I'm taking time out of writing a new tract,
getting another one ready to print, and chomping at the bit
to hand out this one for September 2017,
to give you an important message:
God sees us.
No matter what we do, say or think, day or night,
God knows everything --including what you just thought.
And that, too.
It is now 37 years since the Lord brought me to Himself
in repentance --37 years tonight,
when I'm recording this.
Would you like to be let in on what -- just about everyone
who has known me over the last 37 years also knows?
I'll tell you, as simply as possible, how I was brought to repentance
37 years ago.
You'll want to watch this to the end.
Ready?
Hi, I'm David Daniels from Chick Publications.
37 years ago I lived on Tamyram Road,
south of Joshua Tree,
North of the San Andreas fault.
That's the actual fault line there.
I took these pictures myself.
Lots of people in my drama class at Palm Springs High
knew what I was like.
There I am, right there.
A lot of my friends recognize themselves in these pictures.
I played Beatles on my guitar, I'd ride my Suzuki 90,
and spout philosophy from Unity and est and Religious Science.
God started getting my attention the summer after
I graduated Palm Springs High School in 1980.
I have to skip so many details to keep it to the main points.
I could go on for hours.
But to sum up, by mid-August I had decided to try
to attain spiritual power by going the moral route.
In other words, I had decided to,
pardon the expression, "go for the light side of the force."
And so Sunday, August 24th, I actually wrote that in a note
to my Unity minister, Ronel Sinstead.
I figured that somehow I'd attain spiritual power
by blending all the religions together, removing a few dos and don'ts,
that sort of thing.
That night, my dad and I went to the Theater
in Cathedral City, and watched a movie
with some occult spells in it.
I decided to try one spell out.
It was Sunday night, 9:00 pm when we left the theater.
It was a clear night, almost a full moon,
when I started reciting the spell.
Then the hills over the San Andreas Fault
started lining with clouds from the east, from Indio.
When we turned off Ramon Road onto 1000 Palms Canyon Road,
I decided to add (I'm ashamed to say it)
power to the spell, by ending it with these words
"in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost."
And the clouds got bigger over the fault line hills.
By 9:45 we were home.
Then I got up onto our flat-topped roof
of the squatter's shack, and I looked at those clouds
to the southeast, that it looked like I had called up.
It seemed like my life had led up to this moment.
I pointed to the clouds and I said,
"In the name of the Father, and the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, lightning, STRIKE!"
And it did.
Instantaneously.
No spell had ever acted so fast for me before.
I got all excited.
I thought of the Christian Science Cross and Crown seal,
with the words, "Heal the sick, raise the dead,
cleanse the lepers, cast out demons"
I thought, I'm in my final incarnation.
I can be a Christian Science healer.
And then I said the stupidest thing I could say;
"I am a prophet of God!"
And then I heard a voice.
21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven;
but he that doeth the will of my Father
which is in heaven.
22 Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord,
have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name
have cast out devils? and in thy name
done many wonderful works?
23 And then will I profess unto them,
I never knew you: depart from me,
ye that work iniquity.
I later found out that was Matthew 7:21-23.
And do you know what image was in my mind?
That naked guy in front of the big sign at Judgment,
that said, THIS WAS YOUR LIFE!
I am leaving so much out.
If we meet sometime, I can tell you more.
But I have to summarize.
That night the Lord gave me my first Bible lesson.
That is a story in itself.
And probably an hour after that, I went to a storage shack,
and found that I had 13 Chick tracts.
So I started my repentant life before the Lord
with 13 Chick tracts and my mule-choking King James Bible.
The next day I started reading Genesis and Matthew,
Old and New Testaments.
And I never stopped.
After that I dedicated everything in me to Christ,
was baptized, went to Bible college,
linguistics training, seminary.
In my years in high school, I had known only one Christian:
David Rhodes.
He told me he's the one who gave me the Chick tracts.
But just before our 20 year reunion for the class of 1980,
David had said to a friend, basically this:
"Of all the people I've known in my life,
the one I'm sure won't get saved is David Daniels."
I don't blame him!
I looked pretty far away from Biblical Christianity.
But guess what?
God saw me, and brought me to Himself
at the right time.
And what seed did God have planted in my mind?
This Was Your Life -- a Chick tract.
You see, what David couldn't have known
(because I never told him)
was that 8 years before, on June 7, 1972,
a man I'd never seen before or since, came by my apartment
and asked me if I wanted to read this.
This Was Your Life!
And I read it out loud to him.
Then he asked if I would like to receive Jesus
as my Saviour.
And I said Yes.
So we turned to page 23 and I prayed that prayer.
And God saw me.
As many of you know, after he left,
I had no one to guide me.
And I became a Mormon for four years.
But during that time, I would bike, skateboard
or walk across town to the Christian Light Bookstore
in Ontario and buy the newest Chick tract
for a nickel when it came out.
Even while I was a Mormon!
And when I went to my friend Chad's house,
he and his brother Craig had a whole pile of Chick tracts
lying around their room.
When I stayed the night, I'd read them all --
even though I didn't understand them.
So some Chick tracts I bought, my friends had some,
and even David in high school gave me some.
Seeds were being planted all that time,
even when it looked like I was as lost as could be.
So when the Lord called me back to Himself in repentance,
God had seen me all those years.
He had been tending to my soil all that time,
making me ready to leave all that other stuff behind
to follow Him, no matter what, consciously and openly,
when the time was right.
What I'm saying is this.
Look where I am today.
Look at what I do.
Could anyone on earth have predicted that would happen?
I never thought I'd be here, doing this.
When we hand out gospel tracts we have no idea what will happen.
So not just when I hand out Chick tracts to the servers
or people I meet, but when I leave them lying around,
I am spreading seeds to nurture someone's soil.
God sees them, and He knows when they're ready.
And if there's a Christian willing to be used by God,
BOOM!
They can receive the Lord right there and then.
We have no idea who or how or when it will happen.
But it does.
But what if that man didn't hand me This Was Your Life?
What if Chad and Craig didn't have those Chick tracts
lying around?
I saw other Christian pamphlets over the years,
but I never read them.
They were over my head.
And they were full of words.
But the comic tracts grabbed me, even when I didn't
get all the doctrine.
For instance, after reading The Thing
and Bewitched, I destroyed my Ouija board.
I got that message clear.
Well, things might have been quite different.
I am so thankful for all those Chick tracts.
And what's amazing is how God turned things around,
even after my Bible college professors
totally trashed Chick tracts and Jack Chick
and told us all sorts of lies about them...
and that no one could get saved with them...
We know that's a lie.
I'm proof.
God also saw Jack Chick, and gave him a vision,
to make it easy to spread the gospel
in the modern, busy world.
So if you want to be part of God's work of sowing the seed
of the word of God, and you don't have time
to stand there and talk with everyone you see,
if you're busy, like everyone else, there is a solution.
Do like David and Chad and others did for me.
Give tracts.
Pick ones you like.
Pray over them.
Leave them places.
And let the paper missionaries get more soil ready.
You have no idea what fruit they will bear.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.
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