In 1961, as Federico “Fred” Mission Magbanua Jr. climbed a radio tower in the Philippines that was part of Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) to replace burnt-out light bulbs, he didn’t realize that the tower’s ground had quit working.

Magbanua had actually been saved in high school listening to a gospel program being broadcast on FEBC and would go on to work as an engineer for gospel radio ministry and as well as pastor of a small Baptist Church.

As he climbed that tower, Magbanua was seriously contemplating a move to the US, where he had been offered a secular job that paid substantially more than he was currently earning. On top of that FEBC in the Philippines was currently experiencing its own financial challenges.

In an interview with God Reports, Harold Sala, a friend of Magbanua, said that while on the tower, a radio frequency “hit his head using his body as a lightning rod.”

The powerful 10,000-watt RF radio frequency released him and instead of falling 300′ off the tower, he landed on a platform a few feet below. After regaining consciousness, he climbed down the tower and was able to make it to a nurse’s nearby home before collapsing.

His head had been completely burnt, and he would spend the next several months in hospital going through graft treatments as doctors used skin from his thighs to replace the burnt skin on his head.

But something else happened on that tower that would change the direction of Magbanau’s life.

As he climbed the tower, FEBC was actually broadcasting a sermon that Magbanua had preached on Romans 12:1-2, and as the radio frequency hit his head, he heard his own voice in his head stating ‘Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,” Christianity Today reports.

It changed Magbanau’s destiny. During his three-month stay in the hospital, Sala said that God spoke to Magbanau about his sermon, how he was challenging people to serve God, yet he was “planning to run away from the ministry.”

After his recovery, Magbanau decided to stay in the Philippines and continue his work with FEBC.

Over the next 33 years, he became the ministry’s first managing director who wasn’t American and would go on to lead a Church denomination in that country.

Magbanau, who died in 2013, also became involved with a church planting organization in the Philippines whose goal was to plant a church in every neighborhood referred to as a barangay in that country.