Rocks to Remember!

King James says, the word of the Lord was precious. Precious means usually when you’re talking about gemstones, they’re precious stones. Why are they called precious? Because they’re not everywhere. They’re hard to find. At that particular time, there was no prophet in Israel that was speaking for the Lord. The word of the Lord was precious. It was not there. And there was a reason for that because the whole nation had fallen into debauchery. They knew well, how to perform their rituals. It was a very ritualistic religion and that can happen today.

Where people go, they’ll be in their church today and they’ll be waving palms and so on and I don’t have any problem with that but it’s a ritual. It’s a ritual and at times that’s all that it is. It doesn’t have anything passionate. Nothing is really in the heart. And so that was the condition of Israel at the time. And there was a priest. There was a priest. His name was Eli and even his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were famous for their prophetic acts. The privileges that they had as priests, they took advantage of them and they were scoundrels. They were absolutely scoundrels. So the whole country was morally corrupt. The leaders of the nation were corrupt.

The elders of the country were not passionate in their heart about following the things of God. They were silent. They were silent. The things of the Lord had already been given to the people and it’s not like they needed a voice, a foghorn to liven them up. They knew what was right. They were not following it. So it was just all drainage. It was just all pathetic stuff. So the Lord sent the Philistines against them. Now we can get mixed up between Philistines and Palestinians. And lest you should think that, you would think that today the Palestinians are the descendants of the Philistines, we would be in error. Because the Philistines that you read about, the giant was a Philistine that David conquered.

The Philistines were a constant, like most of the Old Testament, has just a continuous irritation between Israel and the Philistines. The Philistines actually, we could give them a little line if you like, that they wanted to drive the Jews into the sea. And they were a constant problem, constant. One of the significant things is that the Philistines had not always been there. They had come from different areas. They had come from the island of Crete. They had migrated from places like Iraq and Iran, all over that part of the then known world. They were wanderers. I don’t know if they, at times I guess they had some leaders. The leaders among them would fight each other. They were just a bloodthirsty crowd. But they were hardened military people.

So when they came against Israel, Israel was in trouble. The Philistines were very capable warriors. They had much better armor. They had swords. They had spears. They were way ahead of the Israelites. So they could really give the Israelites a rough time. So what happened was that the Philistines came against Israel at the time. And when they were coming, their army outnumbered the Jews. And they were battle-hardened. They were superior in their weaponry. And the the the elders of Israel panicked, unbelievable panic, because they were losing the battles big time.

And so they they came together and they said, what are we going to do? These were the spiritual leaders. They said, God will honor the Ark of the Covenant. And if you know about the Ark of the Covenant, it was made of very special olive wood. It was overlaid with gold. And it was quite the piece of artwork. And the Lord had put it as the central piece of furniture in the tabernacle. And it was at the Ark of the Covenant that the blood was spilt for the redemption of the people. It was a very important thing. Inside the Ark of the Covenant was some kind of a container. And it had some manna. Manna wasn’t supposed to last over 24 hours.

But this manna had been in this bowl and in the Ark of the Covenant for hundreds of years. And it wasn’t depleting. And secondly, there was an almond branch that was in there. And the olive branch had had budded. And also in the Ark of the Covenant was the original stone tablets that Moses had brought down from the mountain. So it was a very special piece of memorabilia. And it wasn’t just a memorial thing, but it was indicative of the presence of God. So the elders came up with a brilliant idea. Let’s take the Ark of the Covenant out in the middle of the battle, and the Lord will save us. So for sure, they had it out. And I’m going to read for you. The Word of the Lord came to Samuel to all of Israel.

Israel went out against the Philistines in the battle. And the battle was pitched between the area known as Ebenezer and another place called Aphek. I looked it up on a map to see where it was. If you were to go for a car ride today from Aphek to Ebenezer, it would take you about an hour and a half. The Philistines put themselves in army against Israel. And when they joined battle, Israel was smitten before the Philistines. And they slew of the army in the field 4,000. 4,000 Jews died on the field. When the people were come into the camp, the elders said, Wherefore has the Lord smitten us before the Philistines? Let’s fetch the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh, which is where it had been kept, that when it comes among us, it might save us out of the hand of the enemies. So the Lord wanted the people to repent of their sin and get right with God. And then the Lord would be among them without playing a little game.

