My Godly Father — Keith Daniel

My Godly Father — Keith Daniel

Thank you for the lovely singing and the preciousness of the Consciousness, the Consciousness of His Presence, His very sweet singing, these lovely hymns together. Thank you dear brother for leading us and God bless you all for being here.

It's very, very wonderful. Can we just bow for a moment of prayer, please? Can we just bow our hearts before God in silence? Come Lord Jesus in mercy, hold us under Thy blood and by Thy Spirit, minister to our hearts, have mercy on us all, Lord, that this meeting may be of God, owned of God, taken up by God, and that God would be allowed to have His way.

Come keep us, Lord, in the hollow of Thy hand, yet tonight, and mould us as clay in the potter's hands through Thy Word. In Jesus Christ's holy name, we ask these things. Amen. God says in His Word, honour Thy Father, honour Thy Father and Thy Mother, and I'd like to attempt to honour my father here tonight in sharing with you, sharing with you the things that I remember of his life that I would believe would bring glory to God.

Childhood Trauma and the Wounds of Divorce

When my father was ten years old, his parents divorced, and for many years from that time onward, he was torn, he was torn between father and mother. It's a horrible word, torn. I suppose one could say, ripped apart.

I know some children affected more badly than others, but the masses of all these homes, where most people who married in this world are divorced now, the masses, the most children alive today, they're torn, ripped apart, and for many years my father was torn between his father and mother from the age of ten.

The scar and the wound and the hurt never healed of what happened there at ten years of age for the rest of his life. It never healed. I remember when he was an old man, at the very mention of his father and mother separating when he was ten.

After all those years, the mention of that, and tears would well up in his eyes, and flow down his face, and he would turn and walk away. He never spoke of it. He never spoke of it. He never, ever recovered.

For the rest of his life, the hurt never, ever healed. Never, ever healed. No words. There are no words to tell of the damage and the hurt in a child's mind when his father and mother divorced. And that which is meant by God to be his security, the two people that can be his security in God's eyes was meant to be his security, his stability, where he sensed love and protection and became stable and conscious of love and care and the right atmosphere to grow up in in God's eyes.

Suddenly, that was ripped apart. Ripped apart. And all I can say is the damage, the damage and the hurt done in a child's heart and mind whose parents divorced. There is no words to tell. It is no wonder that God in the Bible says that he hateth divorce.

God says, I hate, I hate, I hate divorce. And I think in my human limitations that the main reason, if not the only reason, that I can cry out now that I believe God says those words is that he looked at the hurt, that he looked at the wounds, the repercussions for the rest of the lives of those children who should have known stability in a father and mother, but instead found themselves torn apart.

I think that's the reason God mainly cries out from his heart, I hate putting away. I hate it, God says, as he looks at the children and the wounds and the hurts. Right to the old man, that child still weeps, the child that was hurt.

Economic Depression and a Child's Ambition for Wealth

Then at the age of thirteen, depression, an economical depression came upon the world. The wealth of nations within days was gone. It's hard to comprehend to someone who's never been through that, how suddenly there's no value to money.

How suddenly men in their millions didn't have a home when they didn't think they would be homeless. Suddenly millions, millions across the West were without a home. Millions and millions without work.

Hundreds of thousands, it is said, committed suicide in the first few months of the depression across the West. Men who couldn't work, who couldn't bring home money to feed their children, who were homeless.

Men who had businesses who suddenly everything was robbed and one moment from them they were left with nothing. And somehow this is what happens when there's an economic collapse across the world. It's a terrible thing.

Suicide was all over the world, as men couldn't face the hardships and the shock of having nothing to be able to provide. Men who were lawyers, men with degrees behind their names, couldn't find work.

They had to do menial tasks to bring in some money to survive. Education didn't help. There was no money. There was no money. Homes went into terrible darkness when children all over the world left school, couldn't go on with their schooling and had to go and try and somehow find money to bring in a few shillings to put another loaf of bread somehow to survive in that home.

And my father, at 13 years of age, had to leave school along with many, many children and go onto the streets. And he worked for hours and hours every day as a 13-year-old boy with a spade and a shovel and a pick.

