Miracle At Pearl... 80 Years Ago?

The 80th Anniversary of "The Miracle At Pearl"!

Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz…

his little known profound insights into the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

“Thanks to God providing for Admiral Nimitz to have the profound ability to SEE 'between the lines' what actually happened at Pearl Harbor that day, we have this little-known account to share with you; A far better accounting than was told by the script writers of the movies TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970) and PEARL HARBOR (2001). God miraculously intervened that day and most of us aren't even aware." 

-Keith

    The rare ability of U.S. Navy Admiral Chester Nimitz was to "see" above and beyond the way things "look" to be. This is illustrated in the historical account of his profound insights as he surveyed the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Admiral Nimitz had eyes that could SEE with respect to tactical naval warfare. He was so well-studied and experienced in the art of war that it did not take him long to recognize three tactical errors the Japanese made in their planning and execution of their attacks on our ships at Pearl Harbor. These three errors rendered them unsuccessful in their attempt to utterly destroy the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet.

If you visit Pearl Harbor, you will find boats ferrying people out to the USS Arizona Memorial every 30 minutes. In the gift shop there you will find a book entitled, “Reflections on Pearl Harbor” by Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. In that book, you will read that on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Admiral Nimitz was attending a concert in Washington, D.C. when he was paged and told there was a phone call for him. When he answered the phone, he found that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on the line.

The President told Admiral Nimitz that in light of the attack on Pearl Harbor Admiral Nimitz would now be the Commander of the Pacific Fleet. Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of the Pacific Fleet, landing at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve, 1941. He found such a spirit of despair, dejection, and defeat that it would seem the Japanese had already won the entire war.

On Christmas Day, 1941, Admiral Nimitz was given a boat tour of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters everywhere you looked. As the tour boat returned to dock, the young helmsman of the boat asked, “Well, Admiral, what do you think after seeing all this destruction?”

Admiral Nimitz’s reply shocked everyone within the sound of his voice. Admiral Nimitz said, “The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make or God was taking care of America. Which do you think it was?”

Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked, “What do you mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes an attack force ever made?” Nimitz’s explanation is summarized below.

Miracle Error #1: The Japanese attacked on Sunday morning. Nine out of every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and then sunk, we would have lost 38,000 men instead of 3,800.

Miracle Error #2: When the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never once bombed our dry docks that were sitting across from those ships. If they had destroyed the dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of the damaged ships to America to be repaired. As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have them repaired and at sea by the time it would have taken to tow them to America; and I already have crews ashore anxious to man those ships.

Miracle Error #3: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific theater of war is in storage tanks on top of the ground only five miles away. One attack plane could have strafed those tanks and destroyed our entire fuel supply.

Now you can see why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest tactical errors an attack force could make or else... God was taking care of the United States of America. It was Admiral Nimitz’ many years of first-hand tactical experience that gave him the ability to recognize, as he said in his own words, “The Japanese made three of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make.” In turn, it was that same experience that equipped him to be able to see God’s divine intervention where most saw only despair and defeat.

The young helmsman and so many others looked at the devastation and were in many ways crippled by the destruction and despair. On the other hand, Admiral Nimitz looked at the same devastation and saw something completely different. He knew how unlikely it was that the very capable Japanese war planners would miss three such obvious tactical points while preparing their assault, and this made it evident to him that God had intervened on America’s behalf on December 7, 1941. As devastating as the loss of our brave men and women were that day, as Admiral Nimitz states, the results would have been ten times worse if God had not intervened on our behalf.

Even as Admiral Nimitz looked at utter devastation and could see the grace of God at work on the behalf of our great Nation, we have the same opportunity to look beyond whatever it is that we may be going through and see the redeeming power of Jesus Christ working on our behalf as well. As the Scripture says in Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” These are not empty words: God means every one of them, and He wants us to trust Him, Jesus Christ and The Holy Spirit to do Their part.

God promises that in every trial He will provide the way of escape. He also promises to never leave or forsake us. We need to believe Him, we need to continuously pursue being-made-one-in-God, through Jesus Christ, by the leading of The Wonder-full Holy Spirit. So that, when we find ourselves in trouble or needing God's strategy to solve a problem, He, The Holy Spirit, can open our eyes so, like Admiral Nimitz, we to can truly see. So that, we can see everyone, everything and every situation through God's own eyes. 

