The next morning I began my ministry in Sidon, and this is how it began: The son of the landlord came to visit me. He was 23 years old and his name was Joseph Sahyouni. I witnessed to him for almost two-and-a-half hours and he decided he wanted to get saved. We prayed, asking the Lord Jesus to save him, and he got saved. Later he was baptized and became one of the church deacons.

The next day he came to me saying that his uncle was the district attorney for the city of Sidon, and that his uncle wanted me to visit him and tell him about the Lord Jesus Christ. I was surprised to know that his uncle was the DA for the city of Sidon and I thought that would be a unique opportunity. So I went to visit with Bro. Joseph. I knocked and when they opened the door to the living room there were about fifty people present. So I began witnessing to them. But they laughed at me, and the first person to laugh at me was the district attorney himself. He said, "Do you really believe the Bible? This is a myth book that we use to control people's tempers."

I said, "The Word of God is sharper than any two edged sword. You do not defend a sword, you just fight with it so I am going to continue quoting Scripture to you. So I witnessed to them for about 25 minutes, but by the end everybody was laughing at me so I excused myself and left.

Three days later Joseph came running to me saying that his uncle had a stroke and went into a coma, and while in the coma he was screaming "Bible, Bible, give me a Bible, I need a Bible!"

Joseph said that his relatives needed me to come to the hospital and handle the situation. I held my calm and was very serene on the inside knowing it was the Holy Spirit at work in this man's life. I waited for four days until he recovered from the coma and then went up to the hospital. As soon as his folks saw me walking down the hallway they evacuated the room and I went in, closing the door behind me, and didn't say anything to him. I just said, "Now are you willing to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?"

He said, "Yes." I led him in the sinner's prayer and he got saved.

Now I had not used the word Eternal Life as such in my prayer with him, but after we prayed I looked at him and said, "Now if you were to die where are you going to?"

He turned his face to the wall and started crying and said, "Now I have Eternal Life." He was wondrously saved that day and lived another 15 years as a saved man.

2. After I was evicted from Sidon, I went down to the Security Zone to start another church there.

While I was single, I used to study every morning. I used to study from 9:00 to 2:00 every morning and that's how I got my own doctorate in systematic theology.

One day while I was studying somebody came and knocked on my living room door. I had tinted glass on my door so I could not recognize who it was but I could see it was a younger figure at the door. I went to the door and opened and it was a young man about thirteen years of age.

He said, "Brother Ramzi?"

I said, "Yes."

He said, "May I come in?"

I said, "Yes."

So he came in. He said, "I'm the nephew of the district attorney (and the cousin of Joseph) of the city of Sidon, and five years ago when you came and witnessed to my uncle I was sitting behind a chair in the living room of ihs house. You didn't see me, but I was listening to everything you said, and for five years I have evaluated that and I have decided that I want to get saved. We then went down to our knees. I prayed with him and he got saved. He later was baptized and he grew to be a wonderful Christian.

This is not the work of man, this is the work of the Holy Spirit of God. If we think we are interested in missions; well the great Superintendent of Missions is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

3. When I was in Sidon I was the only missionary working there so I combed the whole city with the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I knocked on every single door in Sidon from north to south and from east to west. Almost 60% of the doors that I knocked were moslem and my knees never failed to tremble. I always did visitation under the threat of a knife. When I knocked on doors in buildings I always worked my way from top to bottom, never the other way around or else on the way down somebody might be waiting for me with a knife. But God blessed and I had fifty people saved. One day I knocked at a door and a moslem young man came to the door and he told me that he was a moslem by conviction.

I said, "Great. I'm a Christian by conviction too. Could we set a date where we could sit down and talk?"

He said, "Yes." So I set the day, he set the hour and I was there on time.

It was on a Tuesday at 3:00 in the afternoon and as soon as we sat down he started chewing me out. He said, "You Christians are blasphemers because you say that God has a Son."

I said, "Hold your horses. Jesus Christ is not only the Son of God, He is also God the Son. And to prove the Trinity God created us in His own form and image. God is three in one: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He created us as three in one." I continued, "You are soul, spirit, and body. And when you die your spirit departs from your body. You are at two different locations and yet you're still one person. You prove to me the earthly things. I'll prove to you the heavenly things. You prove to me how you can be three in one. I'll prove to you how my God is three in one."

He said, "I never thought of that. I need to go and ask the sheik." He went to ask him and that was coupled with two plots to kill me.

Whenever you try to argue Christian apologetics with them they try to eliminate you. They tried to kill me twice but I was not there. All of a sudden my car engine broke and for no reason at all. I had to take it up to Beirut to have it fixed. While I was there the two plots took place. God spared my life. Somebody from their ranks sent me word to Beirut and warned me. Right after that the moslems evicted us from Sidon and I never went back again.

