How Prayer Brought a Helper by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 3, 1911

How Prayer Brought a Helper

By W. A. S.

At the German camp-meeting in Olten, Switzerland, last summer, Brother T. Hoerner, who was formerly a medical evangelist in Palestine—having been compelled to return to Europe to regain health—told us of an occasion of peril among robbers when prayer brought quick deliverance.

In March, 1904, he was journeying with others in Palestine. They had traveled from Joppa by carriage to Tiberias, on Galilee. Of the journey toward Jerusalem he said:—

We procured a place with a caravan, drawn by mules, which took fish from Tiberias to Jerusalem. After four days we arrived at Shechem, where, by the blessing of God, we were able to secure accommodations in an English hospital; and there we celebrated the holy Sabbath day. The evening after the Sabbath I wanted to get some necessaries for the journey, and went down into the market. It was getting dark, and the market was not a safe place to go about in. But I felt I ought not to go back; for we needed a supply of drinking-water, this being a difficult thing to get while journeying.

In making my purchase I took out my money, to get a ten-franc gold-piece changed. Now I noticed that I was being surrounded by robbers, with every plan to rob me, or even to kill me. I sent up a prayer to God for help, as I saw that I was in real peril; and the answer came quickly.

As the robbers pressed nearer, a big, strong Arab came breaking his way through the circle, and stood by my side, defending me from them and leading me out of danger. It seems that he was impressed to go into the market just at this time, with no particular object, and as he came, he at once saw my danger. Strange to say, he recognized me; for he had once been employed in a mill that we had operated in connection with our little institution at Joppa, and I had also treated his brother when sick. This made him glad to come to my help. He had left Joppa and secured employment in Shechem, working in this very market, where he had just come to my rescue like an angel of deliverance.

When I returned to the caravan, and asked if we were to prepare to start, the leaders cried out, “What are you thinking of? traveling in the night in such a place as this, infested with robbers!”

In this experience we could not but recognize the hand of God in delivering me from the perilous situation in which I had unwittingly placed myself.

The old town of Shechem is well known in sacred history. There Abraham came first, as he journeyed from Haran into the land of promise; and there Joshua gathered the tribes as he rehearsed to them God’s wonderful dealings with them and with their fathers. It is good to have this modern witness, from one of our brethren, that the Lord who met with patriarchs at Shechem is still the living God, with angels just as quick to bring deliverance as in the days of old. W. A. S.