Buddy and I were so hard that we felt it unfair that a “nice guy” would be in an outfit like ours.  He’d tell us we were a bunch of perverts with all our drinking and whoring around, but we didn’t care one bit what he thought.

Many a night on that barge Buddy and I would sit on our top bunks and finish off a case of beer while Dave would be on his bunk playing his guitar.  Sometimes we could hear him whispering his prayers in the dark, but if he got too loud we’d just tell him to “knock it off!”

Time seemed to stand still as we’d sit in the dark and drink and smoke cigarettes.  Dave’s world didn’t seem to stand still; he lived in a future tense.  Our escape was booze; his was God.  Our reality was death; his was eternal life.

Sometime in July 1969 I remember listening to Armed Forces radio in Saigon and hearing the voices of the astronauts when they took their first step on the moon.  I’ll never forget looking up into that starlit sky and seeing that shiny moon way up there – knowing we had the technology to put men on some planet and yet here I was fighting in some crazy war.  It was like living in the Twilight Zone.

We were on patrol in a free-fire zone, which means you can shoot anything that moves or makes a noise: complete enemy territory.  There were positively no Americans or friendly forces in the immediate area, we had been assured.  It was approximately 3 a.m.  We had received heavy downpours of rain intermittently throughout the night.  Buddy and I were sitting in the middle of the boat on the engine covers sipping beer when a shot rang out. 

The point man was sitting on the front of the boat, and he took the bullet in his chest.  All basic rationale told us that the enemy had found our ambush position and was about 30 seconds away from overrunning our boat. 

The idea of being captured alive scared me more than dying in some faraway jungle.  I told buddy to back the boat off the riverbank as soon as I opened up with a dual M-60 machine gun, and get us out of the area as fast as possible.  When I began to shoot, two boats opened up on us with eight machine guns.  Within a matter of seconds literally thousands of rounds of armor-piercing bullets came down on top of us.

A brand-new, inexperienced, scared American PBR crew from our barge was trying to sneak off patrol early and accidentally had cut through the ambush area.  They inadvertently thought we were the enemy as they came up behind us on our blind side. 

I had been wounded twice before and had been involved in literally dozens of firefights, but I had never experienced anything quite like this.  It was like standing in a pitch-dark room and having hundreds of people shooting off flashbulbs in front of your face.

I was suddenly knocked backwards and felt a burning sensation, like someone whipping me with a wire cable.  But I knew if I didn’t get back up the Vietcong would be on top of us in the boat. 

I somehow crawled back up to the M-60 machine gun, and by that time all hell broke loose.  I started to return fire again into the jungle.  Then, like in slow motion, I was lifted up and thrown back.  As I was falling I could feel the bullets ripping into my body.  I landed on my back in the rear of the boat where the engine pump covers were.

Even as I was lying there, the bullets were still flying, and grenades were going off over and into me.  I couldn’t understand why they still kept shooting when I wasn’t shooting back.

At this point Buddy began gunning the engines to get the boat off the shore, but the boat and the engines were so shot up that we started to sink.  I was choking on exhaust fumes, water, and blood all at the same time. 

I don’t know how much time passed, but all the shooting had stopped.  Buddy was screaming and crying at the same time, swearing at people in the jungle to stop shooting at us.  He had figured out who the “enemy” was, but I couldn’t comprehend the situation.  I remember Buddy picking me up in his arms and laying me on the engine cover, demanding, “Don’t die!”  It felt like my right leg had been blown away completely, and I asked him if my leg was off.  He told me that I just had a bunch of shrapnel and would be okay.

He was kneeling there holding me in his arms, and I started to feel cold all over.  I was coughing up blood, and I told him I was going to die.  He started shaking me and told me he wouldn’t let me die.  We had a long-standing pact that if one of us was badly hurt, the other would “end it” for him.

“If anyone is going to die, they are!” he yelled insanely.  I still didn’t know who “they” were.  He had his mind made up to kill the other riverboat section for doing this. 

I was drifting in and out of consciousness.  I had been in Nam long enough, and had seen enough people die to know that I had “bought the farm” and was dying.

I heard people crying and telling God and me how sorry they were.  There were sounds of a chopper in the distance coming down to take me out.  The noise of the helicopter grew louder as it came closer, and I heard voices say, “He is dead” and “He’s not going to make it.”  I was lifted up and put in a poncho liner.

Suddenly, out of darkness and pain, I saw Jesus hanging on the cross.  Next to Him I saw another man dying.  I recalled from Sunday school as a little kid the story about the thief on the cross who was dying and deserved to go to hell.  It was like I could see and hear Jesus tell the thief that because He loved him so much, it still wasn’t too late.

