Golden HYMNS Of The FAITH

Tuesday 13 May 2014

Hiding In Thee

Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.

- Mark Twain, 1835-1920.

In his book, ‘Tavern Of The Seas’, Lawrence G. Green writes that the best way to kill a dangerous snake threatening one’s life is to hit it in the middle of its back with a stick. He says: “So, when you come across a snake, stand perfectly still until it moves off. The best way to kill a snake is by hitting it in the middle of the back with a stick. Although the head is the most vital point, it is hard to hit; and if missed it gives the snake a chance to strike. By breaking its back it is rendered helpless and the head can be dealt with at leisure.” (Green: 117).

By analogy, Jesus has broken Satan’s back at Calvary, but his head must still be crushed by God under the feet of the faithful. The Bible says:

[1. Breaking Satan’s Back at Calvary]

And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses;

Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;

And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it. (Colossians 2:13-15 KJV).

[2. Satan’s Tactical Error of having Jesus of Nazareth Crucified by the Authorities of the Time]

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:

Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1 Corinthians 2:7-8 KJV).

[3. God shall Crush the head of Satan Under the Feet of the Faithful]

And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. ( Romans 16:20 KJV).

Until the head of Satan is finally crushed underfoot, our only hiding place of note is in Jesus Christ, the blessed Rock of Ages.

YouTube

Hiding In Thee

(William O. Cushing, 1823-1902/Ira D. Sankey, 1840-1908)

O safe to the Rock that is higher than I

My souls in its conflicts and sorrows would fly;

So sinful, so weary ‒ Thine, Thine would I be;

Thou blest ‘Rock of Ages’, I’m hiding in Thee.

In the calm of the noontide, in sorrow’s lone hour,

In times when temptation casts over me its pow’r,

In the tempests of life, on its wide, heaving sea,

Thou blest ‘Rock of Ages’, I’m hiding in Thee.

How often in the conflicts, when pressed by the foe,

I have fled to my Refuge and breathed out my woe;

How often, when trials like sea billows roll,

Have I hidden in Thee, o thou Rock of my soul.

CHORUS

Hiding in Thee, Hiding in Thee;

Thou blest ‘Rock of Ages’,

I’m hiding in Thee.

Bibliography

1. Andrews, Allen (1969) Quotations For Speakers And Writers. Newnes Books. Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. London.
2. Green, Lawrence G. (1947/1956) Tavern Of The Seas. Howard Timmins. Cape Town.

3. Peterson, John W. (1966) Great Hymns Of The Faith. ‘Hiding In Thee’. Singspiration. Zondervan Publishing House. Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Saturday 10 May 2014

The Haven Of Rest

That’s the penalty we have to pay for our acts of foolishness … someone else always suffers for them.

- Alfred Sutro, 1863-1933.

During his heyday, It was said of General Jan Smuts that nothing could ruffle his feathers or unsettle him so brave was he. This was true, whether he was chasing the Tommies during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) or being chased by them during the (last) guerrilla phase of the selfsame war. He was the only survivor of all the signatories to the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 to serve as a (British) Field-Marshall in Winston Churchill's war cabinet during WWII; he even lived to write the 'Preamble' to the Charter of the UN in San Francisco in 1945.
He was also an ardent (amateur) botanist. So thorough was his knowledge of South African wild flowers and grasses that, when during an outing to the mountains to collect specimens and an American woman and botany-enthusiast asked her leader of the excursion, a professor, what the name of a certain unfamiliar plant was, he remarked: "Ask the general ... he will know." The general gave her the name for the plant, and she asked: "How come I had to get this information from a general and not from a professor?" He replied: "My dear lady, I am only a general in my spare time."
So 'unruffled' was he that, when one of his advisers, a senior member of his cabinet, advised him, during the bloody and violent miners' strike on the Rand in 1922 (also known as the Rand Revolt or Rand Rebellion), not to enter into a certain strikers' hot-spot without proper police escort, he first appeared quite indifferent to the advice. The official then insisted on him to be careful and to "give some serious thought to what I've said!"
When later asked if he (Smuts) had given the advice some serious thought, the general replied: "Yes, I have given it some serious thought, and I am now more convinced than ever that I need six more bulls for my farm at Rooikop." He was living a charmed life.
But even the great General Smuts had to capitulate before Death ... he died on 11 September 1950 on his farm Doornkloof at Irene in Pretoria (South Africa). I am reminded of his words to L.E. Van Onselen, his young police bodyguard, during the war: "The only real adventure that remains for me to experience is to discover what lies beyond death." Hopefully he discovered the humble Carpenter from Nazareth waiting for him on the other side.
Thanks to this humble Carpenter, we can enter the rest of Jesus Christ unique in the history of mankind. By His sacrifice we can savour forgiveness and reconciliation with God; by His suffering we can look forward to many mansions in His Father's House; by His thirst we can have access to the cool Living Waters of Life. And this invitation for us to come to the Haven of Rest is open to all and sundry ... whether you are a general or a sweeper of floors; whether you are a king or a labourer in the field.

YouTube

The Haven Of Rest

(Henry l. Gilmour, 1836-1920/George D. Moore, 19^th Century Arr. By Don Petermann, b.1925)

My soul in sad exile was out on life’s sea,

So burdened with sin, and distrest*,

I heard a sweet voice saying, “Make me your choice!”

And I entered the Haven of Rest.

I yielded myself to His tender embrace,

And faith taking hold of the Word,

My fetters fell off, and I anchored my soul ‒

The ‘Haven of Rest’ is my Lord.

The song of my soul, since the Lord made me whole,

Has been the old story so blest

Of Jesus, who’ll save whosoever will have

A home in the Haven of Rest!

O come to the Savior He patiently waits

To save by His power divine;

Come, anchor your soul in the Haven of Rest,

And say, “My Beloved is mine.”

CHORUS

I’ve anchored my soul in the Haven of Rest,

I’ll sail the wide seas no more;

The tempest may sweep o’er the wild, stormy deep ‒

In Jesus I’m safe evermore.

*distrest (sic)

Bibliography

1. Andrews, Allen (1969)   Quotations For Speakers And Writers. Newnes Books. Hamlyn
Publishing Group Ltd. London.
2. Beukes, Piet. (1996) Smuts The Botanist. