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  GODS MERCIFUL INTERVENTION IN MY FAMILY
  by Keith Daniel
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the transformative power of God's
salvation, highlighting personal testimonies of family members who were
saved from sin and darkness. It illustrates the profound impact of
surrendering to God, experiencing His forgiveness, and witnessing the
change that comes from accepting Christ. The message underscores the
importance of acknowledging one's sinful state, seeking God's mercy, and
embracing the truth of being a sinner in need of redemption.

Topics: "Transformative Power of Salvation", "Acknowledging Sin and Seeking Redemption"
Scripture References: Romans 3:23, 1 John 1:9, Luke 15:7, Isaiah 53:5, John 8:34, John 8:36

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the transformative power of God's salvation,
highlighting personal testimonies of family members who were saved from
sin and darkness. It illustrates the profound impact of surrendering to
God, experiencing His forgiveness, and witnessing the change that comes
from accepting Christ. The message underscores the importance of
acknowledging one's sinful state, seeking God's mercy, and embracing the
truth of being a sinner in need of redemption.

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CONTENT
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Can we bow for prayer, please? Father, in mercy on every one of us now,
come visit us by the Holy Spirit. Come and protect us under the blood of
Christ, the sacred blood of our Saviour. And in thy great mercy, wash me
in the sacred blood of Jesus.

Afresh that I might be a vessel, meet for the Master's use, fill with
the Holy Spirit, anoint, unctionize, move upon every heart here this
morning in a very deep way work. Only thou canst do that. Without thee
we can do nothing.

And we acknowledge it and we're fearful of it. The most dangerous
position to ever find a human in this world is a preacher in a pulpit
without God. So have mercy on me and all of us.

And in grace, come visit us and speak thou. Now we ask these things in
the name of Jesus Christ and for his glory only. Amen.

The Lord Jesus said in John 8, Verily I say unto you, in verse 34,
Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin, literally enslaved to
sin, a slave of sin. This is not speaking of one isolated sin. This is
sin that goes on and on.

Whosoever committeth sin is enslaved, he's a slave to sin. You say
you're not. Well, try stopping.

Try stopping. And then we speak again. Whosoever committeth sin is
enslaved, he's a slave of sin.

Verse 36, But if the Son, capital S, speaking of himself, shall make you
free, ye shall be free. Indeed, gloriously free from enslavement to sin,
from being the slave, the servant of sin. God manifests in the flesh,
promised.

If the Son shall make you free, you shall be free. Gloriously free
indeed. When I was a little boy, I remember my father and mother.

There was something completely unique in their lives. I mean that with
my soul. The happiness in that home, though they were totally unsaved.

The happiness in my home startled people. And I became conscious as a
little boy, a very small boy, that I was very, very honored and
privileged to have the father and the mother. And I have.

They loved each other as I have seldom ever seen in this world. There
was an uncanny love. I heard people saying again and again about my
father, how good he was.

Look at this man. Where do you find such goodness? My father was
uncomprehendably good and kind and loving and gentle. And he lived for
my mother.

It was like every breath in his body was honestly there to honor her, to
bless her, and every need to fulfill. My mother was scared to speak
because daddy would make the sacrifices humans would never ever consider
making at the smallest whim of my mother. I was incredibly happy as a
child.

I remember hearing people saying one day as I was singing and skipping
down around the gardens, where do you find such a happy child? Look at
this. But with such a mother and father, how can he be but happy? I was
so conscious. I was in a very, very privileged home.

And I was more conscious of that when I was in other people's homes. And
I realized that happiness is not everywhere, in not every home, as in my
home. A child's security and a sense of stability lies in him or her
witnessing love between a father and mother that is real.

And you can't pretend in front of a child, maybe others, but not a
child, not your child. A child's stability and sense of security and
happiness comes mainly from witnessing love between his father and
mother. My daddy came back from the war.

When the war ended, that was the year I was born. He had no money. He
was poor.

We stayed in a poorly apartment. And I often go and sit and just look at
and pray at what's left of that building, even to this day. But daddy
found work and he worked hard.

But he would come home and the necessity of food, etc., he put aside.
But he took every cent that was over and bought bricks and mortar and
cement, sand. And on a little piece of property he had acquired, with
the little he had on the outskirts, very far from the center of town or
built-up area, he began to build us a home with his own hands.

I used to sit and watch him, all alone, mixing the cement, digging the
foundations. And every week coming with more bricks, bringing them
himself, and laying another few layers of the bricks on our home. I
watched him with the doors, the roof, the tiles.

And he did it with such joy, singing. And always coming back to me and
putting his arms around me while he sang. And then we moved into that
home after a few years of him building, before he could finish it.

I don't know, it was certainly not Buckingham Palace. But to us, I'm
quite sure, we had more joy than the Queen and Prince Philip in their
palace. When we walked in that home, oh, the joy that flooded our hearts
as a little family.

And the joy my father had watching us going from room to room, and
moving in and settling in our home that daddy built us. I loved him for
that. But then our whole world began to crumble.

And now I can remember distinctly how suddenly everything changed.
Everything. And fear filled my little heart.

And I would weep in fear and sorrow in the dark as I heard the arguing.
You see, daddy had no education. He left schooling when he was a little
boy to help his mother to get one shilling, 10 pennies a week, working
on the roads.

Most children had to leave in the recession to keep, to help, to keep
the family alive. He had no schooling, no education in the recession.
But he worked like a slave in this work he had acquired.

He worked so hard that it unnerved anyone, everyone. Daddy didn't just
work. When the tea bell went and there was 15 minutes for tea, daddy
worked on.

And the others just looked at him from a distance. The lunchtime, the
bell goes for an hour. The others sit with their lunch, daddy worked on.

And everyone looked at him. Nighttime, the bell goes. Everyone goes home
to their families.

Daddy works on into the nights. The owner of the company, of the firm he
first worked for, said to me years later, I said to your father, what is
wrong with you, man? What are you trying to prove? You don't have to do
this. Go home to your family.

Stop this. Everyone was unnerved, but daddy didn't speak. He just worked
on, alone into the night.

In his department and everything. He ordered books from Europe
concerning the trade, the particular type of work he was involved in.
And he studied through the nights.

He would come home late in the night, just tired. And I remember mother
saying, but you can't come home tired like this and then study through
the whole night and then go to work with no sleep. You're going to die.

My father said, and I overheard him once, Morty, I have to do this for
you and the children. I have no education. I have to compete with people
who have had privileges that I never had.

Don't stop me, Morty. Don't stop me now. Of course, he went up in
position.

And authority was given to him in an unusual way to put on a man so much
of the business world, just kept on as he proved to everyone. What no
one else could do, he could do. He made himself indispensable.

This is the wrong thing to do, but he did it carefully, calculatingly,
and deliberately. He made himself totally indispensable that nothing
could function without him, very little. And a great amount of
prosperity came in all those businesses.

People began to fear him because he was ruthless. When it came to the
work, he was ruthless. There was one other problem.

Decisions were not made in little conference halls in the business
world. Those days, it was all socializing over drink, and alcohol, and
talking. And there was all these meetings he would come back from.

And soon, he came staggering through the door. And his whole character
had changed from this gentleness to aggressiveness. Alcohol, the curse,
the curse of the world.

You say drugs are a curse. That is hypocritical. Nothing has brought
more shame, and disgrace, and sorrow, and sadness, and suffering, in
homes, in lives, in health than alcohol has done to this world.

But of course, we ban drugs, but not alcohol, because there's too much
money from the top down, isn't it? My father walked in the door in the
night and fear filled my heart when I saw his face. And I heard him
speaking, and I saw my mother begin to weep. And walk out, and I heard
her sobbing through the night.

I watched her begin to age as her eyes began to swell up of all the
weeping and the shame with visitors that she would have to get up and
just walk away. But the way he carried on at times, his health began to
go fast. He was still young.

He smoked 60 cigarettes a day. Nevertheless, somehow it helped him. I
don't know what it is about the nicotine or whatever it is.

There was something to calm him, I don't know, of all the stress that
was upon him. 60 cigarettes a day, year after year. But he drank.

He drank at work, closed the door, and just walked out staggering. No
one said a word, because he still functioned and kept everything going
in spite of this drinking problem. He was enslaved to drink, and he
couldn't stop.

I remember weeping in the night, my back against the wall in the
darkness of my bedroom, as I listened to the arguing, and Mommy, and
Daddy, and what eventually resorted. And I remember, I don't know what
was in my mind, I was very small. I just remember walking out the front
door and running.

And running, just running. I don't know how I got so far away from home.
No one can work that out, I can't.

Cities away, a small boy. The man found me at two o'clock in the morning
down the street in the one town. He got out and said, what are you doing
here, boy? You're going to get killed.

He took me in his car to his home, talked and talked, and contacted my
parents. And then I was taken back. Daddy got on his knees and held me
and sobbed.

He said, my boy, I know it's Daddy that you ran from. It's me, it's
drink. It's all the stress that's made me, not what I wanted to be.

Daddy wanted to be the best father that ever lived, Keith. I tried, I
wanted it. But I'd done things wrong.

Things have come in my life I never realized. In my pursuit of bringing
happiness to the home and stability and wealth. He said these words, you
will never run away again, Keith, from me.

I will never have to fear whether my son is dead or alive. And knowing
he's run from me, and I don't know where he is in the dark of the night,
I will never face this again. I promise you, my boy, I will never touch
alcohol again.

