(September 2002 Edition)
Guest Editorial - Listen and Obey God
At the Lord's Table - Let us Imitate Barzillai
"What is Your Name?" (Genesis 32:27)
Guest Editorial
Listen and Obey God
Let us listen to the Lord when He calls us. Let’s look at Adam in Genesis 3:8. Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence (literally, faces) of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. We tend to hide from the meetings when we sin against God. This is exactly what Adam did when he disobeyed God. Maybe we are, like Adam, “afraid” (v.10). But this is not the right thing to do. Instead, we should draw nearer to God for He knows our weaknesses and shortcomings and wants to help us overcome. How does hiding help? Adam’s game of hide and seek did not help him at all. The angel of God had to play at searching for him, knowing of course where he was all the time.
Noah
obeyed God
God called Noah to build a big boat. People
thought that it was stupid to do so, because there was no water on which to
sail it. Little did they know that God was providing a place of safety for
His people. Noah listened to God’s word and obeyed, despite what others
said (Genesis 7:1-5, Hebrews 11:7).
In the West Indies most people do not get married. People say it’s not a part of our culture. But God says that married life is the way He wants us to live. To some of us, it may seem like building Noah’s ark. But God wants us to listen to Him, not the people around us who just accept our godless culture.
Abraham listened to God
In Genesis 12:1, God told Abraham to leave his homeland and go to a new
place. It is very hard for a person to pack up and journey not knowing
either the route or the destination, especially if he has great wealth like
Abraham did. The Lord spoke and he listened with ears and heart and obeyed
the voice of God.
Many of us as brothers and sisters, spiritual children of Abraham, don’t want to listen to what the Lord is telling us. So often we want to have our own way. The children of God must be submissive to God’s word and humble before His face, recognizing that He is merciful and gracious and seeks for us eternal blessings.
In ordinary daily life, do we listen to what others have to say, or only expect other people to listen to us? We can learn a whole lot by just listening. Sometimes I think it’s a lost art.
Moses
listened
An angel of the Lord appeared to Moses (Exo.
3:2-6). The circumstances were a bit frightening, for sure. Many people I
know would have just fled the scene, but Moses did not run away. He drew
near to listen to what the Lord wanted him to do. Moses thought that he
was not the right man for the job, and he told God so, but God still chose
him to fulfil His purpose.
Sometimes when we run away and hide it is because we don’t want to face up to inconvenient responsibilities. It is not what we think about ourselves in this life that’s important, but what God wants us to do. We have been talking to lots of brothers and sisters about the great challenges facing the brotherhood right now, and so many say, “Fine,” and then hide and leave it to someone else. We are to learn from Moses, and listen and obey God.
Joshua, Moses’ successor, walked in the footsteps of his master, Moses, in obeying the word of the Lord, and the Lord used him in wonderful ways. All God said to Joshua, he obeyed, and did accordingly. He was strong and courageous.
Samuel
listened, Eli didn’t
The young lad Samuel was probably about twelve
years old when the Lord spoke to him (I Sam. 3). His mother Hannah had
already done a good job in preparing him to listen to God’s guidance.
We can’t afford to spoil our children because it will make us sad in later years. We must toughen them spiritually from childhood so they can bear the yoke of service in their youth (Lam. 3:27). If Eli had listened to God with his heart he would have trained up his sons in a godly way. Because of this negligence he lost both his sons in a terrible disaster.
Not
too young to listen to God
David was just a young lad when God called him and he listened. It was
Samuel the prophet, the good listener in his own youth, who anointed him.
At first Samuel thought it strange that none of David’s older brothers were
chosen. Finally, David made his appearance and immediately Samuel knew that
he was the one to anoint.
Man tends to look on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart (I Sam. 16:7). Many people are called, but few are chosen to be anointed. They do not listen to God’s word. It goes in at one ear and out through the other. Brothers and sisters, listen and obey.
Jesus
calls us – listen to his voice
Jesus called his twelve disciples and immediately they obeyed him and
followed him. He said that his disciples, or his sheep, hear his voice and
they follow him. We too must listen to God’s word and hold fast to the end.
Melvin Gordon, May Pen, Jamaica
At the Lord's Table
Let us Imitate Barzillai!
We become like the God we worship. On a slightly lower level, we tend to imitate our role models, and follow their example. My parents, born a whole century ago, were poor, desperately poor. But they were honest. Never once in my childhood did I ever hear murmuring or a word of complaint. When some pest savaged the vegetables that my father tried to grow in his tiny plot, he would sigh a little but then just pray. It was always “Praise God! Hallelujah!” ‑ never resentment or a fist raised in anger at the Almighty.
My parents’ role model was the Jesus of the gospels, and the God they worshipped was the God of David, a God full of compassion, ready to forgive, gracious, and plenteous in mercy and truth (Psa. 86).
Show
compassion, not wrath!
For that reason my parents were merciful
people, a brother and sister in Christ among other brothers and sisters who
were not only compassionate in spirit, but deliberately showed
compassion. It came as – literally – second nature. They knew, and
knew about, very few Christadelphians beyond their own ecclesia. If they
were asked in passing what Christadelphians taught, they would just say,
“Love, my friend. God is love.” And their lives proved it. They taught
me about David’s God. Their favourite hymn was number 35, “The Lord our
God most gracious is, compassion He delights to show.”
Just recently a Muslim friend gave me one of his tracts entitled “Muhammad”. I suppose he wants to convert me to his God. Since bin Laden’s rise to world glory, he and his co-religionists have become very aggressive in preaching about Muhammad. The tract describes my friend’s role model, who, he says was without doubt the greatest man who ever lived.
So I read, “Muhammad was the Messenger of God. During his lifetime he loved beautiful women, fine perfume and tasty food. He took pleasure in seeing the heads of his enemies torn from their bodies by the swords of his soldiers. He hated Christians and Jews, poets and painters, and anyone who criticized him. Once he had a Jewish prisoner tortured in order to learn the location of the man’s hidden treasure. Then, having uncovered the secret, he had his victim murdered and added the dead man’s wife to the collection of women in his harem. He was one of history’s great leaders in the fields of politics and religion. Not only did he deal with matters of religion, but also with issues of law, with the daily jobs of believers, and perhaps most importantly of all, with the organization of an army.”
I asked my friend if Muhammad modelled his life on the God he worshipped. Certainly, I was told. Allah is a God of justice. He wants us to destroy all those who do not submit to his Messenger. His foremost qualities are absolute power and total ruthlessness. So, I thought, you intend to become like him. I told him I feared for his soul. He said I was soft.
Rejoice in mercy!
Our God is just. But His “mercy rejoices
against judgment” (James 2:13). I recall that many years ago some of
our earlier Christadelphian leaders in the Caribbean were wonderfully
compassionate and understanding people. You could confide in them and know
that your trust would never be betrayed. I am very hesitant in saying this,
but some of our present brethren – and especially some who visit us from
overseas – are not so. They like to keep on reminding us of things we did
wrong in the past, sometimes long years gone by, and hold it against us.
Upholding the purity of the Truth is all-important, they say. But that is
worthless without love (I Cor. 13:2-4).
Imitate Barzillai!
That is not the Jesus I know. I am a very old
Christadelphian now, like Barzillai, David’s aged friend. Barzillai knew
David had brought trouble on himself by his mistakes, and – if he had been
like many of us – he could have let David “stew in his own juice,” so
to speak, and have rubbed salt into David’s wounds. He did nothing of
the kind. He “provided the king with sustenance while he lay at
Mahanaim; for he (Barzillai) was a very great man” (II Sam. 19: 32). He
provided a “table in the wilderness” like the one before us now.
I would implore our twenty-first century brethren: base your life, your work, your example on God’s compassion, not His wrath. Then you will be sure to receive His mercy in the Day you come to need it most.
Barzillai of the Caribbean
We had some bad fussing in the family home. Unfortunately it was all about me, which was embarrassing, naturally. We are all brothers and sisters, so we decided to read Proverbs 27, so as to get some guidance.
One person quoted verse 12 and said the best thing to do when hurtful things are being said is just to walk away: A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself. Another said that was not the answer, and quoted verse 8: As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place. Walking away from anger, she said, just makes matters worse. A third referred us to verse 22 and suggested staying put but saying nothing, since keeping up a fierce argument is useless and settles nothing: Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.
I butted in to suggest that we women are usually most to blame for fussing (verse 15): A continual dropping in a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike, and also that some form of envy is usually the problem (verse 4): Who is able to stand before envy? Finally, we had to admit that vexatious fussing is not only needlessly cruel but also outrageous folly (verses 3,4).
What do you think should be done when fussing breaks out in a godly household? We refer to fussing about really important things here, not trifles. Yes, those things that send the blood pressure way up. What’s the best line? A cold shoulder? Walk off? Just ignore everything and everybody and smile sweetly? Freeze into icy silence? Laugh it off? Try and win the argument?
I don’t think we did very well at our end. There’s got to be a better way. Please, any ideas?
Mary Eyre
1. What three household articles did Barzillai bring to David and his men?
2. What four grain foods did he provide?
3. What three vegetable products did he provide?
4. What two dairy products were provided?
5. What meat was served?
6. What was the sweet dessert?
7. What was the condition of David’s people before Barzillai showed up?
8. How old was Barzillai?
9. What disabilities did he say he had?
10. What reward did David offer him?
11. Did Barzillai accept it?
12. What was David’s last loving gesture to Barzillai?
Answers in 2 Samuel chapters 17 and 19.
