Sid: We want everyone everywhere to do the works of Jesus. We want everyone everywhere to not just read the Bible and think it’s a good history book, but have such intimacy with God based on the truth of the Bible that they will do the same works as Jesus if not greater. I have a couple that are moving in that realm. Their names are Anita and David Duggan, I’m speaking to them at their office just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Anita came from a nice conservative Jewish background; always loved God; she had an African American Pentecostal house cleaner that prayed for her, or she would have been dead because she got married then divorced, and a single mom with 2 children. Got into drugs herself was involved in the biggest drug bust in the history of Mississippi. I mean… Anita never in your wildest imagination did you think you’d end up in the headlines in this sort of thing I’m sure.
Anita: No.
Sid: Then you get bailed out from jail because these drug lords were afraid you were going to talk, and they threatened to kill you; so before you would commit suicide or be murdered, you left your children off with your ex-husband; who at that point had become a Christian, and you meet a guy by the name of David who’s heading up a house congregation. You’re out driving it out to meet, I believe it was David’s parents. David you pick it up from here, what happened on this trip?
David: Well it was in the winter time Sid, when Anita came up to Gatlinburg which is in the great Smokey Mountains. She had come from south Florida, so the children didn’t have proper winter clothes, they didn’t have good cOates for the winter. I had offered to take her into a nearby town where my mother lived so that we could buy some cOates for the children. It was a very snowy day and there was a lot of ice and snow on the roads as we were driving. We were going over the mountain and I just completely loss control of the car because the roads were covered not only with snow but with ice.
Sid: Anita did you think that was it for you?
Anita: Oh yeah I did, but I have to tell you before I got in the car with this man who I thought was as square as Andy of Mayberry…
Sid: Well I’m sure from the lifestyle, I mean the fast track you were on.
Anita: Actually he was from a small town in Tennessee and with his little Bible I thought he was the squarest thing coming down the road. I went into the bathroom and I got stoned out of my mind…
Sid: Oy vey.
Anita: to get in the car with him.
Sid: When he’s starting to have this accident, did you think that was it?
Anita: I thought it was it, I thought we were going to die.
Sid: Hmm. Okay, so what happened next David.
David: Sid we were sliding into the left lane and there was just nothing I could do to control the car or stop the car because the icy conditions. There was a truck coming in the left lane, and a head on collision was eminent. There was nothing in the natural that we could do to prevent that from happening. So I just began to cry out in a loud voice the name of Jesus; I cried that name out several times, and in response to that cry, just speaking out and crying out in desperation in the name of Jesus. An angel of the Lord moved my car, it stopped the inertia that was under way moving us directly into the path of that oncoming truck, and moved us back into the right lane where we were supposed to be. The car became stable and controllable without me turning the wheel, touching the breaks, doing anything.
Sid: Now how do you know it just do that coincidentally?
Anita: Well I know because I really felt the car being picked up off the ground. To me I felt that car being literally picked up and put back in the other lane.
Sid: So Anita, what did you think about this square guy’s Jesus and Bible then?
Anita: Sid I turned to him and I just said “Did you see that? DID YOU SEE THAT?!” and I became as straight as an arrow. I mean that just literally jerked me into reality. Something happened in me it was a miracle, I mean it was a true total miracle.
Sid: Well how did it take you then to believe Jesus died for your sins?
Anita: Well I’ll tell you after we went to his mother’s and we got cOates for the kids, there was a Christian bookstore right next door to that department store, and I asked to go in there and I bought my very first Living Bible. On the way home to Gatlinburg I was just flipping through the pages and I came across the word grace. Being a Jewish saleswoman I thought the grace meant, you know like the signing of a contract and you had enough time to change your mind.
Sid: [Laughing]
Anita: I didn’t even understand what grace meant.
Sid: Of course, how could we know that?
Anita: David started telling me about the grace of God and why Jesus died for our sins, and I said “No one can ever forgive me for what I have done. Don’t even tell me that, nobody.” And he said “Yes there is someone that can forgive you for your sins, He died for your sins.” I was wide open Sid.
Sid: But what about that Jewish people don’t believe in Jesus?
Anita: Something happened in me, something happened and I just received it like a sponge.
Sid: Now you really didn’t know the Bible to well, but right after you became a believer in the Messiah you started hearing scripture.
Anita: Yes I did. Very first scripture I heard was Psalm 119:11 and I never even read it, and it said “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” I told David about, we were not even married yet, I told him that the Lord spoke that to me and he said “That’s in Psalm 119” I said “What?” I didn’t even know what Psalm was; I didn’t know the difference between Old and New Testament.
Sid: Wait a second though, you were a drug addict…
Anita: Yes.
Sid: You’ve got all these problems with perhaps going to prison…
Anita: I know.
Sid: What about the drug condition?
Anita: The day that God gave me this Psalm, I have to tell you that right before He gave me that Psalm the Lord told me to get rid of the marijuana. I went into the bathroom and I broke it up into little pieces and flushed it down the toilet. It took a very long time to do that.
Sid: It had to be difficult because that’s like flushing money down the toilet.
Anita: Yes it is, but… you know what Sid I didn’t even know about sacrifice back then, but I was led to do that and I sacrificed it. I sat on the floor by that toilet and cried the whole time I was doing it, and I knew I was sacrificing it to God. I was giving it up to the Lord.
Sid: David when you were watching this happen before your eyes, the miracle of your life being spared from the car, potential car crash; Anita flushing drugs down the toilet. Anita were you totally free of drugs?
Anita: Yes.
Sid: It’s an addiction, how did you get free like that?
Anita: I didn’t even go through withdrawal. I felt wonderful.
Sid: Okay, you’re watching this David, tell me what you’re thinking during this short period of time where you see this, literally, supernatural rescue from certain death, and you see this woman, Anita, who you’re trying to help out to get some clothes for her children go from drug addict to loving Jesus.
David: Well Sid those were very heady days in the realm of the Spirit. It was that period of time known by some as the period of the Jesus movement in the United States. What was happening there was just an outworking of that outpouring of the Spirit of God. Now I had never seen a miracle as dramatic as God moving our car, you had asked earlier “How did I know that it wasn’t coincidental.”
Sid: Right.
David: You would have to be there to fully appreciate how I knew that, but I can just tell you from my own experience that there was no way in the natural that that car could have reversed its direction and the momentum that we had sliding out of control into the path of that truck. I mean…
Sid: If your car had hit that truck based on what you saw, what’s the probability of me talking to you right now?
David: It’s very very slim. I mean we would have been… if we had not been killed we would have been terribly injured.
Sid: So David how long did it take you to realize that you were in love with Anita?
David: It didn’t take very long at all. God bonded our hearts together…
Sid: But wait Anita, you said he was like Andy of Mayberry, whitewashed and squeaky clean. How about you?
Anita: I was a mess. I was a…
Sid: I know but how could you be interested in this guy?
Anita: Well you know God works in mysterious ways Sid. Once He cleaned me up in my heart, this man just became every single thing I ever desired in my whole life and more.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth