One day while travelling through Arabia, John Gaynor, a wealthy English business man, was separated from his companions, and had to travel alone. As he walked along, to his great alarm he saw a huge, fierce-looking lion coming towards him. He had no gun and felt sure that the time had come for him to die, unless it should please God to protect and save him.
He kneeled down and prayed, asking God to mercifully save his life and deliver him from that hungry lion.
As he prayed, the lion walked close by him, went prowling around him several times, and then quietly turned round and went away, without doing the slightest injury to that man of prayer.
Now how can we account for this? Just in the same way in which Daniel accounted for his preservation from the lions in that den in Babylon long ago. God sent His angel who shut the lions’ mouths and they did not harm him.
On his return home, Mr. Gaynor gave a large sum of money to the church he attended on the condition that a sermon should be preached in that church every year in memory of God’s goodness in saving him from that lion.
And every year in the month of October, for many years now, the “lion sermon” has preached.
ML-07/28/1974