-Keith, Brenda & The TTM Family

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The Sweet Fruit of Overcoming Fear

THIS I'VE LEARNED... The spirits of fear and intimidation actually have a weakness. 

If you walk straight IN to them, THEY RUN AWAY!   

  

With all of the challenges people face in the world today, this is the perfect time to share how Keith "pressed through" fear and intimidation, to enjoy a sweet reward of blessings lasting a lifetime!
We pray Keith's story encourages you to overcome intimidation and fear in every area of your life, so you can walk victoriously in...

*  your family.

*  your calling.

*  your career.

*  your greatest heart's desires.

“To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with Me in My Throne, even as I also overcame, and Am set down with My Father in His Throne.” (Revelation 3:21)

       This personal testimony is about the first time I was asked to perform my songs as a solo artist in a good-sized concert. In January of 1981, I was at a Bible study at a new friend’s home in Winston-Salem, NC. One of the guys there, having heard that I had been in full-time music ministry, asked if I would share a couple of my songs. I replied, with a bit of relief I might add, that I had not brought my guitar with me. At that, the young lady who was hosting the meeting said “wait a minute,” jumped up, ran down the hall, came back with her guitar, and handed it to me! So, I took it and tuned it up as best I could (not having played the guitar very long at that point!) and played two songs that I had just scribbled down a week or two before. A few days later, unbeknownst to me, the same young lady who hosted the Bible study called her brother, the President of the Christian Student Organization at the University of North Carolina (UNC) campus. She told him about me and my songs. A few days later, he telephoned me and asked if I would agree to be the featured musician at a concert on the UNC campus in Greensboro the following month. Immediately intimidation attacked me. I knew that I was standing at a fork in the road regarding my ministry’s future, and, by the intensity of the attack, I knew that something big was looming. What was I to do? On one hand, I could believe the intimidation that was telling me that I was not good enough, and perhaps miss out on something that God wanted to do with me. On the other hand, I could trust God, and crawl out onto the end of the limb.

       It was quite a limb! Though I had toured professionally as a drummer for a number of years, I had very little understanding of how to play the guitar, much less sing and play at the same time. To say the least, I wasn’t prepared to do a public performance of any kind! So you see, when the fellow from UNC asked me to do the concert, only God and I really knew that, by all natural reasoning, I was incapable of it. Not only that, but all I had at the time were six unfinished original songs, and they needed me to do at least fifteen. To add to the intimidation, he then told me that one of the area’s most well-known Christian rock bands would open for me that evening.

       So, there I was, standing at the threshold of a major decision. Was I going to walk into the roar of this extremely intimidating situation, or turn and run away? All of a sudden, in the midst of the storm that was raging in my mind, I realized that I was being presented with a priceless opportunity to glorify God, not only for that evening, but also for many years to come. With all of the strength that I could muster, I threw my shoulders back, gulped real big, and said to the guy from UNC, “I would be honored to serve you in this way!” I thanked him for his trust, and we prayed and hung up the phone. Within seconds, it felt as if the intimidating spirits that were pounding on my head during the conversation had called in all of their big-mouthed brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles to convince me that I had just made the biggest mistake of my entire life. There I sat facing the greatest step of faith that I had ever taken, with only six unfinished original songs to my name and an old cheap guitar I had paid forty-five dollars for at a local pawn shop.

       Accepting the offer to do the event had been a huge battle, but not as brutal as the next struggle would be: preparing for and doing the concert itself. The five weeks leading up to the event were some of the loneliest and most trying times that I had ever experienced. My pastor, his wife, and myself had recently moved to that area and were heavily engaged in the first few months of a new Church plant. Six weeks earlier, I had taken a job selling boats, in the dead of winter, working no fewer than fifty mandatory hours a week. Further adding to the difficulty, I had not made any friends in the area as yet, and was having to do this with very little to no support from anyone. As you might imagine, I asked God regularly to anoint me with the wisdom to finish up the songs that I had and to write the other nine songs that I would need. Now these could not be just nine more songs; they had to be nine songs that ministered life to people, drawing anyone who heard them into oneness with their Heavenly Father. Writing those songs took many hours of prayer and hard work to complete, but God was faithful. When the night of the event finally arrived, I placed my guitar into its handle-less cardboard case, climbed into my trusty Ford van, and headed for Greensboro. With every turn of the wheels on my truck, the war that was raging in my mind grew. Pulling up to the concert hall that evening is a memory that I will never forget. After finding a parking place, I decided to sit in my van for a short while and pray. With what felt like the proverbial stomach full of “really big” butterflies, I lifted my hands toward the heavens, let out a big sigh, and said, “Lord, let’s do this!”

