Sid: And do you know what my desire is? It’s for myself, but it’s also for you I want to hear God’s voice so clear and I want to be obedient. After all isn’t that the greatest purpose of life to fulfill your destiny, hear God’s voice and do what He wants you to do. But so many people ponder, “Is it God or is it not.” And I recently got a hold of book by Bruce Van Natta it’s called “Saved by Angels.” I mean it is the most amazing testimony but there is a supernatural quality that allows not just a super star because the only super star we have is Jesus, but allows everyone that has the Messiah in them to be able to hear God’s voice and to move in mighty exploits. And there are ways that God is speaking to me and to you that many times we miss, but this book covers all the major ways and gives examples. Now my guest Bruce Van Natta, I’m speaking to him at his home in Rudolph, Wisconsin. Bruce on yesterday’s broadcast you talked about being sexually molested as a child. As a five year old Jesus wrapped you in His arms literally showered you with liquid love. Healed your little heart and gave you gifts of the Spirit, but then you didn’t tell anyone about this for twenty years, why?
Bruce: Well, you know what it’s sad but we find even today it’s so easy to keep these things to ourselves and you know I keep thinking about this scripture Revelation 12:11 and it says, “They overcame him, the devil, by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” And so that is just one verse that proves how powerful testimony is. And when we keep it to ourselves we are actually robbing other people of the blessings that Lord wants to use us to foster in other people, and to use us just tools. But I kept those things to myself for the most part, now some of these things I couldn’t keep like, right after I was hugged shortly after I had a vision a dream one night. It was walking hand and hand through heaven with Jesus. And nobody had ever given me a description of the precious jewels and the street made of gold and all of that stuff. So I woke up in the morning and was exciting to tell my mom about this story and I told my mom. Mom, mom listen to what I saw last night and I’m telling her I was walking hand and hand with Jesus and these beautiful stones, these layered stones were on the walls and the shinny ground, the shinny road and I was explaining to her. Well my mom knew the definition of what somebody at some point she had read, or heard about it, you know what the description of heaven is going to be like. My mom got really scared and thought that maybe I was going to die and go to be with Jesus at that time. So I have to chuckle about that now, but my mom was a little worried at the time. But these things started happening and we hear people being laid on of hands and after they’re laid on of hands then these manifestations of the Spirit, these gifts of the Spirit start popping up. Well, when I prayed for Jesus to hug me you know that was a kind of a big time laying on of hands if you will and so these things started to happen and different things and that was dreams and visions was just one of them but.
Sid: But Bruce, it took twenty years for you to share your testimony of what God did with you and you shared it to a woman that would become your wife. What kind of impact did it have on her?
Bruce: Well, when I shared the story it was out of reluctance. I was having this conversation with this girl that I was dating and she was asking me why did I believe so strongly about God. The real reason why I believe that there was a God was because of what happened when I was five. But I had never told anyone and so at this time in my life I had to be honest and tell you I was not living by any means the Christians life and she called me on it. And she said, “Well, you know you believe in God, but you’re doing this, you’re doing this you’re doing all these other things and I guess it doesn’t make sense to me. And we’re having this conversation we’re going back and forth and she just kept coming back and saying, now take in mind that this conversation lasted about six hours and I mean it went on. She wore me down and finally I didn’t want to tell, but finally I had, that was the main reason and I told her. And I said, what had happened when I was five and how the Lord had hugged me and she began to cry. We prayed together and talked more and that was what the Lord used to actual bring her into a saving faith and realized that yeah there is a God that He is real.
Sid: But I have to tell you when I found out what happened to you with that accident where the truck crashed on you you’re an auto mechanic, you were working on a truck. There is something about that, it changed your life, but does it change people’s lives the way I discern it does when they hear what happened to you?
Bruce: Yeah, exactly even you know from doctors and nurses and the period of time that I was in the hospital over five different operations after the accident, yeah it does affect people.
Sid: I’ll tell you how it affected me, it makes the invisible world so much more real. Did it have that affect on you?
Bruce: Yes, it did, but because of being hugged when I was five and some of the things that had manifested in my life one of the things is, spiritual discernment and sometimes I can see into the spirit world a little bit. And so it definitely has that affect on people.
Sid: Give me one example, brief, of what happens when you see into the spirit world.
Bruce: Alright a good example would be so now I’m in full time ministry and someone comes and they want to be prayed for. We start praying together and the Lord will sometimes show me or allow me to see in the spirit world and see a demonic presence hovering around that person, or kind of like sticking out of their head, or through their eyes or you can you know be a black shadow.