But because of all the things I had done in my life, especially in Nam, and the way I had lived, I thought I didn’t deserve the right to ask to be with Jesus in heaven.  But I did ask the Lord to please hear my confession before I died because I was so very, very sorry.  And then everything went black. 

I woke up in the third field hospital outside Saigon in the intensive care unit.  They had pumped me with morphine.  Their philosophy was, “Why make him suffer anymore?  He’s going to die anyway.”

The hospital was located right next to the runways of the U.S. Air Force.  One night Vietcong mortared the airfields and walked right up on top of the hospital.  I can’t explain the feelings I had lying there with three IVs, a pin through my leg, and half my left hand gone – watching the mortars go off and kill three nurses on my ward.

I was transferred to Japan.  While looking through my chart, the hospital personnel discovered it was my 22^nd birthday.  They made me a cake, sang “Happy Birthday,” gave me two shots, and cut off my leg.

Two weeks later, I lay in the hospital bed feeling sorry for myself.  About 10 o’clock one night, as the medics prepared to pump us with barbiturates so we could sleep, my IV bottle started tingling.

I noticed others also were tingling.  I thought … How can IV's tingle on the 15^th floor of an Army hospital?  My bed began to slide sideways.  And then I realized that we were having an earthquake!

In disbelief I said, “This is a real head trip.  I’ve been wounded by nineteen .50 caliber machine guns bullets – had hand grenade shrapnel pepper my body -- had my leg cut off, and now I’m going to die in an earthquake on the floor of a hospital.  Life is the pits!”

I experienced job discrimination.  I had passed federal exams with almost the highest grade anybody could possibly get.  And I had guys look me right in the face and say, “I’m not going to hire a Vietnam vet – especially a disabled vet.

God gave me a vision.  He allowed me to see – in the most graphic detail – what was going to take place in two hours.  In this vision my two little children were running down the hallway of the house, laughing.  As they entered the bedroom to see their daddy, my head lay in pieces and my brains were splattered all over the bedroom wall.  God allowed me to hear their screams.  He allowed me to see the permanent psychological damage that would be done to their minds and emotions. 

I was broken.  And I cried out, “God, if you’re for real … if you really sent your Son … if you can take away all the hurt, pain, bitterness, anger, and frustration that I have accumulated over the past 20 years … I need you now.  Not next week, not tonight, but right now.”

I hit that floor and repented of every sin my mind could remember.  I said, “God, I will do anything for peace and happiness.”

There were not any skyrockets or sounds of angels, but a love and power I had never known suddenly took over my life.  Once and for all I totally yielded my life to Jesus Christ.  I was totally unaware of the future supernatural events that would drastically change the lives of so many people. 

After my wife and I became born-again Christians, we realized there had to be more of a spiritual life than what we had received in the “religious” institutions (ministries void of the full free-flowing presence of the Holy Spirit) we had grown up in. 

Through the invitation of a friend, my wife visited First Assembly of God church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Pentecost Sunday, 1981.  When she came home that Sunday morning she was lit up like a Christmas tree.  With excitement in her voice, she said she had witnessed something miraculous and wouldn’t have been surprised if she had heard a rushing wind and seen tongues of fire dancing on tops of people’s heads. 

On Friday, July 2, 1982, my wife was in the kitchen preparing lunch, listening to a radio broadcast called Born Twice.  Wayne Benson, Senior Pastor of First Assembly of God at the time was the host that day.  His guest was a visiting evangelist who was a disabled Vietnam veteran.  My wife called to me outside and asked if I’d be interested in hearing this Vietnam vet. 

At this time, Vietnam had been heavy on my mind.  Several weeks before, Buddy Wilson, who had been through so much with me in Nam, had made a surprise visit to our home following a business trip. 

During the many hours we spent talking about our experiences in Vietnam, he also told me how he had helped throw the burning body of the Preacher Man on a rescue helicopter only two weeks after I had been wounded.  According to Buddy, there wasn’t a chance in ten million that the Preacher Man lived to make it back to the field hospital.  The only guy he felt more sorry for than the Preacher Man was the guy in grave registration that had to stuff that well-done, blackened marshmallow of a corpse into a body bag. 

That was the last straw for Buddy, who had been fighting that insane war in Vietnam since 1966.  When he got back to the rear, he literally quit.  He had lost me, his best drinking partner, and the Preacher Man – the only guy who ever told him he loved him.