       I then climbed out of the van and headed for the building. As I was almost to the door, I looked around and noticed that there were already many cars in the parking lot. There would be a big crowd in the concert hall that night! With my Bible in one hand and my guitar in the other, I took a deep breath and proceeded through the door.

       Inside the hall, people were frantically running around getting things ready, and the opening band was on stage doing their sound check. It was all rather overwhelming. When the promoter saw me, he immediately walked over, took me by the arm, and began introducing me to people and showing me around the place. Shortly thereafter, one of the audio guys shouted from the stage, “Keith, sound check in five!” Do you remember my telling you earlier about the intimidating spirits that had dropped in on me with all of their relatives? Well, they were back and doing a bang-up job of portraying the stage and growing audience as being Goliath himself. Five minutes later, shaking like a leaf, I made my way onto the stage, struggled through my sound check, and went backstage to pray while awaiting my time slot.

       Once the opening band had begun playing, I decided to make my way through the crowd toward the back of the hall and hang out where the sound guys were. As the band announced that they would be playing their last song, I started making my way backstage to get ready to go on. Man, were those guys good! And frankly, that did not make things any easier for me. I was staring into the eyes of a “Goliath-sized” situation, knowing that only one of us was going to step off that stage, one hour from now, the victor. As impossible as the whole thing seemed, I decided then that I was going to win the fight or die trying. As I was waiting for the announcer to introduce me, the intimidation reached a fevered pitch. All of a sudden, with only seconds to go, one of the sound crew guys walked up to me, leaned over, and whispered, “Keith, I loved what you did at sound check. And by the way, the guys said that they can’t wait to hear the rest of your stuff.” Praise God, there they were, the five smooth stones that I needed to win the fight: the testimony that God was with me!

       The announcer introduced me, and I walked out on stage to roaring applause. With a tremble in my voice and my hands shaking, I started to play my first song. As I was about half way through it, I can remember thinking to myself that it sure was a good thing that I was wearing long pants because my knees were quivering pretty much uncontrollably. As I finished my first song, I could not believe my own eyes and ears. The entire crowd rose to their feet and broke into thunderous applause. The mountain that had stood in front of me for five long and grueling weeks was removed in seconds, and I knew then that I had pressed my way through to victory. Not only had the intimidating voices been defeated, but I began playing, singing, and speaking with an authority that I had never experienced before.

       The testimony gets even better! After the concert was over and I was mingling among the crowd, something happened that further exceeded my greatest expectations. People started asking when I could come and minister for them. For example, in the crowd that evening was a lady who managed a local Christian night club. They had just purchased an old Assembly of God church building in the very same community where my pastors and I were in the process of starting our new Church. She walked up to me and asked if I would come and minister for them the following week. I accepted her offer and, as they say, the rest is history.

       A few weeks later, I was asked to play there one night a week, and shortly thereafter, the club’s board of directors invited our fledgling congregation to meet in their building as often as we would like. Not only was that in and of itself a huge miracle, but they allowed us to rent the entire facility for the “whopping” sum of only one dollar a year. God opened a flood gate of blessings in all of our lives, blessings that continue to this day!

       A few weeks later, I was playing at that same Christian club when I was approached by two local musicians asking me if I would be interested in their accompanying me whenever I was invited to do concerts. To make a very long and miraculous story short, that would be the beginning of The Keith Shealy Band and other fruitful outreach groups. Since then, thousands of lives have been changed for God’s glory, and so many wonderful miracles have taken place that we could not even begin to count them, all as a result of my accepting that one challenging invitation on that cold winter night in 1981!

       The good news for all of us is this: if you will only work as God’s partner to press through the intimidation that has held you back from receiving God’s best for your life, the same kind of results await you. Selah!

IN Christ Jesus,
                                 

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