Bro. Tichenor was a Christadelphian with a missionary urge. He was a friend of Sis. Eusebia Lasius, Bro. John Thomas’ daughter. They were both members of the Jersey City ecclesia, established in 1883. He was a tea salesman. He would rent a ‘livery rig’ as it was called – a buckboard wagon and horse – and travel the back roads, selling tea and other staple groceries. One of his customers was Samuel van Aken, who had a small grocery store in the village of Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania. Sam, his wife and three sons all became Christadelphians, and they were responsible for teaching many others in that area the way of salvation. Laura Garing was a young woman who worked for Samuel and his wife. She also accepted the Truth and was baptized.
Bro. Tichenor’s next stop was at the village of Greeley, where he stopped to have his horse shod. He converted the blacksmith named Rosencrance and his wife, Louise, who was the local postmistress. Then he continued to Hawley, where there were several customers. By then, the steel tires on his rented wagon needed tightening and his horse needed to be reshod. So he stopped at the Reifler blacksmith shop. Reifler, who shod the horse, had no interest in his preaching. In fact, later he and his descendants at least to the fourth generation had a hate on Christadelphians which some of them vented on me during my childhood. But James Terwilliger, the wheelwright in the shop who worked on the tires, was an educated man. Not only was he converted and his wife, Addie, but they converted her stepfather, David R. Cooper and his wife Orvilla Potter Cooper, who were my grandparents, and their children Katy, Lloyd and Peter. Subsequently, the youngest daughter, Grace, also became a Christadelphian. My father, Peter, was baptized in 1891, when he was only eleven years old. Their next door neighbours, Jacob and Katherine Sweitzer, were baptized soon afterwards, and their children followed later.
Laura Garing’s father, John Garing, also happened to work part time as a blacksmith in the Reifler smithy, alongside James Terwilliger. He was a farmer in the town of Hawley, about twenty miles west of Lackawaxen. Under the influence of his daughter, his co-worker, and of course Bro. Tichenor, he and his wife became Christadelphians.
Laura Garing then taught the truth to, and married, a widower named John Jones, who lived in Scranton, a big mining town thirty miles away. For many years they ran a small store there. An ecclesia was established there, and Bro. John and a Bro. Thomas Llewellyn together built a meeting hall and the ecclesia met there for the next ninety years.
Bro. Tichenor made a final stop at a store in a place called Maplewood. The owner of the store was not impressed and threw his literature on to a shelf. Quite a long time afterwards the store owner’s brother, Hiram Merring, took the books down and started to read them. He and his wife became Christadelphians.
In the course of time there were quite a few converts in Hawley, my own birthplace. They met at first in private homes, then in a one-room schoolhouse, then for many years they rented the Oddfellows Lodge Hall.
In 1910, there was a spectacular visit of Halley’s Comet, and many Christadelphians supposed, from something Bro. John Thomas had said before he died, that Christ would return at that time. When this assumption proved incorrect, there was a great fragmentation among the Christadelphians, and some went off and started splinter groups, some calling themselves Christadelphians, and others taking other names. I can’t pretend even to give a list. [This premature date-setting crisis wrought especial havoc in distant Guyana, where there were more than six hundred Christadelphians at the time. Ed.].
Like my father before me, I was baptized at the age of eleven years and nine months. We were young, but we knew very clearly what we were doing. Such an age for immersion was not unusual in those days. In my case, Jerusalem had fallen to the British under Lord General Allenby, and there was another period of high expectation of the soon return of Jesus. But it was followed by more recriminations and splintering. Because of this problem, my parents and my brother and I left Hawley and travelled to attend meetings at Lackawaxen, which we did until the 1940’s. At that time there was gas rationing, and we could not make the trip. So there was some sort of reunion involving our family, and we were invited back to be members of the Hawley meeting. This period lasted until the mid-1950’s, when there was another split, over what I never was able to find out. As a result, the Hawley ecclesia melted away. In 1963, one group built a chapel at Honesdale, where an active ecclesia still exists. The majority of the members are third, fourth and fifth generation descendants of the pioneer Garing, Cooper, Sweitzer and Frisbie families, and their wives, or are spouses of said descendants.
My mother, Dora Frost, and William Brown were among the original Sunday school scholars of the Jersey City ecclesia back in 1883. After they were both baptized sometime in the 1890’s, Dora moved to Hawley when she married my father, Peter. William Brown then used to visit the area where Bro. Tichenor and brother Terwilliger, the blacksmith, had done their missionary work, and wrote up part of the story in the well-known book, Preaching the Truth. James Terwilliger is Paul Stephanas in the book. I don’t know the details, but I do know that hundreds of brothers and sisters all over the world now rejoice in the Truth through reading that little book. [Probably there are more than a hundred such brothers and sisters in the Caribbean alone. ‘Preaching the Truth’ has been reprinted at least six times in Britain and several times in Australia in the past fifty years. Ed.]