He just walked in the Commanding Officer’s quarters and told his CO that he had 63 days left in his last tour and that he was done.  No more patrols, no more ambushes, no more seeing his friends killed or maimed.  If they tried to mess with him, he would simply blow up the barge and they would have to send him home.  For the next 60 days, Buddy Wilson strapped on his .45 automatic and sat in a French café in Tan An drinking beer, silently watching the war pass him by. 

As I walked into the kitchen, I heard somewhat of a raspy voice of a man coming over the radio.  He was talking about riverboats, special operations, and losing 40 percent of his flesh to a white phosphorous grenade in the Mekong Delta.  Instantly, my mind raced backwards in time … 13 years.  The faces of so many screaming victims of that war flashed through my brain.

There, underneath my bunk with his guitar, was the Preacher Man.  It couldn’t be!  He was dead – gone – burned alive like the others who didn’t make it!

In my imagination, as if I were there myself, I saw Buddy and the others throwing that charred, smoking carcass on the chopper.  They were trying not to vomit; that would be kind of a final personal insult to the Preacher Man whose love we had all rejected.

It was like I was having a dream – like when the firefights were finally over and I couldn’t believe that what had just taken place was real and I was a part of it.  It is really hard to explain to someone who has never been in war, but once you have kissed death on the lips and survived, you’re never the same again.

I had to know if the Preacher Man was still alive.  Nothing else had any meaning at that moment.  That psychological adrenaline that comes only a few times in a man’s life was racing through my body.  I knew I had to call that radio station.  After all, I had come back from the dead.  Could it be possible the Preacher Man did too? 

As I began dialing the radio station number, my hands started shaking and my throat went dry.  When the pastor answered the phone, my heart jumped into my larynx.  I managed to ask if that Vietnam vet was still there.  He calmly answered that the program was off the air, but if I would like I could still speak with the evangelist.

I didn’t know what he was so calm about.  He sounded just like one of those generals you get on the line in the rear.  Here you are getting overrun by the enemy and your life is flashing before your eyes and you’ve got some dude on the other end who acts like this is just another ordinary day-to-day conversation!  I responded emphatically that I sure did want to speak with him! 

The evangelist came on the phone and introduced himself.  Immediately I asked him if he was with River Division 573, and he replied that he was.  I asked him if he was stationed on a barge in Tan An on the Van Co The’, and he responded affirmatively. 

Then I asked him, “Are you the guy they called the Preacher Man?” 

There was a pause.  Then he said . . . “Yes.”

My voice started to crack when I asked him if he was the guy who slept under my bunk and kept telling me about Jesus.

Almost immediately Dave cried out, “Are you the one I used to call Pervert #1?  Man, I thought you were dead!”

The next 15 minutes was filled with tears, laughter, and the most loving yet peaceful feeling I had experienced since coming back from the jungles of Vietnam.  Dave told me how he had cried and prayed to the Lord the night I was wounded that God would spare my life.  I confessed that it was his continual praying throughout those lonely nights that finally revealed the abundant grace of our Heavenly Father to me.

The ultimate joy of the whole conversation was when Dave asked if I had come to know the Lord.  Never in my life was I ever happier to tell anyone that my wife and I had given our lives to Jesus Christ and that we truly had a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior. 

For the next few moments all I heard from Dave was “Praise God!  Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  Thank you Jesus!  Praise God!”  I then knew way deep down in my heart that our relationship of the past had somehow died and a new, almost supernatural one had been born.  I just loved the way that old River Rat talked!

Dave asked me if it would be possible for my wife and I to meet him at First Assembly where he would be speaking.  Even before I remembered my opposition to the rushing wind and tongues of fire, I enthusiastically accepted the invitation.  We hastily canceled a dinner engagement.   

When we arrived, the church was jam-packed and overflowing with a crowd of the most excited individuals I had ever seen.  Somehow, we found the last two available seats.  With their hands raised high in the air, the crowd of a couple thousand people sang loudly with a live orchestra.  The place looked like it was coming apart.  I hadn’t seen that much excitement since returning from Nam on my first tour with a planeload of combat veterans landing safely in the United States.  It was at that moment in church that I remembered about the rushing wind and tongues of fire.

Except for the pastors at the church, no one else knew what had miraculously transpired that day.  Yet, when the “crispy critter” evangelist began to speak to the overflowing crowd of over 2,000 people, they also sensed that something very special was going to happen.

With an emotional introduction, Dave explained to the audience that through divine planning and intervention, an event had taken place in his life that day.  That event was to change the destiny and magnitude of his service for the Lord.  Even as he began to prepare for this crusade in Grand Rapids, Michigan, God was developing something special for His glorification.  He had been awakened several times in his hotel room, yet not clearly comprehending what the Lord had set in motion.

