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The
Caribbean Pioneer (March 2002 Edition) |
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The following is a list of this month's articles.
At the Lord's Table - Unmovable Excitement at the Breaking of Bread
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The covenants of
promise Why ever should the Creator bind Himself with a covenant? A covenant is a promise, contract, or agreement which is sealed by an oath, that is to say, a solemn public declaration of intent. Indeed, God has affirmed that He has committed Himself by “two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie” (Heb. 6:18). And the reason? That “we might have a strong consolation”! God is our refuge Our forerunner Do we keep our
covenants? Job took his
covenants seriously! The use of
covenants A wonderful thing The covenant of baptism “God hath said…” Do we keep covenants like that? So that our word alone is our bond? (Matt. 5:33). Do we still keep them when everything has gone wrong, just as when things are going smoothly? If we want life eternal, we must. Salvation itself is a matter of covenant relationship. God has pledged Himself. So have we. He cannot lie or renege. Having free will, we can. But we are fools if we do. “For the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children’s children, to such as keep His covenant…(Psa. 103:17-18). Gerzel Gordon
“Be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always
abounding in the work of the Lord, I Corinthians 15:58 is a reminder for us to keep on the narrow road when the going gets rough, when we are tempted to depart for the apparently smoother, easier road, seeing other commitments as more important than the work of God. This passage points out that our labour will not be in vain. There are undoubtedly times in the life of a Christian when our walk is not rosy. Sometimes the narrow, rugged road can be distracting and even discouraging. We can slip, have bruises, even broken parts leaving scars and deformity. Should these adversities so affect us that we resort to complaints and murmurs about the roughness and narrowness of the road? Should we deviate to the smoother, broader road, like Israel of old who murmured in the wilderness and longed for the exotic foods and their previous life as overworked slaves back in Egypt? Keep the goal in
focus Daniel 3 tells us about three young brethren who were “steadfast, unmoveable.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon made a great image of himself and commanded all his subjects to bow down and worship it. Modern day dictators do the same thing in subtler ways! But these three brethren remained steadfast and unmoveable in their trust in the God of heaven, and adamantly refused to carry out the king’s commands, despite the fierce fury of this tyrant and his terrifying threat of burning them alive. These three brethren knew that their God had made the universe, and sustained them – unlike the lifeless god of gold and wood and stone which this megalomaniac tyrant had made. They just could not bring themselves to bow down to this idol. An unexpected
result Unmoveable Jesus! Patrick Rodney, Cayman Islands
Excitement at the Breaking of Bread or Eutychus in Greek means ‘Fortunate’. It was a typical name given (in jest perhaps?) to male slaves in Greek households. Our Eutychus was doubly fortunate! The room was warm, the hour late;
Walter Draper, Kingston, Jamaica
Quiz
In New Testament times, herbs and spices were very important ingredients of both Roman and Jewish cuisine. Every wealthy home had its herb garden, and the following are mentioned in the cookery books of the time: anise, cumin, silphium, thyme, scallion, bay leaf, basil, fennel, hyssop, rue, mint, parsley, pennyroyal, dill, ginger, cardamom, saffron, and cinnamon. Mary, Joanna and Lydia would have been quite at home in our Stabroek market in Georgetown! The equivalent in those days of our hell-fire sauce and fish tea was called liquamen, a very strong stock made of anchovies, factory-produced in seaside cities such as Caesarea and Tiberias. Herbs and sauces were very valuable products, and rich Jews were expected to “tithe” or offer them to support the temple in Jerusalem and the levitical professional classes such as scribes, lawyers, teachers and doctors. Jesus did not say that this was wrong. But he ridiculed religious leaders because they carefully measured out the proper quantity of herbs and spices but “omitted” the great moral principles of justice, mercy and faith. He was worried about the priorities of religious people who were happy to gain merit by performing rituals, to whom the herbs and spices in their gardens were so much more important than poor and needy people around them. Apicius was the Roman author of the world’s longest selling cookery book, entitled “Sauces.” Editions were eventually produced for four hundred years. He apparently got into some financial trouble. When the bursar of his estate revealed that he only had ten million sesterces left (about six million USD in today’s money), he took poison saying that it would be no longer possible for him to maintain his accustomed life style! Which is our priority: herbs [our ecclesial protocols] or mercy? From Marian Woodman