And he worked weeping, weeping for hours as the hands formed blisters. And in the blisters suddenly he saw they broke and there was blood. But he just wept silently as his body hurt for fear of losing his job.

He so needed to take that little few shillings back to his mother. But in his heart, in his heart as a little boy with all his hurting and all his confusion and all the wounds inflicted on his whole being already in life, as he stood there battling through the day and weeping silently, he began to cry out words in his heart one day, words that were to turn the course of his life, turn the whole course of his life.

He cried out from his heart as a little boy, One day, one day I will get money. One day I will become rich. I don't care what I have to do in this life to get it, but I will get rich. It doesn't matter what I have to do to get it, I will get rich.

I will not see my children resort to this to survive as I have to. I will not see my children resort to this to survive. Those words echoed through his heart for the rest of his life, what he said as a little boy in all his hurt.

These men that worked with him, rough-hardened men, they began to drink heavily. They didn't have ethical or morals concerning children. They held out drinks to him. And this little fellow at the age of thirteen found himself lying drunk.

His mother came to search for him, late in the night, seeking out her child. And when she saw him lying down drunk, she began to sob uncontrollably. She wasn't able to go near to lift him up. She just realized, as she looked at this boy, what life had made already of him, the hurts of life.

My father looked up in his drunkenness as a little boy, and as he realized his mother was looking, he began to curse and swear. Language of all the dirty words he'd ever heard in life, in his drunkenness and bitterness and confusion, he began to curse and to swear.

And it broke his mother's heart. I don't know if my grandmother ever recovered. From what I can gather, something died in her when she saw what life had done to her eldest son by the age of thirteen. Something just died in her.

Work, Ambition, and Marriage

Well, a few years went by and opportunities came more, and my father somehow found a job that was worth putting his heart into. And for fear of losing that job, that opportunity, there was something that he could build up here.

He poured himself like a slave to prove himself to the owner of that firm. He slaved, pouring his whole being in to somehow excel above the others who were given opportunities in that same business. So much that he worked that the owner of the firm loved my father.

He loved him. He respected him and he guided him. And there was a future suddenly held out, a hope for a future, something worthwhile in life to fight for. My father began to see something of the longing in his heart, within his hands, within his grasp, that was something he could fight for, to get money, to get position, someone trusted him, someone loved him in the business world.

But he still held this problem that started at the age of thirteen, I don't know, it still gripped him, this drinking. He couldn't stop. He couldn't stop. He found himself drunk and drunk again and again.

Drunk through his teenage years, despite this longing to prove himself in his work. And he was keeping company that was dangerous, bad company, with bad boys, loose morals, the wrong things that they were all doing.

And it frightened him in his heart, but he didn't break from these boys. Somehow he was drawn back to them. No matter what he saw, the dangers that could become of life, he was drawn back to them. There was something in him that just drew him back.

And then he met my mother and he felt so in love. He tried once to tell us of what he felt for my mother. He didn't have to. Oh, he loved my mother. He treasured her. He fought for my mother's love. When he saw my mother and her beauty, she was such a beautiful lady, my father fought for her.

He so loved her and when she loved him back, he held on to this for the first time in his life. He seemed to find something worth fighting for in life, something worth holding on for, something so beautiful that he never knew would be his or would be put into his hands to keep.

She wanted his love. Oh, he loved her. He loved her. Because of this love for my mother, he tried to stop drinking. He put aside all the drinking. He tried to stop swearing altogether. He tried to clean his life out because of his love.

He wanted her. He didn't want to lose her through things that could have lost her love. He put friends aside, got them out of his life who were wrong friends, wrong influences. And he put his heart, set his heart on bringing his life to something decent, just to hold this beautiful, beautiful girl.

World War II and the Destruction of Human Hopes

But then something happened the world didn't know would come so swiftly. War broke out. The Second World War came upon the world and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of young people left home, left loved ones, left all their hopes and the people they held on, treasuring for their love, wanting to build a life with.

Suddenly they left and their millions and millions, never ever to return, never ever to return. Millions and millions were robbed of all life held out for them, all their dreams, all they held on to was taken.

War broke out. My father did something that was irrational, an impulse. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of young fellows of the age of 18 who had to go to war, took hold of the girl they loved and got married against the parents' consent.