As my wife and I listened to Dave’s sermon, it was like we were in a dream world.  It was as if miniscule, fragmented pieces of an invisible puzzle were coming together before our eyes.  Events that had transpired before were finally starting to make sense.  Dave spoke about divine interventions and how the Lord brings individuals together at the right time and place.  He spoke of how John the Baptist had not come too early or too late, but at the proper time to coincide with the birth, baptism and declaration of the Savior of the world.  He shared how at times those used by God to preach the gospel don’t always see the Lord’s complete and finished plan. 

Suddenly the atmosphere of despair and loss was replaced with joyous victory as Dave rocked the entire congregation with the announcement that the man whom he had given up as lost for eternity was there worshiping with them!

The entire congregation was praising God.  The presence of God’s Spirit, unlike anything my wife and I had ever experienced, covered the worship area. 

At Dave’s request, I stood to meet him halfway down the center aisle.  Loving hands reached out to sustain and embrace my wife, as if a long lost loved one had finally come home.

As I took the first few steps, I saw through teary eyes a simultaneous reaction of the entire congregation.  I felt like everything was taking place in slow motion.  Christians were standing, applauding, and raising their hands in the air.  Voices were singing and praising God. 

While they were looking at me as I limped down the aisle, it was as though their gazes went past me and extended into some unseen dimension.  The sound of over 2,000 born-again, Spirit-filled Christians praising God came to a deafening crescendo.  With each step the praises grew louder and louder. 

Suddenly, a power … a force . . . enveloped my entire body.  It was neither physical nor psychological, yet it was so overwhelming that it affected my emotional, cognitive, and physiological components.  All the pain, heartache, disappointment, anger, and frustration of an entire lifetime were being supernaturally extracted from me.

I stopped walking momentarily and placed my hands to my temples, uncertain whether I could make it to the altar.  I felt so strangely weak, and yet, at the same time, a warm peace and contentment filled me.

For a moment I actually thought I was going to go down on my knees.  I knew that what I was experiencing was completely beyond my control, but there was an inner reassurance that I needed this so desperately.

I finally approached Dave and reached out to him.  I saw past that viciously scarred face into the eyes of a man filled with a joy, peace, and compassion that transcended into pure, supernatural love.

I knew exactly what the prodigal son felt like when he had fallen into the loving, forgiving arms of the father whom he had rejected.  The embraces and tears that Dave and I shared were witnessed by over 2,000 Christians whose lives were being touched by the miraculous power of God.

We turned and faced the teary-eyed audience.  We were alone; yet, at the same time we were celebrating a homecoming with a family we had both known all our lives.  And there was the presence of Someone much larger than that of mortal man; Someone more powerful than the human mind could comprehend . . . standing directly behind us with His hands on our shoulders.  We were part of a divine, predestined plan. 

As incredible as it was . . . what happened at the end of that church service is but a small foretaste of the celebration that will take place when we leave this earthly domain and enter our real home … heaven.  There Jesus will be waiting for those who have made Him their Lord and Savior with a huge Dave Roever smile on his face with outstretched arms, welcoming us home.  Myriads and myriads of angels and Christians who have gone before us will be present -- clapping and praising God for another lost sinner come home. 

And so, dear reader, will heaven grant you a homecoming welcome of this magnitude, or will your home-coming be a sentence where Satan and his demonic host and the myriads of lost souls are crying out in pain and agony for all eternity …. because they refused to accept Jesus Christ as their Savior and let Him become Lord of their life?   

Won’t you say, “Yes!” to Jesus right now … before it’s too late?

As an epilogue to my spiritual journey on earth, I would like to make a public acknowledgement and apology to those I may have hurt in some way along life’s way.  To those before I became born again, and to those after I became born again.  In the years that followed after that fateful date at First Assembly, God opened up some mighty doors for me to be used of Him to minister to others.  I made many decisions that I’ve lived to regret, and I can only hope that everyone can receive grace from God to forgive me for any wrongdoing I have caused. 

Since growing in God, and having been called to fulltime ministry for a number of years, I have painfully come to some sobering realities.  First and foremost, God uses imperfect people in ministry to accomplish His plans and purposes that maybe you and I would not use.  I am one of those imperfect people.  Secondly, bitterness and low-level anger was not something I allowed God to strip out of me completely until perhaps it was too late.  Perhaps it was pride on my part, perhaps stubbornness and self-will at the core of my being.  God only knows.  The scars of sin and living run deeper in some than others.