Our Guest Bruce Van Natta

Sid: Hello, Sid Roth here with Bruce Van Natta.

Bruce, when he was 5 years of age, Jesus came to him.

Jesus hugged him. And a hug from Jesus

caused gifts from the Spirit of the Living God

to enter Bruce, which forever changed his life.

Now Bruce, you were going through a hard time.

As a 5 year old, you were being molested.

Tell me what happened.

Bruce: My parents worked out of the house,

so we had a babysitter that I’d have to go stay at their house.

While I was at this family’s house,

over the period of about a year they were molesting

their two children, and they also were molesting myself.

That was going on and off for that year.

Then my grandparents took me to church,

the one time I can remember being at a church as a child.

I went to Sunday school class,

and the Sunday school teacher in this little country church

told us the story about Jesus hugging little children.

His main point was that Jesus loved us as children,

and if we’d pray to Him, He’d answer our prayers.

My parents ended up finding out what happened.

I was listening to their conversation that night

as my mom told my dad what happened to me for the year.

They were upset that I hadn’t told, worried about

my future, worried about what had happened to me.

Sid: Sure.

Bruce: I was laying on the bed in the dark,

and just a little voice, the Holy Spirit now I know,

reminded me what the Sunday school teacher said

six months earlier, and said “Pray to Jesus.”

So I thought I’d give it a chance,

and what I prayed for was what I think any child

at that age would pray for. I just wanted to be comforted.

So I prayed for a hug. That’s all I prayed for.

I said “Jesus, please come hug me.”

Right at that second, the room lit up,

and I felt these warm arms wrapped physically around me.

It was physical and emotional both.

I tell people it’s like being dipped in liquid love.

I was covered from head to toe, inside and outside,

by this incredible love. It blocked out everything else.

The next thing I knew, I woke up the next morning.

Sid: But you had something you didn’t realize:

gifts of the Holy Spirit started operating

even at that young age. Tell me about that dream you had.

Bruce: Shortly after that, I had a dream

where I was walking in heaven, hand in hand with Jesus.

The walls were these beautiful jewels,

and there was this shiny, shiny walkway,

a road that we were walking on.

Jesus was just smiling. We didn’t talk,

He was just smiling and holding my hand. I just felt love.

I told my mom about it.

My mom knew from the book of Revelation

about what heaven looks like.

I had no knowledge of that, but I described it.

Sid: Of course. You’re in church one time, at age 5.

Bruce: I described it, and it kind of scared her.

Sid: What’d you see? What do you remember that you saw?

Bruce: All I really remember is these beautiful stone walls.

When we think of diamonds, we think of little.

These were great big, beautiful stones that were huge.

And even to this day, I still have a fascination with stones.

I’ve got a stone garden at our house.

I think it stems from that.

Sid: Since that point, you hear things by the Spirit of God.

You know things.

Bruce: Starting at that point, I started to have

a lot of dreams and visions,

and what the Bible calls words of knowledge.

Sid: We’re going to go up a number of years

to the accident that you had.

You had almost a premonition before.

What kind of truck was this?

Bruce: This was a Peterbuilt logging truck.

Sid: About how much does it weigh?

Bruce: The part that fell on me weighs

about 10,000 to 12,000 pounds.

Sid: How would you like 10,000 pounds of truck

to fall on you?

I don’t think your body could withstand that.

God spoke to you before this event. What did He say?

Bruce: It happened in November, and over that summer

there were a handful of times where the Lord came to me

and asked if I would die for the advancement of the kingdom.

I called a close friend of mine and told him what was happening.

I said “It’s bothering me. It’s scaring me.”

He said “Well, what did you answer?”

I said “I haven’t answered.”

He said “Bruce, I’m surprised. I know you better than that.

I know what your answer would be. You’d say yes.”

I kind of felt accountable when he said that,

and the next time it came, I was taking a shower.

The Holy Spirit and I were having a conversation,

then He said “Ok, I’ve given  you enough time

to think about it, now you have to answer.”

I started making excuses, saying

“I’ve got four small children, and my wife…”

You know, thinking my way through these things.

So I started asking questions.

I said “Lord, why?” and there was no reply at all.

I heard absolutely nothing.

The conversation, there was nothing coming back.

So finally I broke down, I put my hands and knees

in the shower, and I started weeping. I said

“Yes Lord, I will die for the advancement of Your kingdom.”

As soon as I did, I asked the question again. “Why?”

He said “Well, for the advancement of My kingdom.”

So that was reassuring. Then I said “Ok Lord.”

I know we’re not supposed to make deals with God,

but I said “God, promise me one thing,

that You’ll give Laurie a husband

who will love her more than I do,

and my children a father who will love

them more than I do right now.”

He said “Done.” As soon as He said “done”,

I really started crying, because I knew it was done.

Sid: I understand.

Now take me to that day the truck fell on you.

Bruce: I’m a mechanic by trade. I’ve got a repair truck

that I do on-site repair at different locations,

and this was just a place where I was doing a three day job.

I finished the job. Worked probably a 12 hour day that day.

Had just finished up. I’d done an engine repair,

so I wanted to run the engine to make sure

there were no leaks on what I’d done.

I was working with another mechanic,

and he was doing some other repairs on the truck also.

He’d taken the front right wheel off and placed

a 20 ton bottle jack and jacked up the front axle.

As I was wiping my tools off and putting them in the truck,

he asked me “Before you go, can you take a look?

I’ve got a leak somewhere in this truck,

and I’ve been looking for it for six months.

If you could just diagnose it, I’ll fix it myself.”

I thought to myself “Well, that’ll just take a couple of minutes.”

His creeper was laying there, his light was there.

I had never been underneath the truck once on this job.

I crawled up underneath the truck feet first

towards the back of the truck.

The front axel of the truck is about that wide,

and it’s kind of rounded, and it’s about that deep.

That 10,000 or 12,000 pounds is on the weight

of the two front wheels, but one wheel’s off.

I crawled underneath it.

The axle’s about this much over my midsection,

so it was coming across me like this.

The truck engine was still running, the truck rocked,

and it ended up falling off the jack.

This rounded axle fell across me,

and it crushed me like a blunt guillotine.

It didn’t cut me, it crushed me down to the thickness of my spine.

There were two vertebrae broke in my spine,

my lumbar, a couple of ribs.

But all my internal stuff, my intestines mainly,

and spleen, pancreas, liver – they all took a hit.

Sid: You were crushed almost like a pancake.

Bruce: From what I looked…

Sid: In fact, you thought that you were cut in half.

Don’t go away, we’ll be right back after this word.