Welcome to the Horns of Light Chronicles. Peter Berbalis chronicles his family story, prophecy, and testimony. God's story unfolds, from his grandfather in Lithuania, Nazi Germany, the Russian Revolution, to Ronald Reagan in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the gospel spreading across Eastern Europe, how God called Peter to Petra, Jordan, and so much more as prophecy and testimonies unfold. And now, the Horns of Light Chronicles.
Oh, do we have a treat for you today on Horns of Light? There's so many intricate threads that God is at work in your life, I'll bet, when you think about it, the different threads. And so today, it will look like we're changing directions, but it's all seamlessly in the same direction, like God is coming back, and I'm really glad about that.
So, Pete, we got a new place to go today. Yeah, today we'll start kind of heading down a political path. It's kind of a thread that, you know, started in my grandfather's life and him interceding for the nation of his, I mean, for the nation of Lithuania, and seeing the Berlin Wall fall, and then the Bible that he translated, kind of getting in that nation and still being used to this day. So, there was definitely a political component he was brought before the Russians and asked to testify, kind of that whole story from earlier. So, this story will follow, it'll almost be at times, I think, like popcorn popping, and it may not seem to relate, but by the end, it kind of ties together. So, if it seems like there's tangents, all I can really do is try and tell this story from a linear timeline perspective. And not saying that I have the full understanding of, you know, what the Lord's trying to say at all, by any means.
I think a lot of that still has to be revealed. But I guess one thing that I just encourage, you know, for me, I look back as I was thinking about this, you know, a lot of times it's the questions of why God. And one memory that the Lord had brought back to me was when I was a kid, pre-, you know, probably third, fourth, fifth grade, somewhere around there.
And I just remember parents reading the Bible, and it was that story of, I think it was Solomon, where he makes that prayer to the Lord of, don't make me a rich man or a poor man, pride relating to wealth and poor relating to kind of stealing and that whole thing. And I just remember as a kid just saying, wow, that's a really good prayer. So I prayed that prayer to the Lord at that moment. And that seemed to kind of start a thread. And in September, right around 2018, I'd say, the Lord really highlighted Daniel 12.3 to me. And that is, and those who have insight will shine brightly like the brightness of the expanse of heaven and those who lead the many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.
So those are kind of the two verses that kind of follow this thread. And I would say that this all starts in 1992, I can't remember through spring or summer, but had come to the Lord at this point in time, come back to the Lord in college and fully surrendered everything to him and went to go visit my brother who was living in Texas. And I can't remember if it was for spring break or right after school let out, but we went to go visit him with that guy that took the picture, lifelong friends of that light being coming down in Petra, Jordan. And we met my brother in Texas.
He lived in a small town at that time called Ennis. And then he had a friend who was, my brother was a police officer and his friend was a police officer. And we decided to go deep sea fishing in Galveston. And so my close friend Chuck had surrendered his life to the Lord. I had surrendered my life to the Lord.
This policeman that we were going to go deep sea fishing had not. So we get to Galveston and we stay in this little motel along the beach and it gets time to go to sleep. And as I close my eyes to start going to sleep and drifting into sleep, this bright light starts approaching. And the terror of God just falls upon me and I just start screaming. And my friend just starts kind of shaking. He's like, what's going on?
What's going on? And I said, there's an angel. And so then we both close our eyes and he sees it too. And I see it and I start screaming again in sheer terror. Kind of that passage from Daniel where it talks about him falling on his face.
Kind of a deal. And the one guy who isn't Christian, he doesn't see it. So it's kind of that I believe it was Daniel when he's by the shore. That kind of similar situation happens, if I remember correctly. So that experience happens. My friend can still kind of describe the angel to this day.
Bright white, silvery gray with blonde hair. And so nothing was said. Nothing was spoken.
Nothing was transmitted. It was just one of those strange encounters that you just really couldn't explain. But I think the significance now that's kind of come within the past year, one of them is related to the place, which is Galveston.
And Galveston is a significant place in American history as a result of the recent holiday that just got put in, which is June, Juneteenth, which was all tied into Galveston, Texas, as being a place of origination for that holiday. So I'll just throw that out there and continue on. And that following year, it was either that following year or the year after, I believe it was August of 1993. We went to go, same friend, we went to go visit where I graduated from that church, where that pastor played such a significant role in my life in Carbondale. And went to sleep that night. And my friend, I wake up from a dream and my friend pops up out of bed and he kind of goes perpendicular with his feet down, kind of just perpendicular. And he looks at me and he says, don't ever forget that dream.
And then he pops right back down and falls, falls back to sleep instantly. And that dream, there was a whole bunch of laughs, construction laughs that mark out a road. It was a set of plans for building a road. And kind of what's significant about that to me is in 2016, I took a job that I currently am in. And that job is really just establishing the center line of roads. And that's all I really do for work is roadway work. And I'm also involved, you know, the other thing that came through that is heavily involved with LIDAR, which is how light is used to create reality by scattering a beam and creating millions of points. And you're able to capture reality. So anyway, so I just think that that's significant as far as the timing of things.
And it's just strange that that's all that I do. Then there was another incident in 1998, I had a dream and in this dream, I was driving with my wife and we were living at the time in one of the suburbs of Chicago and we were driving into the city and there was just complete devastation. Something had so devastated the city of Chicago that the National Guard was out. And all I could do, all I could remember from the dream was just saying, my God, my God, and just kind of seeing devastation and remembering devastation and that the National Guard was out. And what freaked me out and, you know, trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean on not on your own understanding.
