PRISON BREAK
Rev 5:2 Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, "Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?"
Who is worthy in this world is the question asked by many people. When I was a young man I asked this question, is there anybody worthy on this earth that I may serve, I read books on the great kings of the earth; I read stories of the great men of the earth. I read fiction of the great men of the earth and I could never find an answer. I read of the great King Arthur; was he the real deal and I saw his fall with Guinevere and Lancelot; I respected the great Bruce Lee and then he died of a headache after taking a disprin-all my life I was searching for a good example and I was disappointed. I went to church as a young boy and the Jesus portrayed in the Sunday school was a very sad Jesus handing out fishes with a Halo around His head. This too was not the example I was seeking. Unfulfilled I then looked to no man anymore. This could be the experience of many people –man has disappointed us! Man has failed us!
At an early age of 1 or 2, I was taken from my mother and placed in the care of a couple in Woodstock. It was a house of torture and pain and fear. I learnt at an early age that darkness is not just darkness but a real terrifying place. I was removed from that home and placed in foster care. It was a house that had its own problems and I was pretty much messed up. I am sure they meant well, but all their problems magnified mine own. I knew the face of fear and loneliness as I grew up. I can never remember a time that I was happy or that I felt loved on this earth till I was 17 and a girl fell in love with me. I would never want my youth back again it holds no good memories for me.
One of two things happen to a boy who is damaged from an early age, he either withdraws or he rebels. I rebelled and in my anger and rage and bitterness I tried to destroy myself and all those around me. I landed up in homes and places of safety; even visits to prison. I was on a journey to nowhere. I was a train running out of control down a track.
Who is in charge of the clattering train?
The axles creak and the couplings strain,
and the pace is hot and the points are near,
and sleep hath deadened the driver's ear,
and the signals flash through the night in vain.
For death is in charge of the clattering train.”
I was expelled from two schools and landed up in a boy’s home called Teen Centre, one step from industrial school. This was a last chance home for naughty boys and it was run by Christians but with a rod of iron. Every Sunday we had to attend church in the evenings. One day I believed in Christ( 1979), I knew Jesus had died for me, I lay awake for a couple of nights as I struggled with this challenge. But there were so many things I still wanted to do, there were sins I wanted to commit, girls I wanted to sleep with, drunkeness and partying that I did not want to miss and I was desperate to go to the army, I thought I could not do those things as a Christian. So, I backed away from God and chose the world. I said to God, I am not ready yet:
Heb 3:15 While it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation.
When God calls you must answer now, not tomorrow, there may not be a tomorrow.
No one told me that there were consequences for sin and that trying sin would lead to years of brokenness and pain. How many of you know that when you walk away from God then He lets you go and I fell into such darkness that the next time I would hear from God would be 6 years later, when my life was now completely ruined. I know God tried to prevent my ruin and give me a hope at an early age.
I left school and went to the army and joined the paratroopers in 1980-81. War was already in my heart and I fitted right in to this elite fighting unit. Before I turned twenty years old we had fought in many battles; follow up operations, ops like Protea, Carnation, Ceiling, Daisy) and partaken in many trackings ops, with Koevert.
I was a well know atheist by now and for some reason I hated Christ. Although I am not sure why? They say there are no atheists in the foxholes. One day we were attacking an enemy base and the choppers were flying in V formation on top of the trees and when we looked out we could see the planes bombing the base in the bush. We felt the helicopters banking and saw different colours of smoke coming out of the trees, where our pathfinder units had dropped in the night before. I suddenly felt a cold chill, as I realised that I may never be coming back. So, in the noise of the choppers I tried to bargain with God that if I survived this operation I would stop smoking and maybe not drink so much. Soon the choppers were coming in waves to the ground and we were dropped into the battle zone. When the battle was finished, and we regrouped, I lit a cigarette and forgot about my talk with God. But how many of you know that there are no deals between lions and men and that if you are not saved Gods way, you will stay on the highway to hell. We saw a lot of action in our unit with major operations in taking cities of Onjiva and Zangongo and many other ops in 1981. These experiences are all detailed in a fellow soldiers book, 19 with a bullet by Granger Korff.
