A SKY PILOT PROVES GOD IN CRASH LANDING AND REVIEWS THE STORY OF HIS CONVERSION

“LEAVING my home in Los Angeles, I came to the city of Portland number of years ago; and God led me under the sound of the Gospel. Here I heard men and women testify to the power of transforming grace in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Cornered

      “In one of these meetings God spoke to my heart. I was just a young man, full of life and ambition, with every promise of the world before me, but God knew how to deal with my heart. He cornered me up that night until I could not see any way out but the way of the Cross.

      “At the close of the meeting the invitation was given to those who wanted prayer. I stouted it out against God to the very last. The benediction had been pronounced. I don’t remember much that happened till someone laid a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Won’t you come to God tonight?’ The whole place seemed to turn black before my eyes. At that moment it seemed everything and everybody vanished from my presence – the old associates, the job, the friends, and everything else – and I said, ‘Yes, Lord, I will settle it, and I will do it tonight.’ I can remember it as vividly as though it were last night that it happened. It was October 23, 1908, at about 10:30 p.m.

‘Heart Trouble’

      “Three days prior to that, I was under such deep conviction that I would shake like an aspen leaf from my head to my feet. I would square myself and wonder what was the matter anyway, and thought of consulting a doctor. But I found out what the matter was; it was ‘heart trouble’ all right. My heart needed God’s salvation.

      “I walked up the aisle and knelt at the end of the altar. I cried out to God for mercy. My heart was wrung within me as I saw myself weighed in the balance and found wanting. I began to see a life behind me that was not very pleasant to look back upon.

Remembers Cash Register

      “I was called a respectable young man, held in esteem by my friends and associates, and trusted by my employers; but I saw the deeds I had done. The cash register loomed up before me where I had sold goods across the counter and had collected hundreds of dollars for my employer. The wages I made didn’t pay the bills that a life of sin brought on. I tapped the till – ‘knocked down’ on the cash register for a considerable sum of money.

     “But the night I gave my heart to God I said, ‘God, if You will save me I will go back and straighten up the back life.’ The enemy whispered, ‘You will go to jail if you make that confession.’ The man I worked for was an atheist and had no regard for God, man, or religion. But I thought I would rather go to Heaven by the way of the penitentiary than go to hell free.

The Old Account Settled

      “Down on my knees that night I settled it. God saved me. The next day I sat down to write letters back to my home town and straighten up old accounts, and enclose money that I never had intended to send back. They wrote me that they freely forgave me, and commended me for the stand I had taken.

Life Completely Changed

      “I was working for one of the largest firms in the city at that time. When I went back among my old associates my life was so completely changed that they came around, one after the other, and wanted to know what had happened. It didn’t take me long to tell them. A real Christian is always ready to tell what God has done for him. My life told it, but my lips had a chance to tell it, too. God had taken out the appetite for cigarettes, the desire to gamble, and the love of the theaters and dances.

Makes First Cross-Country Flight from Tulsa

      “I have tested this Gospel in many ways. For five years I was an airplane pilot here in the Northwest, and on many occasions I found the hand of the Lord working in my behalf, and protecting me from death. Nine pilots with whom I was associated have gone to untimely deaths through crashes; but God in His mercy has spared my life, and I praise Him for it.

      “On a flight from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Oregon – the first cross-country flight ever made from Tulsa to Oregon – in the middle of winter when the storms were on, through mountain passes where we were surrounded by storm clouds and snow, God’s hand in wondrous ways protected us. In Shasta, California, in the Siskiyou Mountains, through a dense snowstorm God made it possible to make a safe landing right in the heart of the mountains.

Fell Four Hundred Feet

      “On one occasion I was flying a plane in Tulsa, and it went into a tail spin. I fell four hundred feet to the ground. I was taken out of the wreckage, was rushed to the hospital, not expected to live until I arrived there. My ankle was broken, my shoulder was dislocated. I had internal injuries – also bruises and abrasions all over my body. Three doctors and nurses worked on my leg to set the bones. The small anklebone was broken, a Pott’s fracture on the end of the large bone, and the ligaments were torn loose. They put the leg in a plaster cast, and the doctor said that the slightest jar would deform my foot for life. He said that it would be six or eight weeks before I could remove the cast, and then I would have to walk with crutches and hobble around for an indefinite period of time. But he did not know my Physician.

Healed

      “Within ten days I was out of that hospital, and the plaster of Paris casts cut was off from my leg. I looked up to God and said, ‘Lord, if You have permitted this for Your glory, You will heal me.’ The Lord gave me the passage of Scripture where Jesus said of the blind man, ‘Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest.’ My soul began to cleave to that verse of Scripture. I said, ‘Lord, You are going to heal me as surely as Your Word is true, for You promised that the works of God should be made manifest.’ That was the thing I hung upon and based my faith upon: God was going to manifest His works before that wicked city and those unbelievers with whom I came in contact every day.

      “God came down in power and healed me instantly, at six o’clock in the evening, in the hotel room where I was sitting. I got up, threw those crutches aside and began to walk up and down the room on the leg that had been broken. When I had put my foot on the floor in the morning I could not bear an ounce of weight upon it. Now tears began to flow down my cheeks, and I said, ‘God has healed me!’ I walked for a solid hour, praising God. He had touched me and made me whole.

The Miracle Demonstrated

      “I went down into the lobby the next morning without the use of cane or crutches. They began to come around me wanting to know what had happened to me. I had the chance to witness that the God of Heaven had healed me, and had the opportunity to let it be known to all the doctors and nurses of the hospital. They knew what a dangerous condition my leg was in, and I walked before them all, just a week and a half after the accident, at the graduating exercises the nurses were having in the Methodist church. All the nurses and doctors in the hospital were there. I walked up and down in front of them. They looked on with amazement at what God had done for me.

Spiritually Clean!

      “I thank God for His watchful care over my soul and over my life. God saved me when I was young, and I thank Him for it. He spared me from many dangers and pitfalls that might have overtaken me and undermined me mentally, physically, and spiritually. One never knows what danger lies before him.

      “I think of the testimony of a prominent physician at the time I had the accident in Tulsa. The day following the accident, when the doctor came to see me he said, among other things: ‘There is some satisfaction in working on someone who is clean internally, externally, and eternally.’ I said, ‘Thank God for that! God has made me clean!’” – R.R.C.