So they were using this thing like a four-leaf clover. They were using it as a. . . they were actually superstitious about something that was meant to be spiritual and to have something very deep about it. So they said, Let’s just take the Ark of the Covenant and that means that God will be there. Wrong. When the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all of Israel got excited. It was an idea of the pastoral leaders. If the pastors got a good idea, must be a great idea. So the people got all excited, started shouting and carrying on some fear. Now we’re gonna fight those Philistines.

When the Philistines heard the noise of the shout, they said, What does this mean, this great shout in the camp of the Hebrews? We just killed 4,000 of them. And they understood that the Ark of the Lord had come into the camp. You’re getting way ahead of me, somebody. Well, we’ve got pictures going on and so on. So I’m looking up there. If you’re on the internet, I don’t know what you’re seeing. So we’ll get it together here in a few minutes. When the Philistines heard the shout, they wanted to know what this about. And the Philistines were afraid because they said, God must be in their camp. Woe for us, for there has not been such a thing before. Woe to us.

Who shall deliver us out of the hand of this mighty God? These are the gods that smote the Egyptians with all the plagues in the wilderness. So the Philistines actually had more faith that God was in the midst of the Jews than the Jews were. So this was the word from their commanders. Be strong. Quit yourselves like men, Philistines, that you be servants, that you do not become servants of the Hebrews as they have been servants of us. Act like men and fight. The Philistines fought and Israel was smitten and they fled every man into his tent. And there was a very great slaughter for there fell of Israel 30,000 soldiers. The Ark was stolen now by the Philistines and the two sons of Eli the priest. They died. They weren’t even supposed to be involved in the battle but they never escaped.

And so here they were the future priests of Israel. They’ve died. And there ran a man of Benjamin out of the army and came to Shiloh the same day with his clothes torn and ripped and he told Eli the priest, your sons are dead. And the Philistines have the Ark of the Covenant and Eli fell backwards off of his bench and he died right there. We jump over now to the fifth chapter of 1st Samuel and we read, Now the Philistines took the Ark of God and they brought it from Ebenezer unto Ashdod. When the Philistines took the Ark of God they brought it into the house of Dagon and they set it up by Dagon. And when they of Ashdod arose early on the morning, Dagon had fallen upon his face to the earth before the Ark of the Lord. And they took Dagon and they set him up in his place again. But every morning the same thing happened. So the presence of the Ark among them was nothing but trouble. And then all kinds of things they came out with boils. The presence was giving them a rough time.

So then they decided that they needed to take the Ark of the Covenant and get rid of it. So they sent it to another tribal area, said here you look after it for a while, and trouble broke out there when those people started to die. So then they got this brilliant idea, let’s send this thing back to the Israelites. But they were scared to death of it. So nobody was willing to carry it back to Israel for fear they’d get caught in the battle. You know, you’ve got our fancy Ark and so we’re going to kill you. So what they did is they designed a cart and they put the Ark of the Covenant on the cart. They put a couple of, we call them fresh cows. Fresh means they have just given birth to calves. They put a couple of fresh cows hauling the cart. And then you can’t separate the cow from her calf. So the calves wanted to follow the cart.

The mothers didn’t want to leave their babies behind them. But they said if the cows go to Israel with the covenant cart, with the Ark of the Covenant, we’re going to be safe. So they designed a cart so that it would go back.

And so the Ark of the Covenant made it back among the Israelites. Now going forward in the story then, the people were languishing in their hearts. They used to know where the Ark of the Covenant was. They knew that God had something against them. And they were unsure how they were going to manage going forward. And so they cried out and said, is the Lord among us? Where is he among us? Samuel came upon the situation and he said, you’re not going to be blessed of God until you get your act together. Put away the other gods.

It’s so amazing that Israel had the Lord God, but they were always nearby other tribals when they were in Egypt. Surely they started following the religion of the Egyptians. And it got them into trouble when they when they were out in the wilderness and they built a golden calf. That was kind of leftover stuff from what they had learned from the Egyptians. And when they came into the Promised Land, they were still intermarrying with other tribal people. And trouble was coming their way because they were not staying true to the Lord. So Samuel said, get rid of all these other little tin gods and let the Lord God be our God. The people then, out of fear, realized what they had done and they began confessing their sins. They brought their tin gods and everything was totally destroyed. And the Lord answered their prayers and the Lord saved all of Israel at that time. That, in essence, is the story. And what Samuel did then at that time is he set up a big stone that was obviously already present.