Well, I'm somebody who likes to lean a lot on his own understanding, unfortunately. And so in that dream, we were driving our white Nissan that we had at the time. So there was a fear as that car was starting to get older and we were getting in need of having to replace it years later that, you know, that was all tied into the timing of this whole thing, which it wasn't. And kind of the other strange thing that accompanied that experience was that when I woke up, my bed was shaking as if there was an earthquake or a train, as if we lived next to, you know, out tracks and a train would go and that would cause the bed to shake.
But there was no earthquake and we lived far from any train. So it was just a really strange experience. And then shortly after that, that movie Armageddon was released and it was all about an asteroid hitting the earth. And then there was, and right up in the paper that kind of freaked me out about an asteroid particle, just a small meteor that had landed on somebody's porch in the city from porch, I think. And so it was just a, you know, there was always this kind of anticipation of, you know, is this going to happen? When is this going to happen?
Kind of a thing. So then we'll move forward into 2004. I go with the church. And at this point in time, the Lord's really starting to draw me into a place of intercession. The church that we're going to meet with a guy from Uganda before services.
And we just start to intercede for the services. And so it was just a just a really beautiful time of fellowship and also just seeing the Lord kind of move. So invited in on a missions trip to the Ukraine that we thought was going to be a missions outreach type of thing. But it ended up kind of being a conference more than anything.
And that's in 2004. And we've got some strange stuff happen there as I'm sitting in this conference. A lady sits down next to me and we just start to talk a little bit and find out that she's from the country of Lithuania. And I just kind of mentioned, you know, my grandfather and the work that the Lord had him do in Lithuania. And then she holds up her Bible and says, well, this is his Bible. She said, your last name must be Berbalist. And I said, yeah. And she said, this is his Bible. So that was a strange thing. And then that evening I go into the elevator just to go take a walk through the streets in Kiev.
Just to kind of see and get a flavor for what it's like. And the doors open up and she's standing in the elevator and she says, what are you doing? And I said, well, I'm just going for a walk. And she said, no, you're not. You're coming with me. And she takes me to this kind of indoor stadium gymnasium type of place. And she opens up a door and she pushes me inside the room and says, you need to be you need to be here in the midst of all these leaders. So it was a conference room, conference table.
All these heads turned towards me and just start staring at me as I'm kind of just shoved into this room. And these were all leaders of very large congregations all over the world. One guy, huge church in the Philippines, the guy in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, the guy ends up falling later. But his name was Pastor Elijah Sunday. And what's significant about kind of that experience, a few things is all heads turned to me. And then I sat down at the table and they just started asking me questions and all the questions were related to the politics of America. And I'd have to go back and remember, I think it was Bush senior who was running at that time.
I'm not sure it was Bush senior, Bush junior. And they got into the discussion of, well, surely all the Christians in America are going to vote for him. And it was a discussion of, well, that's not true.
There's, you know, there's the black church and there's white church and just the political divide that that exists between them. And so get into this long discussion about that with them and thinking, what the heck am I doing in this room with these people? And so then, you know, kind of the discussion comes to a close and I just sit at the table, listen to them talk. And then I have no way home. This lady left me there.
I don't know where I'm at. So the pastor, that Pastor Elijah Sunday offers me a ride home. And he's a black pastor in Ukraine who's able to draw thousands of people and kind of fill stadiums.
And so two things. The fact that he's black and in Ukraine, there's just a lot of racism that exists there. So, you know, he'd walk through the airports and on his let me back up. He offers to give me a ride home and then he just starts telling me his story in this vehicle. So we're in this vehicle with tinted windows driving. He's driving me back to the hotel and he just starts telling me about, you know, his story of being black in Ukraine and attracting all these people.
And the politicians don't like it. So they all have him pulled over all the time. And and I said, well, what do you do when, you know, you're pulled over? And he said, I just laugh. And I said, you just laugh.
He said, yeah, I just laugh. And so he also told stories of, you know, he's walking through the airport and and they basically say that, you know, look at the monkey wears his tail and all kinds of stuff, just terrible racial comments that were directed. But he knew that the Lord had called him, which was just such a strange story, too, because he was kind of part of the Communist Party. And so he became a Christian and then he would move to these different nations from Africa and ended up in Ukraine.
As a result of the level of intelligence that he had and they had brought him to get trained. And so the Lord would call him to start these churches and he would go after the lowly. So the drug addicts and all those types of people. And then the Lord would do miracles and set them free. And then their families would come to know the Lord and then the congregation would explode. And then the Lord would call him on to the next place. And at this time, that next place was.
And I think he still is, despite his failures in Ukraine. But what's kind of significant about that is that was one of the first times for me that the Lord had called me to fast for a country. And so got to Ukraine and fasted for a day. And then what was interesting after that, I mean, I think a lot of people question what, you know, how much should the church be involved in politics?
How much shouldn't the church be involved in politics and that whole ordeal? And I'll just say one thing related to this experience was when we were there in September, October 2004. Well, shortly after that in November, the Orange Revolution took place.
I don't know how familiar people might be with the history of Ukraine, but Russia had. Wow, I hate to jump in here right in the middle of the Orange Revolution, but we've run out of time for this particular episode. But I'm glad we got to I mean, that's quite a dream.
And we're excited to see how that relates to this new thread that we're going to be talking about an upcoming episode. So thank you, Pete. That's awesome. Thank you, Robbie. And God bless you. God bless you.
