(September 2001 Edition)
The following is a list of this month's articles.
Editorial - The Responsible Dead
At the Lord's Table - Last Exhort at Cayman Brac
Editorial
The Responsible Dead
On the wall is The Bible Message Calendar 2001. It shows today’s date, Sunday, July 29. It also states, “Christadelphians believe...Jesus will raise and judge the responsible dead.”
We consider the fourteen Bible-based doctrines printed on the Calendar to be an accurate and succinct expression of saving truth. By our Lord’s own words, any sincere person who confesses these “Christadelphian beliefs,” rejecting all notions that nullify them, and is baptized, will be saved. All through nineteen centuries of scorn and persecution by heretics and unbelievers, this confession of faith is the rock on which the church of God endures unshakable.
Degrees of
responsibility
The doctrine of responsibility is taught
consistently, and insistently, from Genesis to
Revelation. The Scriptures teach that there are
degrees of responsibility to God and men, depending upon our age, our
awareness of the divine will, and our talents or abilities.
Jeremiah 18, read aloud today at hundreds of ecclesias around the
world, is stark and clear.
“I may speak of tearing up a nation, breaking it down and destroying it; but if that nation turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the evil that I thought of inflicting upon it. Again, I may speak of building up a nation, of planting it; but if that nation does evil in my sight by refusing to listen to my voice, then I will change my mind about the benefits which I meant to bestow upon it.”
Who among us dares to say that God is only interested in the welfare of His covenant people? Who dares to question that even whole nations are accountable to Almighty God? In many cases, God rewards responsibility and punishes irresponsibility in this age and during our present mortal lives. In many other cases, as our Calendar reminds us, the Lord Jesus, with his unerring knowledge of us all, will raise to judgment the responsible (and irresponsible) dead. Nearly two thousand years after his death, we can visit a museum in Israel and peek at the bones of Caiaphas in their ancient sarcophagus, and reflect on one of many “responsible dead.” “I tell you,” said Jesus to his accusers, “in future you will all see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven.”
An explosive mix
The doctrine of responsibility, perhaps in a shadowy but very real way,
is acknowledged even by unbelievers. Immediately following
today’s gripping news on BBC World television, showing Jews
and Arabs battling on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, there were two
deeply moving hour-long programs seeking to answer the question, Who is
responsible for the present deadly hate? One program depicted
the Crusades. The other graphically portrayed modern
anti-semitism. The answer from both programs was the same:
centuries of European “Christian” barbarism and
fanaticism has bred Muslim hate and Jewish intransigence. The
message of one was that, through systematic genocide of Muslims,
Richard Lion-heart, the French king of England, was responsible for the
rise to power of the Mamluk jihad warrior Baybars, fundamentalist folk
hero of today’s Hizbollah, Hamas and Fatah. And
irresponsible Christians who turned a blind eye to nazism and the
Holocaust paved the way for Ariel Sharon and the layers of the temple
stone.
An elderly “Christian” German doctor appeared on the second program, and spoke quite casually. I didn’t turn on the gas taps. That was someone else. I only counted the dead in the gas chambers. The commentator ended with this observation: Theology and hate make a horrendously explosive mix.
Do we burn our
brethren?
Don’t let us be self-righteous. In a newly
published book, Sis. Ruth McHaffie, a Scottish Christadelphian, has
this to say: “Calvin’s self-assured bigotry [is]
identical to that adopted today by many in our community against those
“outsiders” who disagree with us, or against
“insiders” who wish to discuss any matter which
does not match Christadelphian tradition. We do not, as
Calvin did, burn a fellow believer at the stake because of our
differences. The law of our country forbids it. We
burn his or her reputation instead.”
However extreme this might seem, Ruth is at least partially right. Regretfully, we have done it ourselves. We rightly condemn the papal Inquisition. But on our editorial desk at this moment is a recent file of ecclesial correspondence regarding the excommunication of a gentle, caring brother for an alleged minor doctrinal deviation. The tone of the official letters would be familiar to any inquisitor of the Dominican order: full of threats and refusals to correct misinterpretations or even to discuss the matters at issue. Sadly, this is not unusual. But when such actions bear their evil fruit in the loss of a saint, be assured that God will hold us responsible. Of that, Ezekiel 34 tells us plainly, there is no doubt.
The great sin of
our time
Irresponsibility is emerging as the great sin of the twenty-first
century. And we are all affected by it.
