Sid: You know a lot of people say, and I’ve seen this on secular news, or they interview evangelists and they say, “Show me one miracle that is definitely verifiable.” Well, I have in my hands a book it’s called “God’s Strategy for Tragedy.” It answers questions that you have been wondering where is God when these tragedies occur? Why do they occur? Why does God allow a tragedy? What should out reaction be to tragedies and because we’re in an imperfect world with an imperfect devil tragedies do happen. What should our reaction be, where are they coming from, how is this going on? These are questions that all of us at one time or another have asked ourselves, or have asked God. There are people that are listening to my voice right now that you have missed judged God because you do not understand the invisible world and as a result you are spiritually crippled and I believe that your whole destiny, you whole life is going to be changed as a result of this broadcast. My guest is Ben Godwin. Ben before we get to what I consider the most, if not one of the most, verified documented modern day miracles. Before we get to that, you were such a blessed man to be raised in a family and in a church environment where miracles occurred as the norm rather than the exception. Tell me about that.
Ben: Yes Sid, I was very fortunate to be raised in a church and a family with a strong emphasis on prayer and miracles. They just believe that the supernatural is natural to God; to God it’s like breathing. And you know sometimes we are surprised when supernatural things happen, but really true believers should be surprised when it doesn’t happen. And I was blessed with a rich spiritual heritage; my father and mother were both Spirit filled believers and I’m just thankful that growing up in Tampa, Florida as a boy I was exposed to the supernatural. Now whenever I face a trial in life I know where to go. I run to God first as my first resource not a last resort.
Sid: And yet within thirty minutes you were a victim of two automobile accidents, and you were literally, there was a possibility your leg would be amputated. I want you to take me back to that day July 16, 1977. What were you doing?
Ben: Well, I was actually swimming, my brothers and I at the lake behind our house. We grew up on a lake and as my brother and I moved into junior high and high school we began to dabble into some things that were taboo in our household. And I’m ashamed to admit, but I was actually on my bicycle headed to a nearby gas station to buy a pack of cigarettes for my older brothers and I to share. And after I made the purchase I hopped on my brother’s bicycle, came right out into the path of an oncoming car traveling thirty miles an hour. It happened so fast I didn’t even know what hit me.
Sid: How did this occur? Did he not see you? Did you not see him?
Ben: Well, it had begun to drizzle and it was starting to get late in the evening and what happened was there was a clump of hedges between me and where the road began, and my view was obscured. Two I was more concerned about getting home before my parents found out where I was and what I was doing, there I was then about the traffic.
Sid: It’s interesting, I had a blind spot situation happen to me recently and I darted out because I had to get across the street and there were no cars, but it was a blind spot and I happened to believe that the only reason that I wasn’t wiped out, and the person I hit wasn’t wiped out was that there was angelic intervention. Do you thing that there was angelic intervention in your situation
Ben: I do, I believe there was definitely an unseen hand or angelic presence because what happened my bicycle was mangled underneath the car. Fortunately I flipped up on top of the car, and this wasn’t a little compact car, this was a mid-seventies Monte Carlo, a huge car. And when the car came to a jolting halt the forward momentive just threw me on the pavement violently and if I had gone underneath the car it’s very possible or likely I would have had a serious head injury or a very serious or even fatal injury. But I believe that unseen hand guided me that day and when I tried to get up I was so dazed and disoriented I didn’t feel any immediate pain. But when I struggled to get up to my feet I put weight on my left leg and it collapsed out from underneath me. What I didn’t know is that three inches of my shin bone was laying on the road right beside me.
Sid: My goodness and according to what I read you had a few fractures and you had a wound. What was going on?
Ben: Well, you see when the car hit; the bumper of the car hit my left leg it blew three inches of the tibia, that’s the large lower leg bone right out of my leg and it landed on the grown, six inch gaping wound on my foreleg. I don’t think that this was a coincidence. You know coincidences when God works a miracle and remains anonymous one of the first people on the scene of the accident just so happened, and I say that tongue in cheek to be a doctor who knew exactly how to tend to me until the paramedics arrived. And of course when the paramedics arrived they put an air cast on my leg to restrict the movement and prevent infection, and they rushed me toward the hospital, St. Joseph’s hospital, the very hospital I was born in incidentally. And two blocks away from the hospital a man ran through a red light and smashed into the ambulance I was traveling in.
Sid: Someone wanted you dead!
Ben: I believe so.
Sid: That was pretty obvious.
Ben: Yes.
Sid: And so what happened from this accident?
Ben: Well, my mother was riding in the passenger seat, she had wisely buckled her seatbelt.
Sid: Now how did she get there so fast?
Ben: While I was lying on the ground from the first accident, they asked me my parents names, my phone number and so forth, I relayed all that information to them, and they had gotten to the scene, we only lived you know within a mile away. And so she road in the ambulance with me in the passenger seat up front. She was unharmed, but the driver of my ambulance had no seatbelt on, he was thrown into the windshield and suffered a concussion so they had to dispatch another ambulance to come and pick he and I both up and take us the remainder of the way to the emergency room.
Sid: I find it also interesting that you happened to be riding your bothers bike, why was that fortunate?
Ben: I’m not sure, I was in a hurry, I had a bike that was a lot shorter and he had a ten speed, maybe I thought I could get there faster, but in hindsight I see now maybe that little detail was the hand of God because if I’d been on a shorter bicycle the probability of me going under the car would have been much greater.
Sid: Okay, so you’re in the ambulance; the ambulance has an accident; the driver has a concussion, what happens next?
Ben: Well, believe it or not I did make it to the emergency room, and they wheeled me in on the gurney; they began a attending the wounds on my leg. And I’ll never forget one of the attendants showed me the bone fragment that had been knocked out of my leg in a jar of solution.
Sid: They brought it with them.
Ben: Yes, that is correct.
Sid: That must be a delightful thing to see.
Ben: Oh it was rather gory.
Sid: I’m sure!
Ben: But the first thing that they did was rather embarrassing, they cut off all of my clothes and of course, guess what they found, the package of cigarettes I had gone to purchase. Be sure your sins will find you out. In fact later on someone ask me how I quit smoking and I told them it was rather easy, I was struck by a car and God knocked the nicotine out of me permanently.
Sid: Okay, they’ve got you in the hospital and I assume that they are going to do some sort of surgery, what’s going on?
Ben: Well, that was another dilemma of course as you could imagine in July in Florida on a summer Saturday you can image all of the boating accidents, swimming accidents etcetera. There were no operating rooms available and so immediately my parents began to call everybody they knew, and their prayer chain, and they began to pray and to intercede because my leg was in jeopardy.
Sid: Well, what would happen if no operating room freed up within a reasonable length of time, what could have occurred?
Ben: Well, I had a six inch gaping wound so the possibility of my body going into shock, the possibility of infection setting in was a grave danger, and really my leg was at risk, but within three to four hours…
Sid: I’ll tell you what hold that thought, I want to talk about, as great as this miracle is and trust me Mishpochah the thing that makes it great is number one it is a great miracle, but number two I’ve never seen a miracle so verified. Any doctor would be able to look through this book and say “Yes, this was not just a misdiagnosis’s; this is I mean you’ll see one X-ray with bone missing and another X-ray with bone there without a bone graft, instantly God performed a miracle. But the thing that makes this book more important to me is not that miracle, Ben. The title of the book is “God’s Strategy for Tragedy.” I know that there are people listening to our voice right now that have lost faith in God because tragedy has struck, or they’re worried about tragedy striking, and they don’t know why God allows such a thing. Have you had people, and I know the book is brand new but you have been teaching on this for awhile. Have you had people that have literally said, “I was backslidden, I’ve come back to God because now I understand God’s strategy for tragedy?”
Ben: Yes, in the course of my ministry over the years whether they read my book or not and I preached on this subject, people who were bitter at God, people who were blaming God, people who were just kind of…
Sid: Woops we’re out of time.
Tags: It's Supernatural, Sid Roth