I Saw The Light

By N. John Melville

The life of a hardened soldier and prosecutor for South Africa's Apartheid government was transformed when he accepted God's calling and became a peacemaker.

Can God really protect you in these troubled times; provide for you in a weak economy and does he have a destiny and purpose for your life? The answer is an emphatic yes. The author testifies how, after he "saw the light" and experienced God's immense power, not a hair was harmed on his head (Luke 21:18), in spite of a price having been placed on it by an Apartheid police death squad. This book tells of how the life of a hardened soldier and prosecutor for South Africa's Apartheid government was transformed when he accepted God's calling on his life. After his Damascene experience, he became a peacemaker, making an important contribution to the miraculous transformation that took place in South Africa.

Inspired in his youth to join an airborne unit by the lyrics of the Ballad of the Green Beret, the author narrowly missed death on several occasions. He narrates how God sustained him and guided his every step through harrowing times. This moving testimony is a "must read" for those wavering in their faith and anyone serving in the armed forces or in law enforcement, as well as their families.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456609276

Book preview

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PREFACE

And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is telling the truth, so that you may believe.

John 19:35

This book is the testimony of a self-confessed doubting Thomas, an experientialist who only believed in what he saw with his own eyes and experienced himself; a highly educated and practiced lawyer who had seen and heard it all before.

The author is no feeble minded adherent or cult follower to the teachings of others.   As a hardened soldier and then prosecutor for the Apartheid regime, he followed in the footsteps of Saul in eschewing the Christian faith.   That is until, like Saul, he had a road to Damascus encounter with the Lord, followed by seeing the light while under the power of the Holy Spirit.

These experiences changed his life from night to day. Through prayer and seeking guidance from the Holy Spirit, he discovered God’s calling on his life and became a peacemaker by participating in the National Peace Accord that was the precursor of South Africa’s miraculously peaceful transfer of power to the black majority.

The author shares his testimony of how the hidden secrets of God were revealed to him by the Holy Spirit and how he relied on the Holy Spirit to conduct him through the Word of God and to sustain him and guide his every step through harrowing times. He tells how, once he embarked upon the Lord’s work, the Holy Spirit provided for him and healed him. Although he walked through the valley of the shadow of death and faced many real dangers, not a hair was harmed on his head. The author reveals how the Lord’s hand was on him even before he came to know the Lord and how the Lord made the path smooth for him and answered even his mundane prayers time and time again.

The fact that the change in the author’s life has been sustained for over twenty years since the spiritual encounter with the Lord repudiates any suggestion that his experience was based on emotion or the influence of any earthly entity.   The church, at which he had the experience, has long since passed into oblivion.   

In the second part of the book, the author shares the Scriptures that were revealed to him by the Holy Spirit and that guided and enlightened him, in the hope that they will also sustain you, the reader, on your journey.

In summary, this is the author’s testimony that Jesus is indeed the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) and the Light of the World (John 8:12).

PART 1

INTRODUCTION

I once was lost

"Amazing Grace" by John Newton

I wandered so aimless, life filled with sin

I wouldn’t let my dear Savior in

"I Saw the Light" by Hank Williams, Sr.

As a kid, my favorite pastime was playing war games and with toy soldiers. My father had fought against the Germans in North Africa, my grandfather on my mother’s side had fought in both World Wars and his father was in the Boer War. So, it seemed to me that going to war was an inescapable part of life. When I was 11 years old, I was inspired by the moving Ballad of the Green Beret by Staff Sergeant Barry Sandler (which still has the power to make me tear up):

Fighting soldiers from the sky

Fearless men who jump and die

Men who mean just what they say

The brave men of the Green Beret.

I decided that when my turn came to serve in the army, I would do so with the Special Air Services (SAS), the Rhodesian equivalent of the Green Berets.

