Water Dog

Water Dog

Does God give special revelations to some of his children?

AS A BOY Robert Annan was such a natural swimmer that his friends called him “Water Dog.” But life in Dundee, Scotland, in the 1840s was not all fun and games. While learning masonry from his father, Robert fell in with the wrong crowd and at the age of fourteen spent three months in prison.

After Robert was released, his father decided to help him start a new life and gave him money to go to America. However, America was not the land of opportunity for young Robert, and soon his money was gone. He went to Canada, joined the British army, and ended up back in England, where he deserted. When he finally turned himself in, he was severely punished.

After the fiasco of his military experience, he returned to Dundee. Robert was sure that he had turned over a new leaf but got drunk with his old buddies. Waking up with a hangover the next morning, he realized he couldn’t reform himself.

From 1860 to 1861 gospel meetings were held in a large hall in Dundee. Since not much else was happening in town, Robert decided to go. But the message he heard only made him feel more desperate. As he was leaving, he paused on the steps. Others had stayed behind to learn the way of salvation. Should he go back and join them? He finally decided he would, but as he walked back up the steps, the door to the hall slammed in his face. Did this mean he was shut out of salvation forever?

Tortured by that question, Robert knocked on a minister’s door at midnight. “What must I do to be saved?” he asked. The pastor pointed him to salvation in Jesus Christ, but Robert wasn’t ready.

He fled to his father’s hayloft and spent the night praying for mercy. His family found him there the next day and persuaded him to come into the house. But for three days he didn’t eat or sleep as he waited to hear God’s voice from heaven.

Two ministers came to visit him and said, “You think that if you heard a voice assuring you of salvation or felt some strange thing within you, you would believe and rest on Jesus? God gives you his word; will you rest on that? ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’ Jesus said, ‘Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

Three days later Robert gave up listening for God’s audible voice and simply believed in Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord.

Robert worked days as a mason but became the leader of a group of young men who preached regularly on street corners. Many of his hearers came to know Jesus personally as he had.

On July 24, 1867, while Robert Annan was relaxing on a raft in Dundee Harbor, he experienced his Savior’s presence in such a real way that he wondered if he was in heaven.

The next Sunday as Robert preached on the street, he said, “I cannot tell you how happy I was last Wednesday morning down there upon the water, when the Lord showed me His glory. . . . I may never have another opportunity of speaking to you. I may be in heaven before the next Sabbath.”

The next Wednesday Robert rose at four o’clock to pray. As he left his house, with a piece of chalk he wrote “DEATH” on the gate and “ETERNITY” on the pavement in front of his house. Then he went off to work at the harbor.

About noon a young boy fell into the water and was drowning. Robert, the “water dog,” had rescued others before and quickly jumped into the water to save him. But this day was different. As Robert handed the boy to other rescuers in a boat, he slid beneath the waves, passing through the gate of Death into Eternity.

Reflection

Why did God reveal himself to Robert Annan that day on the raft and not during the night in the hayloft? Is it ever appropriate to entreat God for a special revelation?

Blessed are those who haven’t seen me and believe anyway.

John 20:29