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A Stranger and a Dog

(Written by the Rev Dr Louis Bosch as told to him by Dennis Leisegang, October/November 2000 in The Grande Restaurant, Rosebank Mall, Johannesburg.)

 

The farmers in the Sterkriver community west of Potgietersrus in the Northern Province of South Africa had arranged one of their very popular parties. The party was to take place in a suitably decorated barn where the occasion could best be enjoyed in the fullest and earthiest manner! Dennis Leisegang, a bachelor farmer in the area, decided to go although he tended to be a recluse rather than one given to wild hedonistic social endeavours.

He was not particularly religious, although he did attend the Methodist Church in the area. This was the mid-eighties and he had other ideas about his future and about what mattered as far as spiritual things were concerned. His decision to go was because of feeling somewhat down. He felt the need to get out and try to "lighten up" a bit. Things, generally speaking, had not been easy on the farm and certain relationships had also added to the unsettledness, the restlessness and the feelings of depression that flooded over him from time to time.

Came the night of the party, he found himself on his way there, quite unaware of anything being out of the ordinary. He joined a table of familiar faces and some friends and, with a sense of reckless abandon, was prepared to enjoy what the evening brought. As the party began, so began the enjoyment of freely flowing drinks, good things to eat, the music and the eroticism of men and women happy to be together and happy to be dancing with the hope that some dream or some promise would come to fulfilment as the evening followed its course of ever growing liberty and chatter.

After a while Dennis offered to go to the bar and get something to drink for himself and his friends. So he took their orders and went over to the bar. While waiting to be served he turned to look at the crowd. He knew so many of them, and as he looked at them, wondered about them -- who they really were, what they felt deep down, and what they really wanted out of life. He thought it a little strange, thinking like this and at such a time, and then thought nothing more of it.

Then it happened.

As he watched the crowd he felt a strange warmth he couldn’t grasp, nor understand, begin to flow through him from head to toe. It was as if some kind of light surrounded him and a waterfall of what he could only term overwhelming love poured over him. It was flooding him, so to speak, and he couldn’t help himself as he succumbed to this feeling of love, a tremendous welling up within him, probably from this outpouring that flooded over him. It was an overwhelming love for all those he could see in the well of the barn before him.

He felt weak, a little faint, and knew he had to get out into the open air as the experience seemed to settle over him and within him. In his mind this was far too weird to explain and somewhat frightening to entertain in his thoughts. He left the order for the table and went outside not only for air but to try and understand, to come to terms with what was happening to him. The sense of the "light" and the glow of the warmth was still with him as he passed through the doors into the open air. It was still quite light outside and he felt he needed to walk.

As he stood outside of the barn he could see the farm dam with its wall about four hundred meters slightly to his right; further to his right he could see the grove of trees and bushveld, about three hundred meters from the dam. It presented a triangle he felt would be a good distance for a walk that would provide the air he needed. All this time the feelings he had experienced still glowed and flowed around him and within him.

He had not gone too far from the barn when he sensed he was being followed. He turned to see a young couple some thirty meters behind him, following him, and he concluded they were probably out to get some air as well. Potgietersrus could be an uncomfortably hot place.

Dennis walked slowly, his mind filled with whirling thoughts as he tried to come to terms with the tremendous feeling of love he was experiencing. He was not particularly religious, but, could this be some sense of Call or visitation, he wondered? The man and woman behind him were forgotten as he walked slowly and contemplatively along the pathway he had chosen.

He passed the dam and from time to time thought he felt the couple looking towards him. This was a further puzzle to him. Why should they appear to be so interested in him? He found himself heading towards the grove of trees and bush which now appeared to be much darker and rather still. Slowly, he came to the grove, his thoughts no clearer, his feelings still unexplained: he sensed within him that something had possessed him, had filled him with the love which still flooded within and over him.

Then, as he approached the grove, a large Bull Mastiff came out of the trees and made straight for him. He stopped, wondering what this huge dog would do, for he knew these dogs were vicious and were used on the farms for all sorts of reasons -- for guarding, protection, even killing. He stood, eyeing the dog and waited. He had no idea what the dog would do.

