10250 North Freeway @ West Road
Houston, Texas 77037
Tel: (281) 447-8484
Pastor: Dr. Lester Hutson

All of the material listed herein is the property of the Byron McCartney family, and may not be copied without express written authorization.

Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust (Psalm 16:1)

Every job has its hazards but from first hand experience I can say that my first thoughts when trying to become gainfully employed were not centered on the potential for bodily harm. I was more concerned with whether or not the income would be sufficient and whether or not I could advance to a better paying position.

When my parents took on the responsibility of bringing the gospel to the Brazilian people they did so without regard for monetary compensation or personal harm. They selflessly accepted the burdens of learning a new culture and language, of sacrificing any desires for a comfortable living and of putting the spiritual welfare of others above their own well-being in order to accomplish this task.

I do not mean to imply that we lived uncomfortably or that we had no time to ourselves or that we constantly faced life threatening dangers. We may not have had much money but God stretched what we did have and provided us with sufficient housing and sustenance. My father always made sure that our family unit remained close despite all the time he and my mother spent helping others with their needs. As for the life-threatening dangers, well, there were several but God protected us and allowed my parents to continue bringing His Word to the Brazilians for many years.

Maybe in some future article I'll elaborate more on the financial strain pastors and missionaries live under as well as how much of their time is requested of them by their converts and disciples but in this article I'd like to tell you about three of the many near death experiences my parents faced while serving God in and around the city of Recife on the northeast coast of Brazil.

When we first moved to the northeast of Brazil we lived a couple blocks inland from one of the beaches of the city of Recife. Being a tropical zone there were many fruit bearing trees the most common of which were the coconut and palm trees. One exceptionally tall coconut tree stood just on the other side of the sandy road from our house. This tree must have been 80 feet tall, which was impressive enough, but what caught everyone's attention the first time they saw it was that the last 20 or so feet of the trunk was severely bent over.

If you've ever lived around coconut trees you will immediately know why this fact was so noteworthy.  You would know that coconuts are heavy, are all clustered at the tops of the tree like giant sized, armor plated grapes and fall off unpredictably when ripe. You would know that a bent tree places all the weight of those coconuts as well as of the large fronds on the apex of the curve of the tree. You would realize that sooner or later the top of that tree was going to come down. It is dangerous enough just to walk under a tall coconut tree but it is absolutely moronic to spend any amount of time under a very tall, fully ladened, bent over tree like the one in front of our house.

However, one day, a fellow missionary's wife, along with a couple other ladies, came by to pick my mother up to go to a ladies meeting. The lady driving had not noticed the infamous tree and so after my mother got in and the door was closed she backed up right under it. At that precise moment the top of that tree snapped with a tremendous boom and down came several tons of trunk, fronds and coconuts.

The whole neighborhood heard the noise and immediately knew the tree had finally broken. Everyone came out expecting to see broken coconuts, splintered trunk and shredded fronds but no one, especially none of my family, expected to see a crushed jeep under the whole mess. Realizing it was the jeep my mother was in my father ran to see what he could do. The jeep's hood was totally smashed but the passenger area was mostly intact. We just knew that no one could have survived that impact.

Nevertheless, the five women in that jeep all crawled out without a single scratch! In fact, the only personal damage, besides the loss of the jeep, was that one of the women's shoes had sustained a permanent stain from the coconut juice spilled on it. Had that tree top fallen just a few inches differently the cab of that jeep would have been smashed just as flatly as the engine compartment and no one would have survived. My father took advantage of the moment to publicly thank God for saving the women. We met several of our neighbors that day and in the following days and weeks saw many of them accept Christ as their personal savior.

The second incident also involved my mother and happened while we were living in the heavily wooded country a couple hours west of the city of Recife. Because of the remoteness of this location there was no electrical service and we made do with a diesel generator, kerosene lamps and refrigerator. Yes, a kerosene refrigerator. The generator was expensive to operate and so was only used each night for two or three hours.

My mother liked to keep a kerosene lantern going through the night just in case one us needed to get up for any reason. This was not an attempt to keep us from collecting bruises on shins or foreheads but to help us avoid stepping on the ever present scorpions and spiders.

The lanterns we had only held about two to three hours worth of kerosene and so sometime during the early morning hours my mother would get up and with the aid of a small flashlight she kept by her side of the bed, refill and re-light the lantern. As I look back on it now I don't understand why someone didn't come up with an all-night lantern, one with a 6 to 8 hour reservoir.

