Chapter 6: THE GREAT MIRACLE

Somewhere in that period of time when the physicians were working on me, I came to myself and realized that I was dying. I knew that my life was leaving me and that I was living on sheer will-power alone. Every breath I breathed was a labor of pain so great that I knew the human body could not long survive such pain. With each breath it seemed as though my strength would fail and once that breath was inhaled, then it required the same amount of strength to exhale. Nothing was automatic. I knew that I was keeping my appointed time to die. It was as though I received a revelation: "This is it."

Knowing that only God could give me back my life and that only God could change my appointed time to die, I prayed a strange prayer. My prayer was that God would allow me to appear before His throne and plead for an extension of my physical life. In any other place and time this prayer would be unusual; however, all of this was planned by God to ultimately serve His purpose. The thought to pray such a prayer was instilled in my mind by the Holy Spirit.

At the time I concluded the prayer, I heard a voice. Oh, what a voice. There are not words in our language to describe to you what I heard. This voice was hypnotic and totally captivating. The tone was so sweet and beautiful that by its very tone it implied that the speaker was God. I thought, "It's God! He has heard my prayer!

He is answering me!"

The voice continued to say to me, "Stop. Don't breathe. Quit. It will all be over.

Rest and peace at last."

It continued to imply that if only I would obey, I would at last have all the things that I would ever need. At this point, I began to comply and started lessening my efforts to breathe. After all, this was the very first time in my life that I had ever heard an audible, supernatural voice, so you can understand my total captivation. It was such a beautiful voice, a voice that is beyond description with human words.

The very tone of this voice was saying, "God is speaking." You can imagine my willingness to obey the command of that voice, so I began to lessen my efforts to breathe.

Then, like a bolt of lightning, "NO!" it came to me just like it states in the Book of James, "Resist the devil and he will flee." Yes, there in that valley beyond the vale of tears, in the very valley of the shadow of death, satan met me and lied to me. Of course, that ploy was nothing to him because he has been lying to me all of my life. He lied to me once again as I was dying. Nothing is sacred to satan, the father of lies, for there he implied that he was God.

These are the tactics with which the people of this world are confronted in this closing age of the Church. satan is, first of all, a liar. He lied to Eve and he has not stopped lying since. The sad part is that many people are buying that lie without even knowing it.

Notice that in my situation, satan did not start with an outright lie. He said that if I would obey him, the physical pain would stop. He was truthful in that statement, but all of the rest of what he said was a lie. That is why he is so hard to trap.

Generally speaking, he will always have a little truth mixed in with his BIG lie.