Encounter with the Heavenly Light

By David Hobbs

Heb. 6:12--... those who through faith and patience inherit the promises

Mike Harris was a young man in his early 20s searching for his way in life. His mother died when he was six but she made his father promise that after she was gone he would take Mike to church.

But it didn’t go well at the little church they went to. It seemed every year or two they would get a new pastor after the previous one ran off with the money or the secretary. By the time Mike was through high school he was through with church as well, “If this is Christianity, I don’t want anything to do with it,” he said to himself.

So in college he entered into the world with its drinking, drugs, and partying. But that left him feeling empty and dissatisfied as well. What was the answer and how would he find it? Somehow he got the notion into his head that if he would only read the Bible all the way through, he would find the answers he was looking for, and maybe what Christianity was all about as well.

He had taken a job with the Forest Service cruising timber in the winter months. Every day after he returned to the barracks, he would break out the Bible. He started at the beginning in Genesis and began reading straight through. But it was hard going, especially through all the laws of sacrifice in Leviticus and the chronologies in 1^st and 2^nd Chronicles. “My goodness,” he thought, “this Christianity stuff is really boring!”

The Forest Service had a basketball league for the winter employees that Mike played on for entertainment. After a game they would go out and get “all liquored up,” but no matter what shape he was in when he finally stumbled back to the barracks, he would doggedly take out his Bible and read some more. Whether it made sense or not, somehow he had to find the answers to the questions that were plaguing him.

Six months later, around March 1^st, Mike was down in Medford, Oregon at a basketball tournament. He thought he might as well look up an old girlfriend. When he did, he found that she had just had a glorious encounter with Jesus Christ. She was glowing with a huge smile.   “That’s great,” he said, “but it hasn’t worked for me.”

That night he was staying in her brother’s room at the family home. He had finally gotten to the Book of Psalms and was reading Psalm 16. I’ll let him tell what happened next:

As I was read­ing the 16th Psalm, I came upon the verse that says, "In his presence, there is fullness of joy; at his right hand there are pleasures for­evermore." Something really caught me on that verse, and I read it again and again, maybe ten times in a row. Each time, it became more per­sonal and more real.

  Now this is going to sound far out, but to the best of my abilities I'll try to explain what happened. There came an incredible sense of a light in the room, and it was very pure--not a light that was brightness. It was a light that was pure—something other than what would come out of a light bulb. Suddenly I had an intense feeling of unworthiness. Then it felt like someone had taken hold of my insides and was wringing them out like an old washcloth--wringing out everything. I had an unbelievable sense of emp­tiness. There was nothing inside me anymore. I was completely empty. I started crying, half out of fright and half out of this amazing feeling of emptiness. And then in the midst of my crying, the pure light that was in the room seemed to flow into me and fill me. At that exact moment, I knew without a shadow of doubt who Christ was. I knew that He was real, and I knew that I would live the rest of my life for Him.

That was March of 1974. In June, Mike showed up at the fire crew I was working on. Two months later, after seeing the joy and peace that Jesus had given him, and especially after seeing 3 stunning miracles through prayer on a fire in Idaho, I met this same Jesus who became my savior after years of atheism.

[You can read the whole story in my book: Out of the Fire, A Life Radically Changed]