My mother's parents were against it, they begged them not to. My grandmother wept for days and days. But against the parents' consent they married. I think it's something to somehow hold on and know I've got something to come back to, something to dream of, something to hold life together, not knowing how long, not knowing if I'll ever come back, something I at least had in a moment of life.

And they married impulsively all over the world at 18 years of age. They spent a few days of honeymoon before my father left for war. My brother was born in that year, that first year away. But my father and no one else knew the war would go on for year after year after year after year after year.

No one knew that. My father never saw his son come into this world. He never held a baby in his arms, a treasured moment that God could give a father. He never heard his first word, he never taught him to take his first steps, which is the privilege of most fathers, the joy, joy that's worth a billion times more than any other joy on earth, that which a child can give you, the joy watching this child be nurtured.

He never saw that, never saw him growing. All he had was letters that took months, sometimes six months to get to him, with little photographs, and my mother writing all in detail, in her love for him, telling of every little step the child has taken, every little bit of growth, in all her trying to somehow give him something of a glimpse of what he was missing.

Oh, men were robbed of the things that are precious in life in the war. Millions and millions never came back to see their own child, never saw them once before they were dead. War is a terrible thing.

My father hated the war. I never knew a man in my life that hated war as much as my father. When the war was over, they started these moth clubs in all the British allies, all the countries that stood with England, where men would meet week after week through the rest of their lives, right to this day in their old age.

They can't wait to get back together in these moth clubs and talk of the great battles that were fought and all the things that were done, and they experience and share, and they get excited to this day about the war.

But not my father. He never went near those clubs. Not once. And when my uncles would speak about the war, I remember watching my father. I used to learn as a boy, a little baby boy, looking at my father when I heard war was being spoken of.

The others, my uncles, would speak excitedly about things, and even laugh. But my father would put his head down, and his eyes would look down at the ground while they spoke. And if they carried on speaking, he always got up and walked out.

He walked out. He never, ever spoke about war. I said to my mother when I was a little boy, Why? Why does Daddy never speak about the war? Why does he always get up and walk out? My mother looked at me for a while before she answered, and she thought, she said, No one hated the war as much as your Daddy.

No one hated the war as much as your Daddy. I think it's because he feared losing life. He so feared losing his life, and not being able to come back to me and to your brother. When I waved goodbye to your father, and I looked at him, and I was weeping, your father had pitch black hair, Keith.

His hair was pitch black. When I saw him the next time coming back from war, his hair was snow white. He had turned grey, totally, in his early twenties, totally grey. He aged in the war. I met a man who I led to Christ many years later, who looked me carefully and said, Keith, I knew your father.

I remember him from the war. I was with him in the battles. I remember him so well. The one thing I will never forget, that your father was one day, an aeroplane was flying over us, unexpectedly, just suddenly appears, and they had machine guns.

And somehow the bullets were just riddling all over, and those who made it to the trench were safe. But your father couldn't make it, and many others, and they were being mowed down, just mowed, and we just, screaming as we watched them, screaming to them, come!

Hoping they'd get him, they just mowed down, lives just being wiped out in front of us. And your father was there, close to the trench, and he said, try and get, just come! The bullets were riddling already, they singled him out, they saw he was still alive.

As his plane just seemed to swoop back, and the bullets were just riddling around him, missing him by fractions of an inch, just throwing up things all around him, as they just went on, undetermined to wipe this one moving body out.

And your father began to laugh. He laughed and laughed, and I just looked at him. I was crying looking at him. And I wondered as he laughed, and then suddenly I realized, the tears were just pouring down his face, streaming down his face as he was laughing.

He was so scared of death. He must have thought he was about to be taken away. It was the end of life. That moment, oh, war is a terrible thing. Daddy came home after the war, and that first year in 1946 I was born.

Wealth, Addiction, and a Family in Ruins

And my father set out to do something. I don't know if any man set out like him in this world. I would be surprised. My father did something that left us all struck, in wonder at what he was doing. Two things were in his heart, only two things.

One was that this marriage of his would never end in divorce. He was determined. You never saw a man so working at his marriage as Daddy. He loved my mother. He treasured her. My mother was almost scared to speak of what she was thinking of, because her thoughts, Daddy went enslaved, just knowing what her thoughts were concerning the whole of her life, and he would slave till she got, before he had any money.

