One night early in 1980 I sat up in bed fully awake. The blood was pounding in my ears and adrenaline was coursing through me.
I flopped down in a living room chair to let the excitement ebb away and give drowsiness a chance to return. Instead of the sleepiness I expected, however, what happened next was to change the course of my life.
That night I heard God as I never had before.
I saw in my mind's eye a world map. Slowly I felt myself being drawn to specific names on that map. I was absolutely overcome with loving warmth for each city and country and I began to sense that God was showing me places where I would minister and see revival.
The last picture I saw in my mind that remarkable night was of a particular group of black people. I saw hundreds of people in an open-air setting. They were sitting fan-shaped on the ground or on rude benches and logs and were staring intently at me. I sensed a great hunger in them for the Word of God.
"Oh, Lord," I prayed. "If this is from you, speak to me.
"In the years ahead, I will turn your life upside down," He said. "I will use you, change you, tax you, break you, and send you out as you cannot imagine. But first you must go to Ghana."
In April I asked a friend, "'Please pray for me about this Ghana thing. I don't know what the Lord wants me to do there. I just know He said I must go to Ghana first. I have decided to wait for God to open the door."
And wait I did. So certain was I that some invitation to Ghana would come that I leaped at every call.
In the meantime, distraction, diversion, and dead ends came from every direction. Go to Ghana, the inner voice insisted, Delay no longer. Go--Go now--go to Ghana.
How could such a thought be from God-to just go to Ghana? What was I going to do'? Buy an airline ticket to a country I knew nothing about and just show up'? It was crazy!
In July an old friend mentioned quite casually that an African who had returned to his own country had been touched by my ministry while in the United States.
I received the address of this man, Dr. Brew Riverson, in Kumasi, Ghana, with great joy. Surely this was the contact I had been waiting for. I could not exactly remember the man and I had no idea if he would remember me.
Nonetheless, I wrote him.
When no response was forthcoming, I sent another copy and still another. Then I sent three similar telegrams. No answer ever came to any of them. Another dead end, I moaned sulkily.
By the end of September the thought of going to Ghana without any contact, as frightening as that seemed. was pressing me with new urgency.
Over and over again God spoke to me with firm patience. Go to Ghana began to ring in my cars on a daily basis.
I purchased my airline ticket and the two weeks before I left were filled
with packing, praying with friends and family and pursuing a visa. Into
this hectic air floated the Job's friends who are so dreadfully helpful.
"Are you absolutely sure you're doing the right thing?"
Of course I was not absolutely sure. I was filled with doubt and turmoil.
Three-day delay
London was much colder than I had prepared for. In fact, I had not prepared
for it at all. A three-hour plane change became a three-day delay in a flash
of gunfire thousands of miles away. While I was in the air over the Atlantic,
an abortive coup in Ghana had ended in the execution of the rebels and the
imposition of martial law.
A British Caledonian service representative greeted me with the news that Ghana's airport was closed. She also informed me very graciously that my return flight to New York was free. "Or," she said as an afterthought, "You may have two nights in a hotel and use your return coupon which you already have. You have an hour to decide."
I prayed, "Lord, what shall I do? Is this Your way of keeping me from doing something stupid? Or is this just a discouragement from the enemy?"
"I'll stay in London," I told her when I returned. "I believe the Lord will open the airport before the two days are up."
"Very well," she said with no trace of reaction.
When I checked in with British Caledonian two days later, I found the airport in Accra had opened for daylight landings. The nation was under curfew from 5:00 p.m. until 5:00 a.m. In a matter of hours I was in the air again.
As we taxied toward the little terminal in Accra, I looked out into the very business-like stare of a tank cannon. Along the runway were Russian-made tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavily armed soldiers everywhere.
At the sight of the tanks and soldiers, I shrank inwardly. Satan buckled into the seat beside me and whispered in my ear: "You've gotten your self in a real mess now--fool! Look out there. What do you think you're doing here? You've plunged way out ahead of your God. Furthermore, you're in dangerous waters and you do not have God's protection."
In the crowded airport suddenly one of the agents said, "Come with me. Come." When I hesitated, he grabbed my arm firmly, "Yes, come with me."
"Wait a moment," I said, "what is your name?"
His smile spanned his broad face and he looked back. "I am Peter. Come with me."
I nervously watched all the madness about me while I stood in line with Peter.
At the customs desk there was more shouting, more charges, more explanations. Seemingly without fear, Peter shouted at the guards with the guns. Finally the bags were marked wildly with chalk and reclosed. Peter grabbed them up and we burst through the doors into the blinding African sunshine.
We slid into the back seat of an ancient Mercedes Benz taxi. The handsome young driver in a brightly flowered shirt smiled as he turned to face me.
"Where shall I take you," he asked.
"I don't know," I finally answered.
"Why are you here?" the driver asked.
"I don't... I don't really know," I stammered. "All I know
is that I believe God has sent me to Ghana."
Unveiled astonishment
The two men could not quite manage to veil the astonishment in their eyes.
In the gentle eyes of the driver I also saw something else.
"You are a Spirit-filled Christian, aren't you?" I asked.
"Hallelujah!" he said. "I am."
"What is your name?" I asked.
"Moses," he said.
Suddenly it hit me and I laughed aloud. "Well," I said, "I have come nearly 8,000 miles to find myself in a taxicab with Peter and Moses!"
I had the address of the Ghanian Methodist headquarters. Being a Methodist, I thought perhaps that might be the place to start.
