(May 2002 Edition)
"Can you Fathom the Mysteries of God?"
Poem - Onward Christadelphians
Paul exhorts us in I Timothy 2:2-3 to lead a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour.
Being honest in the sight of all men means that we must be completely straightforward and truthful in our dealings with others -- and also to ourselves. We say we have accepted the Truth and claim therefore that we are honest. But do we continue to make mischief and tell lies?
To be honest is
hard
Sometimes we find it hard to be honest because we don’t want to upset
anyone. To take a very trivial example: we see a friend and we don’t think
that her clothing is at all appropriate but we are afraid to say so and end
up complimenting her. Is that being honest?
In speaking the truth we have to be gentle and considerate, but sometimes even that can bring hurt feelings.
Complete honesty
We are supposed to be missionaries preaching the Lord Jesus Christ in word
and action. He was always totally honest and true – as we must be! He was
not only honest in the sight of all men, he was totally honest before God.
And he will help us in our aim to be honest before God, for only then will
our honesty be complete. Look how he helped Peter to overcome his shameful
dishonesty. And he did it in deepest love.
The Lord hates
lying lips
Sometimes we tell lies and excuse them as jokes when they are found out.
“Like a madman shooting firebrands or deadly arrows is a man who deceives
his neighbour and says, ‘I was only joking!’” (Prov. 26:18-19). This kind
of behaviour is often seen in children and because it is not corrected it
continues into manhood. It is never too early to learn that complete
truthfulness must be a way of life from childhood onward. These things the
Lord hates – a proud look, a lying tongue, a false witness who tells lies,
and he that sows discord among brethren.
The evils of
repetition
We must be on our guard that we are not taken in by lies just because we
hear them over and over again. We must also make sure that we ourselves are
not guilty of trying to convince others of something that is not true by the
use of repetition. Remember that mob in the theatre in Ephesus? They
wanted everybody to believe that the goddess Diana was real. So they just
shouted and screamed and chanted in unison “Great is Diana of the Ephesians”
for a couple of hours until everybody was hoarse. But the idol was as dead
at the end of all those “vain repetitions” as it was at the beginning. Let
us not be so proud as to refuse to give up a false opinion we have, even
though the truth has been revealed to us.
Recently I spoke to a sister concerning a brother and family member about some misunderstanding that had taken place. The sister made it clear that there was nothing I nor anyone could do to convince this brother that what he heard was a lie. He is stubborn and too proud to let go of self and be humble. We deplore this behaviour in others. Let us also be sure that we despise it in ourselves as well.
Dwell together in
unity
In Psalm 133, we are reminded that it is good and pleasant for brethren to
dwell together in unity. The final blessing of eternal life will come only
to brethren and sisters who dwell together in unity. Spreading lies and
believing them causes discord and unhappiness. What a hateful thing to sow
seeds of bitterness in a united family and cause unnecessary strife! This
is the old nature of man, but for those who are washed in the blood of the
Lamb, this should not be named among us. Our faith should be stronger than
to tell lies.
A new medium for
lies
The Internet and E-mail have provided a new medium for spreading lies about
those whom we may not like. We can hide our identity while still causing
pain to others. I have been appalled at the misuse of the Internet by
brethren who should know better. I know one sister who has suffered intense
distress because of untrue things circulated widely about her, in some cases
by brethren who have never even met her. It should never be like that in
the family of God.
Why should anyone – especially a brother or a sister – tell such lies deliberately? Is it to accomplish evil? Why go naked to such a work when there are many beautiful garments ready to hand? It is easy to feel bitter and find covering which might even deceive ourselves.
Be thankful
We have much to be thankful for today through the mercies of God shown in
the saving name of Christ Jesus. That’s why many of us who have lying lips
like Ananias and Sapphira don’t drop down dead immediately as they did.
There is still time to start a life of truthfulness. How long are we going
to wait before we,
Speak the truth and speak it ever, cost it what it will.
He who hides the wrong he did, does the wrong thing still.
Brethren and sisters, we cannot lie our way through to the Kingdom. Instead, be honest and true. Be truly serious about the word. Be true to one another.
Gerzel Gordon
Find them down and across in the letter square.
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She pretended not to know her child.
