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Midweekly Reality Check:
Meditations on the Mountain Poor, Mournful, Meek and Thirsty Part 1
Part 2 Would you consider it a blessing to be poor, mournful, meek and thirsty? How about poor, mournful, meek, thirsty, merciful, pure, peaceful, persecuted? Well, our Savior chose those adjectives for his Sermon on the Mount…so it behooves us to consider them. An astute observer of my former profession, who wisely chose to remain anonymous, once said, “The average fighter pilot, despite the swaggering exterior, is very much capable of such feelings as love, affection, intimacy and caring. These feelings just don’t involve anyone else.” Most folks …who have never been there, done that, would call it outrageous arrogance. They would be right. But it’s also another way of alluding to something called esprit de corps, a mindset instilled in training that is an important part of staying alive in combat. Our gracious God uses all things for the good of those he calls. None of my old flying friends would ever, in their wildest flights of fancy, think of such adjectives as poor, mournful and meek as descriptive of JDW. And…this will not come as a shock to anyone who knows me now…I confess I still have a very long way to go to meet Jesus’ description of the Christian life that he blesses. And that is what the beatitudes are—Jesus’ blessings for Christians, the characteristics of those who are infused with saving grace: Blessed are the poor, mournful, meek, hungry, merciful, pure, peaceful, persecuted. C. H. Spurgeon called this passage of Scripture, “…the richest fountain of instruction which ever flowed for the good of mankind,” direct from the Son of God’s own mouth. Let’s look at just the first four beatitudes that lead off his Sermon on the Mount as found in Matthew 5: 1-6. 1 Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. 2 And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. In this hedonistic, narcissistic, relativistic, outrageously decadent age, “poor, mournful, meek, and thirsty describe the opposite of success as the world measures it. These adjectives have a dank and disgraceful odor to the ungodly, the scent of failure. The world says blessed are those who are rich and famous and powerful, who spend their days in the pursuit of pleasure—whatever their definition of pleasure may be—who collect ostentatious toys, mansions, and big cars, who are honored for deeds that have utterly zero eternal significance, who have every sheaf of grain bowing to their sheaf. Matthew Henry says “they mistake the end, and form a wrong notion of happiness…and miss their way. They choose their own delusions and court a shadow.” And are totally oblivious to the horrors that await them as they, in their unenlightened self-satisfaction, press on toward perdition. Jesus’ sermon on the mount was “designed to rectify the ruinous mistakes of a blind and carnal world,” as Henry tells us. The Sermon on the Mount was the first recorded and longest sermon by Jesus in the Bible, in the 5th thru 7th chapters of Matthew. It occurs early in the New Testament, just after Jesus had chosen his disciples and built a reputation in the synagogues of Galilee with his miraculous healings and powerful call to repentance— for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For his first full blown presentation of the gospel, he chose a mountain—not a sacred high place, not Mt Zion, not the Temple mount, but an ordinary hill. As with all Holy Writ, the symbolism, here is so divinely rich, the Old Testament types so amazingly manifested in Jesus Christ, God incarnate. In the Old Testament the Ten Commandments were given on a terrifying, bleak, dark mountain in the desert. There God spoke in thunder and lightening, but now, on a verdant Galilean hillside, God the Son spoke in a quiet compassionate voice. Spurgeon said Israel trembled before [Sinai], the mountain of curses, but we rejoice on the mount of the beatitudes. Only Moses was allowed on Sinai, but Jesus, while talking directly to his disciples on the Galilean hillside, welcomed all to this hill of the gospel and into his presence. Just as, at the moment of his death on the cross, the Holy of Holies curtain was torn in two from the top down, making the way open for all to come into the presence of the most high God. And as he would later tell the Samaritan woman at the well, the day is coming when where we worship God is unimportant. It may be anywhere and everywhere…and as Paul said, at all times…as long as it is in spirit and in truth. And here, on this ordinary hillside, Jesus explained for all to hear, the blessings that accompany the Christian life. We cannot, we must not look on these beatitudes as work and reward. They do not begin with thou shalt or thou shalt not. They do not say, IF you do this, THEN I will bless you. This is clearly NOT a to-do list. This sermon does not tell us how to be saved; it tells us what it is like to be saved. As Henry said, “The way to happiness is here opened…and this, coming from the mouth of Jesus Christ, it is intimated that from him, and by him, we are to receive both the seed and the fruit, both the grace required, and the glory promised.” Did you catch that? We receive BOTH. Nothing passes between God and fallen man, but through Christ’s hand. This is so important. Henry is on a bedrock biblical base here: He is saying both the characteristic and the blessing that flows from it are by God’s grace. Let’s pause here to make sure we understand the definition of grace. It is not just a short prayer before we eat. My saintly friend, Rene Schmidt, says, “Grace is totally unmerited favor.” James Boice said, it is “God’s favor to those who deserve his wrath.” Bryan Chapell says it is “an unconditional release from the judgment we deserve…for the monstrosity of our sin.” Would you agree that grace is a very big deal?? So let’s apply grace to the first the first beatitude, for example—blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The poor in spirit is a product of God’s grace, and the glory promised—the kingdom of heaven, is a product of God’s grace. John the Baptist said, A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven (John 3:27). And James said (1:17), Every good gift…[comes] down from the Father. And Paul told the (Philippians, 2:13), for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. After 1500 years of recorded Old Testament history, when Jesus put his message of redemption in the mouths of the prophets, it ended with a threatened curse. Malachi 4:5-6 says: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes. [We know now he was referring to John the Baptist] 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” And now, early in the New Testament, the gospel picks up were the law left off. The law ended with a threatened curse, the gospel begins with a promised blessing: Blessed are the poor, mournful, meek, hungry, merciful, pure, peaceful, persecuted. These eight adjectives, so unnatural to fallen mankind, and so despised by the darkened culture in which we live, make up a perfect character—the principal graces of a Christian. They describe a life-style which no human being could live in his own power. The life of the believer, described by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, is a life of grace and glory, which comes—can only come—from God alone. The first virtue of a Christian we find in verse 3, Blessed are the poor in spirit. That is right where the law leaves us…with the realization there is no way we can keep the Ten Commandments thru our own power. When even are thoughts will be judged according to the Commandments, we are left with the inevitable conclusion that we are spiritually poverty stricken…destitute…desperately in need of God’s mercy. The realization, the knowledge of our poor spiritual estate is a gift of God’s grace. As Bryan Chapell says in his wonderful book, Holiness by Grace, we own our desperation. He says, “Our God is not moved by the deeds that we trophy, but by the desperation that we acknowledge as our own.” Those who know their spiritual poverty are the only ones who by faith can lay hold of the true riches of God’s grace. Inline with Matthew Henry’s thought, this knowledge that we are paupers in spirit is the seed God has planted in a regenerated heart, and the fruit from that seed is his blessing. The grace is knowing, owning our spiritual desperation, and the glory is God’s blessing—the kingdom of heaven—happiness now and incomprehensible bliss to come…forevermore. Both the seed and the fruit, the grace required and the glory promised come from God through our savior, Jesus Christ. A. N. Martin, one of my favorite writers, said “Poverty of spirit results from just getting a sight of who you are, and seeing that you are nothing and have nothing and can do nothing that can commend yourself to the grace and saving favor of God; it results from the conviction that he could make you an eternal monument of his righteous wrath, and let you perish in eternal burning.” Do you feel that way? Not just intellectual assent to the doctrine, but has the Holy Spirit brought you to that place where you consciously know this about yourself. Martin says if not, “I doubt you can claim that Christ is your Savior.” I have just finished reading Arnold Dallimore’s two volume biography of George Whitefield, the great 18th century English evangelist, the forgotten founder of America, as another author claims with convincing evidence. Whitefield, more even than Jonathan Edwards, whose life intersected with his and each had a major impact on the other, was used by God in a mighty way in the great awakening in the 1740’s in the colonies. Both followed Jesus’ example of evangelizing: first awakening their hearers to their dreadful spiritual impoverishment and the holy, horrible wrath that awaited them. Both, by the grace of God, brought sinners to the point where they were blessed with such a vivid knowledge of the depths of their depravity, and the sheer terrors that awaited them in the wrath to come, absent God’s grace, that they cried out with shrieks and gasps and even feintings at what had been revealed to them about themselves and how they had offended an infinitely holy God. What a blessing indeed from our gracious, providential God when he brings us to the conviction of our deep spiritual need.
