“At one of our children's meetings last summer, I invited the conductor of the train running to Cincinnati (who was a Christian man) to talk to the children. After speaking of his work among the prisoners of the Cincinnati jail, he proceeded to relate an instance from his own life, proving God's willingness to supply temporal needs in answer to the prayer of faith. When he was a very young boy, his mother was left a widow, with six children dependent upon her for the supply of their temporal wants.It was a cold winter's day when all their provisions were exhausted; and as there was no human source to which to look, they took their needs to the dear heavenly Father, who promises to hear the cry of the widow and fatherless. They had perfect confidence that He would hear and answer prayer.After eating their last morsel, they all went to bed and slept as sweetly as though they had an abundance at hand. In the morning the mother, with great cheerfulness, went about her work, setting the table, and making arrangements for breakfast, when there came a rap. She went to the door, and found a perfect stranger, who said the Lord had sent him to supply their present wants, and he came in, bringing provisions enough to last them a long time.The stranger said he was awakened at midnight, and something told him of the situation of this poor family. Not withstanding he lived several miles distant, he and his good wife arose, prepared their charities, and the husband set out, finding the place in time for their breakfast. How blessed to have parents teach by precept and example such beautiful lessons of trust!”— Lily Blake Blakeney Howe
_________________SI Moderator - Brandy Gordon
Paul Washer - The Presence of Godhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aWDZW0at068
“If you doubt that God is real, please consider this true story: A Japanese Business man, a president of a Japan Company, was walking in his Japanese Garden in Tokyo. When he looked at a Japanese stone lantern in his garden he noticed a tiny cross etched into the bottom of the lantern. He became intrigued with the cross and went back in his genealogy as far back as the sixteenth century. He found ancestors who had become Christians and were martyred. He could not stop thinking about it. One day, with a bright sun shining, he looked up into the sky in Tokyo and said: “Christian God, if you are real, please give me a sign!”At about the same time, a Christian Business man in the USA was scheduled to visit Japan. He could not sleep at night. He got pictures of a President in Japan to whom he was to give a Bible in the Japanese language. He initially refused but God would not let him sleep. The business man gave in and ordered a Japanese Bible. He took presents for a Board Meeting in Japan. The gifts for 6 Board members were silk ties and socks. For the President he took the Japanese Bible. Culturally speaking, Japanese are very reserved and they do not show their emotions. However, when the President opened up his present and he saw the Bible he held it high in the air and he started dancing and shouting in front of 6 Board Members: “A Bible, a Bible!” He was full of joy for now He knew God was real. God had answered his prayer in the garden. This is a true story as I was that business man buying and delivering a Bible in the Japanese language.” — Edgar Reich
Powerful testimony of Jewish scientist James Tour:https://youtube.com/watch?v=JVGMa9yuqnM
“Now I’m going to share with some of you something I’ve never shared in a conference—it’s a personal testimony—and it might cause many of you to be very disappointed in me, and maybe not even hear anything I have to say. So be it. I preach in a lot of places once. As a young man in the ministry I was privileged of being around a lot of very, very old, very, very Godly men, and they would talk to me. Now these weren’t…these were men of God…very staunch, reformed, some of them. People not given to enthusiasm or emotions or any other thing like that. Sound men! But they would talk to me about the power of God. They would talk to me about the presence of God—not as men quoting stories that they had read, but men who themselves had seen with their own eyes the working of God. And I would go out on the streets in Austin, Texas and preach. I was afraid, there was no boldness, there was no power, there was nothing. But I would always hear the voices of these old men. And one day I decided enough is enough: I will seek Him until I find Him or until I die. I went into a closet and I said, “I’ll not leave this closet until I know God.” 15 minutes later I fell asleep. My roommates came home and found me in the closet. So, I took an alarm clock with me. And please, I’m not sayin’ this for any other reason except I feel like I’m supposed to. Took an alarm clock with me. Set it for every 15 minutes. I’d pray for maybe 5 or 10 minutes. Fall asleep. Alarm clock’d go off. Set it again. This was my prayer. I didn’t pray for China. I didn’t pray for the presence of God in the sense of my ministry… I asked one thing: “Lord, you said if I seek you I’ll find you. You said, you said it Lord, that you would reveal yourself to me. You would let yourself be found by me if I seek you.” Night after night after night after night, for months, 2 and 3 hours a night, simply sitting there like this, on my knees, “Lord, it’s been 4 months now, it’s been 5 days now, and You still have not come.” And just sit there. “Lord, I’ve been here 3 hours and You have not come.” Day