#11

It Happened In Pentecost! 

It Really Did!

Sister Irene Chaney was a dear and respected pastor of a church in Grimsby, Illinois for many years. She told us many faith-building stories through the years, to which we could listen for hours. 

Sister Chaney told one story from when she was the youth leader of a church in Murphysboro. She said a young boy, in his early teens came into a youth service shortly before it ended one night. He told her that he really wanted to give his heart to God. They took him into a Sunday School room and prayed with him and God filled him with the Holy Ghost and then he asked to be baptized. 

Sister Chaney said she and the pastor told the young man that they should get permission from his grandmother before they baptized him. But the young man began to plead with them and told the following story. 

"I felt such a need to give my heart to God tonight that I begged my grandmother to let me come to church. But since I would have to walk five miles to get here, she refused, and sent me to my room when I insisted. After being sent to my room I climbed out my window and walked here. That's why I am so late. But I have to give my heart to God tonight and be baptized."

Sensing the urgency the young man felt, the pastor agreed to baptize him. Then he asked Sister Chaney if she would take the boy home and explain to his grandmother afterward, which she did. When they arrived at the house the boy's family were surprised to see him come in as they had thought he was in his room. 

The following day while at school the young man fell unconscious to the floor of the gym. He was rushed to the hospital and  a battery of tests showed that he had a brain tumor. The doctors determined that emergency surgery was his only hope and he was rushed to The Jewish Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. 

The mother and grandmother of the teen sat in the waiting room anxiously waiting for news about the surgery. After waiting forever, it seemed, a doctor came out of the waiting room with an astonished look on his face and asked, "Where did this young man learn the Hebrew language?" To which they informed him that the boy had never studied any languages, as he was just in junior high school. The doctor kept insisting that the boy had to have studied Hebrew. 

The grandmother of the boy finally demanded to know how the operation had gone. The doctor was taken aback and embarrassedly told them that they had not begun. 

The doctor explained that as they were starting to administer anesthesia the young man had aroused and began to speak to them in Hebrew. He said, "I and seven Jewish doctors stood in open-mouthed astonishment as the boy told us of the Jew's Messiah, of His birth, His life, His death and His resurrection, about the Holy Ghost falling on The Day of Pentecost, and baptism in His name. When he finished he closed his eyes and was gone." 

As told by the late Rev. C.E. George