Archive for the ‘Religious Anecdotes’ Category
Some years ago as we were singing the well-known hymn Showers of Blessings with the large congregation at the Loma Linda University Church all of a sudden my mind went back to another occasion thirty years before:
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We were visiting my parents who lived in the city of Riverside at that time. It was a terribly hot day, and it had not rained in a very long time. My parents did not have air conditioning in their home, and we were perspiring heavily due to the unusual hot season.
My mother, who has always been a person of a strong spiritual faith, suddenly said: It is really hot, and we need some rain. Let us sing “There shall be showers of blessings.” We did, and we sang it in Spanish, since that had become my parent’s adopted language when they amigrated to South America after leaving Ukraine back in 1937.
I did not pay too much attention to the incident, and we returned to our home in Loma Linda in the evening. Of course, we did have air conditioning in our home, for which reason we were greatly relieved upon arriving back to our place.
That night it rained, and the rain was so heavy that I told my wife: We need to call my mother and ask her to please ask the Lord to stop this rain, because I think that it will flood our backyard. Of course, it didn’t, but it came pretty close.
I want to share with you the following anecdotal experience: One day, I thought I had spotted a couple of stains on our kitchen floor. I was lazy, and did not want to look for the mop for just a couple of tiny stains. I picked a wet rag, and knelt down to take care of the problem. The moment I knelt down, I discovered other spots on the floor, and it dawned on me that, being slightly nearsighted, I had been unable to see clearly until I knelt down for the task.
This uneventful experience taught me a spiritual lesson. If I wanted to see clearly the condition of my soul, I would have to do this on my knees. Think this way: If Jesus, the Son of God, felt the need to pray so strongly that he spent the entire night on his knees on more than one occasion; if he felt that being in communion with his Father in heaven was so crucial to the success of his mission on earth, how do you dare to think that you can manage to go through life without help from above?
Of course, you may not enjoy being on your knees for a long time. Well, if that is your case, then remember what Elder Richards, the founder of the “Voice of Prophecy” said on one occasion. He confided that his favorite position for prayer was laying flat on his bed, and do not forget that he was a man of strong faith. He also spent much time reading the Bible, again and again. Actually, he would read the Bible at least one time every year, and what a Christian example he gave us of a life dedicated to the glory of God and the service of humanity!
Following the funeral of my brother-in-law, who had devoted his entire life to the work of a literature evangelist, I began to reminisce about the time, many decades ago, when my sister asked my dad to design their future home. They had acquired the building lot, and my dad accepted the unusual challenge of designing a home with the church in mind. How do you do that? Dad was a builder, and he had designed and built not only homes, but churches as well, but this particular assignment was different: My sister asked him to do this with the needs of the church in mind.
*Can you give me some specifics? my father asked my sister.
*Yes, she responded. Make the living room the largest room in the house.
*And why do you want me to make the living room the largest room of the house? he inquired.
*Because I am planning to use our home for sharing our faith in the soon coming of the Lord with our future neighbors, she responded.
*And how are you going to do this? My dad insisted.
*I am going to invite the neighborhood children for a children’s story time and singing. Children always like that, she explained.
And that is exactly what she did. She was a nurse, and in a short time she became known as the neighborhood nurse. On one occasion I stopped by her place for a short visit. It was dark and rainy, and my sister asked me whether I would be willing to accompany her for a nurse visit. One of the neighbors was sick and needed some medications the physician had prescribed to be administered, and she did not want to be out in the street alone in the dark. I accepted the invitation. The family was poor, and they had no money to pay her for her services, and promised to pay her later. She did not mind doing this because there was a need, and she was willing to supply it.
One day, she invited some of the neighbors’ children to her home for a story time followed by singing. The children came, and the group kept growing, and soon the parents wanted to know why their children were so motivated by the stories and the singing. To make the story short, this is how the Villa Adelina SDA Church, in Buenos Aires, Argentina was born. When the group of children and their parents could no longer fit inside my sister’s living room, they decided to secure a building site, and eventually a church building was in place.
