For Those Seeking The Truth & Dynamic Living

Christ is Victor

January/February 2008                                                                                         

Volume 21, Number 1

 

In The Beginning God ...

 

Now the Bible begins with these words. Yes, that is God's place and no other place can be assigned to him either by human vanity or arrogance. As we all well know, we hate to give Him that First place. We feel that by giving God that Prime and Fore­most place, we are somehow losing out. I know even those who have preached on the scripture, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33) are struggling to keep God first when it came to making decisions, where "SELF" and the flesh had to die. In other words, from human reasoning it did not seem to be rational or advantageous to put God and His Kingdom first in those situa­tions and they chose to do their own will. Some of them never recovered from the evil fruit of their selfish choices.

Now there is no situation where the sec­ond place belongs to God. Most people, notwithstanding their better knowledge, follow a daily routine, and adopt a life-style where God is shunted to a back seat. When it comes to choices, purchases or choos­ing measures of security or self-preserva­tion, men's thoughts, society's ways or one's own predilections, gain total ascend­ancy. In other words God simply has not the first place, nor is His word their “Road Map”. Now such people flounder, slide and slump while years roll on and life itself leaves them behind. On the contrary how wonderful it is, to be “fools for Christ's sake” and simply win, for there can be no other end-result when the Saviour is given His rightful place.

Today, in our midst, when we ought to be producing thousands of soul-winners and men and women of great faith and dedication, we are just not producing the men of such depth and faith as George Muller, or who practice simple obedience to God's word as Hudson Taylor, or men who walk with God like Sundar Singh. We have been given so much light and our retreats and conferences are rich with the preaching of the word of God. Where have we been slipping? In obedience, humility and thankfulness.

The devil should be continually on the run as we PRAISE, PRAISE and PRAISE. Every wall should fall as God walks be­fore us. Christ our Saviour is the BEGIN­NING, the first-born of all things. He walks before us. A New Year must not suffer from the sameness of past failings or pride. Let us ask God for new vision, faith and sacrifice. However small the re­sponsibility entrusted to us, let us pray that we will be found faithful.

- Joshua Daniel

 

Reality Check

 

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

John 3:16

 

“Forgiving One Another”

    This story tells about identical twin boys.  The boys’ lives became inseparably intertwined.  From the first they dressed alike, went to the same schools, did all the same things.  In fact, they were so close that neither ever married, but they returned home and took over the family business when their father died.  Their relationship was pointed to as a model of creative collaboration.

     One morning a customer came into the store and made a small purchase.  The brother who waited on him put the dollar bill on top of the cash register and walked to the front door with the man.

    Sometime later he remembered what he had done, but when he went to the cash register, the dollar was gone.  He asked his brother if he had seen the money and put it in the register, and the brother replied that he knew nothing of the money in question.

     “That’s funny,” said the other, “I distinctly remember placing the bill here on the register, and no one else has been in the store since then.”

     Had the matter been dropped at that point- a mystery involving a tiny amount of money- nothing would have come of it.  However, an hour later, this time with a noticeable hint of suspicion in his voice, the brother asked again, “Are you sure you didn’t see that dollar bill and put it into the register?”  The other brother was quick to catch the note of accusation, and flared back in defensive anger.

     This was the beginning of the first serious breach of trust that had ever come between these two.  It grew wider and wider.  Every time they tried to discuss the issue, new charges and countercharges got mixed into the brew, until finally things got so bad that they were forced to dissolve their partnership.  They ran a partition down the middle of the store and turned what had once been a harmonious partnership into an angry competition.  In fact, that business became a source of division in the whole community, each twin trying to enlist allies for himself against the other.  This warfare went on for more than twenty years.

     Then one day a car with an out-of-state license plate parked in front of the store.  A well-dressed man got out, went into one of the sides, and inquired how long the merchant had been in business in that location.  When the man learned it was more than twenty years, the stranger said, “Then you are the one with whom I must settle an old score.”

