Dear blog friends,
Here is now a story I have called "Wonder and Enchantment".
You will see! It is similar to what I have been telling you on my blog for the past few months.
Here is David's story, which has been reported by various media around the world.
David Jeffery lives in Mallacoota, in the south east of Australia, a small seaside town very frequented by nature lovers. He lives from tourism and runs the "Wave Oasis B&B". David, who was an atheist in his youth, turned to God 25 years ago.
On January 1st 2020, the 1000 inhabitants of Mallacoota and the 3000 tourists who lived there woke up in the morning in a hellish situation, under a blood-red sky. Surrounded by the flames of a gigantic fire, they ran to the beach, put on life jackets and prepared to jump into the water when the siren would sound. Others fled by boat to the open sea. The winds from the west were very strong, glowing embers were falling on the town.
Jeffery and his neighbours were preparing to defend their homes against "an ember attack". It wasn’t until Jeffery received advice from a neighbour in the police force and a friend who was a former fire chief that fire balls were a real possibility, that he decided to leave – retreating to the wharf along with guests staying at the B&B and his pets – two dogs, a cat, a roster and two rescue ducks.
Not far from the shore, a 60-feet high firewall rised up, moving towards the beach, threatening to destroy everything in front of it. 60-feet high, which is the equivalent of a six-storey building. The flames were moving at 90 kilometres an hour.
David remembers:
"We could hear the roar. It sounded like a thousand freight trains coming at us. Then a huge gust, like someone had opened the door of a furnace, pushed us … It went black as black. The smoke was so thick it was hard to breathe."
"And all of a sudden the sky turned blood red. We could hear the gas tanks exploding, houses were burning in front of our eyes. We were losing everything. We were all expecting to die within seconds."
"Then I heard God say to me, "Pray!". I started off with a pathetic little prayer," he said.
"Then within me, this voice rose up and said :
- Who are you praying to?
And I thought :
- Yes! You’re the God of the Bible. Nothing’s impossible with you! You’ve got angels Lord, put them at the corners of the property."
David then began to pray, he raised his voice, he prayed aloud. The people around him heared him and joined in his prayer. Everyone prayed, for his house, for other people's houses, and they prayed for those who had stayed in their houses.
Overwhelmed by despair, David cried out in front of all the people gathered on the wharf:
"- Lord, we need wind from the east."
He said, "As soon as I said that, it started blowing from the east a little bit.
David tells with great emotion:
"Then I got louder and the wind got stronger. Then I got louder again and it got stronger again."
He said that he was praying with greater boldness and was not one bit bothered about what others around him felt.
"I felt it change. I noticed that the bolder I got, the stronger the wind got. So I yelled:
- In Jesus’ name, thank you Lord for rescuing these souls. Push it back Lord, rescue us!"
"It was desperation personified. I did not care who heard me. I knew then that God was doing what I was asking. Because if he didn’t answer then, we were dead."
And David explains:
"The wind was blowing from the west and no easterly wind was forecast. But God, who created the wind, made it obey. What God did was push the fire back from the east, which was impossible but he did it. He did that for five minutes, which broke the fire front enough to stop it from getting to where we were. This was impossible, David said, but somehow God turned off the flames, like flicking off a switch."
In front of their astonished eyes, David and his neighbours realised that where they lived, the fuel reserves had not burnt, they were still there, the houses were still there, the grass was there.
The neighbours – who were not Christians – were eyewitnesses and told:
"- God saved us."
One of them first of all paid homage to all those who, in extraordinary devotion, outside, in the fire, intrepid, heroic, defended the town and the people; he also paid homage to all those men, women, children, who prayed to be saved, huddled together. He reports:
"- We thought we were going to be annihilated because that fireball was coming straight at us. But the whole of our street got spared and the bush around us got spared. Hot embers went into the dry, long grass, big bits of bark and trees, but where we were praying for, right there, it was all spared... There were no burn marks. There was honestly not a blade of grass singed. We’ve seen miracles. We’ve seen the supernatural – flames getting pushed back. We’ve seen the embers hit the grass and not burn, without even a singe mark. Nothing could push back the flames except the Creator of the world."
David explains:
"That’s literally Bible stuff – Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego."
David refers here to this Bible passage in the book of Daniel, who was the great dream interpreter of the king of Mesopotamia, Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar commanded that three Jews, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, be thrown into a fiery furnace because they refused to worship the statue he had made. But the king saw four men unharmed in the furnace, and one looked like an angel. He brought the three men up and there all the people present "saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them." (1)
David, shaken, says :
"- On the one hand I am heartbroken when I think of those who have lost everything and on the other hand I thank God who has given us grace and saved us. We are in awe of what God did."
After this experience, David opened his home, which served as a refuge for all emergency services personnel, firefighters, doctors, policemen, who needed to eat and to sleep.
"- This building, he said, provides an opportunity now for love to flow – that’s what I see it as."
So here is again on my blog a wonderful story, one more enchantment, one more testimony that tells how, when a prayer turns to God, the external nature can change.
Let's take stock of the amazing relationship between nature and man, considering only events of our time, as I have presented them on my blog :
- the deep meditation of the rainmaker made the rain fall and saved from famine;
- General Patton's ardent prayer made the sun shine and let him win the war;
- the dream taught Carole how to make her cherry tree bloom and heal nature;
- like Patton in 1944, in 1989, the prayer of an Italian priest from midnight to 3 o'clock in the morning made the rain stop;
- Alex's fervent prayer chased away his tears and made the sun shine within;
- and in the beginning of last year, the prayer that David shouted publicly together with the prayer of the desperate in the fire, the prayer made the wind blow and the flames stop, the prayer saved thousands of people in Mallacoota, as various newspapers have claimed on the front page all over the world, even if in France we have hardly heard about it.
And it was David who gave the final word, with this encouragement which could also be an alarm:
"It’s time for people to rise up and pray. It’s time to get serious about God and get back into reading his word."
Christiane
Translated by Marianne
Marianne's Facebook Page : À vos songes !
a.vos.songes@gmail.com
References
(1) The Bible (King James Version), Book of Daniel, chapter 3, verse 27.
(2) Epic in Mallacoota:
I have adapted stories from different Australian newspapers, to make a synthesis, in particular from the French newspaper "Info chrétiennes", whose confirmations I have looked for in different Australian newspapers:
Illustrations
The Wave Oasis: The Wave Oasis Facebook Page
David Jeffery: Eternity News
Mallacoota in flames: The Epoch Times
On the beach it's all black: Head Topics Australia
On the wharf: www.abc.net.au
Fire: Nau.ch
Part of this article was first published on the French blog on 12 January 2020: