Proof of the Wachovia Bank Stock
On Saturday morning, September 14,
1996, I handed a couple a check for $250 to
compensate them for the minor damage one of my children had done to
their car in a parking lot at Louisiana College. Leaving there, I
drove on to
Camp Attakapas, the Boy Scout property near Jena. It is a
peaceful ride through the forest, and I had some time to reflect.
I felt deeply impressed that I had not been faithful in my giving to God
and resolved to return to tithing.
I do not believe that tithing is mandated under the New Testament,
but I do believe that it serves as a goal and a guide to our giving.
I did the math in my head and rounded ten percent of what I made to the
next dollar amount. That came to $110 twice a month, because I
received a little bit less than $2,200 a month in salary.
That Sunday morning,
September 15, 1996, as I put a check in the morning offering for
$110, God quickened me with what
I had read roughly a week before about
Isaac in Genesis 26:12, and how God had
graciously blessed him with a hundredfold return.
By faith—I had never been able to do this before, nor have I ever had
the liberty to pray this way since—I prayed for a hundredfold
blessing in return—we were really hurting financially at the time. I continued to
press this home to my heavenly Father in prayer for weeks on end,
not stopping, but believing that God wanted
me to ask him for this. Then, on
Saturday,
November 16, 1996, out of the blue, I received 200 shares of
Wachovia Bank stock
in the mail. It was a complete
surprise and a gift, because I only share my financial needs with the
Lord. I got on the
Internet and discovered that the stock had closed at $55.00 per share.
I did the math, and I was astounded: it was one hundred times
the amount I had given—to
the penny.
From time to time, I have shared the amazing
ways that God has specifically answered our specific prayers, such as
when the transmission went out in our only vehicle—it
was going to cost $900, and I simply did not have the money. I told no
one about it but cried out to God on my knees. Several days later,
I found an envelope that had
been pushed under my door. Inside were nine, one hundred dollar bills.
I certainly praised the Lord, but I didn’t understand just how special
this gift was at the time. When I received the anonymous gift, I had
assumed that someone had learned about my transmission from the mechanic
and had chosen to bless me in this way. However, some years later a
young man came to see me. He was a Southern Baptist from another parish
(county) and hardly knew me. He asked me, “Several years ago did you
find an envelope with nine, one hundred dollar bills in it?”
“Yes,” I replied. Then he told me that he had been praying, and the Lord
had told him to go to Alexandria and give this amount of money to me
anonymously.
Because this gift and the gift of the hundredfold blessing in stock are so dramatic, I have had people call these dramatic
answers to prayer into question—not
the people who know me as part of our congregation, but people outside,
particularly on the Internet. There is no independent way to
verify the gift of the nine, one hundred dollar bills. But the
gift of stock is verifiable, and one person even did the research in the
early spring of 2013 and thought I was making this up, because it did
not match the Internet data for Wachovia Bank for that date.
I confess that was flabbergasted when I followed the link, but I was
sure of what I had read back then and was determined to check things out
at our local library, using their microfilm to confirm the historical
datum.
As you can see from this photograph of Saturday, November 16, 1996, page
B-9 of The Alexandria Daily Town Talk lists the closing prices
for stocks. If you look closely at the second section below, you
can see that the closing price for Wachovia was $55 a share. A
second photograph shows this blown up more clearly.
Wachovia can be seen to the right near the very bottom of the photograph
above, but it is much clearer in the photograph below.
After verifying that Wachovia
Bank had indeed closed at $55 a share the weekend that I received the
stock, I discovered that the problem with the Internet data was that
Wachovia Bank had become insolvent roughly a decade later and was
purchased by Wells Fargo, who gave averages rather than specific closing
figures for these specific dates.
The thing that undergirded our children’s faith as they left home wasn’t
the theology that they had learned, nor the compelling Christian
apologetics—though we did strive to teach them what we believed and why
we believed it—it was that they had grown up in a home where they had
seen their father and mother regularly getting themselves into terrible
difficulties, been present when their parents cast themselves on God's
mercy and pleaded his promises by grace alone, through faith alone, and
then seen God’s often dramatic answers to prayer. Below are a few
examples that pertain to money. I have taken them from my journal and
deleted the names.
The first three are from my journal entries related to the gift of
stock.
* On September 14, 1996, I wrote check #817 for $250.00 to ___,
compensating him for _____ bumping his car in the Louisiana College
parking lot.
* On September 15, 1996, I wrote check #819 for $110.00 to Grace
Presbyterian Church, crying out that God would bless me as he had Isaac
with a hundred-fold return (Genesis 26:12; Mark 10:30).
* On November 16, 1996, I received the Hundred Fold Increase Gift: $110.00
to $11,000.00, by means of 200 shares of Wachovia Bank Stock that closed
@ $55.00 per share that weekend.
God has always provided for us in amazing ways. These are some
to the things that my children witnessed personally, sometimes
individually.
* On March 26, 1999, I received an envelope in the mail containing
$15,000.00; I had been asking the Lord for $22,000.00 since January.
* In August 1999, as I continued to pray for the money that I needed, knowing
that the deadline for dealing with _____’s car was coming at the end of
September, I began to beg God for $25,000.00 more.
* On October 11, 1999, I learned of over $990.00 in traffic fines on
______’s car in the city of ____. This was in addition to the state
fines. I intensified my prayer for the $25,000.00 and solicited the
prayers of ____ and _____ for the solution to the problem of _____’s car
(never
mentioning that cash was needed).
* On October 12, 1999, our children all joined us to be
Sandy’s parents. I pulled out $1,000.00 from our Y2K reserve cash and fixed
part of the problem and committed to paying off ____.
* That same day, October 12, 1999, I receive a gift of $25,000.00 from ________.
* The next day, October 13, 1999, in view of the outstanding traffic fines in ____, I
informed ____ that he could not drive the car back, even though I had paid it off
that morning with a wire transfer to ___ for $5,806.97. After the Oasis
Board meeting at Stalnaker’s Restaurant, I again apologized for having
to keep the car, and he told me, “It’s okay, Dad, I’
* The next day, October 14, 1999, _____’s grandfather, Andy Price,
bought a new car and gave _____
This is not financial, but it really drove home the truth to my
child that God can do anything we ask according to his will.
* On May 24, 2000, _____’s life was spared as he and his friend ____ rescue
three Mexican women from drowning in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of
Mazatlan. He had telephoned me from the beach, begging me to pray for
one of the women, because it appeared that she had died. Several hours
later, he called back
to tell me that she had revived. Had God raised her from the dead,
or had she simply been unconscious and revived? Either way, God
acted in a wonderful way.
I hope these examples help you, as well as those I mention on the page
about how I changed my mind from being a “Reformed
Deist.” The greatest problem in America is not
with the politicians; it is with the Church, and the greatest problem in
the Church is a profound lack of FAITH, HOPE, and Self-Sacrificing LOVE
(1 Corinthians 13:13).
God is very gracious.
Bob