I Saw The Light

N. John Melville

Description

The life of a hardened soldier and prosecutor for South Africa's Apartheid government was transformed when he accepted God's calling and became a peacemaker.

Can God really protect you in these troubled times; provide for you in a weak economy and does he have a destiny and purpose for your life? The answer is an emphatic yes. The author testifies how, after he "saw the light" and experienced God's immense power, not a hair was harmed on his head (Luke 21:18), in spite of a price having been placed on it by an Apartheid police death squad. This book tells of how the life of a hardened soldier and prosecutor for South Africa's Apartheid government was transformed when he accepted God's calling on his life. After his Damascene experience, he became a peacemaker, making an important contribution to the miraculous transformation that took place in South Africa.

Inspired in his youth to join an airborne unit by the lyrics of the Ballad of the Green Beret, the author narrowly missed death on several occasions. He narrates how God sustained him and guided his every step through harrowing times. This moving testimony is a "must read" for those wavering in their faith and anyone serving in the armed forces or in law enforcement, as well as their families.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Living
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456609276
• Langue: English

Extrait

I SAW THE LIGHT
 
 
By
N. JOHN MELVILLE
 


Unless otherwise stated, all scripture quotations are from the THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.,
 
Other abbreviations:
 
AKJV American King James Version
AMP: The Amplified Bible
KJV King James Version
NKJV New King James Version
 
I Saw The Light
Copyright 2012 N. John Melville,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0927-6
 
All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents may not be reproduced whole or in part in any form without the express written consent of the author.
 
PREFACE
And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe.
John 19:35
This book is the testimony of a self-confessed doubting Thomas, an experientialist who only believed in what he saw with his own eyes and experienced himself; a highly educated and practiced lawyer who had seen and heard it all before.
The author is no feeble minded adherent or cult follower to the teachings of others. As a hardened soldier and then prosecutor for the Apartheid regime, he followed in the footsteps of Saul in eschewing the Christian faith. That is until, like Saul, he had a road to Damascus encounter with the Lord, followed by seeing the light while under the power of the Holy Spirit.
These experiences changed his life from night to day. Through prayer and seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit, he discovered God’s calling on his life and became a peacemaker by participating in the National Peace Accord that was the precursor of South Africa’s miraculously peaceful transfer of power to the black majority.
The author shares his testimony of how the hidden secrets of God were revealed to him by the Holy Spirit and how he relied on the Holy Spirit to conduct him through the Word of God and to sustain him and guide his every step through harrowing times. He tells how, once he embarked upon the Lord’s work, the Holy Spirit provided for him and healed him. Although he “walked through the valley of the shadow of death” and faced many real dangers, “not a hair was harmed on his head.” The author reveals how the Lord’s hand was on him even before he came to know the Lord and how the Lord made the path smooth for him and answered even his mundane prayers time and time again.
The fact that the change in the author’s life has been sustained for over twenty years since the spiritual encounter with the Lord repudiates any suggestion that his experience was based on emotion or the influence of any earthly entity. The church, at which he had the experience, has long since passed into oblivion.
In the second part of the book, the author shares the Scriptures that were revealed to him by the Holy Spirit and that guided and enlightened him, in the hope that they will also sustain you, the reader, on your journey.
In summary, this is the author’s testimony that Jesus is indeed the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) and the Light of the World (John 8:12).
 
