I have many spiritual experiences over my 50 odd years, hearing spirits moving around and seeing faces in the dark as a child, but one experience saved my life.
When I was about 23 years old and working in the UK, while standing inside a large tire fitting machine that my firm had just built, and while trying to complete a difficult weld in position amid the noise and clatter of the factory, a loud voice shouted to me, "Get out, get out, the machine is about to start." I had locked the machine and taken the safety key out and placed it in my pocket. Knowing the key was in my pocket I felt safe and ignored the voice. Again it repeated itself seeming louder than before and coming from just behind the left side of my head, "Get out, get out quickly it's about to start."
The machine I was in was made of heavy steel beams down each side with a large metal beam just behind my back and in front of me was a cast iron pallet at chest height that moved on a chain and held the tires to be fitted. The machine would normally move forward by a large hydraulic piston with a tire on and be placed underneath the fitting head which I was welding and be inflated. To get at the place to be welded I had to move the cast iron pallet forward and I stood inside the small area that it normally occupied. On starting this large metal pallet would have to come backwards and occupy the space I was in, in order to reset it's self.
I tried to carry on but the voice was louder and more insistent now. By now I was getting quite angry at not being allowed to finish my work, so I lifted my helmet and stood up with my feet either side of the large chain running down each side, I turned around to see who was shouting at me half expecting to see someone there. But to my surprise and shock, just as I did this the machine started up and reset itself moving the metal pallet over where only seconds ago I had stood. If I had been still in there I would have been cut in half and killed. With rage and anger I ran to the front of the machine some 40 feet further down the workshop to find the owner and the purchaser of the machine standing admiring the machine. I shouted at the owner asking how the machine had been able to start and he said he had a spare key. I informed him that he nearly killed me and he apologized profusely saying he didn't know anyone was in the machine at that time.
The voice could only have been from spirit and didn't want me to die on that day, but had I not taken action or listened I would not be here to tell of the story.
Loading comments....
I must admit I had never given it a thought that it might be my own gift of spiritual insight that saved me. I mother had died a few years prior and I believed wrongly or rightly that it was her who was looking down on me, but the voice was my own and coming from inside my own head I suppose.
Another incident many years later, I saw a movie of what was about to happen, ignored it at my own folly and ended up with a damaged vehicle. I was given this one several times but didn't understand it until it happened. Although this was not a life threatening experience, it could support the idea that the gift is in me and not from a third party, but in any event God is behind it all and his plan for me is not finished.