It was as an army recruit undergoing basic training (boot camp) back in 1974 that I first heard anything about seeing the light.   One of my fellow recruits was a Reborn Christian who made no secret of his faith.   Whenever we went on night exercises and our instructors set off Icarus flares into the sky, one of them would mock him: Have you seen the light now?   The rest of us would break down laughing, or at least we did the first few times before it became old.

As far as I could make out, none of the recruits, other than the Reborn Christian, were in the least way religiously inclined. The theory that there were no atheists in the trenches did not hold true for boot camp, except on Sundays. The unit that I was training with gave a four-hour pass to anyone who wanted to attend a church service on a Sunday morning.   Apart from those whose passes had been cancelled for displeasing the instructors one way or another, everyone leapt at the opportunity to get off base, eat civilian food and, I’m not sure how we managed it on a Sunday morning with the strict licensing laws that applied at that time, drink beer.   That is, until the Sunday that the duty instructor, not so affectionately known as Mad Dog, decided to give us a lesson when we returned to base worse for wear. For two hours in the midday sun, he had us marching in double time up and down the parade square with our nine-pound rifles held above our heads.

As I came within a week of completing boot camp with a regular unit and commencing the rigorous SAS selection course, I was involved in a serious motorcycle accident while on a pass. The accident left me with the major bones in both my forearms broken, my femur reduced to chip-sized pieces of bone and my right foot dangling from my leg on a strip of flesh, the exposed bone ends having been scraped on the road surface.   The paramedics attending the scene of the accident left me for dead and concentrated in trying to resuscitate my friend, Norman, who had been my pillion passenger.

The motor bike that we had been riding on had slipped on loose gravel as we turned a corner and broadsided into an oncoming car.   Neither of us had been wearing crash helmets.   My friend Norman paid the ultimate price, dying on the scene from head injuries.   The paramedics then turned their attention to me.

You might now be expecting me to tell you about my out of body experience while I was dead, like the one that Don Piper describes in 90 Minutes in Heaven.   I’m going to have to disappoint you as there was not one.   At least, if there was, I have no recollection of it.   I could not remember anything at all when I came to in the hospital.   I slowly regained my memory in the next few days.   Well, at least up to the point where my friend Norman and I had gotten onto the motorbike.   As soon as I remembered that, I asked the nurses where Norman was.   At first they lied and told me he was fine and in another ward.   I later learned that they were scared that, if they told me the truth, I would die from the shock.

So tenuous was my hold on life that the orthopedic surgeon who was treating me instructed the nurses to assist me in smoking cigarettes as he was afraid that even quitting nicotine would be enough to kill me.   The big worry for the hospital staff was that a glob of marrow from one of my broken bones would travel through a vein and to my heart and cause a blood embolism.

Over the following six weeks, I had to undergo a harrowing series of operations to have the broken bones in my forearms and my shin plated to hold them in place while they healed.   For the same reason, I had to have a titanium, Küntscher nail hammered through my buttock and down my femur.   Then a metal rod was inserted through a bone in my heel so that traction would keep my leg stretched while the bone grew.   Since then, whenever I see a picture of Jesus on the cross with nails through his feet, I feel pain.   As it would have been too much strain on my body to have everything repaired at once, the operations were performed incrementally.   By the time they got to the last one, they had to break the bones that had started knitting to re-set them.   

I was in the hospital for over three months – 100 days to be exact.   During most of my stay I had my right leg in traction and my arms in plaster up to my armpit.   This meant that I was totally dependent upon others to do absolutely everything for me. For over three months, my life was measured off in four-hour intervals – the period between painkillers.   My sleep was fitful and torturous I could not even escape my injuries when I did manage to snatch some sleep – as I always dreamt that I was immobilized by my injuries and in pain.

After about a week in hospital, the girl who eventually became my wife, Lily, came to visit me.   She was the next door neighbor of a friend of mine and we had met at a party thrown by the friend.   About a month after the party, Lily bumped into our mutual friend and asked about me.   When our friend told her about my accident and that I was in hospital, Lily came to visit me.   She visited me every day after that until I was released.

