Midweekly Reality Check: Meditations on the Mountain
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Skip the controversy and read the book
January 31, 2006

We’re a little off the beaten path…well, okay, a lot off…at this wilderness cathedral called Ridge Haven, but with the internet I feel as  tuned in as any big city denizen, and without the ugly urban downside.  There are a few minor exceptions.  On those exceedingly rare occasions when we want to see a first run movie (the last one being The Passion of the Christ), we must make a one-hour drive to Asheville.  There is a “uniplex” theater much closer, in Brevard (population 7,500 souls and 927 white squirrels), just 12 tangled, topsy-turvy, two-lane miles away, but it rarely gets first run movies in a timely fashion.  Thus we were steeling ourselves for the drive to Asheville’s unique brand of civilization to see the End of the Spear, that is, until the God-bloggers went berserk over the unfortunate, inexplicable casting decision for the lead role. The controversy goes on, but our quandary was short-lived.

Last Monday night my wife and I saw the documentary version of that movie, entitled Beyond the Gates of Splendor, sitting beside Dr. Paul Kooistra, head of the Presbyterian Church in America’s missions arm—Mission to the World.  We were in a room full of brand new missionaries visiting Ridge Haven for a week of intensive training.  Dr. Kooistra had seen the movie, The End of the Spear, just a few days before.  His first comment at the end of our viewing of the documentary was, “The documentary is better.”

I thought it was powerful, even more so given the company we were in.  I always question my status as a Christian when I’m around missionaries.  My work as resident manager of Ridge Haven is like skating to glory compared with the really tough sledding missionaries face.  It took me a long time to go to sleep that night—a rare thing.  I found an online review of the documentary here that speaks for me, with the following additions:

Two women in this story were no less courageous, perhaps even more so, than the five men who died—Rachel Saint, sister of Nate, and Elisabeth Elliot, wife of Jim, and her toddler, Valerie.  Accepting an invitation from two native women to come to the village and live among the uncivilized savages who had killed their loved ones, while the wounds of grief were still so raw, can only be explained by the power of the Holy Spirit working within them. Their success, by God’s grace, at converting many in the tribe, including the killers, is just the most amazing grace.  Others, including family members of the martyrs followed, and today, a half-century later, the tribe is civilized and Christian.  WORLD magazine has an excellent cover story on the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of these five missionaries.  A few years ago, I was blessed to hear Elisabeth and Valerie speak of those long ago days at a conference of women here at Ridge Haven. It was spellbinding. 

But there is much more to this story of God’s grace than just the amazing conversion of a native tribe in the jungles of Ecuador.  As Dr. Kooistra told the missionaries in training, one of Elisabeth Elliot’s books about her husband, In the Shadow of the Almighty: The life and Testament of Jim Elliot, did more to draw men and women to the mission field than any other book in the last half-century.  Read the reader reviews at Amazon.  You’ll find not book reviews, but poignant testimonies of people whose lives were changed by the book.  Elisabeth Elliot, a saintly lady not give to hyperbole,  states in the introduction of the 1988 reprint, “…hundreds of young men have told me that Shadow of the Almighty has had a more powerful influence on their lives than any other book outside the Bible.”

Dr. Kooistra told the assembled group,

 

“There have been three books in each of the last three centuries that have drawn more people to the mission field than any others.  They are Life & Diary of David Brainerd, by Jonathan Edwards; Life and Letters of Henry Martyn, by John Sargent; and The Shadow of the Almighty, by Elisabeth Elliot.  Jim Elliot was heavily influenced by the book on Henry Martyn’s life, who in turn had his life changed by reading the story of David Brainerd.”

 

Like their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, all three men died young on the field—Brainerd at age 29, Martyn at age 31, and Elliot at age 28.  All three books quote extensively from the personal journals and letters of young men totally committed to Jesus Christ, who pour out their souls on paper.  Here are three short excerpts, proof texts of his commitment from Jim Elliot’s journals:

 

“Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.” (As a college student)

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” (Prior to going to the mission field.)

“Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.”

 

Perhaps the highlight of the documentary for this old vet, who spent an intense year of his life in kill-or-be-killed air combat, was this: All five young missionaries—Jim Elliot, Roger Youderian, Nate Saint, Pete Fleming, and Ed McCully—went off to their fate armed with pistols, but all agreed that if attacked they would not shoot their attackers.  The reason?  “We are ready for heaven and they are not.”  They entered the Gates of Splendor on Sunday, January 8, 1956.  The greatest sermon a man can ever give is the life he lives.   

Bottom line, though I was moved by the documentary, neither it nor the movie pack the gospel punch integral to this story of God’s providence.  It will be told and retold till Christ returns. If it has to be a talking picture for you, see the documentary, Beyond the Gates of Splendor.  Or try this challenge:  Go here and read all 22 customer reviews of Through Gates of Splendor, by Elisabeth Elliot, which covers much of the same ground as both talking pictures, but with more holy passion and gospel truth.  Then go here and read all the reviews of The Shadow of the Almighty: The life and Testament of Jim Elliot, by Elisabeth…and follow your heart.  It’ll take a heart of stone to avoid hitting the “Buy with one-click” button for both.  Then brace yourself.  Your life may never be the same.

Why do you not understand what I say?
January 24, 2006

Does this question ever come to mind when your witness to unsaved family members and friends meets with rejection?  Why is the existence of an Almighty Creator of the universe, which contains not a single aberrant atom anywhere, so self-evident wherever you look but so incomprehensible to the unsaved?  C. H. Spurgeon asked, “How many men of profound learning are ignorant of eternal things…?  Anyone who follows current events can only come to the conclusion that the answer to Spurgeon’s question in our age is, “Very many indeed.” And in too many cases their ignorance is surpassed only by their arrogance.

A few years ago I was given the opportunity to witness via email to a graduate student residing in an ivory tower netherworld in southern California.  He had responded to a column I had written about forgiveness and the Vietnam War for the Los Angeles Times.  I failed miserably to dent that guy’s conception of reality, receiving only the hoots and derision of an outrageously arrogant God-basher.  I admitted defeat with a promise to pray for his salvation, whereupon he went ballistic with offense.  (Such a reaction has become the…uh…rage now among the unbelieving, as if they’ve been taking etiquette lessons from Islamic militants.)  I clenched my teeth and composed several clever comebacks, wishing I could get my hands on his neck and shake some sense into his head, but praise God, I remained silent and moved on.

