ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126 USA
E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com, Web Site: www.assistnews.net


Sunday, October 26, 2003

THE GOD OF THE SECOND CHANCE…
An American preacher tells people in an Mexican party city the astonishing story how, after a life of drugs and the break-up of his marriage and his mind, God gave him his life, sanity and marriage back

By Dan Wooding reporting from Rosarito Beach

ROSARITO BEACH, MEXICO  (ANS) -- Thousands of Mexicans were stunned when American preacher, Mike MacIntosh, shared his astonishing story of how God gave him a second chance. He was speaking on Sunday, October 26, on the last night of the Festival de Vida (Festival of Life) in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. (Pictured: Finding Christ at the Festival de Vida).
“My father was an alcoholic and I was not raised by my father,” said MacIntosh, now the senior pastor of Horizon Christian Fellowship, San Diego, California. “By the time I was a little boy I had much anger in my heart.”

As the audience of several thousand Mexicans from the city where the movie “Titanic” was filmed, he told how his life began to drown in a haze of alcohol and drugs. “Because of this, I began to go insane,” he said. (Pictured: Mike MacIntosh shares how God gave him a second chance).
MacIntosh then told how he met his wife Sandy and within three they got married in Las Vegas. “Sandy and I were married for nearly three years and we had two children. But because of the drugs and other problems she divorced me,” he continued.

He then explained that as his life was now spiraling out of control, he somehow ended up at a house in Orange County, California, on a Sunday afternoon, with a group of Satan worshippers.

“A GUN TO THE HEAD”

“I didn’t know who they were, but they gave me an overdose of drugs. Apparently I was going to be their sacrifice. From four to eight clock the drugs started eating my brain away and I lost my vision and I started hallucinating. I found I had my hands behind my back and I had no idea what they had tried to do that night. But in my mind’s eye, I saw the man loading the gun in the room and put a bag over my head and then put me down on the ground and put the gun to my head and to this day, I don’t know what happened after that. I heard a gun shot and I don’t know if they shot the gun in the air or to the ground to scare me, but to me it was real.

“I thought they had shot me in the head and blown part of my face out. I left that house that night thinking that had a hole in the side of my face. The next week I went to the police department and explained what had happened and they took me to the local mental hospital thinking I was a lunatic… insane… crazy.

“For two years of my life I thought I was dead. I would get up in the morning and I as I would shave and look in the mirror, my face would disappear. If I met you on a street corner, you would disappear. For ten months, the doctors worked with me to get me to the place to believe that I was alive. And then seven more months were spent working with me. I knew I needed salvation and a savior. I knew I needed help and Jesus Christ came to me and gave me a second chance.”

A BOLT OF LIGHTENING
MacIntosh said that in sheer desperation, he went to a church and told the pastor and the elders that for three years he thought he was dead. “I told them that I thought the side of my face was missing and I asked them to pray for me,” he said. “When they did, a bolt of lightening went from the right side of my head to the left side and instantly I was healed. I fell on my face and I cried, ‘Thank you God for giving me a second chance.’

“Sandy saw such a change in my life that she gave her life to Jesus Christ and she also was born again. After three years of divorce, we were remarried. We are here tonight in your city to let you know that God will you a second chance. He will heal you and free you and he will love you forever.”

As he had done on the previous nights, he then invited people in the audience to come forward to receive Christ and again hundreds responded – to receive God’s second chance!

The last night of the festival nearly did not take place when 60 mile and hour Santa Ana winds began to rip through the Hacienda San Fernando where the main event were taking place. Hundreds of Christians, both Americans and Mexicans, began to pray for God to still the winds and just before the evening event was due to start, the wind became calm and many thanked God for answered prayer.

DEATH THREATS BY SATANISTS

Many local Christians had also been praying for the safety of local Christian leaders and Festival de Vida leaders after death threats had been received from local Satanists.

Victor Najor, who organized the festival told ANS, “There were threats against people by Satanists who said they were going to kill them and pastors had rocks thrown at their houses and windows busted, but the says that ‘Greater is he that is in you and he that is in the world.’ For a Christian, fear is a choice and it comes directly from Satan. So we had threats against us that we know that the enemy is nervous and he is losing ground. We have not seen any evil come of these threats and so we are going to continue to trust in the Lord.”

“This is cutting edge evangelism. The gift the Festival of Life through Mike is reaching out, stretching our tents to the furthest area and we always try to fish in the deep. We go as deep as we can each time because we don’t want to limit God’s power.”

Najor revealed that over 25,000 meals had been served during the main festival as well as the 18 mini festivals, the five medical clinics and seven sports clinics that had taken place in and around the city of 100,000 people.

He said that also during the Educational Olympics that they had organized in 50 local schools, they had given away ten bicycles, 20 PDA’s, five computers, and ten television sets, these were all given to the first prize winners of the various groups. (Pictured: A pall of smoke from San Diego seen over Rosarito Beach).

Some of the Festival de Vida participants had to return early to San Diego because of the horrendous fires that were taking place there at the time of writing had destroyed 217 homes and killed 11 people.

The next Festival de Vida is scheduled for next April in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico. For more information on this and future festivals, go to www.horizonsd.org.
Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times). Wooding is also a syndicated columnist, and was for ten years a commentator on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. Wooding is the author of some 41 books, one of which is "Blind Faith" which he co-authored with his 93-year-old mother Anne Wooding, who was a pioneer missionary to the blind of Nigeria in the 1930s. Copies of this book are available from the ASSIST USA office at PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126. His writings are on the ASSIST Website at: www.assistnews.net
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