For you. He meant it with all his heart, but days later. And so I ran
again and again.

There was something in me to just run. An instability, fears, wounds. As
young as I was, complexes as young as I was.

Oh, such complexes. How I stayed alive, I will never ever work out. I
don't want to think.

God seems to block those things out of my mind. I don't want to think
about that. Daddy had a high blood pressure.

When I was home, we saw him one night lying prostrate on the ground and
blood just pouring from his nose and his mouth like a pool of blood. I
thought he was dead. I just, out next to him, wept.

I thought he was dead. Blood pressure, oh, the pills, they somehow got
him onto these things. He took so many pills.

It was unbelievable. The doctors were prescribing because all the
stress, all the smoking, the emphysema. As young as he was, choking
through the nights, coughing, scratching, struggling to breathe, all the
cigarettes.

Then he had this heart problem. He lost his health. He looked haggard
and no drink.

Always the drink. My brother, three years older than me, he had very
little toward my father. Very little.

I think he blamed daddy because of mother's aging and looking like a
little battered, smashed, crushed bird and listening to the weeping in
the nights. I think he blamed daddy because of me running and my
instability and disappearing and the fear that filled his little heart.
As we heard later, how he ran down the streets as a little boy, crying
to a god he didn't know.

Don't let my brother die. Let me find my brother. Don't let him die.

I think he blamed daddy. Daddy said so anyway. He knew that's why.

He lost his son, totally. And then my mother said to my brother and I,
as we got older, my boy's mother has to divorce your father. I will
never love another man, Keith, Dudley.

I promise you, I will never, ever love another man. I can't. He was my
childhood sweetheart.

I've never known anyone else who loved anyone else. But this is not the
man I loved. There's nothing left of that man.

Mother has to leave or I will die if I stay any longer. I will die. My
brother particularly was crushed when she said those words.

He was just crushed and crumbled. But then Jesus came, this saviour who
died that we can live. He so loved us in our sins.

He died to forgive us. Not to save us necessarily from hell and
judgment. To save us from ourselves.

To save us from self and sin and wasting our lives. Wasting everything
on things that don't matter. Jesus came in such a way that none of us,
not one of us was not totally conscious and awakened.

And conscious it was God himself stooping down to reach our hearts. Our
free will that every man has. Oh, he can't judge anyone righteously if
we don't have.

It came through my brother first. My brother, three years older than me,
so different from me. South African champion in his sport those days.

Sanctions across the world against us for the apartheid political eras.
We weren't allowed to compete in world events, even sports. But he was
so good.

They couldn't allow him not to be part in spite of the sanctions. What's
the point? He was so outshone everybody in his sport. He had sports
clubs.

He was idolized, hero worshipped by many, many, many people. Who tried
to emulate him. He had three businesses.

He was like daddy. Incredible mind. Whatever he put his hands to, it
just all worked.

He was very young. But he wasn't successful, trust me. Heavy drinking.

Oh, I don't know what it was that he's smoking heavily again himself.
Angry, bitter in many ways. Not a very loving person.

Well, he fell in love with a girl. God can use that. She was so
beautiful, I even nearly stopped breathing.

Which was very unusual for me. I looked at this girl and I couldn't
believe such beauty. Existed.

She loved my brother. She was incredibly beautiful. But she adored my
brother.

And he was so smitten. So smitten by her. He loved her.

But she came from a very godly home. They weren't just ordinary
Christians, you know. Said we shave, we go to the prayer meeting, we
carry a Bible.

We witness. They were the choice of God's people. That were looked up to
and revered by many, many people through their godliness.

And stance for Christ. Well, God brought my brother into this home. And
they were shocked, of course.

This heavy drinking, smoking, swearing full of himself, angry young man.
Who their daughter had fallen in love with. This was shaken.

Their world was staggered. And to see this girl of theirs that they
brought up with the standard going with him into the world. They
suddenly realized she's not saved.

It's all here. Nothing had been here. She just threw everything away.

The love of a man. She wasn't saved. They panicked.

They tried to get him to come to church. They tried to talk to him and
others. My brother said, wait.

I only want to say this once. I am never going to become religious. So
stop trying now.

I don't know and understand about you. I've never seen this in my life.
But I want you to know I will never go to your church.

Ever. And I will never become what you are. And I am telling you now,
don't ever speak to me about God again.

I'm telling you now, don't ever ask me to go to your church again. I
want to marry your daughter and I'm going to. But stop now.

I'm warning you. Don't ever, ever talk again to me. What do you do? They
were the type of people that put you against the wall, you know, and
preach hellfire at you.

They had a bit more wisdom than that. But they got godly people across
Johannesburg, the largest city in Africa, southern Africa. They got
godly across that city, crying to God with them for the salvation of
this young man.

That had one day taught his heart and life. And for the family he came
from. They were praying.

Oh, people were praying everywhere, crying out to God in prayer
meetings. We even found it three houses away from us. People walked up
years later and said, we prayed for you.

We cried to God for you and you're unsaved. People were praying
everywhere. And then Will McFarlane, the second male worker in our
mission, which is now the oldest surviving mission in Africa, that has
sent literally thousands of missionaries across our continent and to
many other countries, of which I have been with for many, many years.

He was the second young worker to ever come into the work many, many
years ago. And it's 100 years ago now. Mr. Will McFarlane, the godliest
man I ever met in my life.

No other man ever made me tremble by just looking at his countenance and
seeing what God can do and make a man if he let him. In this world, I
trembled. People fell on their knees without him speaking about God and
gave their lives to Christ, just being with him under deep conviction
and desperation for salvation just through his life and his countenance.

God had so refined him to such Christ-likeness. And this man had left
Africa and gone to Canada, among other countries, poured his life out
for God on mission fields. And now, as an older man, retiring, he flies
back to his home country.

And in the church where he preached as a young man in his 20s before he
left Africa, their church, where so many of them had come to God all
those years ago, now he stands again, asked again, an old man. And God
began to move again in such a magnificent way as people rolled from all
parts of our city, dragging people, dragging especially young people
coming to God, just coming out in the nights upon nights, giving their
lives to God broken. Oh, what anointing! You could hardly breathe when
he preached.

I could hardly breathe the consciousness of God and the anointing of God
on this godly man's life. They came to my brother and said, listen
Dudley, you have said to us that you will never go to our church. You
said to us, we are never to speak to you again about God.

And we fear that. I fear that Dudley, but Dudley, something's happening
that I am so fearful you're going to miss. The man has come back as so
many of us, so many multitudes came to Christ through when he was young.

He's in our pulpit and Dudley, he only has one meeting left. So many
have come to God in these last few days, from all over, they're just
streaming in this outreach. And Dudley, I'm begging you to come.

Before he goes, I'm begging you. If you don't like him, I will never, we
will never speak to you about God again. We will never ever ask you to
go to another meeting again, but I have to beg you to come before you
miss this Dudley.

This man is different. My brother said he thought to himself, oh my, I
want to marry their daughter. I better show them that I'm not as wicked
as they obviously think I am.

So he said, all right, I'll come. Terrible to go to church. He sat in
the back row.

He wouldn't sit anywhere else. He said he was determined to switch off.
I'm not interested in all this fanaticism.

He didn't want to hear a word. I don't want to become like this. So he
sat there determined to switch off to all this.

But you can't switch off when God comes. When God orchestrates his love
for you, what you think is your decision, doing people a favor. Sure,
you think you're here just to switch off, young person.

Be careful. This God is greater than your understanding and his love for
you. Oh, you can say yes or no to God.

I believe that emphatically. For every verse you give me, if you try and
tell me we have no free will or choice, I'll give you 30 other verses
that have proved you've misinterpreted your one little isolated half
verse. You can say yes or no to this God.

God doesn't press buttons. He doesn't want that sort of love. He wants a
free will because he is love.

And true love wants the will to want that love, not something forced
mechanically. My brother said he sat there and he couldn't switch off as
this man began to speak. This man spoke about hell.

And all he did was quote scriptures of the judgments of God. But Dudley
said he had never heard the word hell in his life or judgment from the
pulpit in his life. He'd only heard the word hell in blasphemous jokes
from a priest.

And this man was weeping in compassion. He believes this. And my brother
believed it for the first time.

He was shaken and fearful as the Holy Spirit took those words and
confronted him with eternity. And then this man quoted the verses strewn
to the Bible of eternal life with God. There shall be no more pain,
suffering, sorrow, no more tears, no more death.

For eternity with this God, singing the praise in the most perfect
bliss, he quoted as heaven. Then he said to escape this hell, this
eternal damnation with the smoke of their torment to send it up forever
and ever. There's no peace day or night to escape this that God has said
you will face.

For all have sinned, there's an unrighteous, no, not one. And again,
this gift of eternal life is one way through Jesus. And he preached and
quoted Isaiah 53, quoted the cross, the love of God.

Nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to the cross I cling. And that's the
first moment God can actually look at you to be able to save you when
you come with nothing but the blood of Jesus.

And God promises he will in no wise turn away anyone who comes to him
through Christ. And then he said, now if God has brought you to this
building tonight, and you know that it's God that brought you here, and
you know that it's God speaking to you, not an old man in his weakness.
But from God's word, his voice is penetrating where no human voice has
ever been able to reach.

You know you have to do with God. And you know God wants you to make a
choice to come. Whosoever will, let him come.