Part of my error, in trying to educate my own way, was clearly spelled out in the 16th century by one of the most brilliant theologians since the Apostle Paul—John Calvin.  In his summa theologica, Institutes of the Christian Religion, he said, “...those who wish to prove to unbelievers that Scripture is the Word of God are acting foolishly, for only by faith can this be known…” (1.viii.13)  Today’s average unbeliever would not consider this “faith” solution profound, but just plain willful gullibility.

I’m going to spend the next 1,100 words answering the title question by standing on the shoulders of giants, the kings of clever comebacks, all of whom have understanding and eloquence far surpassing mine.  First the King of Kings:  The title question was Jesus’ response to the legalist Pharisees who were trying to pin him down with an actionable scriptural offense (John 8:1-42).  As such it was a rhetorical question that he answered as soon as he asked it: Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word (John 8:43).  The NIV translation says, Because you are unable to hear what I say.  A few verses later Jesus tells them, Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God (John 8:47).

The prime mover here is the unsung hero of The Trinity—the Holy Spirit—who enters the  divine redemption drama most explicitly a few chapters later, as the resurrected Jesus is preparing his disciples for his ascension back to the glory of the throne room of God.  Jesus said,

 

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you….  But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you (John 14:16-17, 26).

   

A clearer description of how God moves in the mind of a believer could not be given.  Now we can return to Calvin’s comment on the faith necessary to know that Scripture is the Word of God.  He said, “Scripture will ultimately suffice for a saving knowledge of God [i.e. faith] only when its certainty is founded upon the inward persuasion of the Holy Spirit” (Institutes of the Christian religion, I.ix.13).  This “Helper,” the Holy Spirit that the Son of God promised, will come and dwell (1 Corinthians 3:16) in His chosen (Ephesians 1:3-4) and guide them to the truth.  Calvin’s contemporary, the hero of the Reformation, Martin Luther, said it this way:

 

“For if any man feel in himself a love toward the Word of God, and willing hears, talks, writes, and thinks of Christ, let that man know, that this is not the work of man’s will or reason, but the gift of the Holy Ghost; for it is impossible that these things should be done without the Holy Ghost” (Commentary on Galatians, page 240).

    

It is all part and parcel of the gift of faith.  For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God…(Ephesians 2:8).  It takes an act of God’s grace—an undeserved gift of faith—to enable a sinner to understand the Word of God.

The Gospel of Luke gives a powerful example of the Holy Spirit in action the first time Jesus talked at length with his disciples after his resurrection from the dead.  After the initial shock of seeing him alive after he passed through a closed door and greeted them warmly, he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45).  Puritan commentator Matthew Henry has the best explanation of this: The Son, by the Holy Spirit, “operates on the minds” of his chosen, “enlightening their intellectual faculties with a divine light,” in this case even making their hearts burn within them (Luke 24:32).  “Christ's way of working faith in the soul…is by opening the understanding to discern the evidence of those things that are to be believed.” 

Another Puritan preacher of well-deserved renown, John Bunyan, a generation earlier than Henry, said it no less eloquently.  “Without the Holy Spirit, we are so weak that we will not, with all other means whatsoever, think one right saving thought of God, of Christ, or of the blessings He has reserved for those who love Him” (How to Pray in the Spirit, pg 57).

And when I think about my failed witness to that deluded SoCal college kid, I rest in Spurgeon’s cogent commentary. 

 

The ungodly world is hard to teach…the Lord means to break proud hearts, whether they will or not….  There will yet be such things done in the earth as shall bring skeptics to their knees. Let us not be dismayed because of their blasphemies, for the Lord can take care of His own name, and He will do so in a very effectual manner….  Even so, the salvation of the elect and the sure glorification of all true believers will make the most obstinate of God's enemies acknowledge that Jehovah, He is the God (Cheque Book of the Bank of Faith, Jan 21).

 

Vengeance is mine…says the Lord (Romans 12:19), just as is the heart-changing (Ezekial 11:19).  My command is to defend my faith, in season and out (2 Timothy 4:2), and do good works (Ephesians 2:10), not to earn my salvation but out of sheer gratitude that God, by grace alone, made me different (Philippians 2:13) through the work of the Holy Spirit sent to dwell in me (John 14:17).  The rest is up to God.   In Spurgeon’s words, again,  “Had it not been for the love of Jesus we should have remained to this moment in utter ignorance, for without His gracious opening of our understanding, we could no more have attained to spiritual knowledge than…an ostrich [can] fly up to the stars” (Morning & Evening, Jan 19).

Those whom God chose to be his own before time began (Romans 8:28-30, Ephesians 1:4), will, in His providence in due time and by whatever secondary cause he chooses, have their eyes (John 3:3) and mind opened (Luke 24:45) and heart changed (Ezekiel 36:26) by the Holy Spirit.  Until that day comes for a lost sinner, my witness to him, even if it were as eloquent as Calvin, Bunyan, Henry and Spurgeon combined, is just practice, helpful for my sanctification but nonsensical to him.  Remember this the next time your witness appears to have no impact.  Don’t lose your compassion for the lost.  “Play the man” who knows the love of the Lord Jesus and the indwelling Holy Spirit, who together with the Father are in charge of whatsoever comes to pass. 

     

Now we have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God….   The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Corinthians 2:12, 14)

The Prayers of the Depraved
January 17, 2006

 And this is the confidence that we have toward him,
 that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.
 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask,
we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.
(1 John 5:14-15)

 Dr. Bryan Chapell, President of Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, is, in my view, the greatest living reformed Christian writer.  Just last month our Sunday School class finished his powerful HOLINESS BY GRACE.  I was blessed to be one of the teaching team and, as always, the teacher learns the most.  I’m now reading his PRAYING BACKWARDS and am so moved I cannot wait till I’ve finished it to comment, so this is not a review.  For that see Tim Challies and all the pros at Diet of {book}Worms.