Part 2 I have a friend, another F-100 pilot who was shot down in the Vietnam War and was rescued by the narrowest of margins out of a jungle full of bad guys. In the mindset mentioned earlier, I love to tease him, still, that a good fighter pilot would never get shot down. His response, unchanged over the years, is that the only reason I was never shot down was because the enemy was not worried about me. I believe that perfectly describes my relationship with the devil. Such is the treachery of my heart that I can mess things up just fine all by myself, with no help from the devil. He can concentrate on greater enemies than me. Inside this 61 year old body are all the lusts and sins of the flesh and broken commandments, in thought if not in apparent words and deeds, of an incorrigible young fighter pilot. I really thought, in my ignorance of my own depravity, it would get easier in my geezerhood. But I need as much, if not more, grace to draw a breath now as I did when I thought God was my invisible co-pilot, dutifully silent accept when answering my panic-stricken pleas for help…when I was out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas. I have vivid recollections from the heat of battle when my airplane reacted in ways—life saving ways—that had nothing to do with my inputs. I am blessed repeatedly, still, by incidents in my life that reinforce my conviction that God continually saves me from myself, that I am, without a doubt, dirt poor in spirit, desperately in need of his grace. Thank you Lord, for such a great blessing. The second beatitude builds on the first, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (5:4). If we substitute happy for blessed, which some translations do, we get “happy are those who mourn,” which sounds like an oxymoron if there ever was one. In fact if we pull the beatitudes out of context and take them literally, they are an oxymoronic octave. So much of God’s truth strikes the unsaved as oxymoronic, the stumbling block for those who do not have eyes to see. But Jesus promised as much—he told Nicodemus (John 3:3), NO ONE can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. But for those who have been blessed with new eyes and a regenerated heart, mourning for our sins follows perfectly logically from “blessed are the poor in spirit.” C. H. Spurgeon said, “Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is too choice a flower to grow in nature's garden. Pearls grow naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners except divine grace works it in them. If you have one particle of real hatred for sin, God must have given it you, for human nature's thorns never produced a single fig. That which is born of the flesh is flesh (John 3:6).” And the blessing here is more specific, we shall be comforted now—repentance is a cathartic grace—and we will be comforted so much more in heaven. The Christian’s mourning for sin leads to repentance and repentance leads to comfort in the promises of God. Bryan Chapell tells of a little boy who ate his big sister’s chocolate bar. When caught red-handed by his mama, he backed up against the wall like a cornered criminal and sobbed his confession. She told him that in spite of his tears he would have to tell his big sister when she got home from school. The afternoon was sheer torture for the little guy as he awaited his sister’s arrival. When he finally heard her at the door he ran to her as his guilt exploded again in tears and confession. Sally, I’m so sorry I ate your chocolate bar.” She took him in her arms and said, “It’s okay Johnny, I love you anyway and always.” Johnny began to giggle and cry at the same time, then he began to laugh as tears rolled down his cheeks. Then he hugged his sister with all his strength. How much greater is our joy, when we realize the seriousness of our sin, that is, we are made “poor in spirit,” mourn our offenses against a God who loves his elect infinitely, and repent? The blessing of God’s forgiveness becomes our motive for loving and embracing our Lord with all the gratitude and strength of our being. What a blessing indeed. Love is the most powerful force in God’s creation, as 1 Corinthians 13 proves beyond debate. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Now here comes the most grace-demanding characteristic of all…at least for old fighter pilots. Blessed are the meek. I am convinced that pride is the last idol to vacate a regenerated heart, at least a male heart. I see so many otherwise godly men, myself at the top of the list, who battle the demon, pride. A person who mourns his sin and is repentant cannot be proud. Blessed he is. By meek Jesus means a mild and gentle disposition, not easily provoked by insults or injuries, not ready to take offense (the high fashion reaction so popular in our lawless culture today),and prepared to do anything but react in kind to wicked deeds of wicked men enacted against our person. Calvin said the world we live in would consider such meekness exceedingly foolish, when human experience shows the more mildly wickedness is endured, the more bold and insolent the wicked become. That surely appears to be proven daily in this age as the world battles terrorist radicals. Calvin quotes what he calls “the diabolical proverb” that the world follows: ‘We must howl with the wolves, because the wolves will immediately devour every one who makes himself a sheep.’ One could argue that such a proverb could be a valid foreign policy among nations in this age of rampant evil, but Jesus is quite clear that on a personal level, blessed are the meek, and their blessing is…they shall inherit the earth. Matthew Henry says it is almost the only temporal blessing in all the New Testament. This is a blessing that is promised now, on earth, as well as the great inheritance in heaven to follow. Those who enjoy what God has given them, no matter how little or how much, those who are content with the divine sovereign’s plan for their life, possess, by birthright, both this world and the world to come. We surely know from experience that those who can take the slings and arrows of life with a gentle, laidback spirit, a peace in our Lord that passes all understanding, are much less susceptible to physical calamities of this life, like a heart attack, for example. Only those blessed by God with meekness can turn the other cheek with a smile…and joyfully practice the golden rule. My saintly mother was the best example of that I have ever known. I wish you all could have known her. Jesus says that all the blessings of heaven to come, and the blessings of earth now, are the portion of the meek. This one will keep me a jolly beggar all my earthly days. Lord. Lord, O for grace to love you more, as the hymn writer begs. Can there be any doubt that such a characteristic requires grace, all grace, and nothing but grace from the Holy Spirit that dwells within us? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be satisfied (vs 6). This beatitude is GRACE in bold font capital letters. Of course we cannot BE righteous. There is none righteous, as Paul and the Psalmist both attest. Our best works on our best day are but filthy rags. Christ had to credit his righteousness to us on the cross in love beyond our comprehension. But on this tranquil grassy mountain slope on a sunny summer day in Galilee, our compassionate Savior, knowing he was going to be our righteousness by sacrificing himself in the most horrific way of death known to the world, said…in effect, it is enough for a child of God to hunger and thirst after righteous like mine, because in my Father’s book of life it has already been credited to his account. If I may paraphrase Jesus’ inerrant words with my error prone vernacular: With a new heart and vision that I have given you, your new man with all sincerity will battle against the evil old man still in you, and you will thirst after righteousness like mine, with all the desire of a thirsty deer panting for water, with all the agonizing want of the rich man languishing in the flames of hell, begging the Father to send a brother with a single drop of water to cool his tongue. Such thirst for righteousness requires grace indeed. And our Lord has promised it for those he has chosen, as well as the blessing of satisfaction—they shall be satisfied—and not just satisfaction for the brief moment that cool water goes down our throat, but forever. Jesus told the woman at the well, whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life ( John 4:14). Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst after righteousness—four foundational characteristics of a perfect child of God. Down in vs 17 of chapter 5, Jesus said, Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. Not only does Christ fulfill the multitude of Old Testament prophesies, not only is he the manifestation of all the Old Testament types that foreshadowed him, but in his great love He fulfills the requirements of God’s law for all us blessed, grace-filled souls who own our spiritual desperation. Praise be to God that by his grace he has caused us to own our desperation, mourn for our depravity, meekly acknowledge to the world that we are sinners saved by a holy power outside ourselves, the infinite love of a God who loves the unlovable, and instills in us a hunger and thirst for the righteousness of Christ…our only hope. Jesus concludes the beatitudes section of his great Sermon on the Mount in vs 12: Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven. Note he said is great, NOT will be great. In his sovereign grace, it is a done deal, with a guarantee from the highest level of authority. Do you know, without a doubt, that your reward is great in heaven??? When the Roll is Called up Yonder, will you be there? SOLEMN SILENCE, HIGHEST PRAISE Sept. 20, 2005
I’m hard pressed to name the top fringe benefit in this wilderness cathedral called Ridge Haven, where I am blessed to serve the Lord. Perhaps it’s the latest one. It’s a 25-minute hike from my gatekeeper’s cottage by way of Hobbit Hollow Trail, an uphill pilgrimage that gets you 400 feet closer to heaven while elevating your spirits along with your pulse and pulmonary rate. Bring your Bible. We’ll find that hallowed ground, a new outdoor chapel, just below the summit, on the southern slope of a mountain at 2500 feet above sea level. It’s one of several small peaks at the bottom of a densely wooded bowl whose irregular rim is 3-500 feet higher and averages 2 miles in diameter. The sloping sanctuary seats a hundred souls on five pews on either side of a center aisle. Actually they’re 12-foot long benches made by cutting 15-inch diameter tree trunks longitudinally, each nestled, half-round side down, in the shallow top ‘V’ of two one-foot pedestals made from the same trunk. Worshipers look down on a 4 by 6-foot speaker’s platform centered just in front of the front row—the only manufactured item and the only level spot in the chapel. The nave, carpeted in ankle deep humus, is long and narrow—60 yards by 50 feet—reminding me of the West Point cadets’ chapel, except our ceiling reaches to the stars. The front wall of the sanctuary, fifty yards on down the mountain from the front row of pews, is 75 feet high, a living stained glass window, curving to a point near the top of the wall, that changes with the seasons. It’s framed by a towering oak on the right, ancient as Moses, and on the left by an equally tall pine, their branches curving up and out to touch at the pinnacle. The lower 40 feet of the window is dark evergreen rhododendron and mountain laurel at the base, melding into the lighter deciduous green of lush hardwoods higher up. The next 20 feet, beginning level with the worshiper’s eye as he sits in the pew, is a far horizon view of the broad side of pristine, tree-covered Nancy Mountain, three ridge lines south about a mile, but dominating the picture. Come October the colors in this window will change daily…spectacularly. The top 15 feet of the window, roughly semicircular in shape, is dazzling cobalt on clear days, hazy pale blue on others—what the Cherokee called the Great Spirit descended upon these Blue Ridge Mountains. About 12 miles from this sanctuary, as the angel flies, just below a magnificent rock promontory called the Devil’s Courthouse, is a high mountain cave where Cherokee legend has it the devil danced at night. In our age the devil prowls the world like a raging lion, seeking whom he may devour (1Peter 5:8), and his wrathful minions slaughter the innocent and dance on their graves. But fear not. Find a shady seat—rest in the shadow of His wings (Psalm 91:4). Here only is safety, not because it is remote from a fallen world, but because worship burnishes the whole armor of God we wear. Praying at all times in the Spirit (Ephesians 6:10-18), we are divinely protected from the schemes of the devil in this present darkness, and we can know the peace that passes all understanding. A soothing zephyr will dry your brow, waft the incense of some heavenly blooming thing your way, and render your posterior impervious to the hardness of your pew. Overhead you’ll hear the periodic rush of angel wings, or perhaps the Spirit blowing where it will. The only other sounds are variable, high-pitched intermittent zings of microscopic aerodynamic creatures, no less marvelous in their intricacy than the stately botanic monuments to His glory before us. All else is reverential silence—even the avian choir is too awestruck to sing. Be still and know that He is God. Behold the heart-bursting beauty beyond words, and contemplate the Word through whom it was all made, whose light overcomes the darkness (John 1: 1-5), who holds His own secure forever in the hollow of His hand, and let your solemn silence be your joyful hymn of highest praise. You may meditate here as the Spirit leads, or open your Bible and let the Word speak to you, or you may use, as mute liturgy, a page from my personal psalter, an inferior alternative, my feeble effort at grateful exaltation in this holy temple that sanctifies my soul. It draws me (John 6:44) to worship here with unspeakable joy, in dumbstruck adoration, Him who dwells in matchless majesty above the splendor I see, yet condescends to love me, redeem me and lead me to glory—me, spiritually destitute without Christ; on my own merit, the foremost sinner on the forest floor.
Be still and know that I am God.
No
one,
the
LORD is in his holy temple; [See also "No one...," a meditation]
September 13, 2005 The camera [for the picture at the top] is 20 feet up in a stately, 60-foot-tall pine, 2,750 above sea level, and just below the peak on the northwest slope of a mountain in the residential area at Ridge Haven. I am doubtful that I’ll ever get any closer to heaven this side of glory…unless I put a second story on my tree house. I know…it sounds suspiciously retrograde to be building a tree house at my age…but before you chalk it up to senility or an outrageous effort to relive my youth, listen to my rationale. God, in his amazing grace, using the great hearts of two of our favorite saints, has put 3 pristine acres of Blue Ridge Eden, an incredibly diverse botanical garden, in our hands. For those who are familiar with mountaineer bragging rights, it’s an 8-ridgeline, 180-degree vista (except, on occasion, when the glory cloud descends on this most holy place). There are days when I can just make out the golden spires of the Celestial City that John Bunyan’s pilgrim saw, shimmering in the azure haze just over the furthest ridge.
Of the over
200 kinds of wildflowers
scattered about Ridge Haven’s 900 acres that my
spouse/photographer has catalogued so far, mountain laurel are my
favorite. They and rhododendron are a common sight in this
near-rain-forest setting at the southern end of the Blue Ridge.
Under normal deep woods conditions, rhododendron are rangy, with
gnarly branches an inch or two in Well, because of our rare blooming jungle, the only way to check the view of various possible home sites on the property was to climb a tree and have a look. And once I got up there…well, now you know the rest of the story. God made some pines for tree houses. Their branches grow horizontally from the trunk like spokes, making it easy to build a (more or less) level floor. Spoilsports, who’ve lived here all their lives and take it all for granted, might say it’s just a transplanted flatlander’s poor excuse for a deer hunting stand, and too blamed high off the ground to see down thru all that rhododendron foliage. But it don’t make me no never mind if I cain’t see the ground below me—jade rhododendron leaves are purtier than last year’s leaves and pine needles. My current job, the best one in the Presbyterian Church in America, requires me to live in a delightful gatekeeper’s cottage at Ridge Haven’s conference center, 6 minutes down the mountain. It has great audio—a nearby waterfall—but no far horizon video. So, God willing, for a minimum of five more years the tree house is going to allow me to enjoy both that high life and this soul-satisfying servanthood for the King of Kings. I suppose some folks would call that having your cake and eating it too. I call it classic grace—totally unmerited.
I christened my pine tree prayer tabernacle last Sunday afternoon,
putting the finishing touches on a sermon for the evening church
Yesterday morning my bride of 39 years got up the courage to try
out our new house. Carrying her over the threshold in the predawn
twilight was a
If this all sounds like I’m up a tree, it’s because that’s where this is being composed—“Nearer, my Lord, to Thee.” I’m a blessed man…with blessed friends…and to think that heaven will be infinitely better than this….
THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE
There is no other name…by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). Back in the old days an airplane required a person in the cockpit. The plane could not fly without a human’s guiding hands on the control stick and throttle and his feet of the rudder pedals. There was no alternative. I was blessed to be a fighter pilot then, to dance the delirious burning blue with a supersonic angel, to join the tumbling mirth and chase the shouting wind along, and to touch the face of God, as John Gillespie Magee so beautifully put it in his classic poem. I’ll always be grateful I was allowed to experience the joys of a hundred things an earthbound soul never dreamed of. But there were moments of gut-wrenching anxiety, when the bodily senses were reporting conflicting information to a brain already operating at the outer limits of the human performance envelope, and there was no survivable alternative to hanging in there and fighting through it. Vertigo is an insidious malady that can kill you before you even know you have it if you are flying an airplane. The official accident report indicates it probably killed John Kennedy, Jr. and his family, and there are many more such tragedies recorded in the aviation’s history. If you are on the ground there is a quick remedy. If the eyes report to the brain that you are right side up, and the gyros in your inner ear report something quite different, perhaps even the opposite, you can always quickly sit down or lie down until the senses get back in sync with the real world and each other. If it happens when you are flying an airplane, a much more likely occurrence in a healthy body, on a dark night or in weather when there is no visible horizon, none of these alternatives are available. You either overcome it or you die violently. In those days it took a great deal of education and practice, even when all the bodily senses were functioning properly, to fly an F-100 on instruments only, as the above photo of its instrument panel attests. With or without vertigo, reading all those (now archaic) dials and gauges, interpreting and organizing the information at the speed of neurons, and reacting accordingly was paramount to survival. In its early years of service it was known as a widow-maker. The key to understanding all that information and how it affected a plane in flight was found in a three-ring binder called a “Dash One.” That was shorthand for the arcane military nomenclature identifying the operator’s manual. In this case the full title was T. O. 1F-100D(I)-1. It explained all the systems, how they worked together and exactly what was required of the pilot in all phases of flight. Knowing it so well you reacted instinctively and instantly was critical. I acquired some of my worst cases of vertigo on final approach to land in bad weather, a maximum busy time where the stress level was the greatest and the margin of error the smallest, and there was no reference outside the cockpit to identify up from down. In spite of the fact that I was a Top Gun in every squadron in which I served in the USAF, I seemed to acquire this malady more often than most. I have flown final approach to land at night in bad weather feeling like I was hanging upside down in my seat belt and shoulder harness. It required teeth-clinching discipline to trust my eyes while ignoring the erroneous information from my inner ear. It took granite faith to believe that the airplane’s gyros were functioning properly when mine were not. It also helped not to blink. That millisecond when the eyelids were closed my brain was receiving only the catastrophic lies of an out-of-kilter balance system. Had I been strong enough I would have squeezed the control stick grip into powder. Time slows to a crawl in stressful situations, and nothing seems to be happening fast enough. I attribute that to adrenalin, a manifestation of God’s grace that accelerates the speed of neurons in the brain during life or death situations. If that jumble of instrumentation was telling me an adjustment was necessary, such as airspeed too low, glide angle too steep, or altitude too high, there was a tendency to make the correction—advance the throttle or pull back on the control stick and raise the nose—then get fixated on that instrument during the eternity it seemed to take for the aircraft to respond, ignoring the rest of the instruments. A fatal mistake. Compounding the problem, stress can cause breathing to accelerate, with emphasis on the exhalation—hyperventilation—robbing the brain of oxygen right when peak mental performance is required. There is an audio tape, stored in my permanent mental file, of a WW II hero who flew with me as we attacked a heavily defended target at Mu Gia Pass, the northern terminus of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, during the Vietnam War. As he began his high-angle dive bomb run against some large AAA guns, he made his mandatory radio call, then forgot to take his thumb off the microphone button. I listened to this seasoned combat veteran’s loud, accelerating, orgasmic breathing in my ears as I watched tracer fire envelope his airplane. (He survived and was back in control of his salty old self by the time we landed and walked away from the airplanes.) It was not that his hyperventilating was abnormal in such a circumstance, just that his error allowed me to hear what really lay behind that fearless fighter pilot façade we all worked so hard to maintain. I have no doubt, that were I not so totally visually focused on the instrument panel while flying final approach feeling like I was upside down, my own respiration rate would have sounded no different through my earphones. After landing and the adrenalin had wore off, my eyes were bloodshot and even my socks were sweat-soaked as I celebrated another victory over the Grim Reaper. Bottom line, faith that the instrument panel was telling me the truth, no matter how I felt, was my only salvation. There was no other alternative. In God’s providence it was excellent training for the Christian life I now joyfully live, though admittedly at a significantly more sedate pace, with both feet firmly planted on the terra firma of this wilderness cathedral. Just as I trusted the instruments alone because there was no other alternative, there is also no alternative way to the unspeakable bliss of heaven, except through trusting in Jesus Christ, the incarnate God who made it all possible. There are no other options. Jesus said, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). With monosyllabic clarity, he said, No one comes to the Father except through me (John 6:44). Peter reinforced Jesus’ declaration, eliminating any and all other options: Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). Though others revile me and persecute me and utter all kinds of evil against me (Matthew 5:11), though this fallen world would have me believe the soul-destroying lies of an out-of-kilter values system are the correct ones, not mine, I know the only way to salvation. It is my trust alone in divine avionics not built by the lowest bidder, but by God himself, whose gyros never fail, whose bearing indicator always points to Christ, whose attitude indicator infallibly tells me the truth about myself, no matter how I feel. There is no other trustworthy frame of reference to transcendent truth. In today’s murky culture, with the horizon of truth in constant flux, unbelievers fly blind, by the seat of their pants, an option proven suicidal by far too many pilots. Absent God’s saving grace, they are dead men flying. The inevitable crash will start a fire that no one can put out. I have a God-given faith in what I see with my own eyes in his Word. It can look disorganized and archaic at first, just like an F-100 instrument panel for a first-time viewer today, but there is a “Dash One” available for it, too. The creeds, confessions and catechisms of a cloud of wise witnesses who have spent their lives studying the Bible over the last two millennia explain how the system all fits together. My favorite operator’s manual, is the Westminster Confession & Catechism—FAQ’s for transcendental truth seekers. Read it. Take your Bible for a test hop using it. Give it a good work out, take it to the limits and see if you can find any flaws. Like a Dash One, it has been the key to my understanding of the whole gospel, which is, by God’s grace, the only airway to heaven. There have been dark nights when the devil tries to jam my divine navigation system by planting catastrophic doubts and lies in my mind. Did God actually say…? You will not surely die (Genesis 1:1-3). Or I have laid awake fixated on some specific sin, trying to fashion an adjustment that would pass for obedience. When such spiritual vertigo occurs I put a vice-like grip on God’s promises, knowing my feelings are lying to me. I focus with an unblinking intensity on the whole gospel and pray for guidance, and I meet the dawn on wings like eagles (Isaiah 40:31). That, too, is amazing grace—his favor toward an old throttle jockey who deserves his wrath—as is my survival through 268 combat missions and enough cases of vertigo and ham-fisted flying to kill myself many times over.
God’s flight plan for us includes our allotted days, as the psalmist said (Psalm 139:16), and we will not die till our mission is accomplished. Vertigo at 500 knots and all the bullets in the enemy arsenal will not kill me before God’s appointed time. When that day comes and I slip the surly bonds of earth for the last time, I might well be hyperventilating again. I listened to my beloved aunt as she Cheyne-stokes breathed her last over the phone, a continent away, while I read God’s own words of comfort to her and prayed in her ear. As bodily systems shut down I might have vertigo, too, and I may or may not be able to see the Celestial City runway before touchdown. But this much I know, God knows my ETA to the nanosecond, and with him as my pilot it will be a perfect landing. I will not be exhausted and my eyes will not be bloodshot, because I will be like my Savior and Lord (1 John 3:2). It will be the ultimate victory over death—that's a guarantee from the highest authority. I will join the marriage feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9), and it will be infinitely happier than the jolliest post-flight party I ever attended. Time will slow to zero and cease to be a dimension, and the celebration will never end. The P-40 in the picture, painted just as it was when Brigadier General Robert L. Scott (USAF, Ret.) flew it, resides at the Warner Robbins Air Museum, Georgia. See a full picture of it at their great website.