And when he set up that stone, he indicated to them that this stone will be a memorial for us and it will be called the Ebenezer Stone. And the Ebenezer Stone, he spoke over it and said, this stone represents so far God has helped us. So that whenever people came upon the Ebenezer Stone at this particular unique area, that the children would ask, why is this stone so important? I don’t know if they put flowers around. I don’t know what they did in order to keep it before the people. It wasn’t just a chunk of rock, but it was known as a memorial. And the memorial was a story that could be told again and again, generation over generation, that the Lord helped us when we got into a challenge. So it occurred to me a few years ago when I was pastoring a church in London, this story. And so I spoke to the people and I said, how many of you you think hard now? How many of you have something in your house, in your possessions? The ladies might have something in their jewel box. Or there might be a book in the library and if somebody opened it up, that they would find something in there, like a letter or a Christmas card or something.

And it would be so unique if they found this thing, that they would say to you, grandpa, grandma, what does this mean? And then that would give you an opportunity to tell them your story. In other words, there’s my daughter, a teenager. How many 15 years she’s lived with us. And just a couple of years before she came into the world, her mother was dying of cancer. 15 years later, she still doesn’t know the story. So I said, we should have, we should have things in our house. We should have treasures that when somebody comes upon, it could be something hanging on the wall, something unique, that someone will ask, what’s that all about? When people come into your home, they’ll see things and they’ll say, what’s this? Because of my travels, I brought things home. A few weeks ago, I showed you my stick, called the rungu. And I’ve left it out by times in a prominent location, so that would bring people’s attention.

I’ve got a carved bust of a head of a warrior from Tanzania. And it’s made of one of the most, it’s known as the hardest wood in the world. I don’t know how the Africans ever got to carve it. You would, you’d need a machine to do it. But they did it. And it’s a unique piece because it’s set in a log. The logs about so high. The center of this wood, it’s called ebony. The center of the wood of the ebony tree is black. It’s solid, dark black. But the outside is typical brown bark. So when you see this thing on my desk, this black, beautifully polished, it is, it’s a masterpiece.

When people would see that, they’d want to know about it. And so that would give me an opportunity to tell them the story. And so, I wanted to tell you this morning that in that service, in that church, I told the story about Ebenezer. And I said, think about something in your home that you could set aside. Maybe you already have it. Maybe you’ve already done this. But we should have ways that others coming into our home, it would be a means, a means. There’s a fellow sitting here this morning. His name is Larry. Have you seen the shirt that he wears? The jacket that he wears. The name Jesus is on there boldly.

And he wears this. He wears this wherever he goes. And people will encounter him and ask him about that. That’s a type of an Ebenezer stone for him. He uses that to engage people. And so I’ve kept some things. I’ve gone through my archives. I need to finish the story about that church in London. I said, we should remember about the Ebenezer stone. Okay, so a tragic thing happened in our church. It was Christmas time. We built this big staging up here.

And we had the singing Christmas tree. So it was a wonderful thing. And people gathered and were practicing in the singing. And it was a brand new building. There was a staircase went down to the basement. Everything was concrete. Somebody was looking after the children. They didn’t pay attention. And the word came. I wasn’t even in the church that night. I wasn’t a part of the practicing, etc. But I got a phone call.

And they said, you know Mrs. So-and-so, her husband’s the doctor, etc. I said, yes. They said, his little fellow, their little fellow toppled down the stairs. It was a long staircase. Hit the concrete floor at the bottom. He’s been rushed to emergency. His brain is swelling. The child may not survive the night. And so we had this prayer chain in our church. We had a lot of people. And we had this prayer chain that went all over the city of London.

People stayed up all night praying. And so in the morning, I got up very early in the morning and I went down to the hospital to see if this child’s still alive. Maybe the parents would be there. Maybe I’d pray with them. So when I got there, I went up to the children’s ward. I asked a nurse. And I called out this little fellow’s name. And the nurse very unshallowly said, oh yeah, it’s a third door on your right. So I walked down to the third door on the right and I stepped in. And all the children were healthy. In fact, it was running right inside the door, sucking on his dum-dum. And I looked and I thought, I’ve got the wrong room.

