Psalm 91 (ESV)
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”
3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
5 You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
8 You will only look with your eyes
and see the recompense of the wicked.
9 Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—
the Most High, who is my refuge—
10 no evil shall be allowed to befall you,
no plague come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
12 On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the adder;
the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.
14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
15 When he calls to me, I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble;
I will rescue him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”
My usual morning routine is to firstly spend time praying and reading God’s Word each morning, after which I normally spend a bit of time reading a motivational or business book or listening to something inspirational while having my morning coffee.
On Saturday morning, the 21st of August 2021, for some inexplicable reason, I had an urge to take up a little booklet called “Build an Ark, a blueprint for deliverance from danger” by Gloria Copeland. I bought this booklet at a road stall for R2 while on holiday the previous month.
It’s almost a forgone conclusion that a booklet about God’s protection, would refer to Psalm 91 somewhere in its contents, but what amazed me was that this booklet started out with the whole Psalm 91 printed in full in the New King James version, followed directly by the same Psalm 91 printed in full, but this time in the Classic Amplified version of the Bible.
I felt led to carefully read both versions in full under my breath and physically saying to God as Psalm 91:2 says:
“I will say to the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.”
I didn’t have time to read much more in the booklet as I had to do my exercises and get ready for work. Around 9am I was buys taking stock in my men’s apparel store, which is situated in the Bloemfontein CBD, when I noticed two men talking to my security officer at the store entrance.
Suddenly, I noticed the security officer drop to his knees while almost simultaneously, one of the two men charged at me with a coat he had grabbed off a rail and started pounding me over the head with it in order to scare me off.
I had an expensive remote stock scanner in my hand and ran to put it down on the closest flat surface I could find while the assailant was attacking me from behind.
After putting down the stock scanner, I immediately grabbed a two-arm garment rail with all the garments still on it and used it as a battering ram against the attacker as I suspected that he might have had a knife and I wanted to keep as much distance as possible between us.
In the skirmish, I managed to drive the attacker closer to the store entrance, where I noticed that the other man had grabbed a garment rail of clothing and was making his way to the store entrance. Inexplicably, he suddenly dropped all the garments he had in his hand at the entrance, and in an instant turned around to face me where I was approximately four meters from him. He pulled out a handgun, aimed it directly at me and pulled the trigger …
I witnessed the shot being fired at me and the resulting smoke from the gun after the shot had been fired and I was convinced that I had been hit, but inexplicably had God’s peace on me while I fell down.
One of our staff members who had witnessed the shooting and was hiding under a table, called my wife twice in succession in a state of panic informing her that I had been shot. Lying down, however, I was amazed that I felt no pain and was surprised to feel that I had not been hit.
Thankfully the two assailants had fled after the shot was fired as our other staff members and people from the nearby stores had started screaming and running towards our store after having heard the gunshot. When the police officers arrived, they combed the designated area off for the bullet, but having found nothing, concluded that the assailant used a real gun, but loaded it with a blank cartridge.
On Tuesday morning, following the incident, we were moving all the garments rails and fixtures in the store in order to vacuum the carpets when the security officer suddenly called out, “There’s the bullet!”
Incredibly it was lying on the carpet under one of the garment rails, close to where the first assailant had attached me and was later confirmed by one of our clients who is a retired police officer, to have been fired from a .75 calibre handgun. The point of the bullet shows signs of impact on an object before ricocheting off and landing on the spot where it was found by the guard. I have yet to find the place that the bullet impacted on the wall behind me, before it landed on the floor …
I can without a shadow of a doubt ascribe the fact that neither I, nor my security officer or any of our other staff members, were hit or suffered any harm as a direct intervention by God Almighty Himself, as I personally witnessed the assailant draw the handgun, aim it directly at me over a distance of four meters, as well as seeing the shot being fired at me.
A further miracle is that inexplicably all the garments that were taken, were dropped on the inside of the store entrance and no garment passed the threshold of our store entrance! It serves as proof to me yet again that God’s Word is the truth, and we can always rely on the promises in His Word!
What is also strange is the fact that I read the Psalm with real earnestness and spoke out with intent as directed by Psalm 91:2 lays it out. In layman’s terms, I made Psalm 91 my own. I have on many previous occasions also read Psalm 91 with earnestness and intent when I was facing a particular situation in life, but this time, there was no apparent reason to do so. If I had felt the need to read Psalm 91, I would have read it in my Bible during my quiet time.
As a Gideon, I’m living proof that God’s Word is true, and our aim as Gideons’ members should be to truly blanket the communities we work in with the Living Giving Word of God!
