It was like being able to go back and see where you died. I recently went back to a country road west of Austin, Texas where, for all intents and purposes, I really should have died in October of 1969. It’s a sad, sobering story of what was truly God’s infinite mercy and my depraved wrongdoing.
This is another story, similar to the ones I wrote earlier, “Lucifer and the White Moths“, “The Radio Miracle” and “Don’t Ever Ask Again“. Those events all happened a few short months earlier in July/August of 1969.
You’d think, after all I’d experienced, that I’d be a good boy for the next 80 years. But that’s not what happened. Like I wrote about in “God Is Chance”, at this time I had a fancy European sports car which was in every way a real idol for me. After my near death experience involving drugs in the summer, I stopped using strong stuff. But I soon got back to smoking marijuana again. And later that fall I decided to go out for a “joy ride” with my girlfriend.
She and I were smoking marijuana, driving along winding Hill Country roads west of Austin at night and listening to Jimi Hendricks on the cassette player. I guess I was thinking, “Everything’s back to normal”. In the last month I’d been reading my Bible, a new thing for me, and praying. But I didn’t know who Jesus was; I wasn’t saved and I still was hanging out with my old friends.
The car could go very fast and I liked that. We were driving in an area where there was often a rock wall on one side of the road and a drop off down a steep hill on the other. And recently I went back to this place so I could add photos of the actually location.
What happened next was this. We were driving down a long straightaway that I knew took a slight turn to the right at the end of it. That’s what you can see in picture “A”.
While driving down the straightaway in the dark, probably doing 80 mph (about 135 kph), suddenly on the side of the road in the darkness, just before the curve, I saw two lights. I recognized that they were supernatural as this was in the middle of nowhere. And I said loudly in my mind, “There are angels here!”
Almost immediately I went into the turn. What I didn’t calculate in my driving was that the road not only turned to the right but it had a dip also in the road there. My car was going so fast that, because of the dip, the back end of the car spun around completely backwards, 180 degrees.
So the next thing I knew, we were going totally backwards at the same speed I went into the turn. I furiously clutched the car, looking behind me into the darkness, applying the brakes, trying to steer the convertible, going backwards at high speed on drugs. Utterly miraculously, we came to a stop on a small shoulder of the road around 100 yards passed the turn with the dip in the road. I turned off the engine and we sat there. I turned off Jimi Hendrix and by then all the effects of the marijuana were totally gone. The second picture “A” is the same turn and dip in the road, seen from further along and around the bend. And picture with “A” and “B” is taken approximately at the place where my car came to a stop, still backwards, around 100 yards past the turn and dip.
That moment was one of the greatest zeniths (or nadirs) of my life. If I ever, ever felt that I didn’t deserve to be alive right then, that was the place. After all God had done to save me from death and the devil just a few short months before, there I was back at it again.
Sin is not a popular or politically correct word nowadays. But I knew without a doubt that I had sinned and gone back to the ways that had nearly killed me before. I didn’t deserve to survive that experience. I deserved punishment, big time.
But God had shown me two angels just a few seconds before that incident who were there to somehow guide that spinning car, hurdling backwards through the darkness along that mountainous road so that the car came to a standstill instead of flipping over or going off a cliff.
The total, undeserved, mercy of God. My willful, sinful self. The revelation of angels to show it was an act of His unearned clemency. We were totally unhurt. The car didn’t even have a scratch on it. We drove back to Austin as I was silently in awe, deeply stunned, sobered and humbled by what had happened.
Why had this happened? First, I was not yet a Christian and didn’t have the power of salvation to give me the strength to flee temptation and follow Him in a new life. But God evidently had a plan for my life. It wasn’t His time or place for me to have a big car wreck as there were a number of things that kept happening during the fall of 1969, leading up to my meeting some young radical Christians during the winter who led me to receive Jesus.
But if I ever have any doubts about where Jeremiah said “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9), then I can think back to my depraved foolishness as I tempted fate and God after He’d delivered me from death just a few months earlier. “His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting“. (Psalms 103:17) “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.” (Psalms 34:7)
What a powerful testimony of the Lord’s hand in your life! So well written too! Keep’em coming!
Something similar happened to me as I was driving up a hilly road in the dead of winter in Yorkshire in 1992 with my (ex) girlfriend in an old Polish car and hit a spot of black ice as they call it there…the car spun around like what seemed an eternity like maybe 5 times in slow motion while expecting the bang of hitting a lamp post as it was dark already and a small country road leading up the hill to where we were going to spend the night.
I did feel God’s protection and hadn’t done anything wrong that I know off, just sooo thankful He protected me as I could do nothing to stop the car from spinning. It was a real miracle.
Praise the Lord!
Mark, I so needed to read your testimonty today. It seems I am always having to fight battles of my old self, and your testimonty hit the nail squarely on the head. We really can not fool around with the Lord’s mercy. Once we are forgiven we are accountable. Thanks for posting. PS That is not to say we are not able to call upon the Lord in repentance, as Jesus said we are to forgive 77 X 7 if need be. Which shows how much more forgiving the Lord is to us. The Lord is great, merciful and kind. His judgments (chastisements) are true, merciful and wise.
Glad to know it was a blessing. I’m so happy to have this way now to post for others some of the amazing and wonderful things the Lord has done in my life. Lord helping me, there’s more blog posts to come on these subjects. Love you, GBY.
Great eagerly waiting..
A wonderful outcome and proof that God sends Angels to guide and take care of us. Don’t beat yourself up over your past mistakes just dwell on the lessons and the utter proof that God and Angels do exist.
Thanks. Amen, that’s right.
I’ve always seen Hebrews 1:14 as a promise that angels are ministering to all who will inherit salvation, even before they know they are saved. Because God, in eternity, knows who they are He gives His angels to protect them. I was woken up by angels when there was a fire in my place. This was before I was a Christian.
Thanks for your comment; interesting.
Very inspiring narrative Mark.
Yes, there have been a few angels in my thoroughly undeserving life too.
What a loving and merciful God we have.
I was really touched by the testimony.
Luke
Thanks, always good to hear from you, GBY.
So true: even before I was saved, He was always there to protect me from y own stupidity, my wrong choices. Amazing testimony, Mark! Thank you for sharing it with us!
Thanks for your comment, good to hear from you.