Can you imagine how the church would grow if every SDA family would try this church growth concept? Of course, this idea was not new with my sister. She drank this with her mother’s milk. We were born in Privitne, Ukraine, and during the Communist hegemony in Eastern Europe, it was impossible to get a permit to build churches. The solution? House churches. For half a century, an SDA house church functioned at one of my cousin’s home in that small town. My cousin removed a partition between two of the bedrooms, and that became the local house church.
As you can see, there is a way of designing your home with the soon coming of our Lord in mind. Perhaps someone reading this might be inspired to take into consideration the needs of the church while planning for their own comfort as they build or buy their next home.
In this video clip, Pastor David Asscherick. one of our successful evangelists, apologizes on behalf of the many Adventists who misuse Ellen G. White. He also tells his story of how a visit to a vegetarian restaurant and the reading of the “Great Controversy” led him to accept Adventism. In two weeks, this formerly agnostic young man who despised religion asked for baptism into the Adventist Church after reading Ellen White’s main evangelistic book which has sold by the millions and has been translated into many languages of the world.
Watch this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivIqfdfAup4
“A young child lay dying in a hospital bed when his teacher visited him and gave him some schoolwork to do. “Here, Michael,” he said, “are lessons on verbs and adverbs. Do the best you can.” The teacher, though, could not help but sense the futility of it all, because the child seemed so lethargic, so empty, so resigned to death. Yet, right after that, the child had a remarkable turnaround. Before the prognosis was not good, when it was not expected that he would live, everything changed, and he now seemed well on his way to recovery. When asked about what happened, about why the schoolwork seemed to have changed him so much, he replied: “They wouldn’t give a dying boy work on adverbs and verbs, would they?” …”
“A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones” (Prov. 17:22, NKJV).
It was Crisly PenaFlora first year assignment as a junior high school teacher, and her students were behaving like any typical students of that age group. One morning she was helping her Canadian students navigate their career choice assignment, and she enumerated to them the many professions and occupations open to them, when one of the students expressed his dream of one day becoming a pimp. Of course the class erupted in an outburst of laughter.
Crisly had never heard that word before, since she had originally come from the Philippines. Therefore, she asked her student to describe the pimp profession to her. This generated even more laughter from her students. At this point, Crisly made the following comment:
You can laugh all you want, but unless you tell me what the pimp profession involves, I will never be able to give any advice, since I have never heard that word before in my entire life.
The student had no choice but to describe the best he could the work of a professional pimp. When Crisly realized the meaning of such an occupation, she responded with the following comment:
If you choose that profession, I will cry!
Of course, the students wanted to know why their teacher would cry if that kid were to choose such an occupation. To which the teacher explained as follows:
I see you every day for an extended period of time, and you have become almost like part of my family. How could I refrain from crying if you make such a poor choice?
From that moment on there was a noticeable change in her students’ behavior in her class. Her students realized that here was a teacher who really cared for them and their future happiness.
One day, while I was heading towards an appointment with one of my clients, I flipped the radio dial to a religious channel and heard the following anecdote related by the preacher.
If you don’t believe in God or miracles, you , may stop right here, because events like this do defy the laws of physics.
Quote:
We had returned from a long trip, and it was midnight by the time we drove into our driveway. We were very tired, it was a winter cold night, and our three children were eager to get into our home and their own beds. Suddenly I realized that we had lost the key to our home. What could we do at 12:00 PM? Spending the night inside our vehicle in cold winter was the last thing we wanted.
My nine-year-old boy asked me to hand him the keys I had in my hands, and picking one of them said:
Dad, I am sure that if you try this key, it will work!
To my amazement, I realized that he had picked the car ignition key. Nevertheless, I followed his advice, and could hardly believe what happened, because the key opened the door to our house.
Of course, the next morning I attempted to repeat the gimmick, to no avail. The car-ignition key refused to open the door of our home. I had no choice but to admit that the good Lord had led my boy to say what he had stated in preparation for the miracle he was ready to perform.
