Proclaimer Blog
Chilean Miners testimony: “the glory belongs to Him”
A moving testimony in yesterday's Times (of all places). Worth a look:
The 33 miners entombed for 69 days beneath the Chilean desert were afraid and certain that they would die but they were saved after turning to God, their spiritual leader told The Times.
“Only the Lord could guide that drill to us,” José Henriquez, the group’s pastor, declared in his first interview since he was saved on Wednesday. For him the rescue, which was watched by a billion people around the world, was a miracle of God, not of technology.
He has worked for 33 years as a miner and has certainly led a charmed existence. He narrowly survived a mudslide that claimed scores of lives in 1986. In January he helped to save several miners overcome by gas and was rescued after passing out himself. In February he survived the earthquake that devastated central Chile, including his home town of Talca.
After the rockfall that trapped the miners on August 5, Mr Henriquez, a drill operator, took charge of the group’s spiritual welfare. He organised twice-daily prayer sessions and Bible readings, using 33 miniature Bibles that he asked to be sent down the borehole that was their lifeline. His companions have said that he played a crucial role in their survival.
Mr Henriquez brought “calm, God and unity to the most difficult moments. He was a leader without a doubt,” Raul Bustos, a hydraulics engineer, said.
Richard Villaroel, a mechanic, who admitted that he was waiting for death and had never prayed before, said: “He was the key man who kept us together through all those days.”
Carlos Parra, the pastor of Camp Esperanza, said that Mr Henriquez was “the unifying element”. “The moment of prayer, of his readings of the Bible, was the most special moment for the miners because it was the only moment that they all came together, at 12 in the day and at 6 in the evening they came together in this moment of unity,” he told The Times.
Mr Henriquez, 54, still wearing wraparound sunglasses to protect his eyes, spoke to The Times, without payment, while visiting the scene of his captivity in the Atacama desert near Copiapó on Saturday. He was the first of the miners to return. “I came to look in my locker to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind,” he joked. “It is a joy to be free … I wanted to see this place and see where my family spent so long waiting for me.”
As huge transporters carried away the cranes, drills and generators used in the rescue Mr Henriquez explained how his job was to spread the word of God to the miners. “This was my objective, the work that was entrusted to me,” he said. “Out of all the jobs I think the most beautiful fell to me.”
In the 17 days before they were discovered he and his colleagues were terrified, he said. Asked if they thought they were going to die, he replied: “Of course, we were very sure of that. We had to be realistic, and we realised … there was no way back.”
He said: “I think that some of them cried there, hidden away. That is something obvious.”
He admitted that there were arguments — “that’s like society everywhere, men are never in agreement … We had joys, we had difficulties, disagreements, agreements, a democratic way of resolving things.” He explained how the men would vote on matters of division, 16 plus one being a majority.
He insisted however that “to work in the hands of God you have to always put your problems behind you. So for this, I communicated the words of the Gospel and the seed was planted. Also the word of God has a power in itself, so who received the word of God received strength, and the Holy Spirit was there. He was ministering to us, He was reconciling us, He was healing us.”
Many of the miners found a faith they had not had before, he said. “We were singing to the Lord, we were doing what pleases the Lord. So everyone accepted Him, many of them reconciled themselves with the Lord, some of them made promises to Him.
“This is what the Lord is for, to strengthen the fallen, the weak … This was really the power of God in action in each one of our hearts because He strengthened the hearts of the men and when a man cries, a man screams to God, God answers the prayer.”
Like many of the miners and their families, Mr Henriquez has no doubt that it was God who saved them on August 22 when, against all odds, a probe found their refuge 700 metres (2,297ft) below the surface.
“The glory belongs to Him,” he said. “Any man is only a mere instrument in the hands of God. The resources of faith, this is what moves mountains.”
Later, when the Bibles were sent down the borehole, “we could start to administer the word with more certainty. We even did Bible studies, we did two sessions a day”.
He is excited about returning home “to resume our lives with our family” but his new celebrity gives him a worldwide stage on which to evangelise should he wish to. American religious organisations have approached him with offers of preaching in the US.
Mr Henriquez, who is married with twin daughters and a grandchild, said that mining was his profession “but if God tells me something else, well, the glory is for Him, doesn’t it seem to you? I don’t know where He will put me now, probably it could be somewhere else. Wherever, we are ready to praise His name in any place. This is our trust in Him and our inspiration and our joy”.