The Miracle and Answered Prayer!
A few days passed and I still did not know what I would do about the draft. I knew my time was short and the FBI would soon find me in Marietta, as I was making no efforts to hide. In the end, I had decided to resist the draft and go to prison if need be. Resistance was a stance which every young American youth could take; white, black, educated, uneducated, rich or poor. Cassius Clay, the famous boxer, who later changed his name to Mohammed Ali, had refused induction into the US military and had been jailed for it. I thought refusing induction was the most honest position to take, as it was open to every man and not just to the middle or upper-class white boys who could find a deferment or escape to Canada or Sweden.
Two weeks after my mother’s phone call, I went for two days to Columbus, Ohio to attend a teachers’ convention. It was on the return to Marietta that I picked up a hitch-hiking young couple on their way to Ellenville, New York. He was an American and she was from Mexican descent. They asked me what I believed. We soon got into a conversation with me sharing my philosophy of life developed from my four years at college and my search for the truth. Slowly, they began to talk to me about Jesus. At first, I remember thinking, “Oh, no, they’re two Jehovah Witnesses.” But, no, they were different.
After a time talking, we stopped at a restaurant where I bowed my head and asked Jesus, if He really was the Son of God, to come into my heart and life and show me. Later as we drove further, Chris talked with me about the importance of the Holy Spirit. So, while driving my brother’s Volkswagen Beetle down the motor way, I prayed to receive the infilling of the Holy Spirit. Only a few more miles up the road was where I needed to drop them off to start on my way back to Marietta, about one hundred miles south of Columbus.
Chris talked with me further. He encouraged me that it was no coincidence that I had met them. Now, he questioned, was God calling me to discipleship? I was already used to doing things on the spur of the moment, so I decided to take them to Ellenville and see this training center for myself. Could there really be a place to teach young Christian disciples to live for God? What impressed me the most about Chris and his partner was that they were just as much against the war as I was. It was the first time I had met “Christians” against the war. I had read about a famous Catholic Jesuit priest in Chicago who was, but I had never met personally a Christian against the war. Most of the people I knew against the war were non-believers, or at least, they weren’t church-goers.
I had spoken with Christian youth on the college campus. Those dedicated to Christ were usually always very pro-American, anti-communist and therefore willing to support the war effort in some way. I even had a very close friend who had been a conscientious objector and had served as an army medic in Vietnam. But as much as he had tried, he could not convince me that the conscientious objector was the most righteous or moral stand.
During my search for conscientious objector status, I had also gone and spoken to both Catholic Priests and Protestant Ministers. They had told me it was my Christian duty to obey the government and don the army uniform and perform my duty for God and country. I had already come to the decision from reading Tolstoy and others, including Mark Twain's famous War Prayer[1] and the New Testament, that this pro-war stance was a compromise and not in accordance with the words of Jesus. I had finally met some Christians who believed as I did about the war, and I now was going to see what made them tick.
If you are interested in praying the prayer I prayed please watch Billy Graham’s Defining Moments.[2]
Notes:
[1] http://www.ntua.gr/lurk/making/warprayer.html (accessed 03/2016)
[2] https://myhopewithbillygraham.org/program/defining-moments/ (accessed 03/2016)
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