“What must I do to
inherit eternal life?” August 30, 2005
When the rich young man asked Jesus this question, he made the same mistake so common today, even by those who call themselves Christians: he assumed he had to earn eternal life. You cannot do anything to inherit something. An inheritance comes from what has been done for you, and that is the heart of the gospel. The word means “good news, ” and surely it is the best good news you could ever hear. Nothing you do—your “works”—can earn you eternal life. The Bible says …you have been saved through faith… not [as] a result of works…(Eph 2:8-9). The gospel is best summed up in Jesus’ own words: God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). “Why should I perish? I’m a good person. What is so critical about believing in him who called himself the Son of God? I’ve never murdered anyone. I love my spouse and I have never been unfaithful, and I do better than most at keeping the Ten Commandments.” Haven’t you had those thoughts? Many think God grades our acts ( our “works”) on a curve and they have been good enough to get into heaven. Well, listen carefully. Jesus said anyone who is angry at his brother will get the same judgment as a murderer—the 6th commandment (Matthew 5:21-22a). Jesus also said, that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart—the 7th commandment (Matthew 5:28). Loving anyone or anything more than God is a violation of the 1st commandment. And James said breaking one commandment is as bad as breaking them all (James 2:10)—it is a sin, even if you break it only in your thoughts, and a single sin will keep you out of heaven. Pretty tough standard isn’t it? That’s the whole point. God wrote the Ten Commandments to make us painfully aware of how we have sinned against an infinitely holy God. Paul told the Romans, …through the law comes knowledge of sin (Romans 3:20). All mankind has been sinful since Adam and Eve were evicted from the garden of Eden (Genesis 3: 13-24). And it is crucial that you know just how angry God is about sin. Jonathan Edwards describes it best in his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (www.jdwetterling.com/sinners.htm). Lest you think Edwards had an outrageous flight of fancy when he preached that sermon, read the Son of God’s own words. Jesus said, If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell (Matthew 5:29-30). He said if anyone causes a little child of God to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea, than to suffer the eternal judgment that awaits him (Matthew 5:6). My friend, do I have your attention? This is the most important issue of your life. Awful wrath, incomprehensible terrors await anyone who dies in his sin. But an infinitely holy and loving God has provided the most amazing remedy in the gospel nutshell of John 3:16. God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. It really is as simple as it sounds. Belief gets you eternal life—you do not and cannot earn it. You can never make yourself perfect enough to meets heaven’s holiness requirements. So what does “believe in him” mean? It means 1.) believe Jesus Christ was who he said he was, the Son of God, come to earth as a man, just as the Bible states; 2.) believe that, in the greatest act of love that ever was, he died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins—(atonement), and 3.) believe that he rose from the dead, to live forever in heaven with all who believe in him. Without this belief you will not go to heaven. You will “perish”—be sentenced to eternity in hell (Matthew 12:30-32, 5:29-30, 10:28). Now here is the really amazing part of this good news: God gives you this belief (Romans 8:28-30), an inheritance beyond measure! For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works… (Ephesians 2:8). “Grace” is commonly defined as “unmerited favor,” but it is much more than that. It is God’s mercy showered upon one who deserves his wrath, given to those he chooses (Matthew 11:27). “Saved” means salvation from the eternal punishment your sins deserve. “Faith” is not just intellectual agreement with a theory, but trust in a living person—Jesus Christ who, in His great love, died to pay for your sins. “Not as a result of works” means nothing you do on your own saves you or even leads you to faith—God changes your heart and inclines your will (or put another way, God enables you). Good works are the fruit of the Holy Spirit dwelling in true believers (Galatians 5:22) and a grateful response to God’s grace. As acts of your gratitude they glorify God, but they do not earn you salvation. Paul explains the absolute necessity of God’s grace: There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God (Romans 3:11) on his own. But in his amazing grace, God…works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). God opens your eyes to your sins of commission and omission, and inclines your will to repent of them—to be sincerely sorry for and ask God’s forgiveness for breaking his laws, that is, the Ten Commandments and the myriad variations of them in deed and word and even thought. Sounds impossible. It is…for man by his own efforts, but Jesus said, What is impossible with men is possible with God (Luke 18:27). Redemption—the salvation of your soul unto eternal glory—is the work of God through Christ from first to last. As John the Baptist said, A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven (John 3:27). And James said (1:17), Every good gift…[comes] down from the Father. Jesus told the woman at the well that if you know God’s amazing gift, ask and he will give (John 4:10). Notice there is nothing conditional between asking and receiving, once God has opened your eyes to the availability of his free gift. This is the gospel, the good news of God’s grace, his free gift of everlasting life with him, and that is as good as good news can get! Oh sinner, think about the fearful danger you are in. For the sake of your eternal soul, prayerfully ask God to open your eyes to the His truth, change your heart, give you faith in Christ’s work on your behalf, and enable you to fervently seek repentance. Do it now. You know not the day nor the hour….
MY BROTHER JACK The Psalmist says Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he has done for my soul. (Psalm 66:16) I would like to tell you what He has done for two souls—my best friend’s and mine. We're warriors from two different wars, a generation apart, whose lives providentially intersected, with amazing results, long after our combat days were over, long after God’s hand miraculously shielded us on some of history’s bloodiest battlefields. If you were to combine a Tom Clancy thriller with the mega-bestseller, Tuesdays with Morrie, and reverse the student/teacher roles in the latter book, and demonstrate the Gospel miraculously working in two extraordinary lives, you would have our story of redemption. Thomas Wolfe said, “All men are strangers.” Jack and I are proof he was wrong. In this competitive, postmodern culture close friendships among men are a rare thing. Rarer still, ours is a friendship between men of two different generations living at opposite ends of America, and both of us are called curmudgeons by those who know and love us anyway. Jack is a hero from the age of giants—WW II. As a young ensign just out the Naval Academy he survived the Pearl Harbor attack while miraculously spilling only minimal blood. Eleven months later, aboard the heavy cruiser, the USS San Francisco, he spilled more blood at Guadalcanal, in what has been called “the most furious sea battle in history.” Then he survived countless close calls in five war patrols as a submariner—that elite “silent service” with the highest casualty rate of any branch of the military in WW II. He was awarded the Navy Cross, our nation’s second highest award for valor, and a chest-full of other medals for heroism. After a career as a nuclear submarine commander he had a second and third career as a successful businessman and member of Governor Ronald Reagan’s administration in Sacramento, declining an offer to serve in Washington DC when Reagan was elected president. I’m the relative youngster—a Presbyterian elder—with no comparable claims to fame, and I wield the pen. I flew 268 combat missions in an F-100 in Vietnam, collecting a few medals in spite of myself, surviving by God’s grace alone. When our paths crossed I was fifty-two and Jack was seventy-eight. He was a widower, a giant of a man with a towering intellect living alone but not lonely, actively involved with a wide circle of friends and interests. In the half-century since WW II, he had been haunted by the “Why me?” of a combat veteran who survived against all odds while friends died violently all about him, yet there was no acknowledgement on his part of a divine hand that had preserved his life…and no discernible concern for the perilous state of his soul. I felt burdened to raise his concern and, God willing, help him learn the only lesson in life that matters. It all began when I wrote a column for The Wall Street Journal editorial page for Memorial Day, 1996. It was entitled, Still the Noblest Calling, and was about the first time I visited the Vietnam Memorial Wall, 27 years after I returned home from that war. I have 3 friends, fighter pilots I flew with, whose names are inscribed on that memorial. And truth be known, it is only by God’s amazing grace that my name is not also inscribed on that awesome black granite wall. Between some very determined enemy antiaircraft gunners and my own terror stricken actions in the heat of battle, I should have been killed several times. I am walking proof that there is a God and he is merciful and providential beyond human comprehension. I’ll give you one example from the book. The first time, as a rookie pilot, that I dove down the gun barrels of an enemy antiaircraft artillery battery, trying to drop my bombs on them, I saw enemy tracers the size of walnuts closing on my face at over 1000 miles per hour. They were so thick I thought it was impossible to fly through them. My horrified reaction was to yank so hard on the control stick of my diving F-100, trying to get away, that I exceeded the design limits on the airplane’s wings, by a wide margin, and for a few seconds blacked myself out in the process. There is no earthly explanation for why those wings did not fold up around my ears…no earthly reason why I was not splattered all over the mountainous jungle…it is only by God’s grace that I am standing here telling you this story. But the story gets even more incredulous. Rather than take my badly overstressed airplane straight home and gingerly put it on the ground, I suicidally said nothing and continued to attack those guns with my flight leader. Such was the arrogance of a young fighter pilot who called himself a Christian, a Top Gun graduate of fighter pilot school, who, in the heat of battle, made a spilt second decision that he would rather die than admit he had so badly failed his first test of courage. Such is the way the mind can work in war. We managed to destroy that gun battery and all the gunners. It sounds grotesque 37 years after the fact, but that flight home, as we danced the wild blue in victory, was pure bliss, with the adrenalin still coursing through my veins but the danger past. Mere words simply cannot convey the feeling that comes with being shot at and missed, and in a single seat fighter, no one else hears the whoops and hollers of ecstasy. We landed back at our home base and I