As a Christian, I have a blessed assurance that my God-given faith is solid and my gratitude for His amazing grace is nearly constant.  My top two struggles are with humility and prayer life.  Item one will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me or reads my stuff, but you’ll have to take my word for item two. In my blessed-beyond-belief lifestyle, I rise without an alarm clock long before daylight to do all my Bible and related reading (currently Table Talk, Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapell’s Praying Backwards, Bunyan’s How to Pray in the Spirit, and Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening).  With the inspiration of God’s Word and these icons of the faith, my prayer life should be akin to King David’s, but alas…. 

Author/columnist/former presidential speech writer Peggy Noonan, in describing Senator Joe Biden’s theatrics at the Judge Alito hearings, also described my prayer life: 

 

[He] spins his long statements, hypotheticals, and free associations—as he demonstrates yet again…that he is incapable of staying on the river of a thought, and is constantly lured down tributaries from which he can never quite work his way back--you can see him batting the little paddles of his mind against the weeds, trying desperately to return to the river but not remembering where it is, or where it was going. 

            

 The only difference between Senator Biden before the camera and my early morning solitary prayers is that I do know where the river is going and I can get back to it immediately when I realize what I have done, but every eddy I come to spins me out.  When I beg forgiveness for my sins I often shoot up self-loathing streams of sin for which I have long ago repented and God has long since put out of His mind (Isaiah 38:17, 43:25).  Or I paddle aimlessly up tantalizing tributaries of noxious thought that have no place in the mind of a child of God, least of all in the midst of his prayers to his Father In Heaven.  Or I find myself in stagnant sloughs of self-righteousness where I just quit paddling and loose all track of time and purpose bemoaning poor-old-persecuted-me, composing clever put-downs for those who have offended my fragile ego.  Now that could be the devil’s work, but I don’t believe I need his help for this.  My pre-dawn prayers daily prove my own depravity and my desperate need for God’s saving grace.

This is not my only ongoing struggle.  God hasn’t answered a number of my prayers in the way I have asked, and, boy, have I been persistent with some of them.  Again Dr. Chapell comes to the rescue.  He said, “Our feelings become our authority whenever they determine the priorities of our prayers.  In essence we pray in the name of our comfort, our ambition [!], or our lust.  Imagine how that sounds to God.” (page 145)  Ouch! 

Bull’s-eye, Bryan!  I pray that publishers will like my manuscripts, and that they will publish them “for God’s glory and the blessing of many,” (I’ve borrowed that phrase from someone because it is such a noble goal for all Christian endeavors.)  but in the part of my heart that only God sees, my glory, my fame, my ambition battles mightily for supremacy, and my prayer is but a shameless bribe attempt.  How must that sound to God? 

Of course I could have put a double exclamation point after “lust,” but I’m a Presbyterian Elder (PCA) and there are some details that just must stay locked in my prayer closet. 

The final issue in the trinity of troubled issues of my prayer life is praying aloud extemporaneously before others in our church’s weekly prayer meeting.  I do not open my mouth unless I know what I’m going to say, and I don’t always think positively of others whose mouths run ahead of their minds.  But, in order for me to know what I’m going to say, I have to think about it, and in the process I am not hearing others who are praying and thus not making their prayers mine.  Even worse, too many spoken prayers, including my own, sound like they are said for the benefit of others in the room (Matthew 6:5), not the sovereign God who controls our next breath.  How must that vain self-promotion sound to God?

Charles Colson was correct—“man is the master of self-delusion.”  So what is this camouflaged cesspool of sin to do?

 PRAYING BACKWARDS has the answers, and it doesn’t entail recording our prayers and then playing them backwards…though playing them forward would certainly be a lesson in humility.  This is a great book.  I reread as I go along—savoring it—a rare thing, and intend to start again at the beginning when I reach the end.  Only the Bible has been in that category heretofore.  

The answer to my questions begins with 1 John 5:14:  …. if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.  Dr. Chapell asks, “…[but] how do we pray according to God’s will when we don’t know it?” Even the Apostle Paul acknowledged, we do not know what we ought to pray for, but in the same verse he gives us the solution.  Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26).  Dr. Chapell makes his case in point:

 

Were we with Joseph we would have prayed for his rescue from his brothers plot to sell him into slavery….  Were we at the foot of the cross, we would have cried for God to send his angels to the rescue.  In each case the Lord knew better how to accomplish his will for his ultimate purposes….  Our prayers will always be limited by human knowledge and vision (page 72).

 

Here is Dr. Chapell’s  observation, with jolting clarity, of everyman’s prayers: “Were my prayers truly capable of binding God’s hands, I would be dangerous.”  God knows our thoughts (Matt. 9:4), and our words before we speak them (Psalm 139:4), and our real needs even as we lay out our subjective wants and wishes (Jeremiah 29:11).  That is why we must always pray in Jesus’ name, not just mouthing the words as concluding boilerplate, but by acknowledging up front (hence “praying backwards”), that we are trying to pray with the heart motives and methods Christ teaches us.  When we pray to the Father in the Son’s name, the Holy Spirit, who dwells in the believer (John 14:17), takes our selfish, stumbling supplications, and in a form of intimate, intertrinitarian communication with the Father far higher than mere words (“groanings”), conforms our prayers to God’s will.   And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:27).

Dr. Chapell calls it “global assurance”:  “Prayers offered in Jesus’ name are so wrapped in the love, wisdom and power of God that we remain in his care regardless of the uncertainty of our prayer.  Faith in this truth produces profound peace.”

Think about that.  It can set you free.

Cary and Mary
 A Love Story
January 10, 2006

By this all people will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.
(John 13:35)

 

Cary is a Florida cracker—a native—a West Point grad, father of two grown children, a 58 year-old physical fitness zealot with a passion for basketball, long after most men are looking for lower impact, if not sedentary sports, and one of the country’s top eminent domain attorneys.  Mary is a Midwesterner—Milwaukee, Wisconsin—transplanted to Florida’s Gulfcoast, a musician, passionate tennis player, mother of two service academy grads, and a younger grandmother of precocious Lexi. 

Cary and Ann Gaylord and Mary and Jim Carow have been close friends since Jim’s business brought him to Tampa in 1989.  Jim, a successful executive recruiter, explains the life of this Florida foursome:

We have gone to the same church, our kids [Blake and Anne Leigh Gaylord and Scott and Tate Carow] attended the same middle school, high school, and Blake and Tate even attended college together. Anne Leigh was maid of honor in Tate and Cassidy’s wedding. Anne Leigh introduced Tate and Cassidy. Cary introduced Scott to West Point.

Our families have vacationed together, jointly own four Gator football season tickets, caught lobster and sharks and grouper and all sorts of other ocean life together. We have served together on church committees, pastoral search committees, building committees. We have prayed together, played together, laughed together, and cried together. 

 My wife and I were welcomed into the life of these friends when we showed up at a little Presbyterian church in a pasture north of Tampa one Sunday in the mid-‘90’s.  Ann Gaylord, who gravitates to all strangers in church, met, welcomed and interviewed us in a most non-threatening way at the entrance.  Four years later, Mary, the church music director and keyboardist, accompanied my saintly mother, an angelic soprano, for her last public singing gig at age 81, shortly before she joined the heavenly choir.  When we moved from Tampa to the Blue Ridge Mountains in 2001, we boarded at Mary and Jim’s home our last night in town.

Mary has Polycystic Kidney Disease—cysts have accumulated on her kidneys like barnacles on a ocean-going boat bottom.  Her kidneys are shutting down and she is in mortal peril.  Her pain varies from significant to severe, her appetite is gone and she is exhausted but can’t sleep very well.  Her only survival options are kidney removal and a shortened, restrictive, painful life on constant dialysis, or a transplant from an organ donor, living or dead. Time is running out and something needs to happen soon. 

A plaintive, prayerful call went out to family and friends for anyone who would consider donating a kidney.  The human body seems to function okay on one kidney, though certainly God gave us two for a reason.  A backup organ is always good insurance for those who love life, if nothing else.  The catch is, not all kidneys are perfectly fungible among human beings.  The donor’s organ must be a match for the recipient’s body or it will be rejected.  Thirteen people, five family and eight friends, stepped forward and began the medical procedure to see if they would be a good match.  If you knew Christ’s disciples—Mary and her family and friends—that number would not sound quite so startling.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35).

D. L. Moody said “Out of a hundred men, one will read the Bible, 99 will read the Christian.”  Dear reader, these are Christians you can read, whose actions speak louder that any sermon ever could.  By now I am sure you have figured out from the title that, in the providence of God, Cary Gaylord has turned out to be the best match. His physical fitness was an important factor.  Many years ago, during a joint family vacation in the Bahamas, he rescued Mary’s then small son from a rip tide between two reefs.  Now he is rescuing Mary.  He’s graciously accepted the major disruption of his life and law practice—he’s the senior, founding partner of his firm—as he gets the most thorough physical exam he’s ever had and his kidney functions get examined with all the tools known to modern medicine.  Sometime in late February/early March, God willing, Mary and Cary will ride separate gurneys into adjacent operating rooms, and one of Cary’s kidneys will be removed and placed in Mary’s body.

Please pray for Mary and Cary—that Mary’s kidneys will hold out till then and Cary kidneys will pass his last two tests and the surgical procedure goes well.  You may follow their progress here, and leave a word of encouragement if you feel so moved.          

I have been blessed to know many heroes in my life.  I have eight friends whose names are engraved for the ages on that black granite Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington D.C.  I have equal assurance that Mary and Cary and family and friends’ names are likewise recorded for eternity in the Lamb’s book of life (Rev. 21:22-27).  I find that assurance in 1 John 4:12b:  if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.  Few acts on this earth can display the degree of perfection—a manifestation of God’s grace—in Cary’s demonstrated love for Mary. It’s heroism with eternal consequences.  The Westminster Confession states the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  This is how it is done.

Follow-up Feb. 16, 2006.  Transfer a success!

Is This the Day I Die?  
 January 1, 2006

 

Morbid subject for a New Year’s blog?  God willing, you’ll feel differently a few hundred words from now.  Over the holidays I read a wonderful novel by Randy Alcorn entitled Safely Home, Gold Medallion winner for best Christian novel of 2001 (5 stars based on 62 reviews at Amazon!).  The title quote introduces one of two main characters, Li Quan, a Harvard educated, persecuted “subversive” in China because he is a devout, practicing Christian.  It is the first thought that crosses his mind when he awakes every morning in a hovel that he shares with his wife and son, a hovel that he could swap for a fine home, prestigious professorship and safety for his family…by simply renouncing his faith.  The character has haunted me since I finished the book a week ago. 

In this modern age, untold numbers of mainland Chinese Christians would consider it amazing grace to die as quickly as the first century Christians died in the Roman arenas.  In the face of these terrors inflicted on believers, the Chinese family of God—now many millions—is growing at an astonishing pace, so much so that some Chinese house church leaders (not the false teachers of the state-sanctioned “Christian” church) are praying that similar persecution might come to America so that we, too, might reap the rewards of this mighty harvest of souls.  Christianity grows much faster when persecuted, from first century Christians to Asian and African believers today, two millennia later, when the blood of the faithful worldwide has never flowed in such rivers. 

Even in this moveable feast that is the USA, the growing level of vituperation toward Christians leads this believer to wonder if the Chinese prayers for America are about to be answered.  Hugh Hewitt makes the case well in a little heralded but powerful book entitled, The Embarrassed Believer: Reviving Christian Witness in an Age of Unbelief (1998).  He says,

 

America has become increasingly hostile to Christianity.  The media elite mocks it, vocal scientists disdain it, universities debunk it, and business ignores it.  Public expression of faith is not only unfashionable, it’s seen as slightly bizarre.

 

 The result is, “Every Sunday, in the safety of the sanctuary, millions of worshipers pray and sing with sincerity and gusto, then vanish and go silent for the next six days.”  The mockery and disdain have grown dramatically in the eight years since Hewitt wrote that book, to the point that the embarrassed believer in America is as clandestine as the persecuted Christian in China.  Intimidated by the vocal docents of denial who scornfully call us ignorant, intolerant troglodytes, too many are hesitant to demonstrate the joy of our salvation or voice the best news the human ear could ever hear—the gospel of Jesus Christ.  May God have mercy on us.    