And you want to give your life to God to save you from this judgment and
from a life wasted on sin and self and shame. And gain eternal life and
be saved. If you know it's God that brought you here, and you know what
God is wanting of you, choose you this day whom you will serve.

Come, give your life to God. Kneel in the front here and we will pray
with those that come. My brother was weeping, trembling, fearful.

But awakened, and he got up. He was so staggered, he said, it was like
someone had hit him up with a head with a ten-pound hammer. He could
hardly stand.

And he walked down the aisle, staggering. People helped him. And he
knelt.

He was the only one. The other nights, they streamed out. That night, my
brother in the back row came, the only one, and knelt, weeping.

The old man came and knelt beside him and put his arm around him. While
everyone just sat, he didn't dismiss the congregation. And he cried out
to God with my brother, cry out to God with me, for God to save his soul
through the said blood of Christ and the living Christ, the resurrected
Christ, as many as received him.

To them gave he the power to become the children of God, even to them
that believed on his name, as many as received him. Christ in you is the
hope of glory. You have no hope of eternal life unless Christ is in you.

If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he's none of these. It's God
in you. Cry now to the Savior who died for you for forgiveness.

Cry now to his risen, resurrected power that is, and receive him by his
promise that he will come into your heart, into your life. Your body
will be the temple of the Holy Spirit. God will dwell in you.

Oh, my brother and him cried out to God. Godly wept. And God saved my
brother that night.

He stood up and he walked, didn't want to speak. He walked out of the
church, got in his vehicle, drove home, called father and mother. They
were living separate lives in the same home, but mother, you have to
come.

Father, daddy, mommy, I have given my life to God tonight and I shall
never take it back. God has saved me. I've become a Christian.

He put his arms around my father. My mother stood in shock, trembling,
and he asked my father's forgiveness for judging him, for blaming him
for everything. Daddy, you were a good man.

You were a great man, but you lacked one thing. You lacked Christ and
his salvation. But daddy, that's going to change.

What God has done for me tonight, I know he's going to do for you. God
had you in mind, daddy, when he spoke to me. And you, mommy.

I know God's going to save you, mommy, both of you. And Keith, if he's
still alive, all he needs is what I found tonight. I know that.

I never knew that before. I never had anything to give him. Now I know.

I know. My father wept. My mother said she never heard my father weep so
uncontrollably when his son put his arms around him and said those words
of love and compassion and forgiveness.

My mother wept and said she knew as she looked at Dudley that there is a
God that cares and that is going to help the soul. Out of the mess it's
in. She went to the lawyers the next day, friends of hers and father's,
and she stopped the divorce procedures totally.

Something's happened to my son. I want to stop the divorce now. An uncle
of mine found me in a city a thousand miles away from them.

He begged me go home to them, Keith. I'm begging you. He didn't contact
mother or father in case I never got there, but he put me there as if
I'd get back home.

I went to mother and she walked out and looked at me. She didn't say the
same words I'd heard her say again and again. Oh, thank God you're
alive.

She said, Keith, something's happened to your brother. She didn't know
the terminology of being born again, converted, and something wonderful
has happened to your brother and you have to speak to him. He said if we
ever find you, you are to go straight to him.

Now, Keith, I said I would make sure. Please let me take you just to
your brother before you go. Drove me to one of his businesses and he ran
out when he saw who was in the car outside and he was laughing and
crying.

He said, mother, just go, just leave. Took me inside, sat me down and
said, Keith, I gave my life to Christ. I've been saved.

I've become a Christian. And everything's changed, Keith, everything.
All you need is Jesus, Keith.

I've been so praised. I said, but I am a Christian. What are you talking
about? It's a Christian country, you're born Christian.

What are you talking about? Oh, Keith, I don't know how it's possible.
We've never heard the truth. We changed churches as we changed
girlfriends.

It meant nothing to us more than that. We've never heard the truth until
now, Keith. But now I know the truth.

He sat me down and he shared everything he knew and everything about his
life and I sat there in staggered silence because I'd never heard this.
I looked at his life. He was so changed, it's incomprehensible.

Not 10 years later, not one year later, not six months later, when he
got up from his knees, he was a new creature. Old things had passed
away. All things had become new.

Every value, his attitude, he forgave. He was compassionate. He was not
self-centered.

He was not the blame game anymore. It was just this love and tenderness
and compassion and transparency and humility. I began to thirst after
God just listening to his words, looking at his life.

What Ruth and Naomi, you know, she looked at her mother-in-law and she
said through that life, thy God shall be my God. Thy people shall be my
people. I was crying out that from my soul just looking at his life.

I wanted these people who laughed. In a way, I never heard people laugh
from their hearts. They didn't need drink, they didn't need drugs, they
didn't need filthy jokes or depravity and they were more happy and
laughed more from their hearts in a way I wanted.

