Missionary, Pastor, Friend, and Man of God

Our church was blessed to have Evangelist Alton Beal speak at our Bible Prophecy Conference. His messages helped to direct our thoughts to future events described in the book of The Revelation. His messages spoke of the saved saints seeing God on his throne and the glories surrounding it, to the bowl plagues that will be poured out on those whose name is not found in the Book of Life.

Alton Beal is also the President of the Ambassador Bible College located in Latimer, North Carolina. A former pastor of our church taught at that college. ABC is a missions focused college and Brother Norman Johnston was a missionary and pastor to South Korea before being a pastor to our church. We became friends. Since our birthdays were in March, we often celebrated together by eating lunch then scouring book stores for interesting publications.

The most important thing that I knew and understood about him was he was a man of God. He enjoyed life to the fullest and God filled him with life. He organized tenting trips out West for our youth, making the plans for our food, places to camp, and National Parks to visit. It was an extensive itinerary and often our campers would be busy from early morning until we set up camp and cooked our evening meals after the sun had set.

His last mission trip never came to pass. He organized several of the students at ABC to join him in a mission trip to the island country of Madagascar. On the day before he was to leave, he had a massive heart attack and went to be with his Lord and Savior. Although we all were saddened by his departure, it was a blessing. People look at me like I am cruel and heartless, but if he’d have actually made it to Madagascar; it would have been a nightmare to get his body back home for burial.

I felt blessed when my wife Cindy passed away 19 years ago. I made the same comment then. I said her death was a blessing, not that she died, but that she was filled with ovarian cancer and yet she had no pain; that was the blessing. Ten days after she was diagnosed, she too went to be with the Lord. As a nurse, I’ve seen too many people suffering pain from cancer that the strongest of medication will still leave them writhing with pain.