inspected my aircraft. The extent of the damage was so great that my legs would not support my body. I sat down unceremoniously in the shade of the wing with the Apostle Paul’s words ringing in my ears: “…it is by grace you have been saved.” And I knew…I knew… that the God that had I failed to pray to before I went into battle was in charge and I was NOT. And 37 years later I am still giving thanks to the God who saved me that sunny Sunday morning in the summer of ’68, and the Son of God who saved my soul by dying for me on a cross, nearly 2000 years before I was born. And this was just the first crystal clear manifestation of God’s control of my life in that war that left me too weak to stand when it was all over. The day my guest column appeared in the WSJ I received a few hundred of the most wonderful phone calls from all over the country. One of the callers that day was Jack Bennett, a widower living alone in Southern Cal. We bonded—two passionately patriotic men with heartland roots who had wandered the world. I grew up on a farm in western Illinois and he in suburban Chicago. And we’ve been emailing nearly every day since…sometimes 2-3 times a day. But there was one critical difference in our worldviews. I’m a born again sinner saved by Grace, trusting in Christ alone for my salvation. My friend, Jack, was a lost soul. He was quick to claim “luck” as the reason for his survival in WW II. At Pearl Harbor, as he commanded an antiaircraft gun trying to defend his ship from a sky full of attacking Japanese fighter planes, he reached up to adjust his steel helmet and a bullet clipped his thumb, right in front of his nose. Off the island of Guadalcanal nearly a year later, an attacking Japanese plane crashed into his ship, the San Francisco, and a wingtip, spinning through the air like a razor blade, clipped his elbow as he was ducking. That night, when his small task force ran head-on into a vastly superior Japanese fleet, he was one of a very few men left standing on the deck of that 180-yard-long ship, now a blazing junkyard cremating his fellow sailors. A half dozen times that night, he witnessed or was a part of what the most casual Christian would call miracles, all detailed in a story that will take your breath away. Ten ships were sunk, five on each side, and 1,800 American sailors died, tho we miraculously won the battle. To this day, Jack’s most vivid memory of that night was what he described as a “strange inner peace” at ground zero of hell on earth. He then became a submariner, where the hand of God brought him through several harrowing underwater experiences unscathed in defiance of all the odds. He made five combat patrols aboard the USS Queenfish, sinking numerous Japanese ships, including the biggest prize of all, an aircraft carrier. The details of those underwater attacks, nearly always followed by narrow escapes, with destroyers on the surface overhead, sounding like trains crossing a railroad trestle above them as they lurked silently 150 feet below, enduring the buffeting of depth charges exploding around them, will make your knees knock as you read it. A year after we became friends, after waiting and praying for an opening to witness to Jack, he read an op-ed column I had written for the Los Angeles Times. It was entitled God, Country Forgiveness. In it I expressed my difficulties in forgiving the key politicians who had made such a hash of America’s noble intentions to defend South Vietnam from communist aggression. A few days later I awoke to this moving, eloquent email from Jack:
JD - A strange thing has happened to me tonight. In my response of the 26th to your fine essay in the LAT I adamantly refrained from forgiving the Japanese…for their inhumane acts…during…WW II…. Then tonight I watched a Memorial Day revival show on TV that has me reconsidering everything. I believe it was the Trinity channel and the hosts were a guy and his wife, a…[lady]…with a giant hairdo. Brigadier General Robbie Risner, USAF (Ret.) was on and described his experiences as a POW at the Hanoi Hilton. He was the senior USAF fighter pilot shot down and taken prisoner [by the North Vietnamese]. I never watch these religion programs but was quite impressed by this one. As you indicated in your column, it’s very difficult to forgive, but the sheer coincidence of the issue being put before me so vividly on the heals of your eloquent appeal to forgive—or was it coincidence?—has got me rethinking. The interview was all real and believable but my view is still out of focus. Thought you’d find this odd fallout of some interest. With kind regards, Jack
In his inimitable way, this great American hero was baring his troubled soul—he realized he was clueless about the way of salvation. There was no doubt in my mind—God was in the process of changing his heart. I emailed back, “God is tapping you on the shoulder, my friend,” and I began an intense presentation of the gospel, a small dose at a time. I sent him books, including a Bible with a sticky tab at John 1 that said “Start here.” The internet is a wonderful way to witness. I could think carefully about my answers to Jack’s extremely tough questions, research them, quote Bible verses and commentaries, sleep on them and revise them before sending them on. I have saved all of his emails and all of my answers, and they comprise the detailed diary of an old man’s journey to faith. God willing, they will serve as a roadmap for an unsaved friend of yours. The book flashes back and forth between Jack’s spiritual quest and both our walks through the valley of the shadow of death, decades apart and decades earlier. It’s amazing how plain God’s working in your life can be with the clarity of His truth and hindsight! Jack’s own life and mine provided the real life application, in ways so unmistakably clear, of our Lord’s eternal truths, and was an excellent way to explain to him that with a providential God there is no such thing as luck. A few months later, on a business trip to California, I stayed overnight with Jack—our first face-to-face meeting. Stepping off the train in Solana Beach, CA, at the end of a hectic day of business for me, was like stepping onto a movie set. It was dark, with just a splash of the deep red remnant of a balmy day remaining on the western horizon of the Pacific Ocean. The station was deserted but for a tall, stocky old man standing under a street light on the platform. It was Jack. Our standard introductory small talk seemed stilted to me, like maybe these two men who’d been having such soul-deep email correspondence about issues with eternal consequences were now a little embarrassed about it when confronting one another in the flesh. Men are uncomfortable, no matter how much they have bared their souls to one another, until they have spent a season face-to-face, adding the non-verbal component, perhaps the most important part, to their communication. We spent the night swapping war stories and talking politics. I felt an unexplainable lack of courage to bring up the religious issues that weighed on my mind. Perhaps it was because it would require me to respond to his tough questions on the fly, without the time I had to ponder and apply appropriate scripture before responding…as I did when the medium was email. What a riveting raconteur he was, a blessed gift indeed for a man who had lived on the inside of some of the most important history of the 20th century. The next day Jack drove me to the airport, driving his Thunderbird thru heavy freeway traffic like the wannabe fighter pilot that he always professed to be. In all our nonstop conversation there was never the slightest hint of the condescension a younger man often hears, when talking to a successful older man. I would never match him in worldly accomplishments, yet when he made covetous allusions to my faith he gave me the impression he felt my belief in God made me a better man than he. In spite of my disappointment about my witness to Jack that day, I was sure of one thing: my friendship toward him was trumped and returned. We arrived at the madhouse of Lindbergh Field, San Diego. I set my bags on the curb and quickly turned and gave Jack a big bear hug amid all that chaos. He did not hug back and I was afraid to look him in the eye as I squeezed and thanked him profusely. I suspect it was the first bear hug the crusty old captain ever got from another man. As I walked into the crowded terminal and back into my mundane world, in a daze, I prayed aloud. “Dear God, I love that old guy. Please change his heart so he can spend eternity with us.” A few weeks after I returned to my home in Florida, I received an email from a perfect stranger, a woman living in the NW corner of the US. It read:
Dear Mr. Wetterling, Jack Bennett is a dear friend of mine He recently shared with me the correspondence between you two concerning his salvation. You sir, are an answer to prayer…. I have been praying that the Lord would put a Christian in Jack’s life that he could relate to, someone who has been through similar life experiences as he. I am so moved to see the Holy Spirit at work in Jack’s life. I feel that Jack is very close to making a commitment to Jesus Christ. I know there are no coincidences in God’s plan for our lives. I can’t wait to tell Jack that you are not a coincidence in his life but an answer to my prayer. I agree [with what you told Jack], nothing is more important than where we and our loved ones spend eternity. I will continue to pray for Jack. Thank you for taking the time to share the Lord’s plan of salvation with him. [With] warm regards,
Smart guy, that Jack. He had forwarded my email to another trusted friend for a second opinion. He wanted to see if this guy Wetterling really knew what he was talking about. And he was about to learn from this lady another lesson in how God works his providential ways. Jack told me later she was his travel agent before she married and moved away. Six months after this intense witness began, Jack attended a WW II submariner’s reunion in a Las Vegas casino hotel. An old friend, who was a Christian and fellow crewmember, sat and discussed eternal truths with Jack long after the party was over. And in that deserted banquet hall, Jack prayed with his old friend and asked Christ into his heart. May God be praised…! From that day forth and forever he is Brother Jack, my brother in Christ. Then the spiritual quest grew even more intense, the Q&A even more challenging as Brother Jack struggled to work out [his]…salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). In his words, he had “…no time to waste.” There was so much he wanted so desperately to understand. It was an extended time of joy and frustration, of two steps forward and one step—sometimes three steps—back. I prayed for guidance. I lay awake at night trying to think of new ways to explain the gospel to him. After about three years of discipleship, Brother Jack began to communicate his understanding in a way that made plain his mind had been renewed along with his heart. We joint ventured in witnessing to other WW II vets by email. His eloquent personal testimony brought such great joy to the heart of his junior mentor. Brother Jack is now 87 and has suffered a few strokes, but his mind remains quick as a steel trap. He lives in a small room in a nursing home, but contentedly reports it is still ten times bigger than his stateroom as a nuclear submarine commander. He awaits glory with the most amazing joy and peace. Last December I made a special trip to