Proof The Bible Is True

The phone rang. It was my son, Ryan, calling from West Virginia University, where he was finishing out his final year.   “Dad, I’m not going to be able to make it home for Father’s Day this weekend,” Ryan said. “Some of the guys and I are going to go to a friend’s wedding.”   “Sure, son,” I replied after a beat. I may have seemed pretty mellow, but inside I was devastated. Twenty-two years of tradition—gone. Our family was close, and we’d always spent holidays together. Father’s Day was my favorite. We’d go to church in the morning and [More]

I was about halfway up a cliff face on Mount Thompson, with California’s Sierra Nevada spread out behind me. But I didn’t have time to enjoy the panoramic view. I was focused on reaching the summit. I was free-climbing—scaling the cliff face without safety ropes. I’d gone 70 feet so far. I had about 100 feet left to go.   I swiped the sweat from my forehead and prepared for my next move. This section was tricky; the cliff face was smooth and flat. Not many places to grip, save for a baseball-size handhold just within reach of my right hand. I’d use [More]

“Colt, I think I’m going to die.”   My wife, Krystyna, struggled to get the words out. I had to lean in to hear her. Her voice was weak. She looked small in the hospital bed, her skin pale and shining with sweat.   “No, honey,” I said. “Don’t say that. You can’t lose hope.”   I couldn’t blame her, though. It had been two weeks since what was supposed to be a routine appendectomy, and she was getting worse, not better. The doctors didn’t have any answers. It was hard not to feel hopeless.   It had all started [More]

I drove to the hospital, knowing that today might be the last day I’d spend with my father on this earth. He was my rock, my strength, even while he grew weaker. How could I tell him goodbye?   We knew that dad’s gall bladder surgery was risky at the age of 85, especially after a previous heart surgery. He survived the operation, but complications followed, and his organs started to fail. He’d spent the last three weeks on and off a ventilator. Dad would breathe on his own for a while, then he’d need to be intubated again. It [More]

Nobody was on the beach before dawn in Brigantine, New Jersey. The shore was completely desolate. Maybe that’s what had drawn me. My life was just as desolate.   Six months earlier, in June, I’d been on my boat, the Furthermore, trying to make good time from Florida to New York when a sudden storm had blown up off the coast. Try as I might I couldn’t keep the boat away from the notorious shoals that jutted out from the Jersey Shore. I barely got myself to the life raft before everything else I owned—my clothes, my money, my livelihood [More]

I walked into the tag sale, excited to find a treasure. The first table I came upon was full of railroad memorabilia.   “Fantastic, aren’t they?” another early bird said, admiring some old Chesapeake and Ohio Railway calendars. “Are you a train buff too?”   “Not really,” I said. It was a complicated question. Trains had always been part of my life. My father worked for the Chesapeake and Ohio for most of his life. He wasn’t an engineer or a conductor or even a ticket seller. Daddy had a job few people even knew about: railroad telegraph operator. He [More]

“Today is no day to be cooped up,” I said to my friend Mel. The grin he gave me said he’d been thinking the same thing.   It was Sunday—a gorgeous Sunday in April. When I left the house that morning, I told Dad I was going to church for Sunday school—and I honestly planned on doing just that. Until I ran into Mel.   He was headed to the town’s junkyard to look for salvageable cars.   “Come on,” he said. “There’s hidden treasure in that old junkyard, and we’ll see it sparkle in this sunlight.”   I had [More]

My three-year-old son’s cries jolted me awake. I rushed to his room. Michael was sitting up in bed and crying.   “Bramble, Mommy,” he said through tears.   I pulled him to me and stroked his soft hair.   “It’s just a dream, Baby,” I told him. “Bramble isn’t real. He can’t hurt you.”   For weeks now, my son had been having the same recurring nightmare—about a bald man called Bramble. In the dreams, Bramble stood in our backyard, staring in Michael’s bedroom window. He never tried to harm Michael in the dreams, but my son was terrified. It [More]

