HIStory - Stone The Preacher

Lead Pearl Harbor Bomber Becomes Christian After Reading Tract

Dec 7, 2022Steve SanchezHIStory, Special Days, TRACTSbombing, doolittle raiders, gospel tracts, Jacob DeShazer, pearl harbor, pearl harbor day, tora tora tora, world war 2

“THE DATE WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY” is today, December 7, which is the 81st anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor where over 2,300 people died and 1,100 were injured. It was a Sunday morning when the sneak attack by Japanese bombers was perpetrated on Pearl Harbor in Oahu, Hawaii. This terrorist action propelled the U.S. into World War 2.

This is the incredible story of Mitsuo Fuchida, lead pilot of the December 7, 1941, raid on Pearl Harbor. Fuchida was the one who shouted the war cry, “Tora, Tora, Tora!”

Mitsuo Fuchida fought the United States throughout WWII and was intimately involved in the planning and leadership of the Japanese war effort as flight commander and later as a senior operations officer.

After the war, Fuchida was a defeated warrior in occupied Japan, farming to meet the needs of his family. He was also the only one to return to Japan after the bombing.

In 1950, Fuchida miraculously came to know Jesus Christ as Savior through a tract handed to him while exiting a train in Tokyo. The tract was entitled, “I Was a Prisoner of Japan,” written by Jacob DeShazer who was one of the famous Doolittle Raiders. DeShazer trusted Christ as his Savior while held captive by Japan for 40 months. DeShazer went to Japan in 1948 as a missionary and preached to the nation who held him captive.

Fuchida faithfully served Jesus Christ as an evangelist until his death in 1976. “From Pearl Harbor to Golgotha” is Fuchida’s testimony of salvation. Here it is in his own words:

I must admit I was more excited than usual as I awoke that morning at 3:00 a.m., Hawaii time, four days past my thirty-ninth birthday. Our six aircraft carriers were positioned 230 miles north of Oahu Island. As general commander of the air squadron, I made last-minute checks on the intelligence information reports in the operations room before going to warm up my single-engine, three-seater “97-type” plane used for level bombing and torpedo flying.

Every Christian Should Celebrate October 31!

Oct 31, 2020Steve SanchezHIStory, Pastor's P.O.V., Special Dayscatholic church, Halloween, indulgences, martin luther, october 31, protestant, reformation, reformation october 31

There’s a poster in our Youth Wing that says, “Do you seriously think God can’t use you?”

Then it lists a whole lot of people from the Bible who no one would ever think could be used for the furtherance of God’s Kingdom.

Noah was a drunk.
Abraham was too old.
Jacob was a liar.
Samson was a womanizer.
Rahab was a prostitute (who ended up in the generational line of Jesus).
Elijah was suicidal.
Lazarus was dead.

God also used a crazy man in the 16^th century who was rude, crude and a Jew hater. He was also a worry wart, always thinking God was going to strike him dead for his sin. His name was Martin Luther and the reason you are a Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Pentecostal or even a non-denominational believer is because of what he did on Oct. 31, 1517, commonly called the Protestant Reformation.

It’s been 503 years since the day faith in God was RE-formed, and we celebrate our independence from hierarchical religion and cherish the truth that we can come to God on our own, by faith, through his Son Jesus Christ. Though this truth has always been with us, it was hidden for centuries. What Martin Luther did changed the direction of Christianity forever—all because God used this one man.

Every Christian should celebrate the third greatest Holy Day of the year after Christmas and Easter: Reformation Day, not that silly Halloween, the day that ghouls, ghosts and gross gaggles of the grave are happily acclaimed while death, murder and fiendish activity is lionized.

It all came about in this way:

The Titanic Evangelist

Apr 15, 2018Steve Sanchez14 CommentsHIStory, SUDDEN DEATH!evangelist, john harper, titanic

JOHN HARPER was an evangelist on the Titanic. On the anniversary of this tragedy, after 1,517 people perished in a watery grave, I want to remember a man of God who provided hope for those who had little aboard the Titanic. Here’s an excerpt from the Baptist Press on this great man: When the Titanic

Dunkirk and the Missed Miracle

Oct 5, 2017Steve Sanchez2 CommentsGreat Books/Movies/Videos, HIStory, Pastor's P.O.V., Prayerchristopher nolan, dunkirk, miracle of dunkirk, word war 2

I recently saw the excellent film Dunkirk yet was saddened when I learned the filmmakers got everything right except for the true hero of the story.

It wasn’t necessarily the selfless citizens who risked lives in their personal boats to bring back the hundreds of thousands of troops stranded on the beach as the Germans advanced; it wasn’t even the brilliance of the commanders who strategized the rescue; it was something, someone, bigger than all that.

According to “Anglican Ink” author, John Willans: When Britain was close to defeat during the 2nd World War, and the entire British Army was trapped at Dunkirk, in desperation King George the 6^th called for a National Day of Prayer to be held on 26^th May 1940. In a national broadcast he instructed the people of the UK to turn back to God in a spirit of repentance and plead for Divine help. Millions of people across the British Isles flocked into churches praying for deliverance.

Two events immediately followed:

On Hitler, Auschwitz and Forgiveness

Apr 30, 2017Steve Sanchez15 CommentsHIStorycorrie ten boom, forgiveness, hitler, ravensbruck

Hitler, to no one’s regret, killed his chicken self on this day in 1945. Satan’s servant failed miserably in his quest to complete his Final Solution and is now in the presence of God’s wrath for all eternity.

Now meet Agnes Kun an Auschwitz survivor, imprisoned in Hitler’s death camp when she was 18.

My girls and I met her yesterday at the Museum of Tolerance Museum. I gave her a Trillion Dollar Bill Gospel tract and asked her to what she attributed her survival to.

“Luck,” she replied.

I then explained to her that it was not luck at all, but it was God who spared her. I then requested that she read the information on the back of the tract so that she may learn of her Messiah, Yeshua Ha’Mashiach, Jesus, the Messiah.

Corrie Ten Boom was a prisoner in Ravensbruck, another horrible concentration camp, a camp where she witnessed her sister’s death. She attributed her survival to Jesus Christ.

The greatest test of her faith would be played out a few years after her release, when after a speaking engagement, a former guard at the camp, came up to congratulate her on her inspiring talk. Here’s the account:

“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him—a balding, heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear. It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.
“It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown. ‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever. …’
“The solemn faces stared back at me, not quite daring to believe. There were never questions after a talk in Germany in 1947. People stood up in silence, in silence collected their wraps, in silence left the room.
“And that’s when I saw him, working his way forward against the others.
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