Former Navy SEAL operator who has reinvented himself as a motivational speaker,Eddie Penney, recently sat down and shared a time from an early part of his life when he had an encounter with Jesus Christ. Penney shared the story while doing a podcast interview with Shawn Ryan. Penney shared the story in order to show people how faith can have a positive, even transformative impact on a person’s life.
Penney shared during the interview that he wasn’t always a believer in Jesus, particularly when he was serving in the military. “No, I was never, I was not a man of faith when I was in at all,” he revealed openly. “I mean, to be quite honest with you, I’d be like get that crap away from me, okay, if someone pushed into my face. But the same time I was always, I was kind of like, what I like to say, Christ-curious.”
He then illustrated just how little he knew of the Sacred Scriptures at the time, saying, “And I remember asking Adam like ‘hey, you know, let me ask stupid questions, like, what book do you like better the Old Testament or the New Testament, not knowing what the heck I’m even asking.”
However, Penney did share an amazing, awe-inspiring story of an incident in his youth in which he claims to have seen Jesus Christ appear to him as an apparition in his room one night. Setting the scene, he told Ryan, “My parents went through a divorce probably when I was seven or eight years old, and I was in my bed one night, and like, if you can just imagine a room I’m against on the far side of my window, My bed was there, and then the doors on the other side.
He then added, “And I wake up for some reason, I look over and I see Christ, I see Jesus, and I knew who Jesus was. And I My mom never took me to church a lot. I went a couple times, but, you know, you always see the picture. I knew who Jesus was. Where did you see him? In my room, where in the closet, on the wall, he was standing in the middle of the room. And he was transparent. I could see my bookshelf that was behind him, and he just stood there. He made no facial expressions.”
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Describing the beauty of Christ, Penney added, “Kind of had a I got a glowing light to him, long brown hair, beautiful face, like, just perfect.” He noted that Jesus was wearing a “white robe,” noting, “I could see my books behind him, because he was like, I was like, wow.” Although, once Jesus’s presence to him, Penney said things took a turn for the worse. “And for however long he was there, he vanished, and soon as he vanished, my room was the blackest of black I’ve ever seen in my entire life. It was so dark, and the fear that came over me was overwhelming. It was the scariest thing. It ruined. It wrecked me. As soon as that darkness hit, and I tried to scream for my mom, and I couldn’t, and I finally got the courage, and I guess you could say strength, I was like paralyzed, and I went to her room, and I really didn’t say anything,” he said.
Stories like this are food for the soul and need to be shared more by the folks who experience them. It only serves to authenticate our faith and remind us our God is alive, well, and ruling over all His creation. And, astoundingly, He loves us. What a fantastic truth.