If you don’t believe in miracles, please bear with me as I attempt to recreate what took place approximately a couple of decades ago. We experienced with my wife the following: We had at the time a Cutlas Ciera Oldsmobile that was due for retirement. We had the unusual courage to drive the car to ensenada, Mexico, located an hour drive from Tijuana, where our physician had recently set up a clinic, with most of his patients coming from California.
When we were done with our appointment with the physician, we got ready to return to California, but our car wouldn’t start. We tried and tried until the battery started to loose power; when all of a sudden it started. I told my wife: “We are not stopping until we get home.”
It was easier said than done. When we were approaching Temecula, I noticed that the gas gaugue was almost empty, so I told my wife we had no choice but to stop for gas. We filled the tank, but the car wouln’t start. We struggled on and off for almost four hours, and we even called a tow truck and asked him to help us get the car running.
He tried several times, then checked the engine, and told us there was a problem with the timing gear, and that the car would never start because the timing device was damaged: “When the engine timing device is damaged, there is no way to start a car no matter how hard you try!” he explained.
It was late, so I suggested to my wife that we better call a taxi and spend the night at a motel, with the idea that the following morning we would be in better shape to decide what to do next. We hated the idea of having to tow and old car so far, and thought that we could probably find a local mechanic who could replace the car’s timing for us the next day.
All of a sudden my wife told me: “Let me try one more time,” and as she turned the ignition on she said: “In the name of the Lord! “The engine started as if nothing had ever been wrong with the car. We drove home, and the next morning I thought that perhaps the car would start for me the way it started for my wife the previous evening.
I cranked the engine until the battery would refuse to respond. I called a tow truck, and had it diagnosed by a mechanic. The result? The timing was damaged, and the expert told me what seemed rather familiar by now: “When the engine timing device is damaged, there is no way to start a car no matter how hard you try!”
“Asap peeked into the hospital ward in her hometown of Kavieng, Papua New Guinea. The doctor wasn’t there, so she slipped inside. She knew that the doctor didn’t want her to be around sick people, but Asap was on a mission. The patients looked so sad, and she wished she could do something to cheer them up.
Sing! A voice seemed to whisper. So Asap walked from bed to bed singing songs she had learned in Sabbath School.
One old man, Salatiel, smiled as Asap approached his bed. “What church do you attend, Girlie,” he asked teasingly.
“The Adventist church,” she answered.
“What day do you attend church?” he asked.
“On Sabbath, the seventh day,” she said innocently.
Her simple answer surprised him. He gave her his Bible and said, “Show me a verse that says that Saturday is the Sabbath.”
Five-year-old Asap couldn’t read, but she opened the Bible and pointed to a verse. “Here,” she said to the man. “Read this.”
Salatiel read the verse Asap had pointed to. He blinked and read it again. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord” (Exod. 20:10).
“Go get your father,” he told Asap. “Hurry!”
Asap scampered from the hospital and soon returned with her father. “1 want you to see this miracle,” Salatiel said, pointing to the verse Asap had shown him. “Surely the Sabbath is the Lord’s day of worship!” he said.
Asap’s father studied the Bible with Salatiel, and by the time the old man was well enough to return to his village, he had accepted many new Bible truths. “How am I going to explain this to my pastor and others in my village?” Salatiel asked. Asap’s pastor offered to go with him to help him.
Many people listened as Salatiel and the pastor explained the Sabbath and other Bible truths, and soon several asked to be baptized. The pastor invited Asap and her family to attend the baptism, and when it was Salatie’s turn to be baptized in the sea, little Asap took his hand and led him to the water. Today a new group of believers worship in a little bamboo church in their villageall because a little girl obeyed when the Holy Spirit whispered, “Sing!”
Someone needs your help to find the Savior today. And every day your mission offerings help to share your faith with people you may never meet.”
MAYE PORTER and her pastor-husband have served as missionaries throughout the South Pacific Division. Currently they share their faith on Norfolk Island, off the coast of eastern Australia.