Came out, checked the door. Well, then she said, second door, that’s it. I went back to the desk and I said, you gave me the wrong, the wrong room. I said, I’m looking. I named the little child. I said, he’s got major brain injury. She said, oh, you haven’t heard. 

This is a celebration. We can’t believe what’s happened. In the night, that little child went right down to normal. He’s going home this afternoon. Glorious doors. Like, that was so exciting. What a miracle. And to tell the church about that. Like, the congregation went hysterically happy on the following Sunday. But it had gone, of course, through the prayer chain. I think it would have been about two years later. On a Sunday morning, it was the end of the second service. Packed to capacity. And I would try and get to the door and, and perchance could meet some people. And as I was at that door, a little boy came up and he patted me on the leg like this to get my attention. And I looked down at this cute little kid. And I said, I had a lot of people in the church.

I should know everybody. But it was impossible, I tell you. So I looked down and I never even noticed the parent that was standing with him. I was just captured by this little kid who wanted my attention. I said, well, I patted him on the head and I said, well, aren’t you a cute little fellow? And what’s your name? And he said, I, Ebenezer. I broke into tears. I looked at his mom and I said, I thought his name is Johnny. She said, it is. But I’ve given him the nickname of Ebenezer. And she said, and you know why.

Surely there have been times when that child, the mom would say, Ebenezer Supper. There had to be a time. Mom, why don’t you call me Johnny? Why do you, why you call me Ebenezer? And she would sit down and she would tell him the story. I promise you, she’s told him the story again and again and again. He was her little Ebenezer. They could have come to their house and see what was going on. And she would out of habit say, Ebenezer, you do thus and so. And they’d say, I thought his name was Johnny. Oh, well, we call him Ebenezer, kind of strange. Why would you call that kind of a weird name?

Hello? And so she would get to tell the story of how the church prayed and how this kid survived in a matter of hours, completely changed. Wonderful, wonderful. We need to have Ebenezer, is there an Ebenezer among you in your house? Do you have something special that you can tell your story? I brought this out this morning. I found Al in the prayer room and I said, do you remember seeing this? He said, I don’t remember. And then he looked at it and he said, oh, wait a minute, that’s the rally in Brazil. I said, yes. Now, just a few days ago, I was at their home, Al and Maureen’s house, and I said, I said, it’s just a mirage to me. I said, I’m so mixed up.

I know that as two couples, we went to say Opala, but I said, somehow in my head, I get disconnected. I said, I see myself in a car with Elnie April. You’re not in the car. And I said, the driver can’t speak English. And he keeps on saying Lobrodo, Lobrodo. And I’m, I’m saying, okay, Lobrodo. I don’t know. And I found out he’s trying to tell me, I am the brother-in-law of the man that called you to come here. And so I’m saying to Al, I said, we got to this stadium. There were buses everywhere. And I said to April, sitting in the car, I said, well, we got some stiff competition here. Like there were hundreds of buses.

The streets were jammed. There were people walking hundreds towards the stadium. And we’re being led by the Lobrodo towards the stadium. And I’m more mixed up. Every minute I’m more mixed up. And I’m saying to Al, where were you? You weren’t with us. He said, I was in the stadium waiting for you. 

Why were you there? Well, you see, this is announcing about a preacher, Dave Forrest, and it’s announcing, you get to see a drama on this occasion. If you come to this, the place sat about 40,000 and there were 33,000 people sitting there. And they were there for Al and Maureen with the drama and for Dave to preach.

And I said, well, where were you? He said, I was in there. He said, I only had a couple of hours to build the set. I said, well, where did we find the actors? Well, we got them out of that other church where we went to. So you see, I’m trying to remember all this stuff. I found this a couple of days ago. This is the poster that went to hundreds of churches in Brazil. They came in boxes. I don’t know how they all got there. I got to preach. I got to preach.

And when I gave the altar call, thousands came to that altar to surrender to Jesus. I found this in my files just a couple of hours ago. And I held on it like this. I got so blessed. I got so excited. And then Al gets up and he puts on the drama of the people that had been trained. And then I was to get up and give the altar call. And a whole different crowd came. They filled the altar. They filled the aisles. There were so many people came forward that the crowds were up the stairways. It was like, you know, the big stadium in Toronto.

