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Ralph Burden – Saved by a Bus!

Ralph’s family were typical British ‘Christian’ family. 

“We attended church if there was a wedding, a Christening or a funeral. My parents also sent my sister and I to an Anglican junior school because it was renowned to be ‘a good school.’ Apart from that, my family had just a vague concept of what it is to be a Christian, and it was based upon the fact that the country we were born in (England) was known as a ‘Christian country.’”

A Childhood Miracle

But extraordinary things can happen to ordinary people. At six years old, Ralph contracted a rare form of Sepsis, a serious blood infection with very low survival rate for young children. His condition was rapidly deteriorating, but initial examinations by two experienced doctors did not detect what was wrong. However, Ralph’s mother had noticed a strange rash on his feet and pointed it out to the newly qualified ‘junior’ GP at the Practice, Dr Nancy Watts. She asked a senior physician from the hospital to visit urgently. He came straight away, and her fears were confirmed, it was Sepsis. Immediate hospitalisation and treatment with a high dose of antibiotics were essential for survival. With a death rate of over 90%, Ralph needed a miracle.

“My Grandmother was a Christian who believed in prayer. People said she was ‘always at church’ and she faithfully took my sister and I to Sunday School every week. I attended the St Aldhelms CE church school, and my teacher, Miss House, was a devout Christian. My Mother’s sister and family in the USA were devout Catholic Christians, so I reckon a lot of prayer was going up for me! It was said at the time that it was “amazing”, and “miraculous” how this young doctor realised what was wrong when the more experienced doctors had missed it. The power of prayer, Divine intervention, and the perception of this outstanding General Practitioner saved my life.” 

This was the first of a number of extraordinary incidents which changed Ralph’s entire understanding of the physical world. As he grew up, Ralph began to realise that there is also a spiritual world, and there is a God who loves us all.

“The next miraculous event happened a decade years later when I was sixteen. Riding my bicycle into the town centre, I experienced something which was quite uncanny. I was waiting in a traffic queue near the kerbside on a busy main road in the town centre.  There was no space to cycle inside of the queue of cars as cyclists often do. The road curved to the left as it approached the town centre roundabout.  A huge 30 ton articulated lorry (truck) drove alongside me. I was effectively trapped by the kerb to my left and the lorry to my right.  As the truck began to move forward with the traffic, something ‘spoke’ a warning – deep inside of me. I later realised this must have been God. It was a strong, urgent impression deep down inside. I knew that I had to move immediately off the road and onto the pavement. I somehow just knew that it was crucial that I acted straight away. I leaped off my bicycle and dragged it with me onto the pavement. A second later the wheels of the huge articulated lorry ploughed through exactly where I had been, even mounting the pavement/sidewalk. If I had not obeyed the warning and moved, I would have been killed instantly.” 

Saved by a Bus!

Just two years after the truck incident, Ralph was again saved from disaster.

“By the time I was eighteen I rode a trials motorcycle both on and off road. Just as I had loved on and off road cycling, I now transferred that passion to motorbikes. It was around two years after the bicycle incident when I skidded in the winter snow and was sent hurtling at high speed directly in front of a large bus coming the opposite way. I maybe took the turning into the side road too fast for the icy road conditions. As I slid around the corner and shot across to the wrong side of the road, the bus was almost upon me. I knew that we would collide head on in a second. Instinctively, I yelled out, ‘God, Jesus, help me!’ – and he did – immediately! One second the bus was bearing down on me, the next moment I had hit the kerbside and had come to a stop on the opposite side of the road. How can I explain it? It was a miracle, an impossibility in human terms. I knew that this was a supernatural event, a divine answer to my desperate prayer, and I was safe.”

Every Person is Important to God

“People often say that time goes very slowly in near-death situations, but for me, I was moved out of harm’s way in an instant. I knew that God had again intervened supernaturally to save me. As I sat there recovering from the shock, I was shaken up and my heart was racing. My mind was running through the fact that I was so close to being killed. I finally woke up to reality. There is a God, and he had just saved me from being crushed by a huge lorry. I realised that God had engineered events to save me as a six-year-old, and now He had just saved my life for the third time in twelve years. Like many people, I considered myself pretty insignificant, but God showed me in an instant that every individual is significant to him. He showed me that he was most certainly interested in little old me!”

Ralph had been attending a Baptist church youth group and the teachings of Jesus Christ had been gradually changing him. He asked Christ to come into his life, and began attending church regularly on Sundays. He also started to take the Bible more seriously,

“In the Book of Jeremiah in the Bible it says;

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5), and

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares theLord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’ “ (Jeremiah 29, 11-13)

God showed him that there was a specific plan for his life and, in fact, for every person’s life, but the gift of free will means that many miss God’s plans for them because they do not believe, pray and read the instruction manual (the Bible). Ralph sees life as an intended partnership with God.

“He has given us all free will. His plans for us are good, but we face a spiritual enemy, the devil,  who wants to ruin our lives, even to kill us! Later, God spoke to me through my good friend Ian Buck and told me to start an international outreach ministry. Shortly after that, God also clearly showed my wife and I that we were to move to New Zealand to plant a new church there. It was then I realised the great significance of Jeremiah 1 verse 5 and how it applied to us quite literally. It was also the fulfilment of a prophetic message we were given a few years earlier that we would work with diverse people groups in different parts of the world. You can’t get much further in distance than England and New Zealand.” 

Divine plans

After three years at university in Wales, Ralph returned to his hometown and met the girl of his dreams.

“I had a few girlfriends in my teens and early twenties, but I hadn’t found that special one. So, I prayed. I wanted God’s choice for me. I also sensed strongly that I would end up in some kind of Christian work, and I knew that I needed a wife who had the same vision. A few months after I prayed that prayer, I met Heather. We knew almost immediately that our relationship was part of God’s plan for our lives.  

Ralph became more deeply aware of God’s constant presence each day. He and Heather married, and they went into full-time Christian ministry shortly after the birth of their first child.

“There have been some big challenges, especially when we first stepped out ‘in faith’ and went into Church ministry. There certainly is a devil and he has made sure life has been really tough at times, but there is a fantastic promise in the bible that I have found to be so very true. Jesus said: 

‘I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’ (John 16:33). 

That is such a fabulous promise. We all get challenges, problems and some big disappointments in life. But Jesus promised to help us through them all if we will put our trust in him. I don’t know how I would have survived without Jesus in my life, he is just amazing. I also thank God for the people who had such an influence on me as a relatively rebellious teenager in church. The youth leader later told my sister that he prayed especially for me because I was the most difficult one in the group and the one he thought most unlikely to become a committed Christian!”

Ralph continues to write articles and books, to play and record music, and to speak in churches.

 

Story by Dan Rubel

 

WATCH Ralph Burden: ‘Without You’

Ralph’s music is available on Spotify, Apple Music, on all major streaming services, and on Youtube.

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2BgwPmnylFGs6sIioLhxwa

Website: www.ralphburden.com

No Coincidence is available from Amazon –  books

 

photo-6               no_coincidence

* above photos:  (1) 2015 album ‘Get Ready’,  (ii) book cover for ‘No Coincidence’

* feature photo: Ralph playing at a charity concert (for Prison work) in Bristol, UK, 2010.

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