Produced by the General Conference Office of Mission Awareness.
email: info@adventistmission.org website: www.adventistmission.org
“As I left the clinic, the doctor gave me the Jesus film and like all taxi drivers do, I put the film on my dashboard. Around two hours later I was driving and got myself into an illegal checkpoint where fanatic Shia Muslims were carrying guns, getting people out of the car and killing them instantly.
I was stuck, could not escape and started to panic. I saw people in front of me being murdered. And then it was my turn! The Shiite gunman looked into my car and his eye was on the Jesus film DVD on my dashboard. He said: “This is a filthy Christian, not Sunni, so we can let him go.” I went to my home, shaking and trembling from fear. I watched the film and I was saved by the testimony and story of Jesus Christ.
Because this Christian doctor did not flee and had the boldness to share his faith, Malo “a radical Muslim” has come to know Christ! …”
“A seminary professor set up his preaching class in an unusual way. He scheduled each of his students to prepare a sermon on the story of the good Samaritan. One by one they were to go from classroom to classroom, preaching love and compassion for others. There was only a short break between classes, which forced the would-be preachers to rush in order to meet the schedule. Each of the preacher students had to walk down a certain corridor and pass by a beggar who had been deliberately planted there by the professor.
What happened was a powerful lesson! The number of would-be preachers who stopped to help this man was extremely low, especially those who were under the pressure of time. Rushing to preach their sermon on the good Samaritan, almost all walked right past the beggar at the heart of the parable!. …” Source: http://ssnet.org/qrtrly/eng/10a/less02.html
“A woman, driving her vehicle, was pulled over by a few squad cars, and, when the police came out, they had their guns drawn. The woman was shocked. What had she done?
‘You were weaving in and out of traffic,’ one officer said, ‘making obscene gestures to other drivers and cursing them.’
‘For that,’ she replied, ‘you pulled out your guns’?
‘Well,’ the officer said, ‘we saw the bumper sticker, which said you were a Christian, and we just assumed the car had been stolen.’”
Read More: http://absg.adventist.org/2010/1Q/SE/PDFs/EAQ110_00.pdf
Once upon a time there was a boy living in a remote village in a foreign country where poverty was so prevalent that even policemen went barefooted, and so did children from poor families. Little Daniel’s father was having a hard time providing for his wife and child, for which reason he decided to cross the border to a neighboring country with the hope of securing employment. He promised his wife that he would send her money as soon as possible. Time went by, and a month later the woman received the bad news that her husband had been involved in an accident and was in a government hospital recovering from his injuries.
Then came Christmas Eve, and the local church had scheduled a Christmas program for the village dwellers. Danny’s mother was not feeling well, so he asked his mom permission to go to the Christmas program with a neighbor family, and she agreed. Danny took with him a little toy truck which he had inherited from a friend the previous Christmas season. It had seen better days, one wheel was missing, the original shiny paint had faded, and the dirt was showing where the paint was missing; nevertheless, it was the only toy little Danny had, and it went whenever he went.
The Christmas program went quite well, and everybody was in good spirits. Towards the end of the religious service, the pastor made an appeal. He reminded his parishioners that they were celebrating Jesus’ birthday and encouraged the people to offer a gift for the baby that had been born in Bethlehem two thousand years before. As the deacons started collecting the offering, Danny wanted to show somehow that he was grateful for what Jesus had done for him, but he had no money, not even a dime. His only possession was his old, dilapidated and dirty little toy truck. It took a real struggle, but as the plate came near where he was seated he made the resolve to give to Jesus his cherished possession.
When the deacons got together to count the money, they noticed the little toy truck, and one of them remarked: “I wonder who did this! I don’t understand how in the world someone attempted to desecrate this offering by putting in the offering basket this old, broken and dirty toy truck. Didn’t the person know where the trash can is? Nevertheless, another deacon who had seen the boy placing the toy in the offering basket responded: “That offering was from Danny. I visited the family a few days ago. They live in a thatched roof hut with a dirt floor. Her husband is ill in a foreign country. As far as I am concerned this is the most valuable offering we have received this evening.”