The President of Ghana's Methodist Church listened patiently to my story and responded as lovingly as he could, but as firmly as a stern father.
"There was shooting in the streets here two days ago," he said gently. "I cannot arrange meetings for you or tell my preachers to take you in. I simply don't know you." I knew that he was perfectly correct in not just taking in some stranger. I was disappointed, but I could not fault him.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"Well,. Sir," I said, "I have the name of a man in Kumasi. Brew Riverson. I guess I will try to go there."
"Does he know you?" he asked.
"I believe we met once in the States," I said.
"Does he know you are coming?" he asked.
"Well actually, I don't know," I stammered.
"Did he invite you?" he asked.
"No, sir. But I think--" I just let the sentence drop.
"Go home, Rev. Rutland. That's my very best counsel."
Back in my room, I was near collapse. All spiritual, physical, and emotional strength fled away. I could not even pray. It seemed as if Satan was right in the room with me.
"Fool! Look at the mess you're in now. Tuck your tail between your legs and run. You have disgraced yourself embarrassed Christians everywhere, and heaped derision on God. Fool! go home before something horrible happens. You are out of the will of God. "
The utterly absurd situation into which I had placed myself pressed upon me heavily. Furthermore, the nagging fear that I really was outside God's will hounded me. The heat, the loneliness, the sense of dead-end failure, all liberally laced with self pity, brought down a cold steel curtain on what should have been a joyful first day in Africa.
"Oh, God," I cried, "please help me to pray. Just help me to pray."
The grace to pray slowly began to flood my heart. From 4:00 p.m. until
4:00 a.m., I prayed as I had never prayed before. Not leaving the room,
not eating, not sleeping, I prayed. I wept, I harangued. I pleaded, I praised,
I sang and I lay prostrate on my face. My hope of making any contact
anywhere were pretty dim. I did not know how I would get from Accra to the
city called Kumasi.
Fresh orders
At 4:00 in the morning I sensed the peace of God. It was not a new direction
or fresh marching orders. I only knew, suddenly, marvelously, it was all
right.
At precisely 7:00 o'clock a loud, confident knock sounded at the door. I opened it and there stood a pleasant-looking black man in his forties.
"Are you Rev. Mark'?" he asked doubtfully.
"Yes, I suppose I am. I am Mark Rutland from the United States," I answered. "Are you looking for me?"
He spread his arms out wide and his tentative smile became dazzling. "Welcome to Ghana, Brother. I am Godfrey Bamfo. I have come to find you to preach tonight. It's a miracle!"
"But how did you find me'?" I asked. "What I mean is, how did you know I was here?"
Over breakfast in the hotel restaurant the story unfolded. In my estimation it was, in fact, nothing short of a miracle, as Godfrey had said. It turned out that the letter which I had written to Brew Riverson on July 1 arrived at his house in Kumasi (150 miles in the interior) on the very day that I had arrived in Accra, December 2.
Dr. Riverson, the principal of a small Methodist college in Kumasi, had taken the letter with him to a faculty prayer meeting even as I prayed in my room at the Continental Hotel in Accra. After having read the letter, several professors joined him in praying for guidance. Should they, they asked the Lord, invite this American to Ghana at such a desperate time in its history?
Suddenly one of the professors had cried out, "Stop! We must not pray
anymore! I sense in my spirit that the Lord is saying that this man is already
in the country, even now!"
God's confirmation
Finding a telephone, they managed to get through to Godfrey Bamfo in Accra.
In the two hours between 5:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m., in a city of 1.75 million,
he found me!
From that morning until I left on December 22, I never went another day, save one, without preaching. God had moved miraculously to confirm His Word to me.
I managed to get a ticket on Air Ghana to Kumasi. There I finally met Dr. Brew Riverson and the students of Wesley College where Dr. Riverson was principal. I also grew close to my driver, Samuel Odarno, who became my companion, tour guide, interpreter and advisor.
One day Sammy took me to preach in a poor suburb of Kumasi. When we arrived the church building was empty and only a few children played in the yard.
"Look, Sammy," I said, "no one has come."
"There are too many, Brother Mark," Sammy answered. "The building would not contain them. They are meeting in a cocoa grove."
We wound down a hillside along a narrow trail. Suddenly we saw several hundred men and women sitting in groups of about a dozen each, where they were studying the Bible. I learned that they had been thus assembled for three hours.
They were seated tan-shaped before me on the ground and on rude bamboo benches. Their black faces and traditional garments were a riot of color under the green tent of the cocoa grove. They stared at me with naked curiosity. A more obvious hunger for the Word could hardly be imagined. Straining forward, eyes fixed, attention unwavering, their tattered Bibles open on their laps, they were a poignant picture. Much more than that, I suddenly realized that this was the very scene that had confronted me in that remarkable midnight visitation in my house.
I was as if the Lord put Him arm about me and said, "Mark, you see these people? These very people in this very place were revealed to you in your living room in January that you might see and believe.
There in that cocoa grove, the whole experience of this mission suddenly was once and for all confirmed for me. It was lifted fully and without a doubt, beyond and past adventure or a happy guess that it ended well. It was settled. It was the clearly commissioned. Divinely executed will of a sovereign and utterly faithful God.
Mark Rutland, a member of the North Georgia Conference, is an approved UM evangelist and is president and founder of the Trinity Foundation. He is also a Good News contributing editor.
This article was printed in Good News (July/August 1987).