One mid-afternoon I walked by the home of a smiling old man standing in his front door entrance. I stopped and introduced myself and informed him I was from the local church around the corner. He looked pleased when told of this and he asked me if I could come back late afternoon to talk. Whenever someone asks me to do that, I know without a doubt that God has His hand on that person and He is going to reveal Himself if that should be his or her desire.
And what a tremendous time of visitation this turned out to be for both of us. Stan was his name, an 82 year old man originally from Lithuania. As a child in Lithuania the family lived on a farm and were quite well off in comparison to city dwellers in spite of Russian oppression after the First World War and the same from the Germans and Russians during the Second World War. During the latter part of the Second War He was working in Germany and was called into the army.
The thought of having to join up and become part of Hitler’s plan was not at all appealing so he and a friend asked a lady to lodge them at night and they hid in bushes during the day. Later the Americans liberated them and Stan was placed in a refugee camp for the next four and a half years. In 1950 he migrated to Australia, got married quite late in life but his wife had since died.
As a messenger of the Christian gospel one of my prayer habits is to ask God to put questions into the mind and mouth of each person I meet with and then to grant me the wisdom required so that a satisfactory answer can be given, or, that it would lead to further questions. Stan was full of questions in the three to four hours I was with him, it was a pleasure to experience his very sharp mind. He asked what the differences were between all the Christian denominations, telling me that in his own times of giving thought to that question over the years it seemed that they (differences) were created by influential religious and political people with other agendas, rather than God Himself.
Having lived under Communism and Nazism, Stan had a clear insight into the power of unity – either for good or bad – but he told me that he failed to see such unity in church groups who claimed to be followers of Jesus Christ. I simply explained that most (not all) people who attend or are associated with churches do so, not on the basis of Biblical truth, but rather, on the basis of fellowship or religious obligation. In other words, most people commit to being part of a church because they seek to belong with others, they don’t, primarily, join to become committed seekers of truth as it’s found in Christ.
Consequently, such people are happy to sit passively in their pews every Sunday morning for an hour or so and let the priest or minister do his job and after it’s all over, they gather with tea and coffee or a barbecue and talk about anything and everything except the truth of God’s Bible, which was given to them so that they could know God and know how he wants them to live under His reality and power. For others, I explained, it’s simply a weekly obligation or a religious duty that they’ve ritually practiced since childhood and they live with fear and guilt if they don’t attend. Stan nodded thoughtfully.
He then went on to ask about evil in the world, himself having seen and experienced such a lot of it in 82 years. It’s a common question to ask but wisdom dictated that I avoid giving him a common answer. I responded by encouraging that he, for the moment, lay aside thoughts about the origin of evil and concentrate on the fact of evil, plus the fact that we’ve all made our own contribution to it. I then explained that the Bible tells us that all evil is sin, that Jesus Christ came into the world as Saviour to deal with this sin in our individual lives, by removing it’s power and control over us and, that he could experience the reality of such for himself.
Stan sidetracked the subject of sin by asking questions about the purpose of our existence. I continued to say that the Bible tells us our main purpose is to know God, to love Him and to serve Him and, as a result of this knowing, loving and serving we get to discover who we are in the process and how we can experience our life’s purpose as an on-going, creative, living reality. Somewhere this struck a chord for Stan, his face changed, he smiled and nodded and then he got up and poured us each a bowl of soup with some lovely fresh bread. As we ate he continued to ask more questions about God and angels. When he mentioned these I found myself asking him to tell me of his experiences of both, further saying that I strongly sensed he’d experienced them more than once in his life-time.
Stan again nodded and told me I was correct. Then he shared with me that he’d “missed death by inches” many times in his life. When he was a young man in Lithuania the Bolsheviks raided their village and killed a few people, they then took over the town and locked the villagers up, including Stan. After some months another group or enemy of the Bolsheviks came into the village and the Bolsheviks and jailers ran away, leaving the prisoners to their own devices. He let himself out of the jail and was walking to another village where he stopped for a drink at an inn.
He saw his former jailers at the inn and he spoke with them. Stan went on to say that all of a sudden he felt a power shoot through his head and a voice saying, “It’s time to get up and get away from here.” A few hours later on his journey he was told by someone who had given him a meal of bread and milk that the inn was attacked and that people had died. I said to Stan that the voice he heard in the inn was God’s or an angel’s and that this was the reality and power of God for him. He firmly agreed.
Another time he was sitting at a table in an inn and a group of men came and sat with him drinking alcohol and they asked him to join them in a drink. He thanked them, shook his head and declined the offer. Next, he was told to drink. Again he declined. With that, one man pulled a pistol from under the table, placed it on the table pointing towards Stan, looked him evilly in the eye and said, “Drink.” Stan drank. This was his first experience with alcohol and it went to his head quickly. But also fear came upon him for his safety, he genuinely believed they would shoot him regardless of his drinking with them presently.
A few minutes later, in what Stan described as a miracle taking place before him, these men received a message that immediate danger awaited them and that they should get up and go now without delay. Stan knew yet again, that he’d experienced divine intervention. He went back further in memory. When he was 3 years old he toppled out of a chair into a large open fire. His father pulled him out with little to no injuries. Another time he was lying down on a steep hill where timber was being cleared and a log rolled by missing him “by a hair.”
I then had an opportunity to inform Stan that even though he’d had the hand of God on him all his life, he still lacked a personal relationship with God. But, through trusting Jesus Christ as his living Lord and Savior, it was God’s will that he have this relationship now. By this point in our conversation, the vast difference between man’s religious practices and a genuine relationship with God was clearer in Stan’s understanding. So I asked him if he wanted to invite Jesus Christ into his life. He hesitated, saying he needed more time to think. I responded by saying he’d thought about it for nearly eighty years, and, given what he’d spent the last three or four hours sharing with me, what more was there to “think.”
With that, I told him that the reality of God was with him again today in the form of myself as a messenger, and that this meeting was not one of chance or coincidence. Stan’s eyes glowed and he asked me to pray with him to God. I prayed a long prayer and then got him to ask Jesus Christ to enter into his life. In a moment Stan’s face glowed as he told me he was experiencing peace all over and clarity in his head. Then he told me his chest was warm. How honored I felt to be telling this old man that he was having his own miracle with Christ.
Later on my way out Stan told me that in all his years he’d had many people tell him about God, but not in the way He was explained to him that day. My response to that statement was to say that it is the Holy Spirit of God Who makes the difference. As we shook hands I asked him what was going on for him right now. The glow in his eyes and on his face was very visible, he said, “I feel secure.” That was the first of a half dozen meetings with Stan, over some months, where I continued to give him some Biblical teaching over lunch or coffee, but not long after he went to live with a niece in Sydney. “The Lord shall preserve you from all evil; He shall preserve your soul.” Psalm 121:7.