The Giant White Hand

“I was just praying that I wouldn’t feel the pain of being killed.”

An Unavoidable Collision

The Historic Columbia River Highway, U.S. 30, is a narrow two-lane road that winds through the mountains on Oregon’s side of the Columbia River. Thick stands of tall cedars tightly hug much of the road, but some of the trickiest sections run along mountain shoulders where stone walls rise high above the road or fall hundreds of feet toward the river below. It’s a favorite travel route for tourists who love mountains and for local teenagers who sometimes use it to test their driving skills.

Michelle, with two of her friends, had chosen it as a perfect place to wind down after a hard day. Michelle sat in the front passenger seat as they drove through one of the curvy sections, driving “just a bit above the limit.”

Suddenly two cars came around the curve ahead of them, speeding directly at Michelle and her friends.

“We hadn’t seen them, and they couldn’t have seen us, and now there was less than a car length between us,” Michelle remembers as she tells me the story.

She looked over at her friend in the car and said, “This is it. We’re gonna die.”

Both cars were red. One with a white racing stripe coming down the top and across the hood. The other was a very bright red color. Both were racing at more than 70 miles per hour. 

“I can still see the colors and feel the speed.” Michelle’s hands shake as she relives the story years later. “There was a steep rocky embankment on the driver’s side, and my side fell hundreds of feet down toward the river. There was nowhere to go. We were gonna die.”

No one had time to “bow your head and pray.” There was no time to say, “Dear Jesus.” But Michelle’s car filled with prayers.

Michelle closed her eyes and waited, hoping, she remembers, “that I wouldn’t feel the pain of being killed.”

Instead of the sounds of a deadly crash, a powerfully loud snapping and sizzling sound filled the air, along with the strong odor of sulfur. Then everything went very quiet.

“I opened my eyes,” says Michelle, “and saw that the car with the white stripe, the one that had been coming right at me, had somehow flown over our car and was now far over on the other side of the road. It was as if something had lifted the striped car up and moved it over us.”

The Columbia River Gorge and the Vista House on Crown Point. [Photo: Dick Duerksen]

Michelle’s friend had slammed on the brakes as soon as she saw the cars speeding at them. Now, with both red cars behind them, they drove very slowly ahead. Her friend seemed to be in a trance; her eyes were open, staring at the road, her hands gripping the steering wheel, her voice silent.

They drove that way, silent and overwhelmed, the next mile up to the Vista House at Crown Point.

“Crown Point is a beautiful lookout over the Columbia River Gorge between Washington State and Oregon,” Michelle smiles, “but I didn’t see any of the beauty that day. I did pinch myself a couple times, though, just to be sure I was really still alive.”

The White Hand

As the girls were getting out of their car, a big black jacked-up truck with giant high wheels pulled up beside them. Another big black monster truck pulled in behind it. The doors flew open on both trucks, and about a dozen kids came flying out.

“Did you see the white hand? Did you see the white hand that picked up the striped car and moved it over yours and into the other lane? Did you see it?”

Michelle and her friends just stared while they listened in amazement as the kids told the story.

“We saw this big white hand come down out of the forest, down out of the sky, and it took up the striped car and moved it over your car. Did you see it?”

 The kids were all shouting over each other, waving wildly and describing the big white hand that came down and picked up the car. Nine kids, all talking at once.

“No,” Michelle said. “No, I didn’t see anything. I had my eyes closed. But did you smell the sulfur?”

“Yes, I smelled the sulfur,” one of the kids said.

Another added that he had heard a zap and sizzle, along with a really loud snapping sound.

Michelle and her friends, and all nine of the kids from the black trucks, talked there in the parking lot for a very long time. Until one boy told everyone to stop and listen to him.

“My dad is a pastor,” he said, “and my old man’s been telling me about God for years. I’ve never believed him. Now I believe. That had to be the hand of God or the hand of an angel. Something divine!”

Parking Lot Revival

“Anybody have a Bible?” one of the teenagers asked.

She looked over at her friend in the car and said, ‘This is it. We’re gonna die.’

“I’ve got one in the car,” Michelle answered.

Michelle got her Bible, came back to the group, and led a mini revival right there in the parking lot.

“All these teenagers were believing in Jesus Christ,” Michelle tells me. “We were going through verse after verse, talking about how God protects His children, and praising Him together. After a while they all decided they wanted to go back to Portland, go to the boy’s church, and get baptized by his pastor dad.”

After the teenagers roared away, Michelle and her friends went back to the car and checked to see if there were any scratches or anything else that would show they had almost died. There were no marks anywhere, except on their hearts.

“That was an enormous experience,” Michelle remembers. “Imagine if that striped car had crashed into me at 70 miles an hour! We all would have died! There’s just no other way around it.

“God saved my life, and these kids were witnesses to it. I wish I’d had my eyes open so I could tell you exactly what happened, but I was too chicken. I did see it, though, through the eyes of nine teenagers, and because of them this memory is one of the greatest things I’ve ever experienced.

“I wish I could have joined them to celebrate their giant baptism. That would have been awesome.”