I wanted these people to be my people. I remember my father and mother
and I sitting at the table in the dining room of our home and I looked
at daddy as my brother was just talking with this incredible joy about
God. And my father's mouth was open.

Tears. I looked at my mother, her mouth was open and tears. And I
suddenly realized my mouth's open.

We just sat there stunned at the life God had transformed to this degree
because he was willing to kneel and give himself to God forever. He took
me to his church. The man preached the gospel in a wonderful way, this
old Irish man close to death.

And it was wonderful to listen to the cross. But I wanted God's
salvation before I heard the gospel being preached in truth in my life.
Through a life.

I wanted this God's salvation desperately. I knelt before God that night
and gave my life to him and God saved me wonderfully. Everything
changed.

Everything changed. There was not a soul on this earth beginning with
father, mother or my brother to my relations, to my friends, to my
enemies that was not stunned, staggered mostly to total silence and
shock at the change that came in my life. No man can do that to mind
over matter.

And I wasn't trying. I was saved. One night my father, when we had a
visitor, an old missionary from the Congo, those days come back to die.

All our lady workers, many of them came back young in their 30s to die
riddled with diseases from the rivers and came back to die. I leaned out
to a great woman of God. Oh, she won souls for Christ's eyes.

As she was dying, she brought them to Christ. She was incredible. And
she and many other godly people came to love us as a family as they
became conscious of us.

They watched over my brother and I. We weren't allowed to backslide. We
had no choice. Oh, did they pull us up every day.

How many chapters have you read? Tell us about it. Well, there you are.
Hallelujah.

I leaned out and he comes now to our home. And she's sitting next to
father and mother. And she looks up at my daddy and mommy looking at my
brother and I. We were inseparable.

My brother and I couldn't be out of each other's sight. I loved him for
what he let God do. She looked at daddy watching us both as talking and
laughing and one in Christ.

She touched my father. She said, Mr. Daniel, look at your son. Look at
what God's done to them.

She said, Daniel, what reason can you give God as to why you don't seek
God to do the same for you right now? What reason can you give yourself
as to why you don't seek God with all your heart right now tonight to
save you as he saved them? To do the same for you. My father was so
stunned. No one ever spoke to him like that.

He stood in shock at this confrontation. And he walked down the passage
to his room, shut the door, got on his knees. I don't know why, but he
spent a few hours, hours alone with God.

I don't know why so long. No one ever will know. He never said perhaps
speaking back to the war years, the things he did that was on his
conscience and mind.

I don't know whatever everything he was bringing to God, I suppose, for
forgiveness that haunted him. And when my father opened that door, the
greatest miracle I've ever witnessed in my life walked out of that door
that night. I've seen miracles.

We prayed, I wouldn't say through great faith, and see the most
incredible answers to prayers. It staggered me, so it wasn't so much my
faith, it was just God's mercy hearing our cry. I've seen miracles that
would make people shout hallelujah, but I've never seen a miracle as
great as what God did to my father, not one year later, but that night.

I wasn't there. My brother wasn't there. I didn't doubt he wasn't there,
but mother was.

We'd all gone. Mother told us. He walked out, looked at her and said,
Mother, I too have given my life to God tonight, and I shall never take
it back, Maudy.

He took mother's hand, walked her to the socializing parts of our home.
We had a lovely home by that time, and he took all the bottles and began
to pour them and empty them and broke them and wept, and Maudy, we will
never have alcohol in our house again. Do you understand me? No
champagne, no wine, never again in this home.

It destroyed my life, Maudy. He never touched drink again in his life
from that night. Threw down his cigarettes, 60 a day for over 25 years,
never less than 60.

Didn't touch another cigarette till the day he died. Alcoholics
Anonymous asked him to speak because he was very well known in our
country. He said, You say that the first step to victory over drink is
to say, I am an alcoholic.

But you're wrong. I was an alcoholic. Christ has set me free.

They never asked him back, of course. But no one could recover from that
night, what they forgot over the years, no one could forget that night
and what it did to so many hearts. He picked up this book and read
through it 68 times, from cover to cover.

In the nine years, God let him live as a saved soul. And he began to
turn the world upside down. As multitudes came to Christ through him
everywhere he went, across the business world of South Africa.

They turned to God as they saw this man they feared, filled with love
and compassion and humility and joy and peace. It passes all
understanding. Oh, Father was mightily saved.

And then my mother, she was in a dangerous position, you see. A very
uncomfortable position to be the only unsaved person left in the home.
And to know that everyone's praying for you to be saved is quite a
predicament.

Especially for my darling mother. Hm. How we tried so hard, you know.

Missionaries, preachers, all they came. My mother got up with these
people in the house and said, come to the kitchen. So we stand there
where Mother and I did spend often times through the years.