He did anything to show his mother, my mother, that he would do anything to prove his love, to keep her happy, to keep her in love, to keep her just wanting him. Oh, it was something just, I wondered sometimes.

I looked at him and the things he did, the way he did it, just to show his love to my mother, and to keep that marriage from ever ending in divorce. The other thing my father set his heart to do was to become rich right from when the war ended.

It was in my Daddy's heart to get money, because he believed this would keep sorrows from his home. And so with these two pure motives in his heart, he worked, he slaved. That's the only word I can use.

I tell you, he slaved, that he left people, he left people bewildered in his own work. They stood bewildered at such a man who poured himself out to workers way up to the top of his profession. He took books.

After slaving through the day, he would come home and we knew he was tired, and he ordered books from overseas, and he would study. He had no education and he had to try and overtake people who had education, in positions in authority through their education.

He devoured these books right through the nights. I used to go through in the mornings. He's still awake, there he's making notes, having worked through the day, taking where he thought the business world was heading, hoping that he's taking the right course, that he's ahead of anybody, devouring the business world's magazines and books.

And so he fought his way to the top of his profession in a few short years, and suddenly we had money, we had wealth, we had a home, you couldn't believe the home we lived in. Vehicles, all the luxuries, anything we wanted was just there, but there was nothing but sorrow.

Do you know why? Because as Daddy went up, his health went down, as he slaved. And the responsibility that came on him as the position went higher and higher, the authority went more and more, and the more money came, but the higher the authority, Daddy worked it so, and it was his own fault in many ways, he worked that they couldn't do without him.

He made things, he set up these businesses that no one with this couldn't survive without him. And so he was there all the time, the pressures, and through the socializing expected of him, he began to drink, and he found in this drinking somehow it helped him to switch off under all the pressures, until he was drinking very, very heavily.

He smoked all day, right through the night, 60 cigarettes a day for over 20 years, never less than 60 a day. I used to walk through to the bathroom in the night and look through to his room and there was this little red glow.

Any time of the night he was smoking through the night. Oh, what a responsibility now put upon him, all the pressure of life, and with all the drinking, all the smoking, all the pressures, all the strain, suddenly his health went with blood pressure and he was living off pills right through the day.

Going to doctors, going to specialists, as all his health began to collapse, but he wouldn't stop. We saw him nights struggling in his sicknesses. In the morning he got dressed and I used to say, but Daddy, how can Daddy go to work?

Nothing kept my father from work. He never, it didn't matter how sick he was, as sick as a dog, he would make his way to work determined not one day would he miss the work. Nothing was in him that could miss a day no matter how sick he was.

He went off to work, but at work he was drinking right through the day. He would get into his office and start drinking. They didn't put him off, they couldn't survive without him. They knew it. He would come home reeking of drink.

The first thing he does as he walks in the door he would look for a bottle of drink and start drinking into the night. And of course there was fighting. There was tensions in the home. Mummy didn't understand why Daddy reacted as he did under drink.

It wasn't, drink makes a man exactly what he shouldn't be. Drink brings out in a good man something that he can't believe he was when he gets sober. And everything he didn't want to be suddenly he was in his reactions, in his words.

And there was fighting, there was arguing. Mummy couldn't bear this anymore in the way he was carrying on. My brother wouldn't speak to my father. For weeks he never greeted him because of all the fighting.

I think there was once three months that my brother never said one word to my father. When my father came out the door my brother walked away from him. He wouldn't look at his father. He began to hate his father.

He began to hate his father. When he saw the sorrows and he saw my mother aging and my mother weeping and the fights and the arguments. I used to run away. For a little boy I just couldn't take it. All this change and all these fightings I would run.

And for days they would search me looking not knowing if I'm dead or alive. When they found me daddy would put me down and weep and weep and say, boy I know it's me. It's my fault Keith. Forgive me. He'd go to my mother he'd say, forgive me.

I've got to change. I've got to change. This boy is going astray through all the fighting through all the insecurity. I didn't want this. I didn't know all this would come on me. I didn't know I'd be like I'll stop drinking.