All the slain amongst us in recent years are those who simply refused
to pass by on the other side. Jesus made clear to us all that
although the Samaritan was from a race that was hated by the Jews and
that returned the hate in full measure, he was nevertheless responsible
for the foreigner lying bleeding by the wayside.
And it is an obvious inference from Jesus’ parable that,
despite their unspoken objections that they had religious duties to
perform and therefore were exempt from any obligation to help an
unknown victim of terrorism, the priest and levite would be held
responsible by the judge of all the earth if the victim should die
uncared for.
“Am I my
brother’s keeper”
Cain protested that he was not responsible for his
brother. “Am I my brother’s
keeper,” he whined to a distraught and angry God.
Yes, he most certainly was! And Jesus himself underlined this
when he predicts a host of Christian Cains arriving at his future
judgment seat. “I was hungry but you never fed
me. I was thirsty but you never gave me drink. I
was ill and in prison but you never looked after
me.” How are they to know if he is hungry or
thirsty? It is not obvious. They simply do not
care. Preaching the gospel is our job, we have been
told. Saving innocent people from dying of malnutrition is
not. That is not the responsibility of a true Bible
Christian, it is said.
Amos lets us know something of God’s view of responsibility. Idolatrous Tyre is held accountable to Him for making money from human misery, selling “a whole population with no thought for their bond of brotherhood.” Edom is condemned for “stifling all pity. Moab is rebuked for burning to lime a heathen king’s bones; Israel is condemned for trampling down the poor like dust.
Nathan made clear to David that, although the Ammonites killed Uriah, David was fully responsible. He was the man without pity. Like the German doctor, he didn’t shoot the arrow. He just wanted a rival for his affections got out of his way. Says the Lord, you may not be a gunman; but if you are hating, and silently pulling a trigger in your heart, I will judge the thought for the deed. And please understand, even if you are only saying “Fool” to or about your brother deep inside, I will consign you to hell fire. Harsh, maybe, but it is the word of the Lord.
Passing on the
other side
Thankfully, the worst sins in God’s eyes are not sins of
commission. God has few problems forgiving those.
He grieves most when we shut our eyes and ears to things that are
inconvenient and simply pass by on the other side. When we
hear the cry of poor but do not listen. When, like the
Capernaum synagogue zealots, we blindly shun and even expel a little
one whom Jesus loves, because he does not support some religious
hobby-horse we are riding. Let us be warned: if our
irresponsibility should somehow lead others astray, it were better that
a millstone were put around our necks and we were dumped into the
Caribbean.
Accepting or
evading responsibility
Who was responsible for the death of Christ? Theologians have
argued about it for two thousand years, with more heat than
light. But there was a little sideshow on the way to Calvary
that is worth thinking about. Some women on the road
“mourned and wailed for him.” Jesus
– in a most uncharacteristic response – told them,
“Don’t weep for me. Weep for yourselves
and for your children.” Like the German doctor at
the gas chambers, they did not realize that even as mere bystanders
neither they nor their children could evade responsibility.
The “responsible dead” are not just those whose head is stuffed with Bible knowledge. In the main, they are those who, having taken up responsibilities before God in the family, at the workplace, in the ecclesia, and in the world, fulfil them or neglect them.
There is a wonderful story in the July 2001 Bible Missionary magazine. A couple who did missionary training in Jamaica are now helping to establish clinics in Kenya to help victims of AIDS and other diseases. And the Bible Mission is supporting this “important outreach work into the local communities.” Read it and praise God. Help financially if you can. At the very least, you will thank Him that many of us in the Brotherhood are learning at last what it means to be “responsible.”
The Editors
At
the Lord's Table
Last Exhort at Cayman Brac
"Famous last words” are never easy. Today’s are especially difficult because of the wonderful people of this beauteous isle to whom we must say goodbye. Brothers and sisters in Jamaica and Canada will remember some of them from our Seminars with great affection.
This moment vividly brings to mind another age and another island not so dissimilar in size. The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They welcomed us all. The chief official of the island welcomed us to his home. They honored us in many ways and when we were ready to sail, they furnished us with the supplies we needed (Acts 28).
How wonderfully true of us here in Cayman Brac has all that been – except that an airplane has replaced a ship! A few zealots defending their holy isle have tried to portray us as dangerous cultists, but most people have come to learn how misguided is this caricature.