     “Some twenty years ago,” he said, “I was out of work, drifting from place to place, and I happened to get off a boxcar in your town.  I had absolutely no money and had not eaten for three days.  As I was walking down the alley behind your store, I looked in and saw a dollar bill on the top of the cash register.  Everyone else was in front of the store.  I had been raised in a Christian home and I had never before in all my life stolen anything, but that morning I was so hungry, I gave in to the temptation, slipped through the door, and took that dollar bill.  That act has weighed on my conscience ever since, and I finally decided that I would never be at peace until I came back and faced up to that old sin and made amends.  Would you let me now replace that money and pay you whatever is appropriate for the damage?”

     The stranger was surprised to see the old man shaking his head in dismay and beginning to weep.  When that brother had gotten control of himself, he took the stranger by the arm and said, “I want you to go next door and repeat the same story you have just told me.”  The stranger did, only this time there were two old men, who looked remarkably alike, both weeping uncontrollably.  But alas, how many precious years have been lost due to bitterness in their hearts towards each other!

     “Follow peace with all men…, Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.” (Hebrews 12:14)

“The Devil’s Best Tool”

     Once upon a time- so the story goes- the devil decided it was time for him to retire.  He planned to sell all his tools of trade- malice, hatred, jealousy, lust, envy, sloth- and arranged them, price tags and all, in the most attractive manner possible.

     One of the devil’s tools was a seemingly harmless, wedge-shaped object.  But it was the highest priced of all the items on display.  Moved with curiosity, someone approached the devil and asked what he called this particular tool.

     The devil’s smile became a smirk of cunning.  “That’s discouragement,” he replied.

     “But why is it priced so high?” his interrogator persisted.

     “Because,” answered the devil, “it is the most useful tool I have ever possessed.  I can do more with discouragement than with any of the others.  With it I can pry open a man’s conscience, and once inside it’s no trick at all to get him to do anything I want.

     “And though you’d hardly believe it,” the devil added, “very few even suspect that it belongs to me.”

     No sensible person expects life to be a bed of roses, but for all that, a tendency to discouragement seems to be one of the most prevalent of human traits.  Sometimes, when troubles and disappointments seem to pile up, when the future seems dark and foreboding, there is a great temptation to break down and confess defeat.  It is at just such times that the utmost efforts should be made to shake off the weight of discouragement.  Otherwise, despair, which is the ultimate defeat, may seize upon the soul and destroy it.

     The best antidote to discouragement is trust in God.  God is never blind to the afflictions of His creatures.  While He permits us to suffer, for His own good reasons, He never allows the burden to become too heavy for any individual shoulder.  Discouragement, there, is merely a sign that we have not kept close to Him as we should; that we have, in fact, neglected Him and refused to accept His offers of help.

     Every life will have its share of discouragement.  But discouragement will never overcome a soul, which keeps its vision fixed on the eternal reality of God and His truths.  Paul sounded a challenge to all when he declared that nothing on earth- grief, pain, temptation or disappointment- could ever separate him from the love of God.  The love of God remains the impenetrable armour against which the devil will strike in vain with the weapon of discouragement.

     “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” (Ephesians 6:11) 

-Selected

“William Carey- God’s Extraordinary Plodder”

     William Carey is almost universally acknowledged by church historians as “The Founder of Modern Missionary Movement” and one of the most important Christian missionaries in world history.  From poverty, obscure beginnings and a disadvantaged background in rural eighteenth-century England, Carey emerged as the driving force in the establishment of the modern missionary movement.

     He left behind a vigorous indigenous Indian Christian community, translations of the Bible in all the major languages of the Indian sub-continent, and an inspiring example of Christian courage and dedication that moved thousands of others to follow in his steps.

     A self-described ‘Plodder’ Carey was more than that.  It was his dogged determination and inspired leadership that marked the beginning of a movement that would literally transform church structures and innumerable lives and cultures.

Carey’s Early Life

     Carey was born on August 17, 1761, in the village of Paulerpury, in Northamptonshire, in central England.  Carey’s father was a weaver, school teacher, and parish clerk of the village Church of England.  This meant that he was a somewhat learned but poor villager who led a simple and uncomplicated rural existence.  Limited in formal education, William Carey nevertheless quickly mastered not only English but also Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch and French.  He also loved history and geography and enjoyed studying what today would be called botany and horticulture.

