One of my favorite outdoor places is only about 20 minutes from my church office. Mt Nebo State Park overlooks the beautiful Arkansas River Valley where I live. From atop the mountain you can see the Arkansas River below to the East and Lake Dardanelle below to the North. From the South and North ends of the mountain you can see a panoramic view of other mountains and hills both far and near.
When I was a child my parents would occasionally rent a cottage on Nebo for a week of relaxation. When our children were young Treon and I kept the family tradition going. And when I was a teen my musical group was hired to play at the Mt Nebo Chicken Fry Festival twice -a pretty sweet gig. Mt Nebo has several hiking trails and an abundance of wildlife, but is known best for its scenic views.
But when I think about Mt Nebo now I am reminded of when I’ve experienced God’s manifest Presence there. My most cherished memory of my life occurred one night on this mountain when Jesus met me there and allowed me to see Him in the flesh. But I will save that for a stand alone testimony in a future Newsletter. If you feel that you can’t wait it is included in our "Little Book of Testimonies" in the Booklet Section of our web site.
Here at Crusade Church we open each Sabbath by entering the gates of His Sanctuary with praise, prayer and thanksgiving. Every Friday night at 7:30 pm with lights dimmed low we worship the Lord by singing praises and follow that with prayers. We’ve witnessed many miracles. Unlike how we come together with hugs and greetings to begin our Sabbath morning services, for Friday evening praise and prayer we quietly enter the Sanctuary and find a seat to begin private prayer. Afterwards, we sing praises in worship which is followed by individual prayers both spoken aloud and in silence. We do it this way just to put God first -have our focus squarely on Him -we all greet and hug each other after the service.
A few years ago when I arrived for Friday Night Praise and Prayer there was a dear sister named Tabitha who was in the front yard of the church building. It was August when we normally experience suffocating humidity. But this night was unseasonably nice. As I was approaching the front door to enter I mentioned how nice the weather was and Tabitha said, "Well we could all just drive up Mt Nebo-it would be even cooler up there." For reasons I did not yet know that sounded appealing to me so I replied, "If everybody else wants to it’s fine with me." So we decided to carpool our congregation to Mt Nebo for open air praise, worship and prayer.
Upon arriving atop the mountain we found a pavilion overlooking the Arkansas River Valley. From there we could see the cities Russellville and Dardanelle. Two cities separated by the Arkansas River. Not long after we began to worship the Lord by singing praises God made His manifest Presence known. Some saw spiritual things and everybody felt God’s Presence. It was not until the next day during open testimony services in the afternoon did all that had happened came to light.
Two of our members testified that they had seen the Archangel Michael in a chariot in the sky. We all somehow understood that the people in the valley below were held in the bondage of deception and sin, and that there was a demonic principality who had been assigned over this region at work to keep the people in bondage. So we understood that Michael had come to create a breach in his defenses so that the captives could be set free by the Gospel of Jesus. From his chariot the witnesses could see what looked like lightning descending to the homes where people lived to somehow make evangelization possible.
Tabitha’s husband Donald who was a Deacon in our congregation testified that he saw a giant sword appear in the night sky. As he watched it was presented to us. He described the sword in detail because before it was presented it appeared to him at every conceivable angle. He believed that this was significant.
Needless to say, we were all absolutely spiritually on fire for services the next morning. Though we had not heard all the testimonies yet we had all experienced the unmistakable Presence of the Lord. One dear sister named Dominica who had to drive 80 miles each Sabbath to services, happened to miss that Friday evening. When she walked into the church building with her young son she was carrying a box containing a board game. On the side of the box was a graphic of a beautiful sword. When Donald saw the sword he immediately said, "That is exactly the sword that I saw last night!" Those of us who were in hearing distance excitedly went over to look. Dominica said, "My son Nathaniel saw this game and wouldn’t leave me alone until I bought it for him -and he insisted on bringing it to church today." We opened the box and to our amazement saw that the game board was an aerial view of a city where the inhabitants were in captivity to a wicked king. The object of the game was to set the captives free. The weapon needed was the sword, from which lightning would descend to the homes of the captives, setting them free.
It’s so glorious how God works - in how He confirms His work through many witnesses. It was not only a glorious presence filled night there on Nebo, but several cars stopped -people got out and watched and listened to all that was happening. Some stayed and gave testimony that they had felt drawn by God’s Presence-none were practicing Christians.