When we finished our tour of duty we left straight from a military operation( ops Daisy) where many people were killed and went back home and klaared out. I had just turned twenty years old in that December month. I tried to settle down in civilian life but could not, After the excitement of the military and facing challenges of life and death; nothing could hold my attention and I drifted deeper and deeper into trouble and sin. At twenty-three years of age I was arrested in 1984 for 5 armed robberies –one of them a bank robbery( Norwood Barclays Bank Robbery) and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment -15 years running concurrently with fifteen. By then I had estranged everyone I knew and stood alone in the prison. My foster family only found out two years later that I was in prison. I was alone! I was tired of life; I stood chained like a wild dog in that court, alone cut off and now suffering the consequences of my lifes choices. I had fallen into very grievous sin and when they sentenced me I didn’t care if I lived or died or what happened to me. A very predictable chain of events for such a child. Prison is full of such broken men.
A year and a half later while in prison-a maximum classification prison- Zonderwater Prison in Pretoria, I was assigned to a work bench where there was a Christian Billy Rautenbach, He spoke much too me and gave me a book to read called –There is a new world coming by Hal Lindsay. This book was about the Book of Revelations. It explained the book of Revelations verse by verse. In a dark and dangerous bungalow one night I read our text verse:
Rev 5:1 And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals.
Rev 5:2 Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, "Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?"
And the writer said the angels of God were sent to look on the earth and under the earth – that is people that were alive or those in the place of the dead- all the people of the human race were put to the test. The angel looked at Confuscius and he was not worthy; the angel looked at Buddha and he was not found worthy; the angels looked into the future at Mohammed and he was not found worthy; the angels looked at Ghandi and he was not found worthy. The angel looked at all the men who had ever lived and found no one worthy! No religious man was found worthy by God.
Rev 5:3 And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, or to look at it.
When I read that it hit me in my heart because I knew it was true; I knew that humans were not worthy; I knew I was not worthy; I knew in my heart that no so called holy man was worthy; I had seen just too much evil in my life! I had seen the reality of the human race and it was found wanting. Everybody had let me down and I had let everybody down.
Rev 5:4 So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll, or to look at it.
So, the apostle broke down at this point and wept that his heart was breaking; he was weeping for the brokenness of man; for our terrible wickedness; for our shame; for our brutality; for our violence against one another and for our wickedness. When I read this I too broke down and I wept on a bungalow bed at night in a prison; I must have put my face into my pillow and wept. I wept because of my sin; I wept for all the pain in my life; I wept deeply as the apostle did. I then read the next verse:
Rev 5:5 But one of the elders said to me, "Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals."
And I don’t think I knew who the Lion of Judah was –but the writer said it is Jesus Christ and I knew it was! I knew He was worthy that at last there was someone worthy. I believed ! I knew at that moment that Jesus was the Son of God. I knew if I bowed my knee He would accept me. No one else had accepted me, but I knew then that If I asked Him I would be accepted. In my tears and in my brokenness; I don’t think I knew how to get saved. I just asked Him into my life. There in hell itself Christ found me:
Psa 139:8 If I ascend into heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there
Even if you are in the darkest place He can find you. I did not understand love, so I believe Christ reached me with truth. The truth of God’s Word.
I surrendered my life unconditionally to Him. I have been a Christian for 35 years and I think I know what happened that night. I know as I slept that night; I slept for the first time in my life that I can remember in peace. I know now that He held me in His arms throughout that night –for years the only dreams I ever had were of war and destruction; I never dreamed of anything else; that night I slept in peace.
I want to say that the reformers are right in saying that we don’t find Christ that He finds us and draws us to Him. He found me when I was not looking for Him and I was terribly, terribly lost. And for those of you here today –it’s the Lord who has drawn you here today!
Rom 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
When we hated Him He already died for us. While we were His enemies He had already thought of us and loved us!
The Bible says:
Luk 15:10 Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."
Having learnt about spiritual things I am sure I know what happened that night: a chariot arrived from heaven that night and stopped at the front gates –the Lord Jesus Christ walked through the gates –every demon of this prison was running in every direction. What does the Thunderer want in our domain. We know the devil calls the Lord the Thunderer from the account of heaven and hell by John Bunyan. I can see Lord say I have an appointment tonight stand aside.