     However, as was the custom of the day, his impoverished parents tried to find young Carey a suitable trade as soon as possible.  Thus he was apprenticed at age fourteen to shoemaker Nichols, and continued in that vocation for another fourteen years.

     He made and hung a huge world map on the wall of his Moulton cottage on which he indicated the latest religious and political statistics of the different countries, as he was able to obtain them.  Thus he began to develop a biblical perspective on missions and soon became convinced that foreign evangelism was a central responsibility of the church.  Carey’s ideas were revolutionary.  Many eighteenth-century English church leaders were convinced Calvinists who believed that the Great Commission was given only to the apostles, and the conversion of the overseas world of their day was none of their concern.  In this context, Carey raised the question: Should not the gospel be taken to all the people of the world?

     Captivated by this vision, Carey raised the question among his ministerial colleagues of the Northamptonshire Baptist Association, only to be rebuffed by one of them, “Young man, sit down.  When God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine!”

     But Carey refused to be silenced.  Carey preached at an Association meeting at Nottingham- again hammering away at his theme of taking the gospel to all the people of the world.  The sermon has not survived, but his text was Isaiah 54:2, “Enlarge the place of thy tent, stretch thy tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen thy cords strengthen thy stakes.”  It was a stirring missionary appeal with two points “(1) expect great things, and (2) attempt great things.  The impact of the sermon was direct and immediate, and few sermon headings have been so frequently cited.

     At the following Association meeting at Kettering on October 2, 1792, the gathered Baptists made the momentous decision to form the Particular Baptist Society for the propagation of the Gospel- later simply the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS).  The BMS’s first appointee was John Thomas, a Baptist layman who had gone to India as a medical doctor with the Royal Navy and stayed on as a freelance evangelist.  Now, back in England, he wanted to return to India to minister.  Carey offered himself to the new society as a suitable companion to Thomas and was immediately accepted.

     In many ways, Carey was unsuited to answer his own call for missionary volunteers.  He was thirty-two years old, married, with three young sons under age nine, and a pregnant almost illiterate wife.  Of course, Carey did go and never returned to England.  But the cost in terms of his wife’s mental and physical health and the welfare of his children was extremely high.  Only a deep commitment to his Christian duty and unswerving perseverance sustained him.

India: the Early Years

     Carey’s early years in India were incredibly difficult.  The challenges facing the group were immense.  Initial funds were soon depleted and Carey, in keeping with his philosophy of bivocational ministry, took on secular employment so that his family could survive.  After moving from place to place, the Careys finally settled at Madnabatty in the summer of 1794 and remained there for six years.  However, almost immediately after they arrived, five-year-old Peter Carey contracted a virulent fever and passed away.  Peter’s death permanently broke Dorothy Carey’s mental health and she never recovered. She spent the remainder of her days ranting and raving at Carey, often in the next room as he worked to translate the Bible into Bengali.  With a body racked by pain and increasingly psychotic in her behaviour, Dorothy Carey lived with her various delusions until she died thirteen years later at age fifty-one.

The Serampore Years

     In order to avoid further confrontations with the East India Company, Carey decided to move to the Danish territory of Serampore near Calcutta.  They were later joined by the newly arrived missionaries, chief among whom were printer William Ward and school teachers Joshua and Hannah Marshman.  The Carey family and their new friends agreed to live together communally, like the early Christians in the book of Acts and the Moravian missionaries of their own day.  All of the proceeds from their labours would be funneled back into the common treasury, save for the bare essentials required by each family.  All profits would be used for the furtherance of their mission work.  During Carey’s lifetime, it is estimated that some 90,000 pounds were contributed to the cause in this way.  Ward summarized the rules of the community in his journal:  All preach and pray in turn; one superintends the affairs of the family for a month, and then another; Saturday evening is devoted to adjusting differences, and pledging ourselves to love one another.  Carey believed in the value of education, not as a substitute for evangelism nor as an act of social benevolence, but as a long-term benefit for Christians and non-Christians alike.

