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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DamienJ" data-source="post: 7485494" data-attributes="member: 134504">FACES ON A WALL Sri Lanka lies like a jewel off the southern coast of India, a beautiful bauble of unmolested natural charms, lapped by the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, cradled in her arms like a precious multicoloured opal.She was once known as Ceylon, before the years of harsh political reality and modern world tensions. For centuries the island has been a bastion of Buddhism, a land where seventy per cent of the populace worship Buddha and the rest take care not to offend him.Only two persons out of every thousand are Christians.In Colombo, the capital city on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, live most of the island nation's people. It is a city approaching the modern age with its share of skyscrapers and international flights and tourism and crime.But it was here in Colombo, in the middle 1950s, long before the advent of this modern age, when Sri Lanka was still Ceylon, when the island was still draped in its Buddhist past, that a loving God reached down through the shroud to touch a singular young man - and through him a nation, a continent, a world.In a tough section of town there was a tiny Bible school, where a few Christians gathered to learn what they could of God's Word. They called their school the Ceylon Bible Institute, but it was hardly that; actually it was little more than a collection of old desks and chairs and tiny rooms where students studied and prayed and ate and slept.One of the students, a firebrand named Colton Wickramaratne, had come from a village far outside Colombo and had managed to make a name for himself almost as soon as he arrived. He was a go-getter, always anxious to do more for the Lord, excited about moving forward, and ruffling feathers here and there as he went. Colton brought other problems with him too. For one thing, he was always struggling financially, and, to top it all, his English was bad. Finally the school's harried administrators put him on probation for six months and remanded him to the custody of a local missionary family.It was here that Colton finally took time to listen to God. Captive in his room, he spent long days in prayer. There, the Holy Spirit settled in and began a maturing work in Colton's life, establishing within this diminutive dynamo the strength of character his life's work would require. Day by day, Colton determined to draw closer to the heart of God. Hour after hour, their relationship deepened, as the Bible student opened himself more and more to the Father.One evening as Colton sat in the missionary's home, alone in prayer, he felt a shift in the air, an unusual movement of the Spirit. Something told him it was different, but he couldn't explain why. He opened his eyes -as if to see the presence of God - but everything appeared to be the same: the same skinny bed, the rickety dresser with a ragged rug in front of it and an old lamp on top of it ... an ancient mirror hanging on the wall.The wall.Colton felt his eyes drawn to it.It was no longer the dull blank wall it had been. Instead he saw an arrangement of unfamiliar faces looking back at him. Colton stared at the faces, astounded, silent. He did not recognize any of them. They were all obviously Westerners, white-faced men - except for one, a girl with dark lovely features, an Asian."These eight people," the Spirit of God said to him silently, "will touch Asia with the gospel. These eight people will be instrumental in a great Asian revival to come."Colton watched, wide-eyed, as God continued to speak to his heart."You will meet each of these people," the inner voice continued. "But you are not to tell anyone what you have seen ... until you meet the eighth and final person."Colton squinted to remember every detail, but then the faces were gone as suddenly as they had appeared.Deeply shaken, the young man fell to his knees and wept before the Lord, worshipping with a reverence he had never felt in his life. He knew he had been in the presence of the Almighty, and that the Almighty had deposited something so precious within him that even Colton could not yet estimate its value. Colton Wickramaratne grew by bounds as a Bible student, taking on a small church and nurturing its growth. Over the next ten years he ascended to a place of leadership among the Full-Gospel pastors of Sri Lanka.One by one, during a period of about ten years, the people he had seen in the vision began turning up, sometimes in unlikely places. He had never met any of the eight people before the vision, and now each new encounter filled Colton with awe. Still, he never said a word about the vision to any of them, for he had not yet met all eight.It was after he met the seventh person that things changed. While the first seven people had appeared over the space of ten years, the eighth face did not. The young woman still did not present herself. Another ten years elapsed. Had God forgotten?Colton's work went on, and his ministry progressed. He was now a recognized leader in the Asian religious world. But, he could not forget the face! He found himself looking for the eighth face in crowded churches, in airports, and on street corners. Still she did not appear.Sometimes he wondered if he would recognize her at all; it had been so many years since the vision. Now, twenty years after the experience, he sometimes wondered if he would really ever be able to tell anyone about the experience.And sometimes - in moments of weakness - he wondered if he had ever really seen the eighth face at all.</blockquote>

Verification: Haya warak paha keeyada? (haya wadi kireema paha)

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