“Is this the day I die?”

It’s an excellent reminder of our priorities.  Heaven is our home and the trials of this day are mere details enroute.  The joy of our great reward in heaven (James 1:3, Matthew 5:12) renders the slanderous adjectives hurled our way less than dust in the scales.  No one makes the case any more exhaustively than Jonathan Edwards, in a sermon entitled, The Christian Pilgrim.  If everyone who calls himself a Christian had the courage to live each day as obediently as if it were his last, our country and the world would be a vastly improved place.     

“Is this the day I die?”

It’s an even more critical question for those who do not know the Lord.  It has eternal consequences.  A majority of lost souls strive to convince themselves of the myth that this short life is all there is, that there is no long tomorrow, only eternal unconsciousness.  John Calvin makes a convincing case that it’s all self-deluded denial that does not work, that “actual godlessness is impossible.”  Quoting Cicero, he writes, “Yet there is, as the eminent pagan says, no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deep-seated conviction that there is a God.” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, I. iii. 1).  Calvin calls it “a doctrine…which each one of us is master of from his mother’s womb, and which nature itself permits no one to forget, although many strive with every nerve to this end. …though they struggle furiously [they] are unable to extricate themselves from the fear of God….[it’s] the perversity of the impious” (1.iii.3).  We witness this perversity in the mainstream media daily.  Do they really think that mere man’s shrill invective and disparaging denial of truth makes God quake?  Does the clay dictate to the potter (Isaiah 29:16)?  God is the judge of man, not the contrary (Acts 10:42).  Calvin would agree, I think, that such derision is just the latest whistling-past-the-graveyard fad.

A minority of lost souls, which includes some near and dear to my heart, rely on a god of their own design, sculpted out of cocktail party chatter and the newest new thing in “spirituality,” and burnished with selfish imaginings but divorced from the truth of the Bible.  This may be the devil’s most effective strategy to capitalize on Calvin’s claim that no one is godless.  Mark Twain is the herald of this age of delusion:  “In the beginning God created man in his own image, and ever since man has been trying to return the favor.”

In Safely Home, protagonist Li Quan’s dialogue with Ben (his apostate American businessman friend from his Harvard days who visits) perfectly frames the debate of our radically secular age.

 

Ben:  Religion seems to me to be a lot of wishful thinking.

Li:     That is what the communists say. 

Ben:  Just because they’re communists doesn’t mean they can’t be right.

Li:     No.  But it is not that the communists wish there were a God and have been convinced by the evidence there is none.  It is that they fear there is a God and therefore reject the evidence for him.  Believers comfort each other in their suffering by the truth that there is a God.  Communists comfort each other in their prosperity by the myth that there is no God.  So atheism is the real wishful thinking.

 

Oh, the terrors that await such wishful thinkers, be they Chinese communists, professed atheists or agnostics, or designer-god-worshipers, when they discover that death is not the end but the beginning, and there are only two verdicts with no appeal—Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world (Matthew 25:21), or Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. (Matthew 25:41).    

Every human who has ever drawn a breath has faced, or will face, a day when he will be forever stripped of his ability to deny reality.  If you have not faced that day, if you do not know the reality of the one true God as he reveals himself in the Bible, consider making this daily query your New Year’s resolution:  Is this the day I die?  Post it on your bathroom mirror as a daily reality check. Time is fleeting, death is certain, judgment is sure, and eternity is long.

For Christians, such a resolution can, God willing, lead to the joy the Puritans experienced, living each day knowing right now counts forever. …you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (John 8:32).  For dubious readers, I pray, for the sake of your eternal soul, that our providential God will lead you to repudiate your denial before your death. 

 As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me,
and every tongue shall confess to God.
 (Romans 14:11)

 Solo Bootstrapus
by Justified Sinner
December 27, 2005 

A guest blogger: 
my son-in-law, the soldier/scribe/superior dad to my grandson.
(I’m a blessed man.) 

I have wrestled with it, I have argued against it, I have cursed it and even tried to refuse it, but the truth remains true: God's grace cannot be earned.

 The other day I was challenged by a fellow believer when asked, “What is your greatest struggle as a Christian?" Though many great struggles came immediately to mind, it wasn't until later that day when the horrific truth came to light: my greatest struggle is the source of my salvation. It is tempting irony that the greatest gift I have ever been promised is also the greatest source of my inner strife.  Even upon conviction of the Gospel, I wince at the truth that there is nothing in me that God needs, and nothing of me that I can provide as a match to His grace. Living in a culture that is so focused on personal success and independence, this is not only mysterious but down right frustrating. I want the certainty of knowing that if I correctly apply the formula of salvation by doing a, b, and c, I will be saved. However, God completely alters the logic of the equation through an illogical variable: the gift of his only son to an undeserving people.

In one of his sermons, Rev Tim Posey mentions:

 

 "Grace is freely bestowed to an undeserving recipient; a pure receiver, not a worthy achiever." However, "we really believe in Solo Bootstrapus. We lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. The dominate cultural value in our culture is self-reliance. But grace is God-reliant. Grace is God-dependent. Grace has nothing to do with self-sufficiency; nothing to do with the person who has no need; nothing to do with owing anybody anything."

 

Instead of seeing the grace of God as sufficient unto salvation, we see it as a good start or a helpful nudge. In the state of our ignorance and ungratefulness we say, "Thanks for trailblazing the way, Jesus, but I got it from here. What's that? You also want me to rest in and apply your righteousness? Oh, no thanks. These tattered boots of sinful pride and self-righteousness should be just fine." And we stumble and we fall and still have the audacity to curse God for our trials; for depleting our sinfulness and replacing it with his holiness. In the midst of our self-pity and the demands for reassurance we completely miss it: the love, the mercy, the grace, the birth, the death, the sacrifice, the resurrection, the ascension, the joy; the truth, and the hope. 

 How I yearn for the day when my flesh ceases to lust against the Spirit, and how I pray that we would truly sense the need we have for God's grace, and in that grace rest. And rest not with the hope to later repay, but in the hope of the promise of salvation by grace alone.