We all would look. We saw soon he was back drinking. Just swallowed up in the business world. Somehow he survived with drinking and smoking and my mother filed for a divorce. She went to the lawyers. She told us she cannot live like this any longer.

She's going to die of a broken heart and she cannot, cannot live like this. Seeing her children destroyed. Both my brother and I were wayward and that's all I'd like to say of that. In my shame and I am so ashamed and so my father having worked I would say harder than any other man that I have ever met in my life to not ever let divorce come into his home.

To not ever let his children be unhappy or insecure. My father now looked at his life and the things that he thought would make security that he fought for and everything he'd aimed at to bring security with all his heart.

He looked at his home that was devastated, broken, wayward children, insecure children. His health gone, sickly, very, very sick and his wife leading him and filing for divorce. His whole life lay in ruins.

Salvation Comes Through the Transformed Life

But then Jesus came, the Saviour of man's soul, the enemy of Satan, the Deliverer, man's dearest friend. This precious, holy, Saviour of mankind came to my father in such a way that my father could not fight God.

He could not argue with God. All he could do destroyed of life was lift himself up and run into the arms of Jesus Christ to save him from all life had made. Oh, he ran into Christ's arms in such a way that staggered the world, that staggered the world.

God came to my brother, this boy that wouldn't speak one word to his father for up to three months, that wouldn't greet, that had no love for his father. God came to this boy, three years older than me.

Somehow my brother was found himself in a church one night. He wasn't there to seek God. He wasn't there to seek God. He was determined to switch off to all the sanaricism. He was somehow in that church, but God brought him.

No matter what was in his heart, God brought him and he knew it from the moment one of the holiest men of God that has ever lived on this earth was standing in that pulpit. God made sure the right man was there for this broken boy.

This boy, who would have argued against preaching, even the preaching of the truth, but he couldn't argue the way this anointed life, this Christ-like, godly, holy man brought the words of God that penetrated deeper than any human voice had penetrated before.

For the first time in his life he heard the gospel of Christ, priest and truth, with a man who believed it with such a passion and such a compassion for the souls he was preaching to that my brother trembled right through that whole meeting.

He trembled at the end of that service when he stood up. He said he was like a drunk man. He fell. He was so drunk in the amazing, amazing grace that was presented to him from the heart of God through this man's preaching.

My brother never knew the love of God until that night. He stood up and he staggered out of that building falling down at one stage, weeping, weeping as people didn't know what to do as they looked at him.

That's how God can speak to a person, you know, who comes to a church that he's never once in his life wanted to hear God's voice. Never once and not even then. But when God speaks, a boy can walk out who came with bitterness, hatred of religion, bitterly.

That's my brother was. He hated religion. But he walked out there weeping, sobbing, broken and somehow he turned around and started fighting his way back no matter how many crowds were streaming out of that building and he fought right down through the aisle.

He was the only one that knelt that night, weeping. This godly, godly man walked down and knelt beside him and he prayed through to God weeping with this boy as he saw the brokenness of this boy. And together they cried out to God to save my brother's soul from hell.

And my brother stood up. He stood up. And God says, if any man be in Christ, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. All things are passed away and God says to the world, behold, look. And he starts writing the home.

As that boy walks back to the home that night, look, God says to everyone in the home, everyone that knew him but he starts in the home. Behold, God says, all things have become new if any man be in Christ, God says.

My brother was in Christ when he stood. He was saved by God's grace. Oh, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved, God says. That's a promise. He will in no wise turn away anyone who comes to him through Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Ask, it shall be given you. Seek, ye shall find. Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you for everyone that asketh. Find us in him that seeketh. Find us in him that knocketh. It shall be opened. This is a promise from God.

Seek ye the Lord while he may be found. Call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his source and then return unto the Lord and he will have mercy upon him to our God for he will abundantly pardon.

Oh, God pardoned my brother that night. God saved my brother. God made him. He gave him the witness of the Spirit. My brother walked back into the home that night, late that night, and he did something that no one would ever dream would ever happen in his life.

He walked in that home and looked at my father and he loved my father that night. A man he had hated he utterly forgave in one word. Every bitterness he had against my father was gone. He put his arms around my father.

Restoration of the Family Through Christ

Do you know what that did to my daddy who never believed, he never believed he would ever see love again in that boy's eyes? He never, he had no hope that this boy would ever, ever love him again. All hope was gone.