We have just read Paul’s words to the Romans that we are justified freely by God’s grace (3:24). That is a marvelous concept, but one that can be very easily misunderstood and wrested, as Paul himself acknowledged (6:1). It does not mean, like so many in this island proclaim, that “the blood” just washes everything clean whatever our attitude and whatever we do – the “once saved always saved” delusion. Freedom in Christ is not freedom to sin.
In our times, unconditional liberty –
especially since the American Revolution – is taken for
granted as an inviolable human right. But for millennia this
was never so. Right here in this island the mixture of races
and languages confirms how recent is the “American
dream.” And neither is it so in God’s
economy.
Many of those to whom Paul wrote were the property of other men and
women: among them Herodion, the household slaves of Aristobulus and
Narcissus (16:10-11). These dearly beloved brothers and
sisters were not legally
“free.” But in Paul’s
Spirit-guided thought they had been “redeemed” by
God through the blood of Christ.
Remember, this concept is only a figure, a picture of reality. The literal blood of Jesus had, and has, no magical powers. It was a bit healthier than ours no doubt, through abstemious living, but ordinary blood nonetheless. It is a figure based on the living experience of those to whom Paul wrote. When, for example, a young Christian slave girl – German and Ethiopian girls were the most highly valued – was freed in Rome or anywhere else, it was never accomplished with a mere wave of the hand. Somebody paid the price. It was just the same here in Cayman Brac until 1838, and for another sixty years after that in nearby Cuba. The price was called the “redemption money.” The slave girl was bought by the Christian brother who wished to free her (maybe so he could marry her legally) and then emancipated by him as an act of free grace.
Don’t push the figure too far. A legally acceptable price had to be paid for the girl. But in redeeming you and I, God only pays a price figuratively and emotionally. He owes nobody anything. He does not play games with the Devil, as some medieval schoolmen thought. But, so merciful and gracious is our God that Paul speaks as if He had to pay a fortune in redemption money to our slave master or mistress – Sin throughout Romans, the Devil in Hebrews – out of His own pocket as it were, and then removed our chains.
And what was the price, in this extended figure? Romans 3 again: God presented [His Son Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. It was as if a merciful God, full of compassion for our cruel bondage, offered His beloved Son, crucified, tortured, bleeding, with a crown of thorns on his head, and a mocking sign on the tree to which he was impaled, for our release.
Buying a slave was no Wednesday market bargain. It is very significant that it was the Jewish priests, the very embodiment of Sin and the Devil, who paid out the exact redemption price for a healthy thirty year old male slave, only to have it flung back at them. In return, Judas handed over the Son of God, and they bound Jesus and led him away, just as if they had bought him in the slave market outside the Damascus Gate. Because Jesus was not a Roman citizen, he suffered the Roman treatment for rebellious slaves. He was stripped, whipped and crucified (Mark 15:24).
It occurs to me that the California wine we have been using here is totally inappropriate. It is cloying sweet. I am sure the wine the Master used was a tart and bitter cup. Can you drink the cup I am going to drink? (Matt. 20:22). Sure, we are able, the thunderous brothers responded. But are we able?
If we really appreciate the terrible price God ‘paid’ for our freedom, we would never abuse it. We have been bought with a price. Never let us be slaves of men again.
Moses refers to a loyal slave family that offers willingly to serve a beloved Master until death (Deut. 15:16-17). May we echo in our lives as we finally leave this blessed shore the words of Romans 6: Thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin, and have become slaves to righteousness.
Alan Eyre
Hear What the Children are Saying
Ten-year old Martika Rankine has leukemia. There was not enough money for medical treatment. So, many church friends of the family and well-wishers felt that efforts should be directed to convincing Martika that “God was blessing her with an early trip to heaven.”
Her eleven-year old friend Jon Mikol Haylock has a different theology, based on Luke 8:54 and 13:16. He began to tell people that if enough of them cared for a sick child as Jesus did, they might help Martika to be loosed from Death’s bond.
Young Jon Mikol organized “Hands Across Cayman” to help his sick friend. The idea swept the nation, and so on July 28, Heritage Day, inspired and led by an eleven year old boy who cared, a human chain of people linked hands across the island of Grand Cayman, singing and praying for Martika, and collecting funds. Off-duty police officers volunteered for crowd and traffic control
The next day, overwhelmed with emotion, the parents of Martika were presented with tens of thousands of dollars towards her medical expenses.
Marilyn Whittaker
I watched them tear a
building down:
A gang of men in a busy town.
With a mighty heave and a lusty yell,
They swung a boom and down it fell.
I said to the foreman
"Are these men as skilled
As the men you'd hire if you had to build?"
