Around the World in 88 Years -E Book - Arthur Burt

When the meeting was over, I left with my two heavy cases andcame down the steps, observing that my bus had stopped andwas about to pull away. I didn’t have to hurry because the buscame around about every 20 minutes, but I tried to catch it.Without the cases, I could have easily run and jumped on thatbus, but they slowed me down. As I ran up to it carrying thoseheavy cases, the bus started to move in first gear. Nobody was onthe platform and the conductor was inside.Then, I did something crazy. As the bus began moving, I leapedonto the platform with my heavy load. When I landed anddropped the cases, at that very moment, the driver put the businto the next gear. As the bus jolted forward, I lost my balanceand fell backwards. There was nothing to save me from splittingmy head on the road behind, and traffic was coming up fast.As I fell backwards, I felt a hand placed in the middle of my back,pushing me up onto the platform where I regained my balance— but there was nobody there. That incident could have endedmy life. God didn’t spare me because I had made an act of faithor some grand effort on my part. No, I was totally out of order,having done something foolish, but God had mercy on me, Hisunseen hand pushing me back onto that bus. The incident subduedme rather than encouraged me. I felt I had been very foolish,but I also was conscious of God’s grace and mercy.Apart from one or two little oases like that, my life was a drywilderness during the time I was in that split church which wasfilled with bitterness and judgment. Today, I wouldn’t stop oneweek in such a church, because I have learned that you can’t beeffective in an atmosphere of bitterness and unbelief.Little by little, a conviction was developing inside me that, somehow,I needed to get out of what I was in, so I might get intowhat I was out of. In the light of what I know now, I would notgo to the sort of places I went to back then. They were opendoors waiting for any simple, gullible fool of a young man tostand in the gap for them, instead of the people’s repenting andgetting right before God. If my Lord and Saviour did not domany mighty miracles because of the peoples’ unbelief, how couldI ever hope to?56