     The Serampore years were spent in putting this principle into action.  That’s why Carey, for example, prepared grammars for Bengali, Sanskrit and Marathi.  He accepted the post of Professor at secular Fort William College in Calcutta in 1801, thereby influencing many future leaders of the country.

     The Serampore Trio gave themselves over to translating and printing the Bible in as many Asian languages and dialects as possible.  Consequently, Carey translated the entire Bible into six different languages.  The New Testament was translated and printed in twenty-three others, whereas portions of the Bible were translated and distributed in many dialects.  More than 213,000 copies of the Scriptures in forty different languages and dialects issued from the Serampore presses during Carey’s lifetime.

Sati

     Carey worked tirelessly to end the practice of Sati, that is, the burning of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres.  Carey patiently collected from the pundits the evidence of the Sastras, the ancient Hindu writings, and in this way confirmed the belief of the missionaries that Sati though countenanced by Hindu law was in no way commanded by it.  He also vigorously opposed slavery and rejoiced when the slave trade was abolished within the British Empire shortly before his death.

 Carey’s Fruitful Ministry

     Carey and his Serampore associates had baptized more than 1,500 new Christians, and thousands more attended classes and services.  Moreover, by the year of his death fifty missionaries were serving eighteen mission stations throughout India.  His life inspired many missionary societies to launch their own missionary efforts.  He inspired Charles Simeon and Henry Martyn and Adoniram Judson.  By 1834, fourteen missionary societies in England alone, as well as several others in  America and Europe, were devoted to the missionary cause- all owing their existence to the inspirational example of William Carey.

Carey’s Humility

    His was an extraordinary life by anyone’s standards.  But he did not see himself as an exceptional person.  To the contrary, Carey was embarrassed by fame.  In 1813, when he was told that his work had been commended on the floor of the House of Commons, he responded, “I wish people would let me die before they praise me.”

     In reality, he saw himself as a plodder.  He once remarked to his nephew Eustace Carey, who became his first biographer, “If, after my removal, anyone should think it worth his while to write my life, I will give you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness.  If he gives me credit for being a plodder, he will describe me justly.  Anything beyond this will be too much.”

     Yes William Carey was a plodder.  But this brilliant, resourceful and persistent man was “God’s extraordinary plodder”- and by his fruit we have known him.

 

This newsletter is produced six times per year by the Laymen’s Evangelical Fellowship International. It is printed and distributed in the US, UK, Germany, Singapore, Canada, and Australia and is supported by unsolicited sacrificial gifts of young people. For a free subscription or for other enquiries, please contact any of the addresses below.

This Fellowship is an inter-denominational missionary and prayer group working for revival in churches and amongst students in several countries. We invite every layperson to become God’s ally in changing his or her corner of the world. We train people in evangelistic work and to be self-supporting missionaries.

r USA: P.O. Box 14, South Lyon, MI 48178, Phone – (248) 446-3080

r CANADA: P.O. Box 31002, Windsor, Ontario N9G 2Y2, Phone– (519) 966-4603

r SINGAPORE: P.O. Box 320 PSA Building Post Office, Singapore 91114.Phone – (65) 63562724 (Sam)

r MALAYSIA: P.O.Box 236, Jalan Kelang Lama, 58700 Kuala Lumpur West Malaysia, Phone – 019-3260727

     or Wisdom Hall, 37 Persiaran Shahbandar, Taman Tambahan Krian VI, 34200 Parit Bundar, Perak, Phone – (05) 7164100 T.K. Ong

r AUSTRALIA: P.O. Box 24 Tuart Hill, Perth, West Australia 6939  Phone – 09.345-3739

r GREAT BRITAIN: P.O. Box 737 London SW2 4XT, Phone – 020-8677-6909

r IRELAND: P.O. Box 18 Cavan Co. Cavan

r INDIA: 9B Nungambakkam High Rd. Chennai 600034, Phone-044-2827 2393

r INTERNET: http://lefi.org

r EMAIL: post@lefi.org

PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO A FRIEND