Yes, prayer does work. Major Allen Lindberg of Westfield, New Jersey, is convinced of that. He was pilot of a Boeing Flying Fortress forced down at sea while on his way to Australia. He and his crew of nine were given up for lost.
"It was before dawn when we crashed," Major Lindberg reported. "We just had time to shove off on two rubber rafts, without a crumb of food or a drop of water. The boys were pretty worried all except Sergeant Albert Hernandez, our tail gunner. Right away that lad from Dallas started praying, and pretty soon he startled us by announcing that he knew God had heard him and would help us out."
Drifting beneath a broiling sun with their lips too cracked and their tongues too swollen to join Hernandez in singing hymns, their prayers continued just the same. On the third day just before nightfall they saw the outline of a small island, and soon after that the almost unbelievable spectacle of three canoes rowed by naked men coming toward them. Their rescuers turned out to be Australian natives— black-skinned, kinky-headed fishermen from the mainland many miles away. These men told Lindberg that the day before, they had been homeward bound with their catch when a strange urge came over them. Something impelled them to change their course and steer for this uninhabited and worthless bit of coral. And from that atoll they spied Lindberg and his companions.
Certainly it is good to realize that God is able to save from physical death; but how small a matter that is when compared with the vastly more important matter of AFTER DEATH! We pray, dear reader, that you may not only know God in providence, but as the One who is deeply interested in all your soul's history. Think of the depth of God's concern for you as you read: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).