You’ve seen it where they have stairways with thousands of people. The people were up in the galleries way back. And they couldn’t get down to the altar. They stood to their feet and they got jammed in the aisles. Because God did something special. I love to talk to people about stuff like this. This is a little Ebenezer for me. I brought another Ebenezer. I told somebody that came to my office this morning, I said, I stand to risk of these people thinking I’m trying to brag. What I’m about to tell you, I did not do this. And in fact, when this magazine was printed, I refused to give them any information to people who are printing it. I said, I don’t want my name in that magazine because I didn’t do that.

God did that. God did that. So this goes down. This story begins in an hour when you were horrified by planes flying into the Twin Towers. I was deep, almost into Sudan. I was preaching to people who seldom wear clothes. And I saw hundreds of people come to know Jesus out there in the wilderness. And yet there was a price on my head. There were guards around the house where I was staying at night. They were sure they were sure that the price was going to get connected. There was a price. I was to get killed.

And on my way there, I saw burned out cars along the side of the road where the bandits had come in from the next country, had trapped people, and they burned them alive in the cars. They were looking for me. And the way that I even got out of that country and got back to a town in Uganda was we went across the Nile on a raft. I’m not bragging. I’m telling you that God took me to places. And I was just a, I was an observer. I wasn’t the guy. I was an observer. When I got across the Nile and we got to this town called Mbali. No, doesn’t matter to you. It’s Lira. We got to the town of Lira. And when I got there, I went to a missionary’s house and I had a little radio with me that is a world radio. And I turned it on and I’m listening to it and it’s all crackling. So what I’m hearing is bits and pieces, mostly static. But here’s what I learned in bits and pieces. New York City is on fire. 

This was coming from the BBC, who were just getting the stuff that was coming to them from who knows where. New York City is on fire was the message I got. The Pentagon has been destroyed. And an airplane is flying toward the White House to blow it up right now. That’s what I learned through that little radio. It was all, it was misinformation. I’m sure it was unintentional, but this was coming over the radio wave.

I was shaken to my soul. And I sat with my guests and we were trying to eat supper. I said, I don’t know if there’s a Canada for me to go home to. It’s a very long story. I almost didn’t get to Canada. I was barred from flying across the Atlantic Ocean because of the terrorist threats to everybody and everywhere. But that evening, I was in the house of a doctor and his wife, Sigmar and Priscilla. And so Priscilla, the doctor, she said, David, I have to go and do my rounds tonight at the clinic. Now the clinic was just, to call it modest is, oh, it was less than modest. It was just, you know, like mud brick house with grass roots. I’ve got to go to the clinic and check in the maternity. So I went with her.

I said, I’d like to go. When I got there, there were more people on the ground outside holding babies that were babies that were crying, babies that were smitten with malaria and dysentery and who knows what kind of disease. They couldn’t fit them all into what was called the maternity ward. She said, just come with me. As we went into the door of the maternity ward, Nicholas, I had to step over bodies. There was no furniture. I stepped over a body. What were the bodies? These were the mothers. The staff were overwhelmed. And this is how it was 24 hours a day, every day of the year. They did not have the space.

They hardly had the staff. So if you’re a mama and you brought your baby, we can’t take your baby. But if you’ll stay, you can help us. We’ll help you. And so I walked over bodies and the tears are running down my cheeks. There’s more people outside struggling than there are in here. I could hardly sleep that night. In the morning, as we had breakfast, I didn’t turn on the radio. I was scared to death to turn it on because I could do nothing anyway. I said to Sigmar, her missionary husband, take me back to where we were last night. He said, why? I said, I don’t know why.

Just take me there. So he took me over there and as I walked around, I saw those people that had been here last night all over the ground on blankets and sheets. I saw some women washing some clothes at a spring-fed little fountain there. And as we walked over, there were bedsheets and there were clothings and so on. They did the washing and they threw them over like a wild hedge. We walked over to the edge of the hedge. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. I looked over the hedge and I said to Sigmar, who owns that property I’m looking at? He said, well, it’s owned by the town. Is it for sale? He said, for a Mzungu, it’s for sale. Mzungu, white man, it’s for sale if you want it.

I said, get me a price. He said, what? I said, we have to have a hospital. I said, I see a hospital right there. We’ve got to buy that property. He said, David, we have no money. I said, get me a price. I didn’t have any money. I managed to get on an airplane. I won’t tell you the story. I could have you laughing right now how I managed. I was told, you’re not allowed on the flight.