California to see him one last time. I spent most of my visit sitting beside him with my Bible open in my lap, doing a running commentary as I read aloud. We watched the movie, The Passion of the Christ, stopping every time he had a question. I would read from the scriptures and expound until he was satisfied that he understood, then we returned to the movie—a terrific training aid. A Presbyterian preacher friend of mine and two of his elders agreed to drive down from Orange County and conduct a communion service in his apartment. Surely the Lord was in that place. Finally…sadly…I had to say, “It’s time for me to go, Brother Jack.” He replied, “Then I won’t see you again.” I answered, “I’ll see you in heaven…if not before.” He just smiled back with that peace that passes all understanding. I rose and approached his easy chair and put out both hands. He leaned forward and took them and with some effort I pulled him to his feet and hugged him…and he hugged back. Now stooped with age, he looked up into my eyes and said, “You sure have changed my life, JD.” It was the umpteenth time in three days he had expressed his gratitude. I let out a long sigh of mock exasperation and said, “Brother Jack, you know and I know that God changed your life. I was just one of a few simple tools in His hands.” He smiled and said, “Good-bye, brother.” In typical commanding officer fashion Captain John E. “Jack” Bennett, US Navy, has organized his funeral in detail and all his three adoring daughters will have to do is follow his checklist. He has accorded me the singular honor of conducting his graveside service at the US Naval Academy cemetery at Annapolis, where he will be buried among the great heroes of our nation, and beside his beloved wife. What an extraordinary blessing it will be to commend my Brother Jack, American hero saved by grace, into the arms of our Heavenly Father. We will meet again. We will share a table at the wedding feast of the Lamb…in the Mansions of our LORD…for all eternity. May the name of the LORD be praised. Amen.
CHANGED FOREVER
For I know the plans I have for you,”
declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give
you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me,
and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with
all your heart.
I can’t remember a time when I did not know about God. My parents always took me to Sunday School and church growing up, even on rare vacation trips. At thirteen I attended Lutheran Catechism class in the church basement every Saturday morning for a year. I memorized tons of Luther’s Catechism and scripture, and then recited it on demand in a verbal final exam, along with my classmates before the congregation one summer Sunday morning in 1956. I knew the answers to all the standard questions about God and still did not known him as my savior—there was no personal relationship, no life changing experience. While I could put on a show of knowledge, inside I was the same ornery kid I’d always been…until a providential God changed my life at age fifteen. It was the summer of ’59 and the first cutting of hay looked like a barn breaker. The afternoon sun bore down from a clear blue sky on three of us teenage boys playing football in the barnyard as we awaited the next load of baled hay. The big, red, gambrel-roofed barn and gray stone farmhouse were just a coat of paint shy of qualifying for the cover of one of those magazines that extol the virtues of country living. There was nothing in that pastoral scene that portended the trauma that was about to occur. Football was the most important thing in my life in those days. I was due to be the starting quarterback for Stronghurst High that fall. It had been my dream for as long as I could remember. Our town was just a wide spot in an Illinois road, but like every small and large Midwestern town, high school football was the pinnacle of teenage male aspiration. We were all three shirtless in sweat-soaked blue jeans covered with alfalfa chaff as I tossed the football to the other two boys running pass patterns. Don, one of the pass-catchers, lived in the stone farmhouse, and my younger brother, John, just a year behind me in school and the best athlete of the group, was the other. As the next wagonload of hay arrived, drawn by an old two-cylinder two-cycle John Deere tractor, the game broke up. John and I started up the elevator to the hayloft to stack the incoming bales. The elevator resembled a straight, forty-foot-long playground slide, about sixteen inches wide, with a chain and paddle arrangement for transporting grain or hay bales, running upward at a forty degree angle through an 8 by 12-foot doorway just below the roof of the barn. It was Don’s job to lift the fifty-pound bales off the wagon and position them one at a time on the elevator, which would then transport them up and dump them into the hay loft. Walking up the elevator was the quickest way to the hayloft, though not without some risk—a non-issue for two fearless farm boys. Just inside the barn door, right next to the elevator, was an extension ladder we used to descend the twenty feet or so to wooden floor of the hayloft. As we ascended the elevator to the barn door, Don started the noisy little gasoline engine that powered the elevator. I waited just behind John near the top of the elevator as he stepped off and onto the ladder. Without checking to see if we were safely off the elevator, Don engaged the clutch on the engine and the chain and paddles jerked into motion. They swept my feet out from under me and I fell backwards. My left foot, clad in extra-high-top work shoes, got caught under one of the paddles. It dragged me to the top of the elevator and pitched me off the end, but my foot was stuck in the chain and gear mechanism. I hung there, trying to kick free with my good foot, twenty feet above the hayloft floor, as the gears tried to rip my foot off my leg. Panic-stricken, John yelled at the top of his lungs for Don to stop the elevator, but was unheard above its screech and clatter. I finally kicked free and fell headfirst to the floor. Brother John dragged me clear of the falling bales of hay. The next thing I remember was a doctor's office. My foot was swollen to the size of a football in awful abstract hues of purple and red, and every beat of my heart sent bolts of lightning through it. The doctor said to my father, “This ankle is far too swollen to set tonight. Take him home, put some ice on it, give him two of these every four hours and get him to the hospital first thing in the morning.” It was the worst night of my fifteen years. The doctor’s pain medicine did not lower the pulsating voltage shooting up my leg. Climbing the stairs to my bedroom was out of the question, so Mom made up the living room sofa. She sat up all night with me, applying a wet cloth to my sweat-soaked body, but there was no relief. I moaned and groaned and twisted and turned and cried. As agonizing as the physical pain was, the knowledge that I'd probably miss the upcoming football season and my starting position was equally unbearable—all my hopes and dreams were dashed. Mother soothingly admonished me, “Trust in the Lord and things will all work out just fine, Son.” “Why is God doing this to me, Mom?” I whimpered. “What did I do to deserve this? It's not fair.” Mom tearfully replied that, but for the grace of God, it would have been very much worse. She explained that those lumberjack boots I was wearing, that I just had to have because they were so “cool,” was an act of God instilling a want in me that allowed my foot to remain attached to my leg in the accident. He was in charge and he knew what he was doing. Her words fell on deaf ears. It was a long, hot, miserable summer, and boring in a way that only an immobilized teen could appreciate. Riding in a car in a full-length leg cast was uncomfortable except for the shortest trips, so I was confined to the house. I fought boredom by reading every book available in our family’s modest library until I was down to the last one. It was entitled The Power of Positive Thinking, by Norman Vincent Peale, an author unknown to me. In desperation I waded into it. To my surprise, the book grabbed me and held me until I had finished it just before dawn. It spoke of how prayer and a positive attitude, the fruit of faith, could change your life. If ever anyone needed an attitude adjustment, it was this self-pitying kid. My negativity was driving the whole family crazy. For the first time in my life I began to read the Bible and pray in earnest. I read the healing stories in the New Testament and tried hard to look on the whole experience positively, but for the life of me I couldn’t imagine what God's purpose was in all this misery. I prayed for understanding and for a miracle—complete healing of my ankle soon enough to play football in the fall. Our family had planned to drive to California to visit our cousins at the end of the summer—a major, first-ever undertaking for a farm family of six with modest means. The thought of not making that trip was a crushing blow to everyone, but in my mind it was not as devastating as missing the upcoming football season. My offer to stay home alone was rejected out of hand by Mom and Dad. There was really only one solution to the whole family's problem—that cast had to come off. It had been on only seven weeks. The doctor said it would take twelve weeks, perhaps more. Then one night in my bedroom, as I prayed again for a miracle, I had an inspiration. The family trip had been planned for the next week and my doctor’s appointment was a month away. God might have already performed a healing miracle and I wouldn’t even know it unless the doctor took a look at it. Why not call the doctor and have him at least check the leg? The next morning, after I pleaded with Mom, she agreed to call the doctor. I did not mention my revelation about the power of prayer and positive attitude. The awesomeness of it all was beyond my ability to verbalize, but truth be known, my saintly Mom knew all about such things. The doctor chuckled and said, “Sure, bring him on over to the hospital and we'll x-ray the ankle. It's too soon to remove the whole cast, but perhaps we could put on a shorter one that would allow him to bend his knee and ride comfortably in a car.” Well, that wouldn’t be the preferred answer to my prayer, although it would solve our vacation dilemma, so I persevered in my plea to God for total healing. Two days later I lay half-naked on the cold stainless steel slab of the x-ray table with my cast removed. My leg looked like one big rash with long scarlet scratch marks from the wire coat hanger that I used to scratch the itches that had driven me crazy. The doctor studied the x-ray in silence, then he left the room. He was gone a long time. When he returned he had another man in a white smock with him. They both studied the x-ray and talked in muffled tones. I tried to keep a positive outlook, but I was so afraid I was trembling. Oh Lord, please don't let them put on another cast.... The doctor walked slowly, sober-faced, toward me. He stood beside the x-ray table and traced the outline of the anklebone with his thumb and index finger, as if looking for something. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Well, son, you can put on your clothes and go home. Your ankle is completely healed." I began to shiver, not from the cold. I thanked God and I thanked the doctor. It was a miracle in answer to my prayer…and my life has been forever changed.
