amazing story
Charles Staples: God's Appointed Time
By Debbie Harper
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– Charles Staples is an attorney for the Commonwealth of Virginia. He’s in great health and full of energy these days. But his world was shaken in 1996. What began as a nosebleed turned out to be a deadly tumor.
“It was a hemorrhage like I have never seen before,” said his wife, Marsha.
“We tried for about an hour to stop the nosebleed until we went to the Emergency Room,” Charles said.
A month later, another shocking symptom appeared.
“ I was in church and the pastor was up giving a sermon and visually he cloned himself, he separated into two distinct people about four feet apart, I said something’s wrong here,” Charles said.
X-rays showed there was a large mass behind his nasal cavity. The doctor said that a CT scan done of Mr. Staples in January of 1996 showed his tumor, a large white mass that shouldn’t have been there. A biopsy revealed the tumor was cancerous and too large to remove.
“The lab says cancer, stage 4, nasal pharyngeal cancer, inoperable because it was literally in the center, if you go this way and that way and that way, without making me blind or killing me,” Charles said. “The only treatment was radiation and chemotherapy.”
Charles began treatment but soon had a change of heart.
The doctor said they began treating Charles. He had one course of chemo therapy and he had seven radiation treatments out of the planned course of 35. About a week and a half after that Charles saw the doctor and told him he had decided not to take any more treatments. Charles believed that God would heal him.
“It was just a moment of truth of do you really believe what you professed to believe? And are you willing to trust in the Lord to tell you through the Holy Spirit how much medicine and how much technology to take and how much to rely purely on faith?” Charles said.
“So I tried to convince him to continue his treatments,” the doctor said. “But he said, ‘Absolutely not, he was finished.’ So I said, ‘Why don’t you come back in about a month, we’ll repeat the CT scan and see if the mass is still there, or if it’s not there?”
“I still had to stand and believe that I will live. I will live because of what Christ did on the cross, despite what the doctors were telling me,” Charles said.
Charles went back to the doctor about a month later for a CT scan.
“It was completely normal,” the doctor said. “It was a risky move on his part. Obviously, he was right and I was wrong.”
But even after all of this, things weren’t over for Charles and his wife, Marsha. Five years later Charles faced another bout with cancer. Charles was given a bleak prognosis; he had a malignant tumor in the left side of his neck. The doctor gave him a 20 percent chance of survival.
“I had a real good talk with Jesus that day, in the car on the way to the hospital, and He was there, and said I will never leave you, nor forsake you, just trust,” Marsha said.
This time, it was a lesson in obedience. Charles believed that God was directing him to take the treatments.
“So I took the whole treatment and went the whole nine yards, and went down to 135 pounds, lost my voice, lived on ensure for 60 days, I could just croak,” Charles said. “My throat was all darkened from radiation. I couldn’t drink water. Water tasted like liquid fire. It was just that bad.”
At the end of his 35 treatments the doctor increased it to 40 and told Charles that if he didn’t take them he would die. But Charles refused to accept his words or any further treatment.
“You don’t tell me when I’m going to die. The Lord will say how many days I have on this earth,” Charles said.
Remarkably, the CT scan taken in May 2001 showed no tumor present. Since then, Charles has been cancer free.
“The lesson I learned spiritually through all this, is about God’s faithfulness, that he is just awesome, faithful, always moving, even when you can’t feel it or sense it, but he’s there,” Marsha said.
“God is a rewarder of faith, He is unable to allow his word to return void, and his hands are full of miracles,” Charles said.
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