 “He left His Father's throne above,
So free, so infinite His grace!
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam's helpless race.
'Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!”

In His Love,

Anthony

 

Read more here. 

 

 

A Christmas Devotional

December 20, 2005


   The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of truth and grace. (John 1:14). 

 

  Of all the gospel narratives of the Christmas story, these words of John the Apostle are my favorite.  But why did John call Christ the Word?  His Gospel begins that way:  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made…. (John 1-3a)  It is certainly crystal clear that “Word” means Christ.  No one argues with that.  In the beginning was [Christ], and [Christ] was with God and [Christ] was God…. [Christ] became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  John’s objective in writing his gospel was to prove that Christ was God.  But John must have been trying to convey more or he would have used the word Christ.  What might that be?

There appear to be two reasons why John used “Word” instead of “Christ.”  He was speaking to two audiences, the Jews, of course, and Greeks and Greek-speaking gentiles.  He was writing in Greek, after all.  The Greek language gets much more mileage out of words, and since it is the original language of the New Testament, preachers begin their seminary studies with courses in Greek. 

The Jewish audience would have understood, In the beginning was the Word, as a clear reference to Genesis 1:1:  In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And how did he do that?  He created them thru the power of his word.  Let there be light and there was light.  Such is the power of God’s word.  Isaiah 55:11 says so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.  A word spoken by God is a deed done.  And Christ was the last and most important word of God the Father. We will not find God apart from Christ (John 14:6, Acts 4:11-12). 

For the Greeks “Word” had even more meaning.  Logos, the original Greek word for “word" took on vastly more meaning through the studies of a Greek philosopher named Heraclitus who lived in Ephesus in the 6th century BC.  He was the guy who said “You can’t step into the same river twice.”  You can put your foot into the water of the river and take it out but when you put it back in the water has flowed on and it is different water that soaks your foot.  His point was that all of life was in a state of change.  As he pondered that he wondered, if everything was always changing why wasn’t the world in perpetual chaos.  He concluded that it was because the constant change was not random change but ordered change.  And if it was ordered change then there had to be a “divine plan” or “divine reason” for it.  ( Darwin should have read Heraclitus before he went off on his preposterous tangent.)  The Greeks defined reason as “the word unspoken.”  Heraclitus concluded that the reason, the unspoken word, God’s Logos, controlled all of creation, including all of history, and…listen carefully…the mental order that rules the minds of men.  In summary, Logos, with a capital L, was the mind of God controlling this world and all men.  This became standard philosophy among the Greeks, including Plato and Socrates and the Stoics.  In fact Plato told his students, “It may be that someday there will come forth from God a Word, a Logos, who will reveal all mysteries and make everything plain.”  Greeks were still pondering the Logos and writing about it 700 years later when John wrote his gospel.  It was common knowledge.  So when John said the Word, the Logos became flesh and made his dwelling among us, he was saying in response to Plato, “The Logos has come.”  

As Dr. James Montgomery Boice tells it in Volume I of his commentary on John, the Apostle is saying, “Listen you Greeks, the very thing that has most occupied your philosophical thought and about which you have been writing for centuries, the Logos of God, this word, this controlling power of the universe and of man’s mind, has come to earth as a man and we have seen him.”  Now wouldn’t that be a blockbuster revelation to the Greeks?  It was a stroke of divine literary genius the way the Holy Spirit inspired John to write it.   

God became man.  Marvin Olasky says to think about man becoming a cockroach and you have the slightest inkling what it must have been like for God to become man.  The Logos, the Word, the controlling power of the universe became a man, full of grace and truth, and to what end?  John 1:12 tells us: …to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.

 Dear friends, all the gifts given in the world this season cannot equate to that gift of a baby born in barn in Bethlehem .  What manner of love is this that we should be called children of God?  What manner of love is this that God humiliated himself and became a man born in the lowest estate for us?  What manner of love is this that would suffer a hideous death that we might live with him forever?  It is the infinite love of Almighty God, the Logos who controls our life and breath and being…born this day in the city of David …and he is Christ the Lord.

Talking Tough to a Cringing Soul
An Advent Meditation
Dec. 13 2005

There is Darkness at Noon in America, as Dr. Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Seminary, so perceptively and eloquently warns us in a three part commentary beginning Dec. 6, 2005.  I have read nothing outside of God’s own word that is more appropriate food for thought this advent season, as we examine ourselves and our world in preparation for celebrating our Savior’s first arrival—the only hope of mankind.  Mohler observes:

 

Something is happening to the worldview, the mentality, and the consciousness of this age. If we listen closely, we can hear something like the closing of a steel door—a solemn, cataclysmic slamming of a door… Tolerance is perverted into a radical secularism that is anything but tolerant. There is little openness to truth, and growing hostility to truth claims.

 

Never in my lifetime has the depravity of man been more obvious and the need for a God Incarnate Savior more self-evident.  Mohler proceeds to clarify why the second sentence of my opening paragraph brands me “most eccentric” and “dangerous” by a shocking percentage of my fellow citizens.  Apologist and theologian James R. White, in his Pros Apologian blog entitled, The Secularist Jihad and Christian Warfare, reinforces Mohler’s point.  “Christianity is now an official heresy in our land, a violation of the ‘sensibilities’ of secularism.”  Do we need any more proof of the effectiveness of this intimidation in our land of free speech than our president’s Christmas card this year?  Absent the word “Christmas”?  And this from a self-professed Christian president sworn to uphold a Constitution written by men “who never once walked out on a Christian prayer during their proceedings.”     

Add to this the demonic hatred spewed out and manifested with unspeakable horrors by Islamic radicals.  Our own culture now emulates this hatred in its public discourse, drawing headlines with appalling adjectives directed at political opponents and Christians.  Shockingly similar unspeakable horrors have already been inflicted by Americans on American Christians, as occurred at Colombine High, among other places.  If you think I’m a Chicken Little, read all of Mohler and White’s blogs mentioned above.  My soul cringes this advent. 