Here was this boy with his arms around him asking my father to forgive him. Asking my father's forgiveness. And showing such compassion and care and love that my father was so staggered he was stunned to silence for days, days that he wouldn't speak.

He was so staggered by this love he was suddenly receiving by the son who hated him. In one moment God does that. Oh, there's nothing God can't do, brother. God delights in doing the impossible, what the devil thinks is triumphing over.

In one moment, one moment God delights in showing Satan in the world that the devil cannot keep him from restoring love between a father and a son. And that is a great grief to God, you know, if you just read the book of Malachi.

Oh, what grief it is to God. It is such a grief that I believe he weeps and weeps. It's such a poem as a result of whoever it was that caused it. It stunned my father to silence. My mother looked at my brother that night embracing my father.

My mother, who was going through with a divorce having seen lawyers for a few weeks all sorts of documents being signed. My mother sat there looking at my brother and she began to weep. She couldn't believe her eyes what she saw that night and do you know what she did the next day?

She went to the lawyer and stopped the divorce. Do you know why? Because she knew no human could do that in his own strength. She knew God had come to that boy and if God could do that to that boy her hope flared up in her heart that God could do something for the rest of us.

She hadn't heard the gospel of what she saw the gospel could do in a life made her stop the divorce. Oh, God was not too late, you know. A little bit later and it would have been too late. But God wasn't late.

Not from my home. I looked at my brother's life. I had not heard the gospel but I was desperate for God to save my soul by just looking at his life. I was thirsting. I was hungering after God to what I saw in this boy's life.

I was longing for God. Within days I was longing. I was thirsting for God. Let thy God be my God. Thy people my people was the cry of my heart as I looked at his life. Oh, I chose God through the life of my brother.

Will your brother do that? I came to Christ one night. He stood up and God in His grace saved my soul in a way beyond I ever believed even at what I'd seen in my brother's life. Oh, God saved my soul.

Together the two of us found each other. Suddenly we were sitting there just engulfed with each other. Two boys who had very little to do with each other up to then. That's what sin does, you know. Brothers are not even friends.

Can you know that's what sin does? Oh, we found each other. We were excitedly talking about Christ. Everything was this excitement. And Daddy and Mommy had to sit and behold these two boys transformed.

A Father's Conversion and Total Surrender

And they sat in silence. Then one of the godliest women in our nation came to our home, a missionary who had won countless thousands to Christ. He's a household name in the Church of South Africa. Oh, she and many godly people came to our...

I don't know why God did that. Some of the greatest men and women of God were suddenly in our home and they loved our home. Suddenly through these two boys' salvation they were godly, godly people. This godly woman was in our eyes.

She loved my brother and I. Oh, she loved us. She took joy as she heard our excitement and she taught us what everyone didn't know and the times we could corner and find things of a concerning soul, winning everything.

And she came to our house and she sat there and looked at us one night as we were full of joy and she turned to my father and she said something nobody would ever dare to say to my father. If you knew my father, you'd know why.

No one spoke to Daddy like that. No one in the world spoke to Daddy like that woman did. She looked at him and said, Mr. Daniel, are you lost, sir? Are you lost, sir? Mr. Daniel, look at your boys. Look at what God did in their lives.

Look what God's done to them. How is it that you have not been saved when God did that to your boys? What reason can you give me that you have not fled to this God who did that to those two boys? Why are you not saved, sir?

What has kept you from God? What reason can you give me that you haven't come to God that did that to those boys? My father looked at her, you know. Then he turned and he looked at us and he sat there for a long while just looking at us.

Then he got up and he walked to his bedroom, shut the door and he spent hours in that room. Hours. We've never found out. We never asked him what he'd said to God. But when he got up from his knees in that room and opened the door, from the first step he took he staggered this world.

As a man, I've never ever known anyone to stagger the world so as my father's salvation did. He walked out of that room and looked at my mother and the family and those there. And he said, I've given my life to Jesus Christ and I will never take it back.

I will never take it back. He took my mother to where all the alcohol was and he took all the bottles and emptied them out into the drain and spat some of them in his anger. He never touched the drink till the day he died from that night.