He listened carefully to Mother. I know why these people are here. Don't
think I'm ignorant.

You've got the whole world preaching at me because you think I'm going
to hell. How dare you? I thank God you saved, Keith, and your father and
your brother and the saints. I acknowledge it.

I can understand why God would have sent your father to hell for
eternity. I wouldn't argue. And you, Keith, and your brother, but don't
you tell me God would send me to hell.

How can you, Keith? I'm not a sinner, my boy. God cannot judge me the
way I've lived. No matter what I went through, my boy, I have never ever
in my life touched a cigarette.

Not once in my life. I don't have cigarettes to throw away like Daddy
did. I've never touched alcohol.

I don't know what champagne tastes like, Keith, or wine. Ask your
father. He was my childhood sweetheart.

Ask your uncles. I have never ever tasted wine at a wedding or
champagne. I don't have drink to throw away or break the bottles.

I've never sworn a dirty word in my life, Keith, not even a questionable
word. I have no immoral undercurrent books or magazines. I don't have
anything.

I haven't allowed myself to stoop to that in my life. I've never told a
dirty joke in my life. Your uncles have.

Your daddy did. And from a little girl right through to this day, he
said, stop. Stop.

I don't want to hear the end of this. It's beneath me. I walked away.

I don't know the end of a dirty joke, Keith. You might have gone astray,
my boy. Badly so.

But I want you to tell mother right now from your heart what I did to do
that to you. What I have to ask God for forgiveness for. And your
father.

I never betrayed him, Keith. Men tried. I never thought I would stoop to
tell you that men tried.

But I'm going to today. Men tried again and again, Keith, in different
circumstances with all the socializing of our lives. I said to every one
of them, get away from me, you filth.

I am a married woman. What are you in your mind that you could try this?
No matter what your father did, Keith. And you don't know the half, my
boy.

I never betrayed your daddy. I pursued with my heart to be good. A good
mother, a good wife.

A good person. In a way no one will comprehend. But only God knows.

Your God cannot judge me. He cannot send me to hell. I am not a sinner.

I am not a sinner. Now you stop what you're doing. You stop all these
people coming to this house.

You stop this. Shame on you for believing God would judge me after the
life I've tried to live for you and my family. Shame on you.

Oh, I just looked at mother and I trembled. I couldn't say a word. I
just said in my heart, thank you God for such a mother.

But God heard. God brought others. Eileen Tauty, she said it to her.

And Eileen Tauty was the first to say, Mrs. Daniel, you're wrong. You
are a sinner. A very bad sinner, Mrs. Daniel.

How dare you. You have no idea what I faced. How dare you come in here
and tell me I'm a wicked woman.

No. Mrs. Daniel, God says there is none righteous. No, not one.

If we say that we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves. The truth is
not in us. 1 John 1 verse 7. If we confess, Mrs. Daniel, that's one
mighty encounter with God as a sinner.

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar. The Bible says
you're calling God a liar, Mrs. Daniel.

That's a terrible, wicked sin. Do you know how blasphemous that is to
say God is a liar? We make him a liar. God has said all have sinned,
Mrs. Daniel.

There's none righteous. No, not one. All we like sheep have gone astray.

We've turned everyone to his own way. The Lord has laid on him the
iniquity of us all. He died for all men, Mrs. Daniel, to save all men.

You're saying your husband, your children needed Christ's death to be
saved from hell and judgment, but not you. You're saying others did, but
not you. You're like the Pharisee, and she read.

These two men who went up into the temple to pray, God's ordained
religion, conscious of God, praying. The one a Pharisee, deeply
religious and good man. The other Republican, not very religious and not
very good in other people's eyes.

The Pharisee student prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee that I
am not as other men I am not as other men are exhausted as unjust
adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week. I give
tithe of all that I possess.

The publican, Jesus said, standing afar off would not lift up so much as
his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast saying, God be merciful
to me, a sinner, literally the sinner. He didn't look at other people.
He just came to God for mercy as a sinner.

He didn't have arguments like the other man did as to why he shouldn't
seek God. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather
than the other, Jesus said. You never hear about the other.

He didn't ever. You see, religion, good works, good people go to hell in
their billions, Mrs. Daniel. Because they can't put themselves into the
category of a sinner facing judgment.

How can you be saved from hell if you don't acknowledge you're going to
hell? How can you ask God's forgiveness as a sinner if you don't
acknowledge you are a sinner? Mrs. Daniel, listen to all these verses.
And she came to the end and said, right to the end, the most foolish of
all, she said, filthy, depraved sins in revelation. And then God adds
these words of this judgment that will come upon them for eternity.

And all liars, all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth
with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Mrs. Daniel, to us,
one sin is big, another small. Lies are small.

