GOD INSIDE THE FIRE: An Amazing True Story
Greg Stelley
A mother & her young daughter pray for a friends' doomed horse ranch during San Diego's Cedar Fire in October 2003, then witness the impossible. Read the true story that confirms God's presence and power and miraculous grace! See the world's first and only photo-documented Biblical-sized miracle!

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book excerpt

“We’ve seen the worst of nature, but the absolute best of mankind,” said the President. The Los Angeles Times called the Cedar Fire: “the state’s worst wildfire in 75 years. . .” CNN described it as: “perhaps the state’s most devastating. . .” New York Times reporter Nick Madigan may have described it best: “conditions are little short of hellish. . .” Colin Wilson, a 20-year veteran fire chief from a Northern California fire department, wrote an account of his experience with the Cedar Fire, his first battle with a magnitude 10 firestorm.  “In the course of our various assignments we were exposed to fire at a level that was totally new to all of us. In one conversation we agreed that we saw more and bigger fire in two days than all of us had seen collectively in our entire careers. . .On at least one occasion we survived by dumb luck and the grace of God. . .Cuyamaca is a small town built around a lake that is about two miles long and one mile wide. A high ring of peaks surrounds the community to the north, west and south. To the east, the valley runs out into an old dry lake bed which is the direction we entered from. As we approached the town from the east, we saw an incredible column of smoke rising from the high ridge to the west. It stretched from north to south as far as we could see, rising straight up as a solid wall that appeared to have no end.” Echoing New York Times reporter Nick Madigan, Wilson found a scene that inspired a dramatic description. But his assessment was simply accurate. “I am not at all a religious person but as we drove in and looked at the approaching fire and smoke column the only words that came to mind tended to be biblical in nature: holocaust, jihad, apocalyptic. In truth, I don't have words in my vocabulary that would express the massive, raw, unrestrained force that was about to descend on the town. In my nearly 20 years in the fire service, I have never felt as threatened and afraid as I did that afternoon. In my heart I was saying to myself, ‘What are we doing driving into this?” The last six cataclysmic days of October 2003, brought human tragedies in greater number than any firestorm in San Diego’s history. Thousands of firefighters drove into the enormous and terrifying inferno to defend what they could, while legions of horrified homeowners fled for their lives. Their selfless acts of courage saved the homes of thousands of strangers the firemen would never meet. This rare and special dedication was reflected back to the firemen in the admiration and heartfelt gratitude of millions. It leaves us asking where such a powerful and magnanimous motivation comes from. What is its source? It is as if this zealous devotion was there all the time, waiting just behind the world’s curtain. After earthquakes or hurricanes it is this selfless type of love that brings the rescuers, surgeons and engineers to the victims of disaster, ready to help, eager to serve and desperate to save. If you and I were allowed to see beyond the physical world, to step behind whatever curtain partitions us from the unseen, what would we see? Utter darkness? Marvelous light? Malevolent hatred? Benevolent love? Both? After all, looters, thieves and frauds prey upon the same victims the rescuers work to save. Who or what motivates such conspicuous evil? Such unequivocal good? These diametrically opposed impulses are both larger than our ability to fully comprehend, yet we know they exist. An extraordinary event occurred right in the heart of the Cedar Fire. It involved two families. My family, my wife, Joni, and my children, Danielle, 9 and Juliette, 8 at the time, and our dear friends, the Scalari family, Frank and Kathy and their four children, Frankie, Veronica, Alex and Anna, ages 16, 13, 9 and 5. Our children played together, and we shared cookouts and birthday parties. But, as I say, something transpired in the midst of the Cedar Fire that made us intimates in a different way, witnesses of life-changing circumstances. On Tuesday evening, October 28, 2003, high up in the Cuyamaca Mountains of San Diego, deep within the fiery furnace of the Cedar Fire, there was a colossal manifestation of God’s presence. It transformed all of our lives. I can only call it a miracle. The dictionary defines a miracle as: 1. An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature, held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God. 2. One that excites admiring awe. Philosophers and theologians have debated whether miracles take place for thousands of years. I am not going to provide another installment in that debate here. Instead, I’ve attempted to report what I experienced. Skeptics are free to doubt, but as you will see, something took place, and that something was so odd, so strange, that it defies reasonable natural explanation. It is a story I have told to many people, and over the years I’ve often been confronted by tearful faces. Such reactions planted a seed in me to write this book. It may be that you have never given God a second thought. Or, perhaps you can be found front and center every Sunday morning in your local church. Either way, my assignment is the same. It is simply to tell you my story, to describe truthfully and accurately the things I have touched with my hands, seen with my eyes, and heard with my ears. The story begins with a prayer. Not a mild powerless wish, but a bold headlong leap. A leap of faith. The people, places and events within this book are real. Many of the names have been changed and a few minor characters are composites, but story is true. Come with me behind the curtain.