“Teddy’s gone!” I cried.   My husband, Gus, pulled me into a hug. We stood, surrounded by shattered glass from our back door. While we were at the gym, someone had broken into our house. We’d searched all of the rooms. The only things missing were our wedding bands and some other jewelry—and our seven-year-old toy poodle, Teddy Pooh Bear.   Gus and I didn’t have children, so Teddy was our baby, our little girl. We usually took her everywhere, even to church. But that night, we’d left Teddy at home for just an hour while we went to work [More]

It was brisk and clear that February afternoon, ideal weather for getting shots of the construction site I’d been hired to photograph. At the Madison, Georgia, municipal airport, I made my preflight checks on my Cessna 172, inspecting the exterior—including the wings, fuel tanks, tires and engine. And then the interior—lights, gauges, instruments, radio and so on—as I went through the laminated pages of my checklists. A routine I’d followed diligently for 23 years as an aerial photographer.   I craved the comfort of routine. It had been a rough week for my family and me. We’d buried my brother-in-law [More]

My husband, Henry, walked in and dropped a stack of newspapers on the table. I thought I spotted a beer can hidden behind his back, but he quickly turned to face me, hiding his hand from view. I brushed off the thought as silly. I must have just imagined it.   “Hi, darling,” he said, giving me a kiss before heading to his recliner and flipping on the morning news.   I glanced at the newspapers on the table. Slipped under the bundle’s string was a small envelope. It was payday for Henry’s newspaper route, which supplemented income from the [More]

The pain was sharp and sudden. It shot through my lower molar. I dropped the pair of khakis I had been folding into the open suitcase on my bed.   “Oh, no,” I muttered.   My husband, Mike, looked up from across the room. “What is it?”   “It’s this darn tooth,” I said, rubbing my jaw. I had a crown, but the tooth underneath was apparently infected. The dentist had warned it might become a problem. But that tooth couldn’t have started acting up at a worse time.   We were heading to Florida for a vacation with the [More]

Bang! bang! bang! I shot up in bed that mid-December morning in 1992. Someone was pounding on the door of my rented room at New Dramatists, an organization for playwrights in New York City. My hair a mess, I grabbed my robe and ran to the door. I threw it open to find Peter, the office manager, standing in the doorway. His face was as white as a sheet.   “Kimberly, are you okay?” he asked, visibly shaken.   “Yes, I’m fine! Why?”   “The building was robbed last night. You were the only person in here. Three floors have [More]

Pichilemu, my Chilean home, is known as the Capital of the Surf. People come from all over the world to ride our waves. My husband, Mitch, and I have lived here since the eldest of our five children was a baby, surfing and spreading the Gospel, living it in our home as well.   A couple Easters ago, I was especially focused on our youngest, 13-year-old Katrina. She and I had been talking about Easter in preparation for the upcoming service, but I wasn’t sure how much had really gotten through. Katrina has Down syndrome, and she often had trouble [More]

  I leaned over the hospital bed in which my 18-year-old son, Art, lay in a comatose state that seemed like death. Tubes fed him through the nose; a machine breathed for him, breaking the stillness of the room with its mechanical gasps. I moved my lips close to Art’s ear and whispered, “Honey, I had a dream last night, so beautiful it seemed real. Two magnificent angels stood by your bed. It means you’ll be healed, I know it.”   Did he hear me? Can the soul hear when the body is asleep? Art didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge my [More]

Mom pulled the big sedan onto the mountain road, the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway. From my seat in the back I gazed up at the pines that towered over us. The cliffs seemed to go straight up, higher than I could even make out through the window. We had been driving for nearly three hours, heading back to Florida from a family camping trip in Williamsburg, Virginia.   I looked back at the pop-up trailer we were pulling behind us, our home for the past two weeks. It had been a tight fit for the six of us—my mom and [More]

Great-aunt Anna loved to tell humorous stories that highlighted the joy she found in everyday life. Sitting in her kitchen drinking tea, laughing over her latest tale, I looked at her in wonder. As a young woman during World War II, she had fled Ukraine on her own and managed to get herself out of Europe. Then she spent time in South America before my mother was able to sponsor her to come to Canada, where we lived.   “How did you manage in those war-torn years?” I finally asked out of the blue. “I imagine it must have been [More]