He gave a laugh and said "No indeed
Just a common laborer is all I need.
And I can wreck in a day or two
What it took the builder a year to do!"
And I thought to myself
as I went my way
Just which of these roles have I tried to play?
Am I a builder who works with care -
Or am I a wrecker as I tend God's own
Content with the labor of tearing down?
From Susanna Dawe, Newsletter of the Moorebank Ecclesia.
FAITH AND DOUBT
Doubt sees the
obstacles, faith sees the way.
Doubt sees the blackest night, faith sees the day.
Doubt dreads to take a step, faith soars on high.
Doubt questions "Who believes?" Faith answers "I!"
Dorothy Isaacs
This is the first of a series of short meditations by sister Mary Eyre, based upon the Second Book of Chronicles.
Introduction
In the Second book of Chronicles, we are introduced to many prophets.
Among them are Shemaiah, Iddo, Azariah Ben-Oded, Hanani, Micaiah, Jehu
Ben-Hanani, Eliezer Ben-Dodovahu, Jahaziel Ben-Zechariah, Elijah,
Jehoiada, Zechariah Jehoiada's son, another Zechariah, another Azariah,
another Oded, Huldah and Jeremiah - a real Heroes' Circle. They each
have a message for us.
Here is the theme of the book: The LORD sent word through His messengers again and again, because He had pity on His people (36:15). The book records the varying responses of those who heard the messages of these prophets, and their eternal fate that inescapably followed. The voice of the prophets was the voice of God.
The Chronicler records a prayer of David:
I know, my God, that you
test the heart and are pleased with integrity.
I have seen with joy how willingly your people have given to you.
O LORD, keep this desire in the hearts of your people for ever,
and keep their hearts loyal to you (I Chron. 29).
This prayer that God's people will remain loyal with wholehearted devotion remains a kind of standard or measure with which the prophets later in Second Chronicles compare the responses of their hearers.
1. Shemaiah
Shemaiah's first message to God's people was this: Do not fight against
your brothers. Go home, every one of you! And surprise, surprise, they
obeyed the words of the LORD!
When I was very young in the truth, there was a Shemaiah among us. He stayed at my home. His name was Bro. Islip Collyer. His message was the same. But sadly, most brothers and sisters that I grew up with did not do as the Israelites did. They decided instead to go on fighting until God's house was almost a wreck.
Shemaiah's second message to God's people was this: You have abandoned me: therefore, I now abandon you. Surprise again! The leaders of Israel, and the king, humbled themselves. Shemaiah must not only have been a very courageous man, but a very persuasive one as well. Rehoboam and his government ministers were a better lot than most of us. For most rulers and politicians, and most religious people, are not humble at all. Yet these said, The LORD is just, and accepted Shemaiah's advice.
God's third message to God's people through Shemaiah was this: Learn the difference between serving me and serving the kings [or gods] of other lands. You see, they had to learn by discipline, for God brought Pharaoh Shishak up from Egypt, and he took everything. Yes, everything. And once more, Rehoboam and his one time brash young supporters (perhaps they had been fired up like Mugabe's men) humbled themselves. And the Chronicler makes a terse comment: Indeed there was some good in Judah.
So think twice before running down Rehoboam. Have you and I done any better? Let us make sure that there is some good in us too.
Mary Eyre
"His Name Shall be Covered With Darkness"
TBASF is probably the most popular brand of audio-cassette sold in the Caribbean. BASF stands for Badische Anilin und Soda Fabriken AG, the name of a German manufacturing company.
The founder of the company was Fritz Haber, a brilliant Nobel prize-winning chemist, rector of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin.
BASF, the company he founded, made chemical weapons for the German government in both World Wars. More significantly, Haber developed and then his company manufactured vast quantities of Zyklon B poison gas used to kill millions of Jews in the extermination camps of Europe. When Haber demanded that his beautiful young wife Clara, also a brilliant chemist, assist him in producing a new chemical weapon that would enable nazi Germany to wipe out all enemy armies and conquer the world, she refused and shot herself with his pistol.
Then the Gestapo secret police discovered that Fritz Haber himself was a Jew. Fritz died of shock, but all the surviving members of the Haber family and relatives were gassed to death at Birkenau with Zyklon B from their own factory.
Recently, the senior editor was required to arrange a visit from a firm of pest exterminators. One firm promised its technique would be 100 percent successful because Zyklon gas from BASF was used, which exterminated every living thing down to the level of bacteria. The firm did not get the contract.