Rom 8:38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Rom 8:39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And I believe the Lord came to my bungalow for that appointment. I know Jesus held me that night in His arms as I dreamt no evil dreams and for the first time I felt secure. He will also meet you today for your appointment with the God of heaven.
The prison I was in was brutal, there was only prisoners of 9 years and up at the prison in those days, all capital offenders, meaning offences that you could be hanged for and many lifers. There was no kindness, peace or joy. Any form of kindness was looked at as weakness. The prison looked like Sodom and Gomorrah. It was the most wicked place I had ever seen. Violence ruled in the prison.
So, the next day after trusting in Jesus Christ I went to the workshop and told my friend Billy Rautenbach that I got saved last night but that he was not to tell anybody, as I was embarrassed. But Billy told everybody, and I was confronted by people in the passage and in the bungalows. Is this true they would ask and the hardest thing I had to do was say yes, I am a Christian. The Bible says:
Rom 10:9 that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
It is important that we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus so that angels and demons can hear that we have changed sides and that now we belong to Christ.
Rom 10:10 For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
I did not have an easy walk with God as I was a savage. I really struggled to be a Christian. I think there were only two of us in a thousand men that were really Christians. There were many times I wanted to give up, but God always helped me. I tried witnessing but was not very successful as I would start to talk to someone and then lose the argument, so the discussion quickly turned into a fight. One day the prison gang leader second in charge -spoke to me and said -you are supposed to be a Christian, but you build a fence one day and break it down the next. This was true. A gangster knew more about being a Christian than I did. We led him to Christ much later on. I am not sure of your theology, but I was desperate for more of God.
One day I read about being Baptised in the Holy Spirit, so I asked God to give me His power to save souls and I trusted Him for power. Within a couple of days, I was talking to some prisoners and I felt like there was water running out of my belly and while I was talking to these guys, suddenly I felt power in my words and the men were astounded. Then we started winning men to Christ and over the years we defeated, by the power of Christ, all the cults in prison and won many men to Christ.
But the years dragged on and towards 7 years I was pushing time hard, so a Christian welfare worker called my sister, Melanie, in Cape Town who was a Christian and told her your brother is not doing well, you need to pray. She fasted for three days and on the third day she went to a prayer group and the leader said I have a Word from God for your brother in prison:
Isa 45:1 Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;
Isa 45:2 I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron:
Isa 45:3 And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.
The welfare lady told me what had happened to my sister, but I knew every Word must be confirmed in the mouth of two or three witnesses, so I was curious, there was no way I could get out, I had missed many opportunities to get an amnesty and capital offenders did not get amnesty. So, I just left that Word there in my heart. A couple of weeks later a Pretoria prayer group that I did not know at all sent me a message:
Zec 9:11 As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.
In Afrikaans it read Ek sal die gevangeners losmaak uit die pit Zonderwater( The Name of the prison).
Then I knew something was going to happen. One day we were watching TV in the bungalow and from nowhere a message came on the news that said there was an amnesty and that all prisoners who had finished a third of their time were going to be released. That was on a Tuesday by Thursday I was released unconditionally to the care of my sister who rode up from Cape Town. After almost 7 years in prison I was released, to me that was the Hand of God.
I have been serving the Lord Jesus Christ for 35 years now, most of the time in the front lines of the battle. I do it because I love Christ more than anything in my life. I am now a soldier for Christ.
I want to encourage you today, forsake the world, give your life and your dreams to Jesus, let Him lead you into adventures you can only dream about. Climb up on Elijahs altar and allow the fire of God to consume you, let it burn up everything of the world till you are radical, Born again believers on fire for God and His kingdom.
I wasted my life until I was 25 years old, I spent most of my twenties in prison. What if I had listened to God in matric in that boy’s home? How different would my life have been. I want to encourage young people and old people to give your life to Christ. I am not talking about going to church or cell group, but give your life to Christ totally and lay your life down on the altar. Climb up on Elijah’s Altar an allow the fire of God to burn up all our junk and our sins and our fears, until all that is left is the fire of God in our lives.
If you want to know God, you must first draw near to Him and then He will draw near to you. YOU must draw near and take the time and effort to draw near to God, then you will begin to know God and learn to love Him.