Sid: And when you see this what do you do?
Bruce: Well, what it does you know the Lord gives us these gifts you know it’s very…
Sid: No, no what do you do when you see this?
Bruce: I start praying.
Sid: And can you see it actually leave?
Bruce: Sure, yes, yeah I mean it’s clear that we’re given these gifts for the purpose…
Sid: Okay, I don’t want to digress too much, but let’s go back you’re a automobile mechanic tell me what was going on when you had that horrific accident.
Bruce: Actually I’m a heavy equipment mechanic on diesel on large things, large pieces of heavy equipment and trucks. And so I was working on a Peterbilt logging truck, and I’d just finished up doing my portion of repairs, it was an engine filter head gasket. I was putting my tools away in the truck and guy that I was working with at this shop, I go around on sight, I go from place to place all over the state here I did. And this particular shop that I was working in the man that I was working with was doing some other repairs on the vehicle of the truck. I finished my portion and he said, “You know he’s got this leak somewhere that he wanted me to just diagnosis, and he was going to fix the leak himself. And so I ended up crawling underneath this Peterbilt truck and it fell on top of me. And it was on a jack, he had jacked it up with a twenty ton bottle jack. It fell off the jack and the front axle came across my midsection and crushed me down because the right front wheel was off the truck and it has what the call low pro wheels on it, the front axle was pretty low anyway. And so this 10, 11, 12,000 lbs comes down and crushes me like a blunt guillotine filled with cement. So it trapped me, and it’s kind of like you see in cartoons like Wyle Coyote, it just kind of trapped me in half where my body was roughly you know on one side probably an inch thick or less, and on the other side you know across my midsection maybe two inches thick. It crushed all the way through top to bottom is where it went through and even you know cracked two vertebrae in my spine. So it happened I stayed conscious long enough to see the first volunteer fire fighter show up who just happens to be in the area.
Sid: Did you think that that was your moment that was your time to die?
Bruce: Oh yeah, yeah I did, I did yeah. In fact it happened, and all I could say was, God help me and that’s all could say, I said that twice, God help me. Because I looked at myself and from my vantage point I thought I thought I was literally cut in half. I thought I was from what I was looking at I thought I was in two pieces.
Sid: I can’t think of much more awful circumstance to happen to anyone, I mean your guillotined in half you weren’t, but you were almost and that’s what you felt.
Bruce: Yeah, well I’m laying there and they jacked the truck up, get it back up off of me. And it took all the strength of the…big chrome of the front bumper, if you can picture a large semi, the large chrome front bumper was just behind my head. I was completely underneath the truck, and I reach my two hands back, I grabbed the bottom of that bumper, and I’m on a creeper, and I just pulled myself out because I want to get out from out of that truck really bad. And they weren’t going to move me because they knew that I must have back injuries also so I just grabbed that front bumper and I pulled myself out to the point of my head was just sticking out from underneath of that front bumper of the truck. At that point is when I went unconscious, and that’s about the point that the doctor said I should have died.
Sid: Well, you just have, I mean if nothing else you should bleed to death.
Bruce: Exactly, we’d bleed to death internally because it didn’t…there was no external bleeding at all, it was all internal because the piece that crushed me was rounded and flat so it came down and just pinched me to an inch thick, just pinched me. And so all the bleeding what it did was it severed by mesenteric artery that comes off of my heart towards the bottom.
Sid: Now you’re saying that you were crushed to the point where your flesh was an inch thick, is that what you’re saying?
Bruce: On the left hand side of my body was thinner than the right hand side, yes, yes.
Sid: That is crushed!
Bruce: That’s crushed, yes it is. Like I said, it was all the way through the point that it broke my two vertebrae in my spine it cracked them you know and so you figure the thickness of your spine, that’s how thick I was in the center, that’s how thick I was in the center because it came all the way down to crack in my spine so. Now in the center of my body on the left it was actually thinner than that, thinner than the thickness of my spine.
Sid: Alright when you lost consciousness what is the next thought that you had?
Bruce: Well the very next thing after I lose consciousness is a period of time lapsed and I’m not sure exactly how long but the next thing is I find myself up in the ceiling of this garage looking down and I can see myself, I can see my head sticking out from underneath this front bumper, my eyes were closed, my head was actually turned to the driver side. The man that I was working with was on his knees above me running his fingers through my hair crying, I’ve known this man for a long time.
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth