CANADA—Ontario member Jan Bonsink has lived an adventurous life. The firstborn son of a baker and a homemaker, he came into the world in 1925 in the town of Kampen, the Netherlands. Ninety-two years later, he is an active member of the Philadelphia Church of God. In between, he has been a fugitive from the Nazis, an outdoorsman on the brink, a Christian searching for answers and a husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather.

At the age of 14, Jan had to go to work to help support his parents, his brother and four sisters. Soon thereafter, Germany shocked the Netherlands, which was on better terms with the Germans than with the British. The Nazi army ignored the country’s neutrality and invaded. One day after the German air force bombed Rotterdam, the Netherlands surrendered and its government and royal family fled to London.

Under German occupation, Jan kept working. He was working at a printing press in the city of Zwolle when he received a notice: German forces were ordering him to report for labor service to work in Germany without pay to help the Nazi war effort.

Jan followed the example of many other Dutchmen and went underground: He became a fugitive. This meant that he received no ration coupons for food or clothing issued by the Nazi-controlled government. From other members of the underground he obtained a counterfeit identity to get ration coupons and ended up working for the underground.

Eventually, the situation got too dangerous in Zwolle, so he went into hiding on a farm outside the city. In the fall, Germans raided the area and searched every residence for onderduikers: people in hiding. Someone warned Jan, and he ran from the farm across a mucky field in oversized wooden shoes. Just as a German soldier fired at him, he tripped and fell to the ground. The soldier thought he had hit him and fired no further shots.

Soldiers inspected the body and realized he was alive, then arrested him and took him to Zwolle for three weeks of grueling interrogation. He carefully remembered to respond to his allias name (Johan Willem Bronsma) every day at roll call, and he never revealed anything about what he knew of the Dutch underground.

Jan was sent to a concentration camp to do slave labor, carrying logs out of the forest on his shoulders through the mud and snow all day. In the spring, he was transferred to a different job, working in the garden.

The war claimed the lives of more than 200,000 men and women in the Netherlands until Canadian Allied forces crossed the Rhine and pushed back the German army.

Around this time, Jan was released from the concentration camp for some reason. He walked about 16 miles from Ommen back to Zwolle, then continued to his parents’ home at Kampen. There, he hid in a crevice under the floor for one week, then another, then another.

Then, finally, came the news that German forces had surrendered: The Netherlands had been liberated.

Jan volunteered to join the Dutch army and headed to Indonesia, but by the time his deployment arrived on the archipelago, the Japanese had already surrendered. World War ii was over.

For the next three years, the mission of Dutch forces was to try to stop the spread of communism. While in Indonesia, Jan experienced something unusual: “We were assisting a police post which was under attack with small arms fire and rockets,” he said. “A mortar grenade fell approximately 15 feet in front of us, but did not explode. The next morning, the grenade was detonated.”

Indonesia won its independence in 1949, and Jan returned to the Netherlands. He met Sietske Vander Heide, and the two married in 1953. They had two daughters together, and then the family moved to Canada in 1958. There Jan worked as a painter and a sawmill worker until 1962. He then found employment as a chemical processor for Boeing, a large aircraft manufacturer. In 1986, for the sake of his health, he retired after 24 years with the company.

Today, Mr. Bonsink is an avid home vintner, hunter, outdoorsman and conservationist. And here again he has found God’s intervention in his life. During one hunting trip, along the Ottawa River, Jan was walking through a heavy mist that reduced visibility. He says he doesn’t know why, but for some reason, he stopped walking. A few moments later, he realized, “In front of me, only 15 feet away from where I stopped, there was a steep drop. I would have fallen off this cliff—had I not stood still for no reason that I know.”

Toward the end of his career with Boeing, Mr. Bonsink experienced another miraculous intervention. As he and his wife continued on a five-hour drive home from visiting their daughter, Mrs. Bonsink spotted a diner that they had not noticed in the past and suggested they stop in. Near the entrance of the diner, they spotted a magazine rack offering a free magazine called the Plain Truth. They picked up a copy and read an article about a book called The United States and Britain in Prophecy. Mr. Bonsink requested a copy, and when it arrived, he read it all the way through. He remembered some of his grade-school history lessons about the great migration and peoples moving into Holland. It now all made sense who those people were.

Mr. Bonsink contacted the Church, began keeping the Sabbath, and started tithing. He was invited to the Worldwide Church of God in Ottawa where he was baptized on Nov. 5, 1983. His wife started attending a year later.

Dissatisfied with the change in doctrine and division in the Church after its pastor general, Herbert W. Armstrong died in 1986, Mr. Bonsink says he kept meditating on the fact that the Church is the body of Christ. That meant it could not be divided—it is neatly fit and framed together. In 1995, he decided to move on from the wcg and began attending the Global Church of God and then the Living Church of God. There, a minister said during services that the end-time Elijah was yet to come. Mr. Bonsink says he knew that Mr. Armstrong was that prophesied type of Elijah, so he kept searching for the true church. In 2008, while in Florida, friends gave him a free copy of the Philadelphia Trumpet magazine. He says it was then that he finally learned where God had moved His lamp.

Mr. Bonsink contacted the Philadelphia Church of God, received a visit from a minister, and began attending services. He and his wife celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary in 2008; she died shortly thereafter after having suffered from dementia for five years.

Mr. Bonsink serves in his congregation and still travels to attend the Feast of Tabernacles and to frequently visit his daughters, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. For those visits, his children have a lifetime of miracles to thank.