I took the first steps in a prison bungalow, where we were locked up every night from 5pm to 5am, they even took the keys out of the prison, so we were all alone. We used to close our beds with blankets, so each bed was private from the next bed. I learnt to draw near to God there, even though I was in a bungalow of thirty men, I drew near to God by reading my Bible and spending time in prayer.
Being a Christian has been life changing for me, I wish I had done it when I was a much younger man, many great men of God have given their lives to Christ at 8 years old. often wish I was one of them, to waste my life so much has been a burden I must carry sometimes. I would have had more time to make a difference in my life.
Get radical for Christ, be a soldier for Christ, allow God to give you His armour and sword and shield. There was a movie- Men in black- the men in black were defenders of the universe against aliens- but the truth is we are the men in black. Christians have supernatural armour, with a sword and shield, to defeat the dark demon and unseen forces of this world. Only Christians clad in Gods armour can defeat the darkness.
I want to encourage you to be a great warrior for Jesus Christ, do not let the demons laugh at you when you come in the room, let them tremble for a person has come into the room with gleaming armour, powerful sword and a great shield. Be full of Gods Word and faith and purpose. Let your shield be mighty and your sword sharp and effective.
I heard a story a while ago on a Christian radio station and a top gun pilot who was a Christian told this story. He said- I was on duty at a military base in the mountains. A pilot in a Cessna plane was calling for help as there was much mist and he had lost all his instruments, so he could not see the mountains, or the airport and he was really scared and calling out for help. So, the Tower asked if I would go up and help him. So, I climbed into my latest fighter plane and flew up and found him on my radar, pulled up next to him and over the radio said, follow me, I will put on my back lights and go before you and help you find the runway. When we landed that Cessna, pilot was crying and so grateful that he was safe. The top gun pilot said that we should be like that fighter plane, with every weapon and the latest state of the art equipment, to be able to engage the enemy and bring the lost safely to Christ.
The Bible tells us that we have a great cloud of witnesses watching us to see what will we do with the power of God. They did great things, 3 of David’s mighty men ran through an army, like Asterix and Obelix and got a pail of water and bashed their way back again and gave it to David. Others killed three hundred of the enemy at once. Why is this recorded? So that we may defeat three hundred demons at once and drive demons out of our suburbs and schools and universities.
I believe God is looking for champions today, that may be many of you hearing this message. God chose you to be at this time on the planet, not five hundred years ago but now. You were chosen for Gods army today, probably in the greatest battle of all time.
Extend Gods kingdom, be willing to lay down your life for Christ. This does not just mean dying for Christ, but also giving up what you want to do. On a Saturday you want to go to movies, give it up for outreach, go to the worst block of flats and go knock on doors and say, hi can we pray for you! You will be surprised how lost and scared people are and how they want to hear good news.
Take your sword and shield and drive out the demons in that house, stick your sword in the demon’s face, place your shield over the people and say, get out, these people belong to Christ. I think of the young Moravian missionaries who carved out their own gravestones and left the date off because they were going on a mission and would never come back. Young twenty year olds knew that the life expectancy of a missionary in Africa was 2 years, they would die of malaria or wild tribes or terrible diseases, yet they gladly went and gave up their lives for Christ that people may be saved.
The Bible says, the kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. Reach up into the Heavens and lay hold on the promises of God and bring them down to the earth and drive hell out before you.
Be soldiers for Christ! I think of some of the words of the great Hymn by William Blake:
Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!
I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In England’s green & pleasant Land.
I think the early believers knew about building Jerusalem here on earth. Driving out crime and fear and darkness and establishing the Kingdom of God here on earth.
I was officiating at a memorial for a deceased paratrooper and he was ten years younger than I am and I wonder if his life was ready to meet Christ. He had no idea that his life would end so soon. I often hear on the radio in the early morning that there has been a terrible accident and that people have died. I wonder when they got up that day, brushing their teeth and thinking about work, that they realised that they had only had one hour left on this earth. None of us know how long we have on this earth. Live your lives powerfully, sold out to Christ doing the work of God.
We can replace the word England for South Africa in the above hymn. I leave you with these words-do something important with your life, we have one chance to change the world around us, sign up for Gods kingdom, learn to love God and be a conqueror!
Amen