after day and night after night. And then one day our church, it was a Spring break and all the college students were going to go on a Bible study/ski trip type thing in Colorado, and I felt that the Lord wanted me just to go out into West Texas to the hill country, pretty barren. And I walked on top of those hills for 3 days like a wild man. If you would have seen me you would have thrown me in an asylum. I was picking up rocks and I was throwing them. Literally, physically, throwing them at the sky. I was screaming. I was saying, “God, I must know you! You must come. You must. I can’t live like this anymore [crying], I can’t live just reading books! I can’t live just reading about revivals, and about people who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody who knew you!” And nothing happened. I went home. Another several weeks passed. And one night, He came. He came. I just said, “Oh Father…I can’t. Please come.” And He came. I was thrown down on the ground, I don’t know how long in a fetal position, covering my head, thinking ‘God’s come to kill me.’ The presence of God, in a way, that in one second, more of my sin and my need, and His glory and power was revealed. And then all of a sudden every bit of fear was taken away and I was filled with such JOY , and my mouth shot open… now don’t be afraid… verse after verse from Psalms and from everywhere else, passages I had read just started coming forth... praises unto Him… the Word of God, such joy. And I can tell you, it’s been 20 years, and the presence of Christ is more real to me in this room than any one of you. And one of the things that is so bad today is many of you men here—you also have known the presence of Christ. But now, most of your prayer life is nothing but praying just a little, and then just realizing He hasn’t come, and getting up and walking away...instead of staying there until He does. It’s just prayer of going through the motions. You want holiness in your life? Run to Him. And stay there! Stay there. My little boy, whenever I’m putting my shoes on and he realizes my bags are packed, he goes “Daddy stay with Eyan? Daddy stay with Eyan?” Or “Eyan go with Daddy?” I find myself, even this morning, in prayer going, “Father stay with Paul? Father stay with Paul?” Or “Paul go with Father?” I see so many boys today in the pulpit. They’re boys. Just as those old men told me, the mark of a man of God is God upon the man. And I don’t want, I don’t want to sound..I don’t want to sound arrogant, I don’t want to sound anything else. I just want to say this: We have a desperate need to be men marked by the presence of God. We have a desperate need.”— Paul Washer
“There was in the city of Minneapolis, quite a while ago…a Presbyterian preacher by the name of T. J. McCrossan. McCrossan was a lecturer in Greek and Hebrew. He was a master of those areas. The man came to an understanding of the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He had one man, who was an elder in his church, by the name of Charles Ingersoll…Ingersoll had been under the ministry of T. J. McCrossan and he had been filled with the Holy Spirit and had been given the gift of healing. On one occasion, Charles Ingersoll, who had a seat on the Grain Exchange here in Minneapolis, he had a secretary a Jewish woman, who had worked for him for some time and whose father was extremely ill. Finally, she got up nerve enough to ask her mother if she could bring her boss, this man who had this gift of healing, to her home to pray for her father. Charlie Ingersoll said, ‘Yes, but I want you to bring in all of your relatives, your near relatives and your Rabbi. I want them all there when I come.’ So he went to this Jewish home and he told them about the Lord Jesus Christ, who He was, and that He was God come in the flesh. He was the Messiah. And that He was going to pray in the Name of their Messiah that this father would be healed. The doctor was also there and he said he wouldn’t live till morning. The family was kind of waiting to be with him, till he died. And so Charlie Ingersoll, after having explained all of this, prayed for this man in the Name of our wonderful Sovereign Lord. The next morning when he came to work, his secretary was there and he said, ‘How’s your father?’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘he is fine…he regained consciousness. And this morning he asked for breakfast and when I left he was sitting up. He is fine.’There was at that time Ruben A. Torry Jewish Mission in Minneapolis, Hebrew Mission. Ruben A. Torry said of that event, or the people of the Mission said, that more Jewish people came to Christ as a result of that one miraculous healing than in several years of ministry to the Jewish community. Because of that one miracle healing in that one Jewish home.”— Paris Reidhead
