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War Cry World
Broadcaster inspired by uni friend’s faith
ADRIAN CHILES told The Sunday Times Magazine how the Christian faith of a friend at university inspired him to convert to Catholicism 20 years later.
The Radio 5 Live presenter explained that he had always been a believer, but added that he had ‘never had a way of expressing it because my family were complete nonbelievers’.
Adrian, 55, said: ‘I was fascinated by believers, kids at school, some of them were churchgoers, then I went to university and met committed Jewish people and Muslims.’
He went on to say that when he started attending Mass, he felt ‘at home there’, describing the people he met in church as ‘the kind of people I could see myself hanging round with’.
Archbishop argues case to ‘disagree well’
THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said that society needs to find a way of ‘disagreeing without exclusion’, reported The Times.
During a visit to Australia, the Most Rev Justin Welby said that people have lost the ability to ‘disagree well’ and warned that secular society risked fragmenting into ‘a whole bunch of small groups all of which are convinced they are persecuted minorities’.
He said: ‘We have not found a way of disagreeing without exclusion, without cancelling people. We are just in a place where since there is no one authority, we seem to be going to no authority at all, even the authority of a common concern for each other’s dignity and for freedom of religion and belief. We invariably end up setting one group’s rights against another group’s rights.
‘Freedom of speech, freedom of religion and belief and nonbelief is an essential for any society to live well together. But it has to be negotiated. You have to find a way of doing that in a way that does not result in people [saying]: “You know, if you belong to X organisation, you can’t do Y.”’
Church finds way to grapple with belief
THE BBC has reported on a church in Bradford that has combined worship with wrestling.
Fountains Church has its usual service on a Sunday and gives food on Saturdays to people experiencing homelessness, but also hosts wrestling nights, which members of the public attend. In addition it runs a wrestling school, through which it aims to engage young people who may have lost their way in life.
Gareth Thompson, a Christian and pro wrestler, opened the wrestling ministry to help people who may have had difficult childhoods. He experienced one himself, having been sexually abused as a child and kicked out of home.
‘The two things that helped me get my life back on track are wrestling and the Church,’ he says. ‘The driving force behind the training school is sharing my story and using my past to help others.’
He adds: ‘What really excites me is we’ve got this community of people who are coming together to support each other through life’s issues, whatever it throws at us.’
A BBC documentary The Bradford Church of Wrestling is available on iPlayer.
nARCHAEOLOGISTS have identified what is believed to be the oldest surviving church in England, reports the Church Times.
The chapel of St Pancras in Canterbury, which was built and consecrated in about AD600 by the missionary Augustine, is believed to be the first purpose-built place of Christian worship constructed in Anglo-Saxon England.
Professor Ken Dark of King’s College London, who led the research, said: ‘The newly evaluated archaeological evidence from St Pancras’s, Canterbury, for the first time pinpoints where Christian public worship was officially first re-established after a period of pagan domination. It marks the official relaunch of Christianity in what would become England.’
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‘I wouldn’t change a thing about my car crash’
CALEB FREEMAN suffered life-changing injuries after being in a car crash when he was just 16 years old. Now he and his father JEREMY FREEMAN recall how he overcame the odds to survive and why his faith is flourishing
Interview by Emily Bright
Caleb using a walking harness as part of his rehabilitation
SIXTEEN-year-old Caleb Freeman
was driving down a slippery wet road on 19 December 2017 on the way to a University of Oklahoma basketball game with his younger brother, Clayton, when he lost control of his car. It span into the middle of a major road and into the path of a 34-tonne articulated lorry which slammed into the driver’s side. Caleb’s head hit the grill of the lorry.
Just 15 minutes before, Caleb’s dad, Jeremy, had dropped off the tickets to his son. But as he arrived home, his phone rang, and Caleb’s number popped up. A stranger told him that Caleb and Clayton had been in an accident. ‘My heart rate went from zero to a hundred in two seconds,’ he recalls.