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Abram told him his wife was his sister.
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She and her husband misrepresented the amount they gave to the church.
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He said he did not know Jesus when pressured by a slave girl.
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Potiphar’s wife tore off his loincloth and said he had raped her.
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She said she did not have her father’s images.
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He told a woman she would not die if she disobeyed God.
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People from here pretended not to be neighbours of the Israelites so that they would not be killed.
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He stole from the place which God had said should be completely destroyed and nothing taken.
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They wore these and carried stale food to prove to the Israelites that they came from afar.
JOSEPHSA
OLASELEB
CAPOTWRI
HRPSEOPM
EIHLRNEE
BGIBEONL
EORAGSTE
DFACHANC
RACHELAH
Annette Johnson
I am 19 miles away from the ecclesia and have no transportation. Nevertheless I am not a bit discouraged for there is one sister in our ecclesia who is 40 miles away. Thinking of my beloved brothers and sisters in other parts of the world – such as Africa, England, America, Panama, Russia, etc. -- I verily believe that there are some who are living in worse isolation than myself. Living so far away from the nearest ecclesia I am unable to attend the weekly meetings which mean so much. But there is one meaningful moment for me every single day: that moment is when I take my Bible and my Bible Companion. These are beyond price. I say to everyone who is isolated: please don’t allow an isolated life to prevent you from living up to the highest standards of a Christian life. Alone with God we live. Alone with God we die. But not alone, we rise to life eternal.
Many readers will know that Bro. Neville Beckford of Kingston has been partially disabled from birth. One Sunday in August, 2000, he was due to preside at the memorial service. On the way to the meeting hall he slipped and fell. In intense pain, and finding himself unable to walk, he hailed a taxi in order to reach the hall and fulfil his duties. After the meeting, sensing that Neville needed help, Bro. Jim Samuels took him to the nearest hospital, where X-rays revealed a multiple compound fracture of the hip. He was transferred to a larger hospital, where he had major surgery and was a month on the ward. It was six months before he could walk again. We have all read stories in magazines like Readers’ Digest and National Geographic about Olympic and similar heroes who conquer their disabilities to win international fame. Bro. Neville Beckford is my Christadelphian hero. He seeks an incorruptible crown.
The outpatients’ waiting room at Kingston Public Hospital was crammed with victims of hurricane Gilbert in 1988 awaiting treatment for trauma. For many hours 40-plus year old Sis. Marie Williams, a victim of Gilbert’s fury, sat in the hard tin chair beside me, a study in Christian patience. One hand was resting on my knee in a touch of brotherly love. Bone weary myself from the long wait, I nodded off several times. I was jerked into consciousness when a trolley porter tapped my shoulder and said, “She’s dead, you know.” I looked at Marie, her hand still resting on my knee. It was true. She had fallen asleep in Christ.
In 1957 I had a terrible accident – a head on collision on a winding mountain road. An elder brother from my ecclesia was critically injured and my son was seriously hurt. I ‘awoke’ in hospital long after. Eventually all three of us recovered, the elder brother with permanent brain damage. A very meaningful moment for me occurred many, many years later. In the course of my duties with a Caribbean government, I had to meet some members of the British royal family at a function in Lancaster House, the London headquarters of the British Commonwealth. During the tea break, I observed a man looking at me intently. Finally he came up to me and said, “Did you have a bad accident in 1957?” Puzzled, I replied, “Yes, but why do you ask?” “I thought I recognised you. It happened right outside my house. I took you all to the hospital and saved your life.”
Sometime around 1980, the late Bro. Hugo Mitchell told me about a very famous Soviet visitor to Guyana. They discussed the plight of Christians in the Soviet Union and Hugo must have mentioned that he, along with many of his colleagues and friends, believed in God. The visitor was scornful of such primitive folly and predicted that, within ten years, the triumph of scientific socialism would totally eliminate such crass superstition. Hugo answered after this manner: Don’t you know that for 3000 years the Bible has been telling us that it is the man who says there is no God who is the fool. Who was right?
For some time a blind old man has been coming regularly to our meetings in Kingston. We knew he lived close by, but when he said that he desperately wanted to become a member, we decided it was time to find out where he lived. He led me down a few dingy, deserted streets, and showed me the entrance to a long street full of people. Many eyed me with suspicion. There was a huge tree trunk barring the way, and beyond a massive barricade of burnt out cars, rusty refrigerators, and mountains of stinking garbage. Men in unidentifiable uniforms fingered heavy machine guns. “Down there,” he said, “is where I live. Right behind that piece of zinc. Whenever you want to see me, just ask for ‘Old Blindy’ and say that you are from his church.”
Bro. Chris Tarry (The Hague, Netherlands) had a surprise for us oldies when he visited Jamaica in March. It was a set of 34 photographs that were 43 years old. They were black and white pictures of ecclesial activities and brothers and sisters in Jamaica in 1959 and 1960.
Those photographs are marvellous. Those were wonderful days of dramatic growth in the Caribbean. Nearly two hundred people appear in the pictures, some children but mostly brothers and sisters who had been baptized within the previous three years. An astonishing thing, looking at them now, is the youthfulness of our ecclesial population at that time. The photograph of the Kingston ecclesia shows a group of 28 brothers and sisters with only two over 35 years old – Bro. Herbert Burke and Bro. Harry Whittaker. Of those brothers and sisters in that picture, only seven are still alive, of which four are ‘shut-ins.’ But the truly amazing thing is that of the twenty-eight brothers and sisters, twenty-one are asleep in Christ, and the seven alive still live in him. Over 43 years, not one has made shipwreck or lost faith.
There is a photograph of the Old Hope ecclesia, taken in front of their old thatched hall, before it became Broughton. Seventeen brothers and sisters: just two still alive. Not one was lost.
The photograph of the Epping Forest ecclesia shows their hall made of zinc sheeting. It was a furnace inside! A smiling group of 11 brothers and sisters. One of the group – a converted witch – went back to practise her old craft. The rest died in faith, with just three surviving now, only one still in Jamaica. There are nine members of the old Mandeville ecclesia beside their little meeting hall. Two are now just hanging on to life still. None left the faith.
There is a wonderful old photograph of the Lances Bay ecclesia, with its fine meeting hall before the enemies of the gospel invaded and hacked it to pieces with axes. Again, with 15 brothers and sisters in the picture, every single member died strong in faith or still lives today rejoicing in the truth.
There is a group of ten at the Rockfort Mineral Baths, witnessing a baptism. Nine Jamaican stalwarts of faith. The only backslider has been one English brother who happened to be visiting Jamaica at the time.
What giants of faith were they! What a wonderful harvest the Lord was reaping in the Caribbean in 1960!
Some individual close-ups actually brought tears to our eyes. Bro. Sidney Tomlinson of Kingston, cruelly racked with TB but radiant and smiling; Bro. Alfred Bingham of Old Hope; Bro. David McLeod of Mandeville; Bro. Larry Henry and Sis. Joyce Silvera of Kingston; Sis. Ruby Pinnock of Epping Forest. These all died tragically, or were killed, in their prime, while still in the full flower and power of ecclesial life.
Then there are the dearly beloved ones who lived so long and faithfully that it seemed that they would always be with us: Bro. Willie Watson of Broughton, Bro. Herbert Burke of Kingston, Bro. Charlie Lamb of Epping Forest, and that amazing Sis. Etta Young of Old Hope who, we recall fondly, was baptized as a dear old lady in 1957 and is still praising God today in Broughton.
These old photos make you want to shout for joy because of what God has wrought. The faces in all those photographs are just fantastic. Black, brown, white, they absolutely radiate joy.
If you want convincing evidence that God is, and is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, then look at those thirty-four old photographs, as we did, and thank Him from your hearts!
Fifteen Jamaican oldies (over 75!)
Advice from an Elder to the Young Generation
Commence the day
with God, and speak to Him in prayer.
Ask for His blessing on thy way, and He thy life will share.
Open His wondrous word, and read it every day;
For priceless wisdom is therein, a light for all thy way.
With God go through the day, for He is at thy side;
At home, abroad, in solitude, or on the ocean tide.
When daily work is o’er and sunset gilds the sky,
Think on the marvels of His power and praise the Lord most High.
Conclude the day with thanks to Him who will thee keep
From harm and danger in the night whilst thou shalt sweetly sleep.
