And he made a career for himself. Brother Herman had soon brought things so far that he had his own studio with Columbia Pictures and became the chief photo editor, and he managed for Rosalind Russell, Rita Hayworth, Lucille Ball, Glen Ford, all of the big stars of the 1920's and 1930's. He had personal dealings with these people. He managed for them, took cover photos of them for magazines and such, and had a fantastic salary, and could afford anything, and the glamour life of Hollywood.

And then one day he got a draft notice. War had broken out, the Second World War, and he got a draft notice and had to report for military duty, namely, he was to be a photo correspondent for the war and was to go into the battle zones. And that was one of the most difficult assignments that there were. In the heat of the battle he was supposed to work with his team and take movies of the war, and then send the films back to the Pentagon in the States. And it was a very special assignment that he had received, since it was a job for which only the best people were chosen. He went to California, was prepared for the job, and then was sent off with a team to Manila where the great battles took place between the Japanese and the Americans. And five times, five times God spared his life. Once he was riding in a jeep and some Filipinos jumped in front of his vehicle and yelled, "Stop, stop!" And he barely managed to screech to a halt. And when he got out, there was a mine lying right out in front of him. If he had driven onto it, it would have been the end. Once he was standing on an eight-story building where he had a terrific view from which to film the battle between the GI's and the Japanese. An officer came up to him, a colonel, and told him, "It would be better if you went over there. Over there you can cover more with your camera." Brother Herman took his camera and went just a few steps, and no sooner had he taken his foot away from the spot where he'd been standing than some shots came and blew everything to pieces. If it had been a second later he wouldn't have been able to go away at all – he would have been blown away. It happened like this five times in his life, where he escaped from death by the skin of his teeth. And something else that isn't written in his tract is that one day a guy that was sitting in his jeep was hit as he was making his rounds. He was driving, and directly behind him in his jeep there was a guy sitting who was hit. And his name was similar to Harold Herman's – it was Harold Kahn. And when this happened, when this man sitting directly behind him was knocked off like a rabbit, he started thinking things over and asking, "Why didn't it get me? Why wasn't I shot to pieces up on that eight-story building? Why wasn't I blown up by the mine? Why are all these people always coming just in the nick of time?" Five times he escaped from death by the skin of his teeth. And he started thinking about how that could be.

And then more picture-taking, Manila. Pictures of rotting flesh. The most ferocious battles between the Japanese and the Americans which was finally ended by the atomic bomb. A brutal, ferocious battle in the steaming jungles of New Guinea, Manila. There he worked and saw how his friends fell around him everywhere. Just a small fraction of his camera team returned, and he had to watch while everywhere around him men were dying. And more and more he asked himself, "What is the meaning of life?"

But the end came when Brother Herman… At that time he wasn't a brother yet. He was a man who wanted to succeed. He came into General MacArthur's staff and became personal press secretary under General MacArthur. And he traveled with the team directly selected by MacArthur clear over to Peking.

Then he came back, and then came the end of the war. The dropping of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima where hundreds of thousands of people were wiped out – pfft – with a single stroke. The bomb was dropped and a hundred thousand human lives were swept off the face of the earth as is they had never been. And then he was chosen to be one of the first ones to fly over Hiroshima and Nagasaki and take pictures. And he took pictures of the ruins and of the mutilated people whose limbs, whole arms and legs had been melted away by the heat, where just one eye stared out from a face halfway melted away. I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of napalm bombings, what people look like afterwards. And he was confronted with this, and suddenly all the celluloid dreams fell apart. He realized that what he had done in Hollywood was all phony. It was all just a put-on. He had taken movies of battles there, too, between cowboys – bang! – and then the guy falls down and then gets up again. But this was different. Here nobody got up again. The corpses stayed on the ground, and he had watched as arms were shredded away, heads were shredded away, how men took off their wedding rings and carefully wrapped them up and sent them back as momentos to their wives and children. And as he lived through that he started thinking things over and asked, "What is the meaning of life?" If this is life, why is it that I happen to be lucky enough to make a career in Hollywood, and things go fine for me, that people love me wherever I go, that I always have something to eat, that I've had a career and had the privilege of working in General MacArthur's staff? Why is it that things go so well for me? Maybe for me life is worth living. Just from the standpoint of outward circumstances, I've got it good." But all those that he had met in Asia, who only had rice in the morning and rice at noon and rice in the evening and nothing more because they didn't have anything else, who were slaughtered between the front lines, first from one side and then from the other, depending on how the battle was going at the time. First they'd flee from this village and that village and then from that village back over to their old village, and when they came back there wasn't any more village because their own troops had burned it to the ground so that if the enemy took it there wouldn't be anything for them. And there wasn't anything for them, either. And he asked himself, "What is the meaning of life?"

He was there when emperor Hirohito stepped out in public for the first time and spoke to the Japanese people and admitted that he wasn't a god. The Japanese emperor was worshipped as God, and maybe some of you know how fanatically the people there believed in him. The kamikaze pilots took an oath to God and fatherland and then they got into their kamikaze planes and took off, and then also made an attack on Pearl Harbor, and they knew for sure that they would never come back. They took off with the knowledge that they were now dying for their god, emperor Hirohito. And then they spotted the enemy ship and then – zoom – right into it, and they blew up with it. One-man submarines. A single soldier would get in, take aim, and then take off full speed right into the American ship and then – boom – blew it to smithereens, and the people that sat inside went with it, out of love for their god, emperor Hirohito. Sometimes when you read that you have to say, "Oh, God, where are the Christians, who aren't so fanatical, but who are convinced, and take such a stand for you, God?" And he was there when Hirohito stood up and declared that he wasn't a god, and that General MacArthur had taken over supreme command and that all his orders were to be obeyed. He stood there with his camera and took pictures of the whole ordeal.

And then he came back to the studios after the war. But he said, "I couldn't feel right any more. I sat down, and it was hard for me, after all the savage, extreme, shocking, gut-wrenching reports that I had written and experiences that I had had, and now all of a sudden just to sit down and make movies or take pictures of beautiful girls and write up stories. It struck me as so frivolous, so stupid, because I didn't have any ties with that world any more. I had somehow become uprooted by the war." And he said, "I looked at my friends and saw what they had done. They had joined religious sects and spiritist circles and all kinds of groups to find any kind of fulfillment in their lives, because materialism didn't satisfy them and neither did sex. And then some of them plunged themselves into wild and dissolute lives in order to find satisfaction and fulfillment." But he said, "I could see how everything went downhill for these people, how they got divorces, and the men took to drinking, and how Hollywood became notorious for everything that took place after the war through the lives of uprooted people." He was always busy with writing reports about how famous people, famous people from Hollywood, movie stars, and leading figures in the press committed suicide because they couldn't see a way out any more, didn't know any more why they were even alive, they were so dissatisfied and empty, just a vacuum.

And this is the neat part. Now comes this grace of God that works in advance. God saw his parents' prayers, I'm absolutely convinced of that. And secondly God saw a searching Harold Herman. And so he started getting involved with scientists of religion, with philosophy, and with politics, and got involved in everything imaginable, but he felt that this wasn't everything there was to the truth. He said, "Okay, I'll get involved in politics, but who should I take sides with? So that whoever comes to power can use the power to beat up on the other side, just like I experienced at Nagasaki, like I saw in Manila? What should I fight for? Philosophy? One guys says this, another guy says that, Kant says one thing, Freud another. Which opinion is binding? What counts? What is the standard? What can I orient myself to? Where is there any fixed point? They are all just human opinions, even though they might be very elevated human opinions, but they're not absolute." No fulfillment.