PART 1
INTRODUCTION
I once was lost
“ Amazing Grace” by John Newton
I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin
I wouldn’t let my dear Savior in
“ I Saw the Light” by Hank Williams, Sr.
As a kid, my favorite pastime was playing war games and with toy soldiers. My father had fought against the Germans in North Africa, my grandfather on my mother’s side had fought in both World Wars and his father was in the Boer War. So, it seemed to me that going to war was an inescapable part of life. When I was 11 years old, I was inspired by the moving “Ballad of the Green Beret” by Staff Sergeant Barry Sandler (which still has the power to make me tear up):
Fighting soldiers from the sky
Fearless men who jump and die
Men who mean just what they say
The brave men of the Green Beret.
I decided that when my turn came to serve in the army, I would do so with the Special Air Services (SAS), the Rhodesian equivalent of the Green Berets.
It was as an army recruit undergoing basic training (boot camp) back in 1974 that I first heard anything about seeing the light. One of my fellow recruits was a Reborn Christian who made no secret of his faith. Whenever we went on night exercises and our instructors set off Icarus flares into the sky, one of them would mock him: “Have you seen the light now?” The rest of us would break down laughing, or at least we did the first few times before it became “old”.
As far as I could make out, none of the recruits, other than the Reborn Christian, were in the least way religiously inclined. The theory that there were no atheists in the trenches did not hold true for boot camp, except on Sundays. The unit that I was training with gave a four-hour pass to anyone who wanted to attend a church service on a Sunday morning. Apart from those whose passes had been cancelled for displeasing the instructors one way or another, everyone leapt at the opportunity to get off base, eat civilian food and, I’m not sure how we managed it on a Sunday morning with the strict licensing laws that applied at that time, drink beer. That is, until the Sunday that the duty instructor, not so affectionately known as “Mad Dog”, decided to give us a lesson when we returned to base worse for wear. For two hours in the midday sun, he had us marching in double time up and down the parade square with our nine-pound rifles held above our heads.
As I came within a week of completing boot camp with a regular unit and commencing the rigorous SAS selection course, I was involved in a serious motorcycle accident while on a pass. The accident left me with the major bones in both my forearms broken, my femur reduced to chip-sized pieces of bone and my right foot dangling from my leg on a strip of flesh, the exposed bone ends having been scraped on the road surface. The paramedics attending the scene of the accident left me for dead and concentrated in trying to resuscitate my friend, Norman, who had been my pillion passenger.
The motor bike that we had been riding on had slipped on loose gravel as we turned a corner and broadsided into an oncoming car. Neither of us had been wearing crash helmets. My friend Norman paid the ultimate price, dying on the scene from head injuries. The paramedics then turned their attention to me.
You might now be expecting me to tell you about my out of body experience while I was dead, like the one that Don Piper describes in 90 Minutes in Heaven . I’m going to have to disappoint you as there was not one. At least, if there was, I have no recollection of it. I could not remember anything at all when I came to in the hospital. I slowly regained my memory in the next few days. Well, at least up to the point where my friend Norman and I had gotten onto the motorbike. As soon as I remembered that, I asked the nurses where Norman was. At first they lied and told me he was fine and in another ward. I later learned that they were scared that, if they told me the truth, I would die from the shock.
So tenuous was my hold on life that the orthopedic surgeon who was treating me instructed the nurses to assist me in smoking cigarettes as he was afraid that even quitting nicotine would be enough to kill me. The big worry for the hospital staff was that a glob of marrow from one of my broken bones would travel through a vein and to my heart and cause a blood embolism.
Over the following six weeks, I had to undergo a harrowing series of operations to have the broken bones in my forearms and my shin plated to hold them in place while they healed. For the same reason, I had to have a titanium, Küntscher nail hammered through my buttock and down my femur. Then a metal rod was inserted through a bone in my heel so that traction would keep my leg stretched while the bone grew. Since then, whenever I see a picture of Jesus on the cross with nails through his feet, I feel pain. As it would have been too much strain on my body to have everything repaired at once, the operations were performed incrementally. By the time they got to the last one, they had to break the bones that had started knitting to re-set them.
I was in the hospital for over three months – 100 days to be exact. During most of my stay I had my right leg in traction and my arms in plaster up to my armpit. This meant that I was totally dependent upon others to do absolutely everything for me. For over three months, my life was measured off in four-hour intervals – the period between painkillers. My sleep was fitful and torturous I could not even escape my injuries when I did manage to snatch some sleep – as I always dreamt that I was immobilized by my injuries and in pain.
After about a week in hospital, the girl who eventually became my wife, Lily, came to visit me. She was the next door neighbor of a friend of mine and we had met at a party thrown by the friend. About a month after the party, Lily bumped into our mutual friend and asked about me. When our friend told her about my accident and that I was in hospital, Lily came to visit me. She visited me every day after that until I was released.
After I had been at the hospital for about two months, Lily asked me if she could bring in a friend of hers, who she described as a “faith healer”. I agreed, and about a week later, the girl came to see me. I do not remember what she said or prayed, but I do recall her laying her hands on me. A sense of peace came over me and for the first time since my accident, I was able to sleep through the night without pain.
The next day I thought about it and came to a decision which astounds me now when I look back. I decided that it would be hypocritical of me to run to God for help now that I was smashed up when I had had no use for Him before my accident. When I try to make sense of my re