller. Love, joy and peace wrestled away any concerns I might have had about eating and sleeping. Each stranger’s face became an object of intense love, so much so that I had to lower my head, lest the passers-by would see my tears of love. Every flower had a message, every street a story to tell. Everything pulsated with life, and I was in ecstasy!

What had happened to me? Well, it seemed that it had something to do with meeting Mr. Harrison. Perhaps his enthusiasm had gotten to me? Perhaps if I could learn to simulate that same kind of enthusiasm, I could always have this experience? However, never ever once did I connect what had overtaken me to the prayer he had made to his God. It just wasn’t on my radar. I had thought that I was a truth-seeker, but evidently, my field of “truth” was very narrow.

I don’t remember where I slept, but I awoke to the same humdrum. Again, I found that there was nothing I could do to regain what I had seen and experienced.

Six years later, perhaps to the day, I was once again overtaken with the same experience, but this time there is one significant difference. I was left with no doubts about its Source. I knew that a mysterious and loving God was holding my hand, the God who had been secretly wooing me for years, even as I had no awareness of it.

Why did He wait so long to reveal Himself? Why does the fisherman allow his catch to tire itself before reeling it in? Perhaps I first had to first exhaust every other possibility and to spend all my reserves on false hopes? Perhaps only in a prostrate position would I accept what I had always regarded as abhorrent?

I must confess, that this was the last such encounter. It was as if my strange Benefactor had deposited me with His intended custodian, the Church, without ever abandoning His oversight. Yes, I long to be taken up once again by His embrace, but I am told that there is an approaching time for this, and it will last for all eternity:

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:6–7)

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This was only the beginning. I now belonged to Jesus, who had chosen a highly troubled and tormented individual, filled with self-loathing, jealousy, and hatred. These would first have to be burned away so that they wouldn’t contaminate everything that Jesus would teach me.

However, the more that His Spirit would reveal to me about my depravity, the more I’d fight these destabilizing revelations with positive affirmations – “I am a good person, worthy of His love.” Already, my initial understanding of His unconditional love had become contaminated. Therefore, I was now convinced that I needed to convince God that I was worthy and deserved Him, in the face of the revelations of my unworthiness.

Eventually, I succumbed to devastating years of panic attacks. What went wrong, and how could God truly love me? I was left without hope. I became so broken that I had to isolate myself. I couldn’t allow anyone to see me, for I could not bear to look at myself, an utter loser!

I was going to church, but I was convinced that I had been rejected. Therefore, I felt no kinship with the others but felt that I had to continue to go to church to at least stay in the running.

Once a month, the church opened the pulpit to anyone who wanted to testify about the blessings that they had received. This made me feel doubly alienated. I had absolutely no blessings which I could identify. I was a reject, perhaps even rejected by God, and wanted to run away. However, before I could make my hopefully inconspicuous exit, I heard a voice for the first and only time say, “Just wait a moment.” A couple of minutes later, I was lovingly embraced by a set of arms from behind and turned to see who it was. There was absolutely no one there behind me.

Instantly, I knew that it was my Savior reassuring me that He loved me despite all my experiences to the contrary. Now I’m reminded:

• “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:5–11)

However, I had not yet learned to abide in His Word. Instead, I would just underline those verses that made me feel good about myself.

God had miraculously revealed that He loved me in many ways. Sleep had been a rare luxury. Nor did I have the concentration to pray or even to read the Bible. I could only grasp the simplest things. However, on several occasions, the Spirit opened my eyes with a literal burst of light, an explosion of brightness that drove away all my terror, self-loathing, and depression. I looked for them but could not find them. On one such night, a verse was illuminated, “And God heard him.” It was then that I experienced, for just a moment, the explosion of blinding light, and I knew that God had also heard me. However, all my angst returned in the morning, but I knew that God had heard me.

I would pray, “God, how can you possibly do anything with the barren desert of my life.” I was sure that He couldn’t. However, one morning at church, a woman came up to me to relate an unusual dream she had about me. She claimed that it was startling because it was in technicolor, something she had never experienced:

• We were both standing before the bleakest desert I had ever seen. I knew that there was an enemy somewhere on the other side of the desert but didn’t know its identity. As we stood there and watched, the desert was transformed into the most verdant garden I had ever seen.

Hearing this, I had to control myself. I knew that it was God’s answer to me. He would transform my pitiful life into something beautiful. He was in charge:

• What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:31–32)

The last time I had experienced such miraculous events was about 35 years ago. I seems that I didn’t need them as I once had. Nevertheless, I often get the sense that He speaks to me through His Word, and that’s enough.