To God, he's so holy, it's beyond comprehension. You can't explain God.
Those sins are in the same sentence as the wicked, evil sins that God
says.

It's not that less judgment will come upon. Sin is evil, evil lies. Mrs.
Daniel, there are sins in your life that are contrary to God's law,
because by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Start with the Ten Commandments alone, carefully, Mrs. Daniel. Oh, Mrs.
Daniel, you are a sinner. Oh, God is a liar.

You're going to hell. God is a liar. And I pity you that you can't see
that, Mrs. Daniel.

My mother went into total darkness. She wouldn't want to speak to
anyone. She just somehow went into this total silence and shock at the
awakening of her true state.

I don't know what God convicted her of. My nanny, a Basotho black lady,
I loved her. She raged with me.

She was always there for mother. I think the two were the closest of
friends on earth. She said to me, your mother's crying, boy, all the
time again.

And I'm worried. Go, she's somewhere in the gardens. Go and find her and
find out what's going on.

So I went and looked for mother. And she was weeping. And I said, why?
Daddy's saved.

There's no drink. We're saved. I thought all the weeping was over.

Oh, I'm not weeping because of anything daddy is wrong in doing. I'm
weeping because he's so changed. My boy, your father is so changed that
I feel I'm living with a totally strange man.

I have never known another man. He was my childhood sweetheart, kid. I
look at him even tonight and I don't know what to say to him.

I know nothing about this man. He's so changed. I'm living, as it were,
with a totally stranger who's in my home.

I can't communicate. I don't know what to say. I know nothing about him.

He's so changed. And it's so much confusing me. One night she heard the
gospel.

I was in a meeting. An appeal was made. Mother stood.

You must know my mother to know what that cost. And she walked out as a
sinner going to hell that needed God to save her soul. I stood at the
back praying.

And she was with some misandry lady behind the church there. And
eventually she came out, walked up the aisle, and saw me and walked
straight up to me. Before she opened her mouth, I knew God had truly
saved my mother.

I had no doubt God had saved her fully. I didn't see mother throw drink
down the drain, smash bottles. I didn't see her throw cigarettes down,
stop swearing, sort out her magazines or books that are questionable or
change her clothing to something that's not immodest or sensual.

I never saw mother have to do anything. I saw nothing change. Before I
knew mother was saved, you see, I saw mother in her eyes as she came up
to me.

I knew she was saved by her eyes. I saw peace that passes all
understanding. It flooded her eyes and her face.

And I'd never seen my mother's face in my whole life until that night.
God's peace. And one other thing.

This book. She devoured and loved from that night. Until she died at the
age of 91.

At daddy's funeral, there was no room in this magnificent old building.
For all the souls, in the end, they were standing out in the parking
areas. No room left in the church.

They put loudspeakers out and the service was delayed. I sat with my
mother and I looked around at all these people. I said, mother, do you
know every single face that I can recognize? Most of them daddy brought
to Christ.

In the end, at the door, some businessmen said to my mother and I that
they would like to have the responsibility and the privilege of doing a
stone for my daddy's grave and everything else. So we did give them the
details of his birth, death, etc. And his full names.

And mother said to me, a few months later, I was preaching, of course, I
want to show you what these men have done for your father. So she drove
me to the cemetery. And I couldn't believe the stone mother led me to.

The magnificence, it was like a tomb for a king. I couldn't believe it.
And I saw all the details of what we had given them.

But on top of that beautiful marble stone were these words engraved in
the stone. He walked with God. And I said to my mother, daddy's life
demanded that that had to be written across his tombstone, mother.

My brother and I, well, we gave up the businesses. I was involved in
things too, not worth even thinking of. And we went out to preach, both
of us.

In the same mission, which I have been over 50 years in now, he went on
into the ministry and other countries. I'm now 71 years of age and had
the privilege of preaching to a few hundred thousand people. Some would
say far more than that, but I'm going to that.

And multitudes and multitudes have responded in brokenness, meetings
upon meetings across much of this world. But you see, if my brother had
closed his heart to God that night, what would have happened to me? What
would have happened to my father? My mother, she would have died in
brokenness as a broken woman. And my father enslaved to drink as an
alcoholic for over 20 years, 25 years.

My brother, what would have happened to him? But he didn't walk out. You
see, God had more than him in mind that night. Don't doubt this.

God had others in that home in mind. God had others in churches and
churches and buildings and buildings and prisons and school assemblies
across our land and other lands. Oh, God had many, many people in mind
when he waited for my brother's decision.

Of his free will. And you, you think it's just you that God has in mind?
You think you're just here because choices were made? Be careful what
you do here this morning. You have no idea how many.

Souls. God has in mind through you.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/7gMnvzTDnWY.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/keith-daniel/gods-merciful-intervention-in-my-family/
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