Twice I was invited to exhort at the old Moreland Hill meeting. The presiding brother, Percy Drummond, called upon a fine old brother, Jabez Davis, to read Matthew 22. It was a very powerful reading but, oddly, the verses were not in the text order, and he missed out one or two. On the next occasion, Jim Drummond as presiding bother called upon Jabez to read Haggai 2. There was a fairly long pause and then, “Sorry, I don’t know that one, brother.” Jabez was illiterate. He wasn’t reading at all. He was reciting from memory. When I read Bro. Hugo Mitchell’s exhortation, I remember when I met Wilfred Grunnill, an English missionary brother who was in his eighties. He had a long white beard, and incredible determination of spirit. He arrived in Port Antonio after midnight in an old beat up motor car with no muffler and no headlamps. He had made the eighty mile journey from Kingston, through the night and over the Blue Mountains without lights. I asked him how he had managed. He said that as a seaman, he had always had good night vision, and for some of the way he had just followed the tail lights of a car in front. He also said that he had a flat tire on the way over, which is why he was a bit late. I once visited a little ecclesia in the mountains of one of the West Indian islands. The Sunday I went they had a baptism – a 71-year-old lady. They asked me to officiate. We went to the only water available, a rushing mountain stream. We made a little pool by damming the flow with big stones. The water was ice cold. I shivered continuously from the time I stepped in. It didn’t seem to worry the new sister at all. She was so eager that she almost plunged into the water. On emerging, she paused a moment to raise her hands and shout an Alleluia. She took the emblems afterwards as if her life depended on it, which, if you come to think about it, it did. A few days later, after I had left the area, I heard that she had fallen asleep in Christ, from pneumonia. As a young sister, I spent a few years in the Caribbean. The most meaningful moment for me was a breaking of bread meeting in a brother’s house in Marabella. There was a Hindu funeral going on right in the next yard, and the wailing and shrieking was so loud that it was impossible for us to hear either presiding or exhorting brother. Both decided they could not compete. So we remembered the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus in complete silence. The emblems meant so much more to me that day.
Elisha, when his master Elijah was taken away from him, witnessed an awesome sight: a chariot of fire and horses of fire that came between the two prophets. Elisha cried, “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof!” Who was he speaking to? Elijah? God? Both? And what was the connection with Israel? In II Kings 6:15, Elisha and his servant are besieged by Syria’s army. Elisha prays that his fearful servant may be able to see what Elisha could see. When he looked, he saw chariots of fire and horses of fire on the mountains all around, a clear demonstration of God’s power and protection. Was this vision open to Elisha’s eyes all the time? What did he see and what was he talking about? Psalm 104 talks about God’s power and might and His creative force in the forming of this world: Who maketh the clouds his chariot and his ministers a flame of fire. Isaiah 66 speaks thus: The Lord will come with fire, and with chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. Habakkuk 3 has this: Was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation? In II Samuel 22, David speaks of God’s saving power in song and describes how God had protected those who called upon His name. Was David privy to the same vision witnessed by Elijah and Elisha, because the language is so similar? In verse 11, we have a big clue to our understanding of this subject. The Hebrew word for chariot is the same root word as that for cherub. The chariot and the cherubim are one and the same, the means by which God moves around. Ezekiel 1 fills in many details. There we have many significant features: clouds, a whirlwind or tornado, a fantastic vehicle with wheels full of eyes, and strange living creatures. Above the creatures was a sheet of ice or crystal that appears to be supported by the wings of the creatures. There was a throne like sapphire, and a rainbow of many colours. The appearance was the likeness of the glory of the Lord. In chapter 10, the man clothed with linen (a prophecy of Christ?) was told to go in between the wheels under the cherub and fill his hand with coals of fire. The court was filled with the brightness of the glory of the Lord. Was this the same glory used to lead the Israelites through the desert in the pillar of cloud and fire? What we see here is a vision of God’s glory demonstrated in the construction of a fantastic vehicle. This vision of God’s power and activity in the world was seen by Moses, Elijah, Elisha, David, Ezekiel and other faithful ones, giving them all the strength and encouragement they needed to witness to the truth. Could this be the means by which the Lord Jesus was taken up into heaven by the cloud that received him? And he will come back “in like manner” as he went. Will we be ready when our Lord and Master, the Son of God, rides upon his horses and chariots of salvation? R.L. Canning and Andrew Spiers, Australia |
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