You can tell from my story that being a missionary means being on fire with the word of truth. It need not involve any big cumbersome organization. It means giving an answer of the hope that it is within us graciously and humbly to every man who asks of us. I do so long that more young brothers and sisters may catch that fire that burned in my native Pennsylvania so long ago. My story has a very sad part too. I do hope and pray that my younger brothers and sisters will never again spend precious time striving among themselves as my generation did while people around us are perishing in ignorance of the truth.
Margaret Cooper Knorr, 1991
"What is Your Name?" (Genesis 32:27)
During my second year at University, my professor in Management gave us a ‘pop quiz’. I breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: What is the name of the lady who cleans your classroom? Surely this was some kind of joke. I had often seen the cleaning lady, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Just before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count towards the quiz grade. Of course, said the professor. In your future business career, you will meet many people. All are significant, yes, even the cleaning woman. She is a person, made in God’s image, just like the CEO. They all deserve your attention and care. If you don’t know the name of the cleaning lady, you’ll never be any good in Management.
I have never forgotten that lesson.
Meta Bogle
During May we had three weeks of continuous rain. It rained and rained as if it would never stop. Bodies of water could be seen far and wide, some lying still while others rushed wherever they pleased, carrying humans, animals and various entangled objects along in their paths. As one distraught woman put it, “We know it’s not the Judgment because the Lord says He is not destroying the earth with water again.”
Water changed his plans!
Many Jamaicans, especially the older ones, stated that in all their lives
they had never experienced such abundant rainfall, nor seen so much water
lying on the ground in town or countryside. A few months ago the Prime
Minister of Jamaica committed his government to make the country’s roads
pot-hole free (2002 is an election year!). Millions of dollars were spent
to fulfil this promise. But the flood-rains have changed all this. The
data collected show that some rivers have changed their courses, new ones
have appeared as if from nowhere, bridges recently built have been washed
away, and roads now have more pot-holes than before they were fixed – some
with more pot-hole than road. In one parish a completely new lake one
hundred and seventy feet deep has been formed as if by magic and the water
continues to spring up from underground to sustain this amazing phenomenon.
Badly affected
The poultry rearing and farming industries have been greatly affected.
Acres upon acres of ground provisions and vegetables have been destroyed.
Many farmers lost animals. They were just not strong enough to withstand
the force and depth of the raging waters.
Fallible forecasts
The national meteorological centre was kept on its toes trying to make sure
that the correct weather report was announced so that the necessary steps
could be taken to minimise loss of life. Overall, they did a good job.
Thankfully, loss of life was minimal. Considering the overwhelming
magnitude of the disaster, only eight fatalities were officially reported.
But the fallibility of man was much in evidence. There were times when the
forecast promised a let up in the deluge, but instead down came yet more
rain, and there was severe flooding in some parts of the island even when
the weather prophets said the rains were definitely finished! These things
do remind us of the well-known song that God has the whole world – and its
future – in His hands. As His children we can face each day courageously
through His loving kindness toward us. Since we know not what tomorrow will
bring, we ought to say, if the Lord will we shall live, and do this,
or that (James 4:14-15).
Emergency centers
At the height of the crisis, thousands of families had to abandon their
homes, run for their lives, and seek higher ground to escape the raging
waters. Emergency shelters were set up at safe locations. The Red Cross
and other such organisations worked relentlessly trying to feed and care for
those who suffered as a result of the heavy rains. Once again we see the
works of the mighty God we serve. We know that He is able to protect His
people and deliver them from harm and ill.
Thankfulness
We are grateful to the Lord that the brotherhood in Jamaica has not suffered
any major loss. Two sisters in May Pen had frightening experiences. One
had to seek accommodation at a neighbouring home and watched helplessly as
the swirling water circled her house. The other sister lost a door as the
wind and rain battered her house and finally found entry.
Surely the word of God stands sure. So in all things we give thanks. God is our sustainer and provider. In Isaiah 55:10 the word of God is compared to rain and snow from heaven. When the mighty waters have subsided, they will bring new life to the earth, perhaps yielding bumper crops next year. In the same way that water covers the ground and causes crops to increase, providing food for us, so the word of God will perform that which He desires. Crops have been destroyed today, and this puts a high price on food items bought in the markets. But we can be assured that our land will soon yield again. And as God’s word goes forth with greater power in Jamaica, surely He will bless us with an abundant spiritual harvest, yielding thirty-fold, sixty-fold and an hundred-fold.
Gerzel Gordon