I said, why? She said, I don’t know, Mr. Gump. She said, I don’t know, Mr. Gump. But she said, British Airways said, don’t let that man on the plane. It turned out that the airport in London was jammed with thousands of people. All the planes were shut down. You couldn’t fly across the Atlantic. So the British Airways didn’t want another passenger to come from Uganda. They didn’t have a place for you. God be praised, I ended up on the first plane that flew across the Atlantic Ocean.

The whole world was open. I was on the very first plane. And when I arrived in Toronto, I found my wife weeping. The airport was empty. And she said, David, you’re not going to believe what has happened on this side of the world. The Lord impressed me. The Lord impressed me. I won’t go down the road with all of this, but I can just tell you that just going from church to church and playing no games, I would just tell people of the very special need of these little children. And I said, God’s put it on my heart. We have to build a hospital. And on November the 30th in 2008, I flew over and went to that town again. Came in this little beat up old truck.

We came up over the hill. And Sigmar said, David, there’s your dream. And that building was bigger than anything I could ever imagine. And I was the keynote speaker. There were ambassadors there from all over the world. This was a celebration. It was the first of its kind on the continent. A hospital only for children. And they handed me this, and I’ve held on to it to this day. My name’s not in here, but God helped me to raise over $100,000 from people like yourselves when I just said, do you want to be a part of this? I look through this all the time. All the time.

Here’s the pictures. You can’t see it, I know, but from the day of the sod turning. They didn’t have all the stuff that we have today. They’d mix the cement and pail at a time. It took eight years to build this thing. But it takes up a couple of acres. It’s two stories tall. And it’s state of the art. It’s unbelievable. And it has now, it’s exceeded all credit. It’s now known not as a little medical wafer on the side of the road thing. It’s known as a hospital in Uganda for little children.

This book is my Ebenezer Stone. I keep it because I want to remember. And then lastly, I want you to have, every one of you to have a copy of this. April and I sat last night, I was almost in tears as we just reminisced. I was a pastor in Toronto and I got a call from Nairobi, Kenya. Will you come in? We got a brand new building seats, four to 5,000 people. We need an evangelist. My board said you go. And so April and I went to Nairobi, Kenya, and it was a turning point in my life. I had no idea what I was getting into. It’s a long story.

I won’t bore you. But this is an article that was printed in October of 1987. And it’s the newspaper account of my visit to Nairobi. I became nationally known in a matter of hours. Because God, God did this. God orchestrated that the president of Kenya would come to the service where I first preached on a Sunday morning. I got a rap on my bedroom door. April will remember. Roy Upton, the missionary, spoke through the door and he said, David, look out your window and tell me what you see. I moved the curtains and I said, oh my goodness, there’s a man outside my window. And I said, he’s dressed in a black suit. He said, that’s what I thought.

He said, David, this is not trouble, but this is going to be a challenge. I said, what, what, what, what, what? He said, that man is security for the president of Kenya. He said, that means the president is coming to church. Get out here, we’ve got to talk. And so Roy Upton told me all the things that you’ve got to do, David. You’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that. And he said, by the way, you make the wrong move. He said, there’ll be a sniper behind you up in the window of the baptistry. He said, he’s trained to shoot. If anybody’s threatened that the president, and he said, he said, the president will be sitting right in front of you. And when I mounted up to that pulpit, there’s one of the most important political figures in the entire world.

He’s sitting in the front. He’s got ambassadors with him. He’s got, you know, the chancellor of the exchequer. You know, I had all of these people and the whole audience, thousands of them are sitting there, absolutely their mouths hanging open. This is a big moment. And I was trained by the missionary to stand up and say, Mr. President, honored officials, honored ambassadors, honored this, honored that. He said, David, don’t make any fast moves. And when I’m sitting on the platform and Roy leans over and he says, David, don’t forget your lines. I said, I got it, sir. He was scared to death. I guess my stupidity had gone before me and the Lord had something in my heart.