“While Lidia our sister [in the concentration camp] worked so hard, the thieves stole the work done by Lidia. And in the evening, when she was brought back to the prison cell, she didn’t have the [right] amount of work done, so she was punished – not allowed to have her little bit of soup.Hungry, weeping, Lidia went out from the prison cell in the yard of the prison, praying, weeping. And while she walked around, at once she heard somebody, ‘Hey, hey. Do you have a mother?’ Awakening, like from a dream, Lidia looked back. ‘Hey, hey. Do you have a mother who prays for you?’ [It was] a communist guard with a revolver in his hand. And Lidia answered him, ‘Yes, I have an old mother who remains behind. She surely prays for me. But why do you ask me?’‘Since half an hour,’ said the guard, ‘I am running after you with my revolver to shoot you because you are where you are not allowed to be. But my arm which was all right the whole day – I cannot move it. It is surely your mother who prays for you. And now, run back immediately, because if they find us here, they will shoot us both. We are not allowed to be here.’Still weeping, but now tears of thankfulness for her God, Lidia ran back to the prison cell, arrives safely, goes to bed and sleeps as if she would have had the best of dinners.And early in the morning, when the thousands of prisoners are gathered to be brought to the field to work, among the many guards with their revolvers is also the guard whom she met last evening. He was not allowed to speak with her, but he showed her his arm. His arm was all right.. . .we have seen in communist prisons the love of our Saviour. We have seen in communist prisons signs, miracles, wonders. And we have learned to know that forever Jesus is Lord and He alone will prevail.”— Sabina Wurmbrand
“A minister was one day moving his library upstairs. As the minister was going upstairs with his load of books his little boy came in, and was very anxious to help his father. So his father just told him to go and get an armful and take them upstairs. When the father came back, he met the little fellow about half-way up the stairs tugging away with the biggest in the library. He couldn't manage to carry it up. The book was too big. So he sat down and cried. His father found him, and just took him in his arms, book and all, and carried him upstairs. So Christ will carry you and all your burdens.”— D.L. Moody
“I met in England, a lady who told this bit of a story. In a book that came into her hand the statement was made that one might pray here in London, for example, for someone two thousand miles away, and that something would happen at the other end; that always when one prays something is happening at the other end, and is changing because of the prayer. This lady had a brother in India, a long distance away, who was not a Christian, and she at once thought, Now, if I pray especially for him, will something happen? Is this statement of the book true!" She felt led to pray especially for that brother, that he might come to Christ. She went on praying, day by day, saying to herself, half wondering as she said it, "Is something happening at the other end?" and, in her heart, saying, "Something is happening; but I wish I knew!"By-and-by, in the course of the usual family correspondence, she put this sentence in the letter to her brother: "Has anything unusual happened to you lately? "That was the only reference she made to her special praying. Back, in the course of the mails from India, came a letter from him, saying this: "Yes, something has happened. Two months ago my thought was turned to God; I do not know why. It was not any book that I was reading; it was not any sermon that I heard; I did not go where I would hear sermons; but I do know that my thought was turned to think about God." He had been trained in a Christian home, he knew the whole Gospel story, and he now said, "I was led to give my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ, and as I write to you I am a Christian man." She ran her mind quickly back over the calendar. The letter said, "Two months ago," and she found that two months carried the story back to the time when she began her special praying for her brother. That is, something had happened at the other end.”— S.D. Gordon
“In the year 1900 a ‘massed band’ of four people marched out-of-step down the main street of Bangor in Northern Ireland. The two members with uniforms were Salvation Army lassies; the other two were young men…The young man who headed this little parade was beating a tuneless tambourine. He had recently vowed that for Christ's sake he would go anywhere and do anything at any cost. Then this silly thing in the streets of his home town had turned up. He had been walking down the street when this Salvation Army lassie asked him to stand with the other three at the street corner to witness for Christ.It hadn't the faintest smell of the heroic about it…wide-eyed cynics showered the band with unsubdued catcalls…To make bad worse (as the Irish say it), it seemed by some pre-arranged signal that every friend, every relative, and every enemy of his passed the corner as he stood there bashfully.…Seeing the dilemma, one of the Army lassies suggested that the four kneel down and ask the Lord to ‘take over.’ Poor Billy! As they knelt there, a brother offered a ‘telegram’ prayer which Billy wished had been as long as the 119th Psalm. Then something happened. When Billy arose from his knees, he was through forever with any sensitiveness to public opinion. His reputation died and had a public funeral in that street meeting. (To die and be buried publicly doesn't take long!)To the jeering spectators, this street meeting may have looked like comedy. But to this young man it was sweeter than the "Triumphal March" in Verdi's Aida. It was a glory march to celebrate a greater victory to him than that of Nelson at Trafalgar or King William III at the Battle of the Boyne. Billy was triumphant. He had just lost what he never wanted to find again and had just found what he never wanted to lose. He lost his reputation and fear of man and found the joy and peace of the overflowing fullness of the Spirit.” — Leonard Ravenhill