THE SAP-FILLED BOYS OF SUMMER
Ridge Haven’s summer camp season is over, 25 on-fire-for-Christ college-age counselors are gone and we are going thru our annual August-empty-nest-syndrome. But after a day or two of adjustment, the silence becomes golden—just another form of joy in this Wilderness Cathedral. To judge from the happy kids that left every Saturday morning, a week at camp has been the highlight of their summer, and, God willing, lives have been changed for eternity. That is so different than the highlight of my summers growing up on a farm in the Midwest. The Henderson County 4-H fair was the highlight of the summer season in rural western Illinois. It was not the carnival midway that made it that way, nor the cotton candy, the Ferris wheel or the tractor-pulling contest. It was the unmitigated mischief we got into that sticks in the mind. The fair was five days of Cain-raising by Illinois farm boys who'd spent their summer break baling hay, building fences, and cultivating corn, none of which was an adolescent's preferred way of getting from sunup to sundown. Each mid-July every country kid gussied up his 4-H project—hogs, cows, sheep or chickens—and trucked them to that pasture south of town, there to live day and night with their livestock in a half-dozen big sweltering circus tents. The animals didn't really need watching overnight—that was just an excuse—but the boys sure did. And one feeble old night watchman was no match for a few score sap-filled boys of summer. The most memorable fair was the one Herb the Horrible won't ever let me forget. Herbert was the model of meanness, the icon of orneriness in Henderson County. Just the words, “Herb the Horrible is looking for you,” were sufficient to strike terror in the hearts of lesser pubescent males. “He's sawch a beeg boy,” his Swedish grandma said. He reached 200 pounds before he reached his fourteenth birthday. His hair had the color, texture, and unruliness of the flank hair on those Grand Champion Hereford steers he always brought to the fair. But while his steers were halter broke and generally docile, Herb the Horrible was neither. With a temperament to match his hair, he was an accident looking for a place to happen, and at the county fair he stumbled upon that venue two or three times a day—double that rate after dark. To this day I don't know if the Horrible One was that way by nature, or if he just got that way in self-defense—he was so much fun to pick on...if the gang of pickers was large enough...and fleet enough. When he did succeed in cutting one of his tormenters from the herd, his favorite form of torture was to dunk the hapless Lilliputian in the livestock water tank and hold him there until all the sap had drained out through his eyeballs, letting him up for air just long enough to inhale and swear an oath of eternal allegiance to his horrible highness. One hot summer someone hatched the perfect pestilence to foist on our favorite firebrand. It was not on the list of approved 4-H projects. I was not in on the act but Herb to this day has accused me of being the ringleader, never believing my denials. So a few years ago I decided to recreate the event to the best of my imagination, given the facts I knew, as if I had been there, and the St. Petersburg Times was pleased to run the story illustrated by their Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, Don Addis. The county fair was a stressful time for both young men and livestock, and there were always a few hogs who would die from excitement or heat or both. Such was the fate of one of Stinky Singletree's Hampshire barrows one night. Rollie's Rendering Works had blown a head gasket on his only truck and business had piled up, so Stinky's expired pig spent all the next day in the summer sun. We decided that the dearly departed porker would make a great bed partner for his horribleness, allowing him to sleep cheek by jowl, as it were, with the Hampshire hog. The challenge lie in the logistics of transporting a two-hundred-pound cadaver with advanced rigor mortis and a serious case of B.O. The sun had created an additional element of danger—the carcass was inflated to a point where the untanned leather had the timbre of a snare drum. The cattle tent was a good seventy-five yards from the hog tent, and the way was cluttered with electric extension cords, water hoses, portable pig pens, a huge mud hole surrounding the water tank, and all the ropes associated with circus tents. Then there were random bales of hay and straw, gunnysacks of feed, trucks parked helter-skelter, and the ever-growing manure piles. Any one of those obstacles was sufficient to doom the mission. One slip and that hog would have made like a dropped watermelon. We four post-midnight pallbearers staggered like drunken sailors under the heavy, awkward load, our arms crossed and hands locked under the corpse as we shuffled sideways across the darkened obstacle course toward the cattle tent. It required a greater degree of intimacy with the dead than any of us really cared for. By some act of fate Herb was comatose on a blanket spread out on a pile of straw next to his steers. It was the third night of the fair and no amount of excitement can keep a body going forever, especially at the Horrible One's pace. With hearts pounding in our ears we eased the hog down to its not-quite-final resting place, then pushed it up next to the sleeping Viking, shirtless and snoring. Now I was long gone and in deep cover when it happened, but they say one of Herb's horribly sharp elbows over-stressed the hog hide during the night. He awoke as a most angry centerpiece in a smorgasbord of semi-cooked hog haggis. Word spread like wildfire through the cattle tent, the hog tent and all over the fairgrounds the next morning—hell hath no fury like the Horrible One’s wrath. When my Dad showed up that day, he asked what was ailing me. I confessed to nothing but offered that I thought I needed to go home to bed. He decided it must really be serious if I were willing to forgo the last day of the county fair. It was twenty-five years later that our paths converged on the Gulfcoast of Florida. Herb's girth had expanded and his hairline had receded even more than mine. His conversation quickly got around to a humorous allusion and accusation pertaining to that fateful night at the county fair. I pled the fifth yet again and we became good friends, marveling at how the passage of time and the aging process had changed our view of what constitutes a good time. Over the years we've spent many a happy day sailing in the gulf and canoeing and camping on Florida's rivers. Several years ago he married his charming wife, Fetch, in our living room before our favorite Presbyterian preacher, and the good times got even better. But he's never let me forget that night he spent in hog heaven—the accusations and denial have become hilarious ritual to our spouses. Fourteen years ago, when a very exciting opportunity presented itself, I used my friend, HTH, as a reference. A few days later the phone rang. “Somebody called me asking a lot of questions about you.” “Yeh?” “Remember when you put that dead hog in my bed at the county fair 35 years ago?” Silence. “Well...I finally got even.” More silence. Then I heard myself say, “It was worth it.” I got the job anyway, and ten years later retired early to this Blue Ridge Beulah Land, but if I could relive my youth, I’d go to Ridge Haven Camp in the summer.
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