"Can you Fathom the Mysteries of God?"
Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty? asked Zophar the Naamathite a very long time ago (Job 11:7 NIV).
Not long ago, Alan Guth, internationally renowned Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was awarded the Benjamin Franklin medal, one of the most prestigious awards in the world of science, only a whisker short of a Nobel.
Franklin himself, I am sure, would have been startled at the reason for this award of his medal. Dr. Guth was given the Medal for answering Zophar with a resounding “Yes!” He was credited with being the greatest living thinker for “answering the central question of human existence, the origin of the universe.”
And what is his answer for which he has been given such an accolade? Here it is: “Everything was created in a random quantum fluctuation out of nothing. The universe burst into something from absolutely nothing. And as it got bigger, it became filled with even more stuff that came from absolutely nowhere. All matter plus all gravity in the observable universe equals zero. So the universe came from nothing because it is, fundamentally, nothing.” [To which comment the Tidings editor is having a good chuckle. What the universe came from is something not visible to us, but it is certainly something, something awesome from which God made all things.]
Guth says that “it seems like a sure thing” that there are many universes, and they are all self-reproducing – “like bacteria.” He claims that he can “explain creation by the laws of physics,” by simply invoking quantum mechanics.
Is that explaining, or explaining away? Guth admits that the universe is so finely tuned that matter, velocity and gravity all balance to within a range tolerance of (at most) 1000 million million to one, otherwise the universe would have collapsed aeons ago. But he insists that this can still be thought of as within the reasonable limits of chance! During a recent interview, science writer Brad Lemley asked Guth, “You say that a chance or random spontaneous creation from nothing is compatible with the laws of physics. But where do the laws of physics come from?” Guth answered, “We are a long way from bring able to answer that one.” So there’s no Nobel Prize in the pipeline in that direction just yet.
The Franklin medallist claims to have identified the power that created the universe: repulsive gravity. According to Guth, gravity can ‘exist’ even when there is nothing. And can create everything out of absolutely nothing, including you and I, and -- if he really exists at all -- God. “Anything – a dog, a house, a planet -- can pop into existence by means of a quantum quirk, a vacuum fluctuation.” His students -- who adore him -- describe him as full of excitement that either a telescope or an atom smasher somewhere in the world will soon provide the clinching scientific proof with, of course, a Nobel Prize to top it off.
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this. What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Do you know the laws of the heavens? (Job 38:18-19,33).
Alan Guth’s response to the Lord is not exactly modest. At a meeting of the New York Academy of Sciences after ‘September 11,’ he proclaimed that only a secular scientific rationalism like his can possibly defeat terrorism and free the world of fear.
Job’s answer was a little different: “I am unworthy – how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer” (40:4-5).
Three thousand years before Alan Guth got his Medal, David king of Israel taught his choir a song: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, and their ways are vile. God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Will the evildoers never learn? Oh that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!” (Psalm 53:1,2,4,6).
That Benjamin Franklin Medal: was it awarded to Alan Guth for science, or for being a fool?
Adapted and updated from a Christadelphian lecture
Poem - Onward Christadelphians
Onward,
Christadelphians, gathering in the sheaves,
By Truth’s revelation, each one who it believes.
Fear not, then, O brethren, work for Jehovah’s praise;
His arm shall bear your courage up, though difficult your days.
Like the
mighty ocean is the truth of God.
Comrades, do not falter, with peace your feet are shod.
Truth your only standard, love unto all mankind,
Forward, ever forward, the Bible as your Guide.
Forward,
ever forward, till the truth is known;
Take your Savior’s message – you do not go alone.
Lo, his promise given, he’s with you all the way,
Guiding, guarding, strengthening, helping those who pray.
In this
great commission your work has just begun,
A lone voice in the wilderness, at rise, at set of sun.
Now may Jehovah strengthen through His Son our Lord.
Go then in strength and prosper. The world awaits His Word.
Ruby Holland
Our beloved sister Ruby wrote this poem for the occasion of her baptism on May 19, 1960, nearly forty-two years ago, at Number 63 Beach on the Corentyne in Guyana. Her call was certainly prophetic of the present hour when the gospel is going to all nations of the earth.