Right during this time – and that's the wonderful thing, how God deals with people on a personal level – right at this very period of time a young woman came along and gave Brother Herman a tract. And as he took the tract into his hand he said, "No, that's not for me." Strange. You start talking to people specifically about Jesus and then they'll say, "No, that's not for me." People can be so stupid and stubborn and blind. They'll experiment with everything, even with drugs, even though they know it has devastating consequences, they'll experiment with it. They'll experiment with illicit sex even though they know that it destroys them; but with God – you start talking Jesus – no dice. You're a little cracked if you still believe in all that. He took the tract and said, "No, that's not for me." Rip, rip, gone. But the woman had a vision. And that makes the difference, when we, if we just pray in general, or if we've gotten something on our heart from God and then pray according to God's will, that makes the difference. If you just want to get Berlin all fired up and go along on the torch parade just for the sake of sensationalism, or if you have a burden for this city and want to give a testimony to the power and grace of God and you stake your life on it and go on the torch parade in prayer and tears – that makes the difference. This woman had a vision, an inner picture, that this man was a vessel for God. And she came the next day and gave him another tract. And he said, "I already told you…" But on the third day she came again, and on the fourth day she came again, and on the fifth day she came again, and he didn't want to throw her out because she was so nice. And then she had to go away, she had to leave Hollywood. And at this last meeting before she left, she gave him a Bible. And she said, "That he won't dare to toss out. He'll tear up a tract, but he won't tear up the Holy Scriptures." And she gave him the Bible. And he took the Bible and leafed through it. He didn't tear it up. He left it at home.

And then came Palm Sunday. That evening he was home, alone and bored. In one hand he took a cigarette, lit it, and said, "Maybe I can take a look in that black book she gave me." And so he takes the Bible, opens it up completely at random, and starts reading. I'd like to read this word for word… Yes, here:

It was Palm Sunday, the midnight hour. Hal Herman was sitting alone in his room. In one hand he held a Bible and in the other a burning cigarette.

And this is his testimony. And it's so good that I'd like to read it word for word.

I was reading the Bible and I wasn't having much success. Suddenly I thought, ‘It isn't very respectful for me to read this sacred book while I am smoking a cigarette.' I promptly snuffed out the cigarette in an ash tray. That was the last cigarette I ever smoked… I began to read an Old Testament prophecy foretelling the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on the cross, Isaiah 53. It said, ‘He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.' A gospel tract which I held in my hand said, ‘You can be saved right now, not because of anything you can ever do, but because of what Jesus Christ has already done for you on the cross!'

And he writes,

In that moment the light of God broke through to my soul. The spiritual blindfold that had kept my soul in darkness since childhood was ripped away.

It was as if a curtain had been ripped away and the light came pouring in. Maybe you've had a similar experience where at a certain time and place, suddenly – boom! You were hit with God's light. And he said, though he'd never had anything to do with it before, he had never been in a Pentecostal church or in a charismatic prayer group. He was a hardened man. And when you see Brother Herman next Sunday and you have some knowledge of human nature, then take a good look at his facial features. And you will see what hard features he has, but God completely melted him. He was a go-getter, a tough, and he took what he wanted, his rights. And then God came to him and he said, "Suddenly in that room I sensed God's presence and love." And he heard a voice that spoke to him three times, and each time the same. "Now you know the truth. Now you know the truth. Now you know the truth. I died for you. Remember, I am alive for evermore!"

And from that moment on Brother Herman was not the same. A transformation had taken place in his spirit, in his inner being. He sensed how he had been inwardly cleansed through this encounter with Jesus. And he said, "Jesus, my life belongs to you." And he told me once while we were walking together, "One of the most wonderful things was how God led me." He said, "There I was. I didn't have any knowledge of theology. I didn't know what was right or wrong. I was just there by myself." And all that he knew was "Jesus died for me on the cross and saved me, and I want to serve him." That's all he knew, nothing else. And the moment that he started searching – the woman was gone, he couldn't ask her anything any more – he just started telling people what he had experienced. He went to his journalists, he went to his movie stars, and all the big stars and told them what he had experienced on Palm Sunday evening in his room. And he said, "I went to the chief manager of Columbia Pictures, and for half an hour I talked with him, and the guy sat across from me with tears running down his cheeks." He said, "The thing that really shook me up during this first period was that many people cried, but few took any action, because it would have cost them too much to follow Jesus." They didn't want to give up the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, but wanted to go on pleasing their own ego. And now where was he supposed to go? He said to me, "In Hollywood – if anywhere there are churches and sects and religious groups and circles, it's in Hollywood. There's a different religion at every street corner. You can find anything in Hollywood." And he said, "There I was. Was I going to comb through every church after church?" I heard once that there are 400 recognized churches there alone, and then all of the hundreds of unrecognized, non-biblical oriented Christian religious denominations. "Was I going to have to comb through all of these?" He said, "It would have been hopeless. After all, I didn't even have the light to judge what was good and what was bad." And he said, "I prayed."