When you schedule an outreach event, in the midst of a pandemic, you can expect the attacks of Satan as well as the miracles of God. Our prophecy series was no exception.
We believed it would be a one of our best series from the start. We had scheduled a well known evangelist. We had mailed out 100,000 brochures. We had prepared the church with revivals, training, and evangelistic sermons. From a human perspective, we were ready for opening night, but we were not ready for COVID-19 to hit our speaker and myself at the exact same time and two weeks before the meetings began.
The devil was working and trying to stop the gospel — just as he did when he sought to shut down the preaching of the early church through persecution. What would we do? The mailers had already gone out and registrations were already coming in. When Satan comes in like a flood, it is then that we must trust God to work things out in His way. Unfortunately, our speaker was not able to recover in time to start the series, but miraculously God gave me strength and healing to not only recover quickly from this virus, but to preach for the series.
Another attack by Satan came with low numbers on opening night — really low numbers. But again, we turned as a team to the Lord and asked him to bless. Another miracle happened as the series progressed. Normally when you hit topics like the Sabbath, the state of the dead or the mark of the beast, you see your audience numbers drop. But it just didn’t drop. The people who started with us kept on coming, and coming, and coming, and sharing how their lives were being transformed through these meetings.
A woman named Dianna shared that before this meeting she had been deeply interested in prophecy and believed in the secret rapture, the immortality of the soul and went to church on Sunday. But now she believes God’s truth and believes just what the Bible says. She was a co-worker of one of our church members and when she got the flyer she decided to come. Her life has changed.
Another man who received the flyer and came to the meetings is also praising God. He tells everyone that he has finally found a church that has God’s truth and that loves him like Jesus does. He was so excited about the Sabbath truth he called his sister and mother in Idaho and told them they needed to find the nearest Adventist church. When I looked up the church with him, we discovered that the pastor there was covering the same topics we were covering in our series on the book of Revelation. His family plans to visit this Adventist church. Praise God!
As I look back at this evangelistic series, I realize that God always blesses and always has a plan. Our part is to move forward in faith despite the obstacles we encounter!