The Bible says …for those who love God all things work together for good… (Romans 8:28).  The gracious purpose of God overrules evil for my good, whether or not I comprehend it.  What could be the good in this?  Once again, in His providence, in my early morning reading Dec. 9th,  I read a wonderful advent devotional (click here and scroll down to the 9th) on Psalm 43, written by the staff of Park Cities Presbyterian (PCA) Church in Dallas, TX. Verse 5 reads,  Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.  It was God talking to a grown man  who was letting the darkening culture assault his assurance in Christ.

 

…even when our hearts are nearly broken with…disappointment we know that in Christ we are always at home in the Father’s heart, and that one day we will actually dwell at home with Him in glory.  When you think longingly of life as it once was and probably never will be again, lay hold by faith of the light and truth of the Incarnate Son of God and, like the psalmist, talk tough to your cringing soul.     

 

So I did.  My soul, perhaps God is saying don’t love this earth too much.  You are just a stranger passing through, and it lasts but a cosmic nanosecond.  Your home is in heaven with me, where you will abide forever in bliss beyond your comprehension.  Fear not those who say disparaging things about you but can never alter your destiny.  Fear not those haters who could manifest their hate in physical harm to you or your possessions but cannot steal one second of your eternal bliss in My presence.  No one can snatch you out of my hand—that’s a guarantee from the highest authority. 

This much I know this Advent Season, and I stake my life and eternal destiny on it :  The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever (Isaiah 40:8).  That eternal, inerrant word that prophesied our Savior’s birth also says every man is destined to die once and then face judgment (Hebrews 9:27).  I may be judged a dangerous fool by fools in this present darkness, someone may be planning the next hateful act against me, and it may get worse before glory, but God has promised my burden will not be more than I can bear by His grace.  And in the ultimate court of no appeal I will be exonerated in Christ alone by His grace alone.  A baby, immaculately conceived, the Word made flesh (John 1:14), born in the humiliation of a barn in backwater middle-eastern hamlet two millennia ago, has secured this all for me.  The greatest gift.  Amazing love.  O Come, O come again soon, Immanuel.       

THE TROPHY KILL
December 6, 2005

USS Queenfish (SS393)

Sixty-four years ago, on Dec. 7, 1941 my dear friend, Jack Bennett, survived the attack on Pearl Harbor by an inch or two when a bullet clipped his thumb in front of his face as he adjusted his broken helmet.  His ancient WW I helmet, with a broken chin strap, was a microcosmic metaphor of the sorry state of our country’s military preparedness back then.  You may read the story of Holocaust Sunday and Jack’s miraculous survival as it appeared here last year on this day of infamy. 

“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19).  Few of us are allowed to partake in our own revenge, but in God’s grace Brother Jack was allowed to on a number of occasions, long before he became a Christian.  Here's one, adapted from a book in progress:

Shortly after the Guadalcanal battle, the “most furious sea battle in history,”  Jack finally gave up trying to get Navy approval to become a fighter pilot and volunteered for far more dangerous duty, the silent service—submarines—with the highest casualty rates, by a wide margin, of any branch of service in WW II.  Because that service desperately needed more men, they took him immediately (after he passed a battery of tests that only a minority survived).  Pagans would say he led a charmed existence.  I think most of my readers know otherwise. 

The USS  Queenfish (SS393), refitted and flush from her successful first patrol, headed out from Majuro, an atoll in the Marshall Islands, to the East China Sea for her second patrol on October 27, 1944, with Jack Bennett as the number three ranking officer on board.  This time Jack’s skipper, Commander Elliot Loughlin, was leading a wolfpack made up of three subs, named “Loughlin’s Loopers,” an allusion to his basketball playing days at Annapolis, where he was an All-American.  The pack consisted of the Queenfish, the Barb and the Picuda. They had no sooner reached their assigned area, the shipping lanes between Shanghai and southwest Korea, than a fat target convoy appeared on the horizon—two freighters and three destroyer escorts.  The Queenfish drew first blood, sinking both freighters while the Barb sank a nearby merchant ship.  It was a portent of even bigger things to come. 

ComSubPAC—the Commander of Submarines in the Pacific—sent them a top secret intelligence report alerting them of a large convoy from Manchuria with several troop transports and freighters with supplies and munitions bound for the Philippines.  It included the Akitsu, a 10,000-ton aircraft carrier used as an aircraft ferry.   

The Loopers immediately set course for the intercept point in the northern part of the East China Sea, wanting to be there waiting and ready just below the surface when the convoy arrived.   Shortly after reaching the position they observed smoke on the horizon, heard the sound of ships’ propellers and finally sighted a ship with no mast escorted by 6-7 destroyers and several patrolling aircraft. The Queenfish dove, manned battle stations for a torpedo attack and waited.  It had been such a happy hunting ground they only had four “fish”—torpedoes—left, all loaded in the aft torpedo tubes. The sea was flat calm and only about 120 feet deep with a coral strewn bottom, not ideal circumstances for a periscope attack.  Airplanes can often see into the water when it’s dead calm and shallow, and the “feather wake” of a periscope is easier to spot.  As the Queenfish maneuvered into firing position the skipper needed to make periodic brief periscope observations to update range and bearing data for the TDC solution while at the same time attempting to avoid detection.  The TDC—Torpedo Data Computer—was a mechanical set of meshed gears, driven electrically, in an upright glass-faced case about two feet by three feet, mounted on a pedestal in the conning tower and was the heart of fire control system.  It was a far cry from today’s microprocessors—its only automatic information input was the submarine’s course and speed.  Target range and bearing were manually input. It then computed a heading to be set on the torpedoes’ guidance systems before they were fired.     

Commander Loughlin could see through the periscope that the flight deck of the carrier was so fully loaded with airplanes that flight operations couldn't be conducted.  That explained the land-based air cover, as intelligence had indicated. He could also see, through the side openings below the deck, that the hangar level was packed with aircraft, so he knew the ship was being used to ferry aircraft to reinforce Japanese forces in the Philippines in preparation for the expected American landings.

Jack’s battle station was on the opposite side of the periscope from the captain, requiring him to move in circle around the periscope as the skipper rotated it through 360 degrees to check the area.  Here he could read off the target bearing relative to the sub when the captain put the periscope crosshairs on the target and ordered, “Bearing...mark.” Then Jack would take the reading and pass it on to the TDC operator.

