To Testify to the Truth
What kind of reign of Jesus? What is truth? Work in today's world as compared to the Kingdom of God.
To Testify to the Truth
The Question of the Kingdom
If It Be the Word of God …
G. Campbell Morgan had grown up in a Christian home, never questioning that the Bible was the Word of God. But in college, his faith was severely challenged and he began to entertain doubts. “The whole intellectual world was under the mastery of the physical scientists,” he later said, “and of a materialistic and rationalistic philosophy. Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer, Bain. There came a moment when I was sure of nothing.”
In those days, opponents of the Bible appeared every Sunday in great lecture and concert halls across England, attacking Christianity and the Bible, and these brilliant atheists and agnostics troubled the young student. He read every book he could find, both for and against the Bible, both for and against Christianity, until he was so confused, so riddled with doubt that he felt he couldn’t go on.
In desperation, he closed his books, put them in his cupboard and turned the lock. Going down to a bookshop, he bought a new Bible, returned to his room, sat down at his desk, and opened it. He said, I am no longer sure that this is what my father claims it to be—the Word of God. But of this I am sure. If it be the Word of God, and if I come to it with an unprejudiced and open mind, it will bring assurance to my soul of itself. As he looked into the book before him, studying its form and structure and unity and message, he was amazed. He later said, That Bible found me. I began to read and study it then, in 1883, and I have been a student ever since
Judgment and Redemption in the Kingdom
Jesus’ Humanity and His Divine Purpose
lthy man. I cannot pay a thousand yuan. I cannot pay five hundred yuan. I cannot even pay fifty yuan. But I believe God. If it is His will, He is able to bring my children back without any ransom.
Passerbys were amazed by his message, and it was widely expected that the children would be quickly killed.
Weeks passed, and in the course of time a band of soldiers broke in upon the hive of bandits. As they pursued them, they heard a sound from the ditch beside the road. One soldier stopped to look, and there he found a skeleton-like child lying in the ditch where the bandits had hastily thrown him. It was Mr. Kao Er’s son. He had been imprisoned under a large overturned vessel, and was on the brink of starvation. But he was alive, and he recovered.
But what of the baby girl?
Later there was another battle between the bandits and the soldiers. This time, the wife of the bandit chief was captured, and she was found nursing two babies—not twins—too near in age to both be her own. The daughter, too, was returned to her parents.
Ruth recalls, “Sitting one Sunday in the little gray-brick Chinese church, I watched as Mr. Kao Er, carrying his still-too-weak-to-walk son, and his wife, carrying the now healthy, chubby baby girl, walked forward to publicly give thanks to God and to dedicate both children to Him.
What Is Truth?
Why God Responds to Faith
Houston pastor John Bisango describes a time when his daughter Melodye Jan, age five, came to him and asked for a doll house. John promptly nodded and promised to build her one, then he went back to reading his book. Soon he glanced out the study window and saw her arms filled with dishes, toys, and dolls, making trip after trip until she had a great pile of playthings in the yard. He asked his wife what Melodye Jan was doing.
“Oh, you promised to build her a doll house, and she believes you. She’s just getting ready for it.”
“You would have thought I’d been hit by an atom bomb,” John later said. “I threw aside that book, raced to the lumber yard for supplies, and quickly built that little girl a doll house. Now why did I respond? Because I wanted to? No. Because she deserved it? No. Her daddy had given his word, and she believed it and acted upon it. When I saw her faith, nothing could keep me from carrying out my word.”
Implications for Today
Closing Call
Letting God Take Over
“Suppose I try to run a store. I know nothing about it, I get the books mixed up, I do not know how to buy or sell, things are in a dreadful mess. I turn the whole business over to another to own and manage and I become only a clerk in the same store I used to run. Mind you, I am as busy as ever but I have changed my responsibility. The care, the upkeep, the management, all that now is the owner’s concern; my part is just to be a faithful clerk.
“This Christ life is simply turning the little shop of life, so woefully perplexing, over to another. Christ becomes owner, manager, overseer; his is the responsibility, the upkeep. Your part is to be a faithful clerk, steward of the grace of God.…
“And one day, if you have been faithful over a few things, he will give you a heavenly shop in the city of the King!”—Vance Havner