“I know what I will do: I will write up the story of what transpired here this evening, send it to the local paper, and put the little toy truck on E-bay for sale.” He did, and a rich man, who had read the newspaper Christmas story, purchased the item for the equivalent of around one thousand dollars. Thus, the dirty, broken, and dilapidated toy truck became the most valuable offering collected said Christmas Eve.
An American Orthodox Jewish man named Moshe gets a letter from his son studying in Yeshiva in Israel.
”Dear Dad”, it starts. “I know you will find this hard to believe, but I met some Christians and they have persuaded me that Jesus is the Messiah. So I have decided to convert to Christianity.”
“Oy Vay”, shrieks Moshe. Pulling on his beard nervously, he runs to the phone and calls up his closest friend. “Asher, can you talk?” “Sure, what’s going on?” Well I got bad news from my son Ya’akov in Israel.” “Oh no, was he caught in a terrorist bombing?” “No no, much worse! He’s become a Christian!”
There is a long pause on the phone. Wondering if his friend has fainted, Moshe yells into the phone, “Asher, I sent my son to study in a yeshiva in Israel and he went and became a Christian!!”
He jumps into his car and drives as fast as he can to Asher’s house. Asher is fine, but looking pale. When Moshe asks if he is OK, Asher says “I want to tell you something I haven’t told anyone else, not even my wife. Our Yitzie just wrote me from Israel with the exact same story!” “Yitzie who was the best student in his Yeshiva” asks Moshe incredulously. “Yeah, that’s the one. I sent my son to study in a yeshiva in Israel and he went and became a Christian!”
Both men slump down in their chairs. After what seems like an eternity, Moshe says to Asher, “I know what to do. Let’s go talk to Rabbi Cohen. He’s the only one who can help us. He’ll know what to do!”
They both head over to the shul to speak to Rabbi Cohen. Fortunately there is no one else with him and he ushers them straight in to his office. “Yes,” he says. “How may I help you!” As he says this he notices that both men look pale. Speaking more kindly, he says, “My sons, what troubles a Yid? You can share your hearts with me.”
“Well rabbi” they both chime in together. “We both have received disturbing news from our sons in Israel”. “Oy, what has happened?” asks the Rabbi. “Were they expelled from Yeshiva? Kidnapped by terrorists?”
“No rabbi, actually much worse than that”
“What could be worse?” asks the Rabbi patronizingly.
Moshe and Asher glance at each other, trying to decide who should confess the horrible news.
Finally after a long pause Moshe says: “Look, Rabbi, we tell you this in the strictest confidence.”
The rabbi, thinking perhaps it involves a sex scandal, smiles reassuringly.
“We both have received letters from our sons studying in Israel that they have decided to convert to Christianity! It’s incredible: we sent our sons to study in yeshivas in Israel and they went and became Christians!”
The rabbi, who only moments before looked so confident, suddenly seems to have been stricken by a harsh blow across his face. He turns red and then white and starts trembling violently.
Moshe and Asher look at each other, wondering if they will be asked to resign their memberships in the synagogue. Before they can speak the rabbi whispers hoarsely: “Tell no one this, but the same thing happened with my Avrumi. I sent him to study in a yeshiva in Israel and he went and became a Christian!”
Horrified at both the news and to see their rabbi so embarassed, the two men rush to embrace their beloved rabbi. They put their arms around him to comfort him and say, “Well rabbi we thought you would know what to do. We did not want to cause you this much pain.”
After a few moments the rabbi looks at them and says, “Let’s go into the sanctuary and say some chapters of Psalms. Then we will pray to God for an answer.”
They all file into the sanctuary and take seats near the front. They read some Psalms and recite some laments and then pray to God for an answer.
Before they can finish their prayer, suddenly a powerful Heavenly voice booms out:
“My sons, my sons. I know exactly the pain you are suffering. For I too sent My Son to study in a yeshiva in Israel, and He went and became a Christian!”
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