Jeremy went straight to the scene with his wife, Emily. When they arrived, they discovered that Clayton was concussed but otherwise OK. Yet there was something the emergency services weren’t telling the couple about Caleb. The ambulance he was in was swarming with paramedics. The events that followed are the subject of Jeremy’s book, #butGod.
Jeremy tells me: ‘We went to the accident scene, and they wouldn’t let us see Caleb. They said that we needed to go to the emergency room. So my wife and I drove there, crying out to God to spare his life. At the hospital, we quickly discovered that Caleb had a brain injury.
‘On the Glasgow Coma Scale – which rates your level of consciousness – he was a three, which is the lowest possible score, with survival odds of less than 10 per cent. Doctors told us that his brain was swelling rapidly and they had to get a drain in his head to get the fluid off the brain. They said: “We’ll do all we can, but we don’t expect him to survive.”’
Jeremy, a Christian pastor, turned to his faith for strength in such a frightening time. He says that God showed up in remarkable ways.
‘A lady came running into the ER,’ he says. ‘She had blood all over her and
Jeremy and Caleb Freeman
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asked us if we were Caleb’s parents. Then she said: “I saw the accident and pulled over to help. I’m a certified CPR instructor. I made sure Caleb’s airway was clear and that he was breathing. I’m also a Christian, and I prayed over Caleb from head to toe. God has told me your son’s going to live.”’
Despite this encouraging declaration, the outlook remained bleak for Caleb. The family waited anxiously for hours to receive an update. Eventually a member of the medical team spoke to them.
‘One of the nurses told me: “Your son needs a miracle.” I remember almost falling to the ground. At that moment, I realised that this was life or death. I got my phone out and sent a message to my family and friends, telling them what the doctors and nurses had said. Then I typed
in two words: “but God”. And that was my way of saying that if God didn’t step in, Caleb was gone.
‘“But God” became this mantra, this declaration of faith through our journey. It’s a phrase you see all over the Bible. Every time they would tell us that Caleb would never walk again or eat again or do
I realised that this was life or death
Caleb’s first speaking event after returning home from eight months of therapy Caleb on a day trip after having had his ear reconstructed
whatever again, we would say: “That may be true, but God has the final say.”
Jeremy remembers how God answered his prayers time and again.
‘One night I was in the hospital with Caleb and he was neurostorming, his heart rate went up to 200 and he was sweating and shaking profusely. It’s a terrible experience to watch and had been going on for hours. By two o’clock in the morning, I was tired and angry at God. I said: “God, just say the word and you can stop it. Please do something.”
‘God answered my prayer in a greater way – he sent someone to encourage me.
Jeremy baptises Caleb in November 2018
One of the nurses walked in. She said: “Hey, I saw you on the monitor at the nurse’s station, and I felt that God told me to pray with you. Do you mind if I do that?” She prayed with me, and Caleb calmed down.’
Over time, through the support of two brain injury rehabilitation centres, Caleb became more alert and responsive, and relearnt how to eat, stand, walk, talk and bathe himself. Despite his remarkable recovery, Caleb still struggles with co-ordination and balance and lacks fine motor skills. Yet he says that he ‘wouldn’t change a thing’ about the accident.
‘I have a strong faith that I didn’t have before,’ he says. ‘I’d grown up in church, so I had an informationbased relationship with Jesus. I was convinced that all the miracles that God performed – making the blind see, opening deaf ears and making the lame able to walk – was something Jesus used to do.
‘But when I needed miracles to be l #butGod is performed in my life, God did them. I now published by know that God is for real, and I realise Thomas Nelson
that I can’t do this life on my own. This wreck showed how much I truly need him. And countless people have come to know Jesus after hearing about me going through the wreck.’
Caleb now shares his story at speaking events across the US.
Rather than feeling bitter towards the lorry driver who hit him, Caleb wants him to know God’s love and grace. ‘I pray that he comes to know Jesus Christ,’ he says. ‘I don’t think it was any mistake that he was in the wreck with me. This is my earthly body so, sure, I lost sports and running. But if that truck driver doesn’t come to know Jesus Christ, that affects us all in eternity. I decided that I’d totally forgive him so that he can know the grace that God shows.’