After I had been at the hospital for about two months, Lily asked me if she could bring in a friend of hers, who she described as a faith healer.   I agreed, and about a week later, the girl came to see me.   I do not remember what she said or prayed, but I do recall her laying her hands on me.   A sense of peace came over me and for the first time since my accident, I was able to sleep through the night without pain.

The next day I thought about it and came to a decision which astounds me now when I look back.   I decided that it would be hypocritical of me to run to God for help now that I was smashed up when I had had no use for Him before my accident. When I try to make sense of my reasoning all these years ago, I put it down to pride.   While the love of money is said to be the root of all evil, it is pride that is at the source of many of humankind’s woes and is something that the Lord detests (Lev. 26:19).

In spite of the severity of my injuries, I was released from the hospital after 100 days.   Although this seemed an eternity to me, I later discovered from other doctors that it was nothing short of a miracle that my bones knitted so quickly and that I did not die, given the extent of the injuries.

When I went for a follow up check-up at the hospital, my orthopedic surgeon put my before-and-after x rays up on the light box and called every other medical person in the vicinity to have a look at them.   He swelled his chest with pride as his colleagues marveled at his handiwork and at the short duration of my recovery. I do not want to take anything away from my orthopedic surgeon, who was undoubtedly a brilliant surgeon. I now thank God for having made him available to take me on as a patient.   I do believe, however, that there were other forces at work.

My mother’s good friend, Anne Weber, had marshaled the members of her congregation to pray for me right from the time that she first got word of my accident until I left the hospital. I firmly believe that God intervened in saving my life under hopeless circumstances.   Moreover, He caused my injuries to heal in super-quick time, in spite of the fact that not only did I not seek His help, but I rejected it.   At the time, I did not even accept or acknowledge that God had played a part in my recovery.   I disregarded with scorn any suggestion that God had saved me because He had great things in store for me.   I realize now just how wrong I was in light of everything that has happened since then and which I record in the chapters that follow.

I hope that you have stayed with me up to this point.   If you grew up and remained a committed Christian, you will no doubt be shaking your head in disbelief and perhaps even disgust at how obtuse and difficult I was.

The truth is that much, if not most, of the world is like I was.   They have stubbornly turned their faces from God.   Like it or not, you have been commissioned to go forth and engage with the likes of the person that I once was, to bring in the harvest (Matt. 9: 37; 28:19).   Remember that Jesus himself spent his time with the lost, saying that He had come to save them (Matt. 9:10-12).

If, however, you are either merely a nominal Christian, as I was, or totally against the notion of Christianity, I encourage you to keep on reading, with an open mind.   The following chapters are my testimony of how I had a supernatural experience and a spiritual awakening that changed my life like night and day and gave me purpose in life and a deep sense of satisfaction.

Chapter 1

OUT OF AFRICA

And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring to you the testimony of God.

1 Corinthians 2:1 (AKJV)

When Paul addressed the angry mob in Jerusalem, he testified to them of his personal experience of Jesus Christ (Acts 22).   This approach makes sense to me as a former practising lawyer.   My experience in that field has taught me also that, in order for the testimony of a witness to be evaluated, it is necessary for that witness to explain his or her background and experience.   This is something that Paul also did.   He explained that he was a Jew and that he had persecuted the Christians before his encounter with Jesus.

To give you the opportunity to weigh up my testimony, I will share with you a brief glimpse of my origins and experience.   My other and perhaps more important reason for referring to my experiences before my encounter with God is to show how God used them to equip me for His work and to teach me lessons that would help me to understand His ways.   I learned also that every experience, whether good or bad, strengthens and builds character.

I was born in the 1950s in Central Africa, in what was then known as Rhodesia. Like the United States, Rhodesia started out as a British colony and drew settlers from Europe who came to seek their fortune or a new start or, later, to escape from the chaos left by both world wars.   The early pioneers had to make an arduous journey through uncharted and hostile terrain in their ox drawn, covered