The dog walked straight to where he stood and simply nudged his hand that hung loosely at his side. Then it turned and disappeared into the grove and bush. Dennis was surprised, nonplussed, never expecting this. He stood trying to make sense of this and all that was happening to him. What was going? What did all this mean?

Bemused by the strangeness of it all, Dennis was standing very still when he became aware of the couple who had been following him. They were standing a few meters from him, transfixed. He looked at them and saw they had obviously been frightened by something terrible. Their eyes were wide with fear and, even in the increasing darkness as the night drew in, he could see that they were pale, quite ashen. His first thought was that it was the dog that had frightened them. Then he asked them what had caused their fear and why they were following him, for it all seemed "curiouser and curiouser," as Alice in Wonderland might have put it.

The man with the girl blinked, then asked Dennis who the person was that had been walking with him. Puzzled, Dennis replied that he was alone -- no one had walked with him. The man insisted that the stranger who walked with Dennis was what had attracted them to follow him as he walked away from the barn. The person wasn’t someone they knew, yet one who seemed uncannily different.

"What stranger? What person?" Dennis asked, suddenly becoming aware of the change that had taken place in him -- the glow and flow of light and warmth seemed to have gone from him, though the feelings of love for these people remained. This sense of love lingered on and was to remain with him for some days afterwards.

"The man who was with you, walking with you, was here -- and we saw him! But, when the dog’s nose touched your hand, and as the dog turned and went back into the trees, the person with you just disappeared!"

Dennis began to tremble. Not only did he fail to understand what was happening to him, he had seen no-one with him or near him other than this very frightened couple who now stood staring at him. Yet he believed them. Instinctively, he knew they were too frightened not to be telling the truth. Then they described the man they had seen as tall and very distinct. He was clearly defined in the light, more so than Dennis had been. He had walked with Dennis, matching his stride if not also his thoughts. Then, when the dog came, he just disappeared! He simply vanished into thin air!

Leaving the couple, pale and shaken as they were, to go back into the barn, Dennis felt he had had enough. He made his way home to his farm, still full of the feelings of love.

He felt more strongly than ever that he had to talk to someone about the experience. The only one he could approach was the Rev Dr Louis Bosch, the Superintendent Methodist Minister who lived in Pietersburg. Even so, he hesitated about this, for he felt the Minister was too important to share this experience with and that he would probably laugh off the whole thing as some hallucination that comes to those who go to certain parties. So he decided not to tell the Minister and to wait and see what would happen. He would live with the experience and see whether this visitation that had come to him so mysteriously would also as mysteriously explain itself. This proved to be a very difficult choice, but with that choice Dennis was to live from the mid-eighties until November 2000 when, meeting the Rev Bosch in the Mall at Rosebank in Johannesburg by accident, he decided he had to tell him.

As Dennis told his experience, the Minister sensed some of the answers to the questions he had asked himself about the changes he had seen in Dennis while he was still in the Pietersburg- Potgietersrus area. Dennis had gone on to teach in the Sunday School; he had grown in an ever-deepening spirituality that was pregnant with an equally deepening sense of love for people; he had emanated a love for God and His Word and a strong desire to pursue his love and search for truth. It was clear, now, that Dennis’s life had dramatically changed. It would never be the same again since the night of that party.

These days Dennis is involved with teaching individuals and groups what the Bible is all about, and what life is all about according to the Gospel and its truth. He experiences growth in mind and spirit he could never have thought possible, as well as an enthusiasm pertaining to the things of God. He has got no closer to an answer of what happened that night and who the stranger was that walked with him; neither has he any conception of what the dog had seen and done, and why. But he has been a different man ever since.

How do we, the readers of this experience, understand what happened? In the end, what does it say to us?

Now published in

This work is in effect a sequel to Touched by God: Testimonies of Christian Power, which brought together seven inspirational stories of God’s supernatural intervention in the lives of Christian believers—testimonies that presented extra-biblical proof of God’s divine power and love in the lives of Christian believers.