I didn’t do anything that he told me. I walked up to the podium and I said, Mr. President, and then I burst into acapella, a song about how privileged we are to bow at the feet of Jesus and to worship him and adore him. And as I sang that song acapella, the missionary was having a heart attack. He was hyperventilating, David, David, David. But I looked down and the president was smiling. He said to the whole service and my whole sermon was the Sunday morning news. And my sermon was the Sunday morning news on Tuesday morning. And my Sunday morning, my, my, my, my, my Monday night sermon was the Tuesday morning news. And on Wednesday morning, there was another one. And it said that the headlines, the headlines were the president stayed to pray. So there was a journalist who recorded about what I preached on and he wrote it as it was the front page news in the newspaper.

And so somebody sent that back to Canada and it was republished in the Pentecostal Testimony, which is a magazine that went to every church, every PAOC home across the nation. I made a copy of it for you. This is my Ebenezer Stone. If you’re not staying for lunch, God will forgive you. But I want you to take one of these and read it. And what you’ll see on the front is a picture of Roy and Maisie Upton, Daniel Arakmoy. I got to finish. Oh, the trap door, it didn’t work. I just got to tell you this. So Roy came with us to the state house because we got a message. I must have on Tuesday night, tomorrow morning, you will be at the state house to see the president. Roy said, that’s not an invitation.

That’s a command. So we got up and made ourselves pretty. We went, walked into this place and as we’re walking through the state house, this is unbelievable. Here are these elephant tusks that arched up over us like we went through a column of arched tusks. And here were stuffed giraffes and zebras and lions and all this stuff. It was like a zoo, but everything was staged. And we got into the office with the president. He dismissed his protector guys. And Roy said, don’t make any fast moves. Don’t touch them. Don’t do this. Don’t do that.

I said, okay, okay. And as I sat there and he served us coffee, he served us coffee. And he said, well, we’re almost done here. Is there anything else? And I said, sir, I feel impressed to ask you, may I pray for you? He said, of course. He got off from behind his desk and here’s Roy sitting beside me, his knees banging my knee. Look out, look out, look out, look out. He came and stood before I stood up and I said, Mr. President, the word of God speaks on laying on of hands. And Roy is pregnant. And the president said, please.

And I laid my hands on him and I prayed that the Holy Spirit would be powerfully upon him. He shook like a leaf in the wind. The power of the Holy Spirit came over that man. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I came home to Canada and the PAOC had a call from me and said, David, we’ve heard about you in Canada. We heard what happened. Will you work with us in the missions department? I said, yes. Then they changed their mind. And I said, fine. And we launched our own missions called third world crusades. And I went all over the world preaching and I told people about Daniel F.

Roy and I told them about April’s healing. I told them about Heaven’s gates and how it’s like. I took that drama. How many countries I got permission to take us? I’ve got record. I started flipping through this binder. I came up to April. I said, I was just reading the thousands of people. I said, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot. I’m reading about the reports that came from all over the world. That’s my little Ebeneezer. I’m not bragging to you.

I’m telling you that if you listen to the Lord, he will, he will lead you and he will guide you and your life will be a life of surprises. God is so good. There’s a sandwich and a coffee waiting for you and I need to let you go. I’m good for another hour. You know that, but I, I’ve shared with what I shared with you this morning ever so humbly. I’m just David. I’m full of errors. Half of my life has been spent making apologies and just know that it’s my heart that Jesus would shine and that I would be obliterated by his glory. When you get baptized in water, a couple of Sundays from now, when you come up out of that water, you thought you were excited today. The reality, the beauty, the love of Jesus, his grace and his mercy, you’ll be overwhelmed. I’ve seen people come out of the water, speaking a language that they’ve never been taught. Have you ever heard about that kind of thing?

It happens. It’s found. You should read in the Bible, Acts chapter 2, about how people spoke another language. I’ve seen people come out of the water so overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit. I’ve seen people come out of the water, couldn’t walk straight through it, stagnant, because God’s presence is so powerful. Lord Jesus, I pray for this young lady. I thank you for her exuberance. I thank you for the freshness of her faith. Lord, while I’m sick right now, I want her to pray for me because she is powerful in her sight right now. Her faith is so large. I thank you for her.

Lord, we’re such a blessed little group of people today, just to even have her appointed to the Lord. I pray that when she goes through the waters of baptism, it will be one of the most glorious moments in her entire life, and may that moment be an Ebenezer stone for her, that she will remember, remember, remember, remember, help us to remember good things, help us to remember when God came through the stone man. So far, God has helped us. Thank you, in Jesus’ name. Amen.