Jeremy explains what Jesus means to him and Caleb. ‘We believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and the fulfilment
of hundreds of prophecies in Scripture that foretold he would live a sinless and perfect life, die on the cross and be raised from the dead. Jesus is not just a person of history. He has the power to transform a person’s life. It’s through him that you come to know God. ‘In the Bible, Nahum 1:7 says, “The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of Jesus has trouble, and he knows those who trust in him.” In our household, we often say that, the power to while life is often not good, God is always good. And you can transform a always trust God, no matter what.’
person’s life
Caleb prays over an American football team from Oklahoma after their game
Mission: impassable
Brother Andrew, who died last month, crossed borders behind the Iron Curtain and took risks to pass on good news around the world
Feature by Philip Halcrow
Brother Andrew
THE man who spent years smuggling
items into countries confessed something to Eddie Lyle one day. Eddie recalls: ‘He said to me that his greatest regret was that he didn’t take more risks. Yet, when you think of the things that he did…’
The ‘things that he did’ included crossing borders in a blue VW Beetle stuffed with the consignments that he was taking behind the Iron Curtain and landing on a Chinese beach under cover of darkness to rendezvous with people waiting on the shore for what he brought.
Dutchman Anne van der Bijl – better known by his nickname of Brother Andrew – who died last month, became renowned for his smuggling exploits. When he wrote his autobiography it was titled God’s Smuggler – because the items that he was passing into communist countries in Europe and into China were copies of a book that was being suppressed: the Bible. His work led to the founding of Open Doors, an organisation that today supports persecuted Christians in more than 70 countries.
Eddie, president of Open Doors UK and Ireland, says that Brother Andrew ‘fundamentally believed that it was a human right for everyone who wanted a Bible to be able to hold it in their hands and read it for themselves and be fed by it. He wanted everyone to have access to the word of God.’
Brother Andrew’s smuggling activities can be traced back to 1955, when he travelled to a communist youth rally in Poland to give out tracts. While there he discovered that the churches behind the Iron Curtain were vulnerable and in need of encouragement.
Eddie says: ‘God spoke to him through the Scriptures and the verse in Revelation that says: “Awake and strengthen that which remains.” He gave his life to that cause of helping the Church where it was
Open Doors UK and Ireland president Eddie Lyle
Brother Andrew with his VW Beetle, which he used on his smuggling journeys, and (top) with copies of the book he wanted everyone to read
vulnerable, such as places where there was persecution of which the world was unaware.
‘So he began some of his big initiatives – taking Bibles into Russia and then running Project Pearl, in which a million Bibles were taken into China in one night and distributed across the country.’
Brother Andrew told some of the exploits of those journeys in God’s Smuggler, written with journalists John and Elizabeth Sherrill, which has sold more than 10 million copies since it first appeared in 1967. He reveals the prayer that he would utter as he approached checkpoints: ‘Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture I want to take to your children. When you were on Earth, you made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see those things you do not want them to see.’ He describes the joys of his missions, as well as the difficulties – as, for instance, when he was deported from Yugoslavia. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, he obtained copies of KGB reports that detailed his work in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
The change that took place in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s did not signal the end of Brother Andrew’s work. In a 2008 interview with the War Cry
he spoke of how he had been ‘travelling, preaching and teaching in a good number of Muslim countries’ where ‘Christian believers were persecuted or at least intimidated into silence’. Eddie Lyle says: ‘For several years he had been praying for the communist world and that the Berlin Wall would fall, and when that seismic change happened he was thinking about the world of Islam. ‘One of the things that was perhaps a bit controversial about him was his meetings with terrorists. He would talk with the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas. I have a photograph of him sitting with his hand on top of the hand of the leader of Hamas, praying that he might have a revelation of Jesus. ‘His thought was: how were these people ever going to hear about Jesus if someone didn’t go and spend time with them, understand their mindset and unashamedly meet them as an ambassador – a peacemaker – of Christ, so that they could accept Jesus as their saviour. ‘I was having coffee with Brother Andrew one day when he looked at me and said: “When was the last time you prayed for Osama bin Laden?” At that time, I had never prayed for Osama bin Laden.’ Ultimately, says Eddie, Brother Andrew Do not let the was motivated by his desire for Christians to be encouraged by – and non-Christians guards see to discover – the truth about God’s love for them, as set out in the book that decades ago he began smuggling into Eastern Europe. ‘There’s a lot of talk today of fake news,’ says Eddie. ‘He believed that the Scriptures – those words passed on over hundreds of years – were good news and contained the truth that people were seeking.’