One very dark night we were all awakened by a shriek from the hallway. Instantly awake and recognizing my mother's "there's a nasty bug or something" type scream (she also had a "oooh there's a bat in here" type noise which was more of a loud and shaky statement than a scream) came running to the rescue shoe in hand. When my father reached my mother she almost leaped into his arms pointing at the corner of the second step. Prying her fingers off the flashlight my father shined the beam onto the step to reveal a beautiful but deadly coral snake.

When you consider that this snake's poison is one of the most lethal of all snake venoms, that once bitten a person only has minutes to receive life saving help and that we lived about two hours from the nearest such help you realize how "fortunate" my mother was to not have been bitten.

My father quickly dispatched the snake with a shoe heel in a fashion reminiscent of Kruschev's outburst at the United Nations conference in the early sixties (he took off one of his shoes and banged its heel on the podium in front of him in protest of America's U-2 spy plane flights over Cuba and Russia). My mother calmed down and rethought her choice of nightly footwear (usually single strap sandals). If she could have she would have bought steel toed, snake proof, waste high boots but settled for a thicker version of house slipper. After thanking God for another life-saving intervention we all went back to our beds searching every dark corner along the way and keeping one eye open for the rest of that night.

The third episode happened in 1964 and was by far the scariest. During the late fifties and early sixties communism was being promoted within the work force and the universities of Brazil, and other South American countries, as a better form of government than democracy. As a result of relentless propaganda and the moral corruption of certain government officials a socialist was elected as Brazil's president. Thus began a downward spiral of financial instability and governmental degradation which culminated in a revolution in the latter part of 1964.

A brave military general named Castelo Branco (White Castle) led a bloodless coup and ousted the socialists from power and established a military dictatorship which lasted 6 years. This man is revered as one of Brazil's greatest heroes. During the 6 years of his leadership Brazil enjoyed its most prosperous and politically stable era. Any Brazilian over the age of 40 will tell you with great pride and longing that those were Brazil's best years.

Towards the end of 1964 an official my father had befriended years earlier came to visit us. He gave my father a document that was confiscated from the socialist regime in Recife. When my father read it his face turned very pale and we knew it was serious news. On that list were the names of all the Americans living in the area. My father's name was right up at the top of that list. The reason my father's face paled at reviewing this list was that it was a hit list. The people on that list were designated as enemies of the socialist state and were to be terminated at the earliest opportunity. We had unknowingly escaped death by hours! But God had known and even if the country had gone totally socialistic I'm positive He would have rescued us.

SUMMARY:

We faced many other near misses during our time in Brazil but God protected us through them all. But then of course, He promises His children that He would "give his angels charge over" them, "to keep" them "in all" His "ways" (Psalm 91:11). Another tremendous advantage to being a child of God is that when we do pass away we will immediately be with Him in Heaven. Paul the great Apostle assures us that
"to be absent from the body" is "to be present with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8).

What about you? Can you share in this Divine promise of safe keeping? Do you know where you will go when you pass away? If you are not a child of God the Bible, God's Word, clearly tells how you can become one. Once again it is the Apostle Paul who shows us this truth. In Galatians chapter 3 and verse 26 he tells us that it is through faith in Christ Jesus that we become children of God.

The gospel of John tells us that "as many as received him (Christ), to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his (Christ's) name" (John 1:12). Luke tells us in Acts chapter 4 and verses 10 through 12 that it is by "the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth" that salvation is given and that "neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" (Acts 4:10-12). Finally, Jesus Christ Himself tells you that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

All you have to do is place your faith and trust in Jesus Christ and believe that He is the Son of God, that He died for you and paid for all your sins, was buried and rose again on the third day and that it is only through Him that you can become a child of God and you will be saved. It is as simple as that. Don't risk another moment without knowing for certain that you are one of His children and that your eternal soul will be with Him the moment you pass from this earth. Trust Christ today and allow God Almighty to give you the greatest gift anyone could ever receive, the power to become a child of God.

NEXT LESSON:

I bet you think it takes several years of medical school and hospital training to become a doctor, right? Nope. I'll tell you how my father became known as "Doctor" with the cunning use of olive oil, a syringe and a hemostat.

"It Does Make a Difference What You Believe"