4. Another testimony is that in one of the suburbs of Sidon I had 23 people saved. It was a Catholic town. The priest tried everything possible to try to get me out but I wouldn't leave. So he finally went and hired a hit man from out of town. He did this so nobody would know him and would influence him. He asked him to just come and get me out. That criminal came with his machine gun and he brought his bodyguard with him.

I came home on Sunday night. Sunday is usually a very long day for me. I usually go to bed early. But this time I came home early and I saw there was a car in the parking lot. I didn't think much of it. I parked the car and as soon as I got out that criminal got out of his car and he made me open the door to my own living room, and when we went inside he made me made me sit down on my own couch in my own living room and he sat on the other couch facing me. He put the machine gun in my face and said, "Tomorrow by 8:00 in the morning you will be out of town."

I said, "Okay."

He said, "Do you understand?"

I never understood anything more clearly in my whole life. He left with that understanding and as he was getting into the car, his bodyguard reached for his pistol, shot a bullet in the air and he said, "Tomorrow by 8:00 in the morning."

Well, I closed the door, took my Bible, went into my bedroom, and sat on my bed. I was blown away. I just did not know what to do, what to think. So I began reading my Bible and praying for hours when at 1:00 God interceded. One of the men that I had won to the Lord heard of the event and he went and told the Christian militia leader in the area. When I say Christian I mean Catholic. Over there they use the word Christian. It's a nominal Christian. It is a term used as opposed to a Muslim or even a Jew. So at 1:00 in the morning that Christian militia leader came to me. He thought that that criminal had abrogated his authority because he did not get permission from him first. So he said to me "You could stay if you wanted to." In fact he wanted me to stay just to prove his authority in the area. But to me that was divine intervention and an answer to prayer.

After two weeks I was taking the boat from Sidon to Jounieh to go up to Beirut to visit my parents. We couldn't go by land from Sidon to Beirut, we had to take a boat from Sidon all the way up to Junieh then drive down south to Beirut. Embarking on the boat there was a man struggling with a sick girl trying to get her on board the boat. I looked at the man. It was that criminal and I panicked. I did not approach him neither did I flee. I just stood there to observe what was going to happen. He was in need of help and there was nobody helping him because there was a cloud of war and shells could fall any minute and everybody was trying to get on the boat. It was a war situation. He looked around and he saw me. When he saw me he could not control himself.

He cried out, "Pastor, Pastor, please help me." I went and helped him get his sick niece on board the ship, then vanished from his eyes for the duration of the voyage.

That was divine justification and the vindication of God.

5. While I was studying one day at home in the Security Zone somebody came to me and asked me if I could give him a ride to the Good Fence, which is the border gate between Lebanon and Israel, and I said I'd be glad to do that. I gave him the ride and when I took him to the gate area I saw a truck. It was a small truck with two small children. I mean they were teenagers like 14-15 years old. They were sitting still, sitting without even budging and they had the windows rolled up on a very hot Summer day, and the engine was off. They had their hands sticking up like maybe they were holding something. They just starred blank with their eyes. I am usually curious. I always try to see what is going on and see if there was a problem to help people or find a door of oppurtinity to tell people about the Lord Jesus; but I did not have peace in this case and because I was busy studying I decided I would let that go and return home to study. So I turned around and drove back home. As I was putting the key into the hole to open the door, I heard a tremendous explosion. I looked back and at the gate, at the Good Fence, and there was a huge cloud of dust in the air. So I ran back to the car, back to the place where the explosion had just happened and that was a kamikaze car bomb attack. That truck was loaded with TNT explosives. They were waiting for an Israeli convoy to pass. The minute that it did pass they pressed the buttons and killed 18 Israeli soldiers and 30 civilians. God spared my life. If, for any reason, I waited maybe three minutes to just visit with anybody or talk to somebody I would have been right in the middle of it. Or if I were to have tried to talk to them they would have panicked and blew me up, but my time was not ready yet.

6. When I was deported into Israel I was still a bachelor. At that point in my life I decided to get married. I got married to Ruth, who was my Sunday School superintendent, and right after our wedding we went on our honeymoon and then we came back to settle down and start ministering in Jerusalem. On the first call that we made, the first night we went out on visitation, after visitation some moslem young men attacked us with firecrackers and one of them shot one that flew all the way over from the other side of the street and hit my wife in her upper lip and cut it and she started bleeding. If that firecracker had hit her eye, she would have lost it. I saw her blood on the sidewalk. I didn't know what to do so I took her back to the house where we were visiting, and they treated her lip. The mark on her lip is still there until today. Then they covered us up, and took us to our own apartment. We were robbed once, and we were vandalized once. We had a very rough time in persecution but we had a wonderful time in the ministry.