A brush with angels
Twenty years ago ANNE NEILSON painted an angel on a canvas. She talks about how that first picture started her career as an artist and why angels are significant to her
Interview by Sarah Olowofoyeku
‘NO two are the same,’ says artist Anne Neilson. She is talking about snowflakes, fingerprints
and angels. The last are the subject of hundreds of pictures that have hung on the walls of her gallery in North Carolina and appeared in the two books she has put together, the most recent being Entertaining Angels.
Anne had dreamt of working as an artist in childhood, but she had set the thought aside after receiving a bad grade in art class at school. However, about 20 years ago, after getting married and raising her four children, she decided to rekindle her desire to create art.
She began to paint and, one day, painted a little angel on a canvas. She believes that what she created was inspired by God.
‘I sent it to my sister,’ she says, ‘and asked her what she thought. She said: “I think you’ve found your voice.” So, I began painting more of these tiny angels. And I would sell them. They started growing in value and going into galleries. People would gravitate towards these ethereal paintings.’
Anne describes how her paintings – which she eventually made more widely available by printing them in books – have affected people’s lives.
She says that after the publication of her first book, Angels, she received a call from a woman whose granddaughter had died two years before.
‘The woman told me that she hadn’t been able to grieve her granddaughter, but when she got my book and read it cover to cover, the floodgates opened up and the healing began for her. So many other stories like that came in, and that’s when it shifted from being a happy passion to a ministry.’ Anne’s second book, Entertaining Angels, is filled with accounts by the artist and her friends of encounters that they have had with angels, or times when they have acted as angels in other people’s lives. One contributor talks of helping a single mother with her shopping at the supermarket. Anne herself descibes how as a toddler she was ‘carried by an angel’ when she fell from a window, two-and-a-half storeys high, but broke no bones. Anne believes that angels are present in the world and that they can make a difference in various situations. One thing Anne is sure of, however, is that the angels do
Anne Neilson
not exist of their own accord. She says that they are created and sent by God.
‘They’re his messengers and they’re our protectors. The angels are real, but we don’t worship them – we worship God. In the book, there’s a story about a near car crash, and I believe that angels were really stood there.
‘I think a lot of people do believe in ethereal spiritual beings, even if it is only in some kind of abstract way. But I want to encourage people that there is a God who created those spiritual beings. I hope that the stories about encounters with angels in the book might help people to go a little deeper and connect with the heavenly Father.’
Earlier in her own life Anne was deterred by ‘the religion and performance of Christianity’, and kept God at arm’s length. But, at the age of 30, she ‘surrendered to God’.
‘I love to control things, but you have to let go of that control and let God step in,’ she says.
It was in the following years, after she rediscovered her faith, that Anne also rediscovered her artistic gift. Since then, her angel paintings have sold so well that she has been able to open an art gallery where she lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. The success has also allowed her to be philanthropic and give to communities in need, and particularly
to people experiencing homelessness. ‘My mum taught me from an early age to be a giver,’ Anne says. ‘When I started painting, I wasn’t sure how I’d be able to help others. But I felt that God wanted me to help those communities in need through painting. He said I should paint and give back. So I began to partner with various organisations throughout our community and then the country, and we give back by donating a portion of our profits. ‘Never in my life when I first painted that angel did I think I’d have a gallery, People gravitate my own product line and books. But God towards these can do more than we could imagine.’
ethereal paintings
l Entertaining Angels