Horses have always been my passion, but I never thought I’d own a horse farm, one where I taught children and adults, many with special needs, to ride. God had made that possible. When I first started out, I felt like he and I were partners. He was on the farm with me as I fed and watered the animals, cleaned their stalls, talked with the riders. But over time the daily struggles of running a business made me feel as if I were on my own.   I felt the weight of my doubts on my shoulders the afternoon [More]

I stuck my thumb out into the biting wind. I was somewhere in Utah, trying to hitch a ride as the daylight faded. It was bitterly cold and beginning to snow. I had on a coat and the combat boots I’d worn in Vietnam. But not much else to protect me from the late spring snowstorm.   It was 1970. I’d served a tour of duty in Vietnam and come home in 1966 with plans to help my dad with our family farm in Minnesota. Maybe go to college and find a career. Instead…I drifted. No reason. Just a vague [More]

01/20/20   I shifted uncomfortably in my seat as the worship team played their first song. This was our pastor’s last Sunday. He was taking an exciting new position as regional director of the denomination. I was happy for him, but his move had me thinking even more about my own career. What was God’s plan for my life? For Pastor Gary, the road ahead seemed crystal clear. Why couldn’t it be like that for me?   For nine months now I’d been wrestling with making a career change. The idea was to work with my wife, Rikki, in her small company, [More]

01/20/20   “No, Chad,” I snapped, spotting my energetic little boy racing for the front door as it closed. “You can’t go with your sister.” Chad ran to the window and knocked on the glass. Shauna waved before she ran off down the street to play with her friends. At two and a half, Chad was a handful. Trying to keep him out of mischief and danger, I’d nailed drawers shut, built a wooden box over the TV knobs and duct-taped safety plugs into the electrical outlets.   For nearly two years, since I’d suffered a slipped disk and had [More]

12/08/19   The little girl looked familiar. She sat in the corner of my hospital room, staring out the window. She wasn’t looking at me or saying anything. She seemed serene. I found her presence uplifting after a harrowing week of being severely ill. But who was she? And what was she doing here in my hospital room?   I’d been admitted to the hospital a few days before, diagnosed with septic shock from a urinary tract infection. I was in my mid-twenties and too focused on my job in viral research to pay attention to my symptoms. It didn’t [More]

12/08/19   It was Christmas Eve morning, and I awoke with a mission: to find my lost cat, Baby-Girl. As I got ready, I could hear icy rain pelting the windows. I said a quick prayer for Baby-Girl. She was out there somewhere in the storm, I could just feel it. Sure, it had been six months since she’d gone missing, but I still had faith. It was the season for miracles, after all.   That summer, my sweet kitty had disappeared from my parents’ house in Indiana. Baby-Girl had been staying with them while I was between apartments. I’m [More]

12/08/19   Your house is going to be struck by lightning today.   The voice woke me up. It was a late-summer night in Wisconsin, 1993. The air was thick. My sheets stuck to me as I rolled over, trying to ignore the strange statement. Tomorrow was my third day as a high school freshman, and I needed all the sleep I could get. This farmhouse had been where Grandpa lived his whole life. Our family had moved in five months ago, after he’d passed away. Lightning had never struck.   BOOOOOM! Thunder rattled the windows. I opened one eye [More]

When a tornado came straight for Jen’s house, she hid in a closet and prayed. She took a direct hit and is thankful for the miraculous outcome.  cbn.com

Tyler and Heather were about to drown in the open ocean when God literally answered their prayers by sending the “Amen” to save them.  cbn.com

It was one of those perfect New York autumn mornings—blue skies, a crisp breeze. A day when I felt lucky to live in the city. I was on my way out of my East Side apartment when the doorman waved his hand to stop me.   “A plane just hit the World Trade Center,” he said.   An image of John F. Kennedy, Jr., shot through my mind. He had just crashed his private plane into the Atlantic Ocean in the summer of 1999. These private-plane owners really don’t know what they’re doing, I thought as the doorman pushed open the [More]