The captain ordered, “Up ‘scope.”

Jack ordered the torpedo room, “Tubes aft, open the outer doors, stand by 8” (#8 torpedo tube—the tactical sequence for firing the aft torpedoes was 8, 9, 10 and 7).  Opening the outer doors of the tubes would allow them to flood with sea water, a necessary requirement to launching the torpedoes.

Halfway around his last scan of the area, the skipper stopped the periscope and said one word, a swear word, but perhaps an unconscious plea for divine help—“Christ….”  Then he continued the sweep and said, “Dip scope.”  A few seconds later he ordered, “Up ‘scope,” again.  Then “Final bearing and shoot…bearing…mark.”  Jack called out the bearing he read to the TDC operator, who dialed it in and replied “Set.”

Jack ordered, “Tubes aft, Stand by eight…ready…fire eight.  The quartermaster pressed the firing plunger and the sub shuddered as the fish was expelled from the tube by compressed air.  The entire crew felt the shudder of the torpedo being ejected from the tube by high-pressure air. If all went well it would start its own propulsion system, triggered when it left the tube, take an initial dive and then its gyroscope would come up to speed and control its course and preset running depth—6-10 feet below the surface, depending on the target.  At 500 yards from the sub a small impeller on the torpedo’s nose armed the torpedo. 

In six second intervals the number nine and ten torpedoes were fired.  All hands held their breath, hoping that the exploders would not malfunction and go off prematurely—a not uncommon occurrence—or that the torpedo would be moving erratically, a too common occurrence.

Everyone exhaled when the sonar operator reported, “#8 running hot [armed], straight and normal, ” and repeated it for the next two.  The quartermaster in the conning tower, Cowboy Hendrix, started his stop watch when the first torpedo was fired to time its explosion or announce the seconds expired if it failed to detonate.  The run time for a distance of 1200 yards was 25-28 seconds.

Right on time all hands heard two muffled underwater explosions followed by breaking up noises as the target’s hull tore apart and the ships propellers went silent.  The carrier was headed for the bottom of the East China Sea.  In the midst of the frenzied activity the sonar man reported hearing two enemy ships’ propellers accelerating and getting closer and the enemy sonar shifting to “short scale pinging” in preparation to drop depth charges.

The captain ordered, “Take her deep, flood negative.”  The sub had a small ballast tank, normally kept empty but in emergencies flooded with sea water to aid in getting down faster when speed was critical.

Jack ordered,“110 feet,” as the bottom was only 118 feet deep. 

The captain ordered, “Rig for depth charge.”  Then Jack asked the captain what he saw earlier to prompt his expletive.  The captain replied that a Japanese aircraft must have spotted the Queenfish, only 67 feet below the surface when the periscope was up, and dropped a smoke flare float near the sub’s periscope.  He could see it and two enemy escort ships headed directly toward them.  That would explain what the sonar man had heard. 

As Jack said, “The captain could have run at that point (rather than proceed to launch torpedoes), but of course he proceeded with the attack. That’s what we were out there for.” 

With the bottom too shallow to go as deep as they would have preferred—just over 400 feet—they had to gut it out as they awaited the smashing of light bulbs and popping of circuit breakers when the destroyers roared closely overhead dropping patterns of depth  charges—300 pounds of high explosives in what resembled 25 gallon barrels.  The enemy destroyers sounded like freight trains crossing a trestle overhead to the tense crew of the Queenfish.

The first depth charge explosions did not come as soon as expected.  Jack’s theory was that the two escort ships, both going full speed ahead toward the same floating smoke pot, were playing chicken with one another, neither wanting to yield to the other with such a sure kill in the offing, and in the end they both had to break off their attacks to avoid collision.  By the time they repositioned for re-attack the water was churning from the carrier’s sinking and they momentarily lost contact with the sub.  The shallowness of the sea and the coral bottom could also have confused enemy sonar signals.  “That saved us more than once during 5 war patrols,” Jack said. 

When they were settled in at depth and in “silent running” mode, awaiting the first depth charge, the crew sprinkled CO² absorbent on locker tops and top bunks in anticipation of “foul air” build up.  In those days, there was no self-contained oxygen system in subs, another limiting factor, along with battery life, for staying underwater.  In spite of the absorbent, the CO² build up would not allow cigarettes to burn and matches flared and went out immediately.  Smoking was not allowed while under attack anyway, so it was a moot point.  The air got more and more foul until, after 16-18 hours submerged, the fresh air on surfacing tasted sickeningly sweet.  “Subs weren’t called pig boats for nothing,” Jack recalled.

When the first depth charge went off the first indication in the sub was the click of the sound wave from the explosion going through the hull, then the “swoosh” of the pressure wave rocking the sub—destroying it if was close enough. The interval between the sound wave and the shock wave told them how close the blast was—similar to the time between lightening and the sound of thunder.  When they were really close the sound wave and shock wave were simultaneous…and catastrophic. The sub would sink to the bottom, thousands of feet deep in many places, a horrible death for all as the hull collapsed like a crushed soda can under the enormous pressure of the depths.  Though there was a practiced procedure for escaping from a dying submerged sub, no one successfully did so during the war…and no one expected to.  It was always a time of controlled terror and more than one submarine crew member cracked under the strain during WW II.

In the providence of God the Queenfish slowly, quietly slipped away with only minor damage, and six hours later she surfaced under cover of darkness to charge her batteries, her air compressor and water distiller, and, of course, breath sweet fresh air.  Then it was off to Guam for more supplies and ammo.   

Later they learned that the Akitsu was ferrying not only airplanes but also all the artillery and armor of a Japanese Army division enroute to Manila as reinforcements against the expected American landings in the Philippines.  Its destruction was a key factor in the American victory in the Philippines.  It was the trophy kill. 

The Presidential Unit Citation they received called it one of the most successful wolfpack operations of WW II.  Almost exactly 55 years later, my friend, Jack, got a bigger award—God awarded him a new heart he didn't earn and gave him eternal life.  And now my brother in Christ understands why he survived more close calls than a dozen cats. 

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