Rescued from Death!

The lifestyle of this rebellious young man nearly cost him his life. What if his wife had not discovered him lying in a drunken condition in the snow bank?

By George Burton

It is a good thing that my wife, Barbara, looked back or in a few minutes I would have died in the snow bank, and I was not ready to meet God. Although my parents had raised me in a Christian home, I knew that I was not living to please Him.

My mother and father were faithful to pray for me. Whenever any of us fifteen children traveled, once we arrived at our destination and opened up our suitcases, the first thing we saw was a Bible, because my mother always packed it. As a young fellow, I did pray and get saved. However, when I was fourteen years old, I became rebellious and turned away from God.

Growing up in rural Newfoundland at that time, we did not get very much encouragement to continue our schooling. So after celebrating my sixteenth birthday, in the month of May, I told my mother that I was finished with school. Then I left home for “Sodom and Gomorrah.”

My sister was living in Wabush, Labrador, at the time, and I moved there. That is where I took on many facets of sin. It was necessary to be twenty-one years old to get into the clubs, but I passed for that age because I am so tall.

I worked two jobs and had plenty of money. Before long, I was drinking alcohol, smoking, and addicted to gambling.

Some of my buddies and I were so consumed with gambling that we signed a contract to have a four-hour session each week. If a person lost the first hand, he still had to stay the four hours and borrow money. People lost their whole paychecks in a few moments. I've lost thousands of dollars in gambling. No one should ever start gambling, even with five cents, because the high that comes from the occasional win will lead to further debt.

Meanwhile, my parents were praying for me, and God watched out for me. One time seven of us were in a big company van and all of us were under the influence of liquor. We had an accident, and it was the mercy of the Lord that none of us were killed.

One of my jobs was as a chef, and many of us who were employed by the hotel lived in company trailers. I was dating a young lady, and we had been out one night with another couple. We were going to one of the trailers, but just when I was ready to enter, I felt like a Voice spoke emphatically to me, “Don't go in!” One couple went in, but the other girl and I each went back to our own trailers. The next morning I was working in the hotel kitchen when one of my friends ran in and said, “George, did you hear the news? Your buddy and his girl died last night in the trailer!”

In Churchill Falls, the temperatures were often so cold that we left our vehicles running at night to keep the engine blocks from splitting from the frost. An elderly gentleman who had another unit in the same trailer had backed the end of his car muffler into the snow bank. When the furnace in my friends' trailer ran, it sucked in the carbon monoxide from the vehicle and killed them all, including the elderly man. Right then the Lord let me know how serious this was. Even though I tried not to think about it, it hit me that I needed to change my ways.

From the time I was fourteen years old, I had always been attracted to Barbara Hancock. She had a Christian background too; her parents were in fulltime ministry in the Apostolic Faith work in South Brook, but she too had turned away from her early training. After I had been away from home for a while and was back for a holiday, Barbara and I were married.

We did quite well financially. We had a company trailer and company vehicle at Churchill Falls, and we were living high. We loved dancing and partying, and made friends with those who loved the same activities and lived it up. However, even while we explored the pleasures of sin in Labrador, we never could really forget about God. On Sunday nights, sometimes Barb would go to a local church there, but she was not happy and I knew it.

One night, I went to a stag party before one of my buddies got married. Barb had said that she wanted me to be home at a certain hour. When I did not come home by the appointed time, she came looking for me. After she found me, I left the party with her. We were walking in a snowstorm, but she walked on ahead because she was upset that I had been drinking and had not come home when I should have. As she walked, she looked back and realized that I was not behind her. She went back to the club to see if I had returned to the party. That took her about ten or fifteen minutes. It was snowing, drifting, and 40 below zero Celsius. When she could not find me at the club, she started home again. As she walked, she looked down and saw a mound in the snow bank. It was me, asleep and already starting to be snowed over. She had to shake me roughly to awaken me. If she had walked on home without looking back, I would have frozen to death before she could have gotten back to where I was.

Around that same time, two of my best buddies in town got into an argument about gambling. They began to fight at the hotel where I was working and were ordered out. I watched them after they were outside. One man hit the other, and he fell down and split his head open on the sidewalk and died. For several weeks, I had to go back and forth to the police station because I had witnessed the incident. After that, I stopped gambling.

God really spoke to my heart through those incidents. Before too long, I went home one day and said to Barb, “Honey, we are going back to Newfoundland .” She said, “I was waiting for you to tell me.” I did not know that she had been contemplating the same thought. Even though the move meant quitting a high-paying job, she was ready to go without any hesitation. We moved back to my hometown of South Brook, and God provided a job for me, even though finding employment was difficult at the time.

Barb's brother, who had lived a very sinful life, had recently been saved, and God used that to speak to her heart. The thought came to her that if God would save her brother, He could save her too. We had not been there long when Barb gave her heart to the Lord she had rejected. We were still staying with her parents, and I was looking through a window when she came home from church that day. She looked different, and I said to myself, “Uh-oh! Life is going to change!”

I had always told Barb that I loved her, and after she was saved, I thought about what would happen if the Lord came back. I knew she would be raptured, and I was not ready. I wanted to go when the Lord came, but I knew I needed to be saved.

One Sunday night I was in church and my father-in-law preached. After the service, an elderly lady came and put her hand on my shoulder. Even though I was not saved, she called me Brother. She said, “Brother George, I've been praying.” That was all it took. I went forward and knelt at the little altar bench. Before long, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was my mother, and she prayed with me until I prayed through to salvation.

Barb and I began to grow as Christians. God was good to us. We had one son when we moved back to South Brook, and later we had three more children. When I sought for Him, God sanctified me and gave me that wonderful heart purity. He began to call after my life, and I was asked to be an usher, then a Sunday school teacher. The Lord laid it on my heart to learn to play the accordion, and I was happy to play in the church services. For quite some time, I was content in that spiritual position and just enjoyed the Gospel. Then the Lord's Spirit began talking to my heart, and I started to seek to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost. On a Tuesday night, after working hard as a lumberjack all day, the Lord gave me that experience.

Shortly after that, my father-in-law asked me to preach. He believed that if you were in the Gospel, you needed to go to work in the Lord's harvest field. The years went by, and Barbara and I appreciated our opportunities to serve God. He blessed us too, and eventually we owned a brand new home, and seemed to have everything we wanted. I loved being a logger and loved working with a chainsaw.

However, God began to deal with my heart again. Barb's dad, who had been our pastor for years, became very sick and was about to retire. I felt the call to go into the ministry fulltime, but I did not want to yield. Week after week, God's conviction was on my heart. All day long in the woods, floods of tears poured out of my eyes, and I would say, “Lord, I thank You for what You have done for me. I'm enjoying it! What else do You want from me?” I knew what He wanted, but I said I could not surrender it.

One Monday I was hurting and despondent because I did not want to let go to God. I remember I held up the chainsaw and started it. I picked it up and went to cut down a tree, but I could not do it. I just threw that chainsaw into the woods and said, “Lord, if that is what You want, You take it!” The Lord had just worked and worked on me until I finally surrendered.

That evening I spoke with Barb about the matter and found that she had been going through the same struggle. Before long, our area leader requested that I go into fulltime ministry, and now that has been our privilege for a number of years. God has been with us every step, and we enjoy the Gospel. We would not trade it for anything!

When I reflect, it is amazing that I am even alive. It is only because of the mercies of God. He caused Barb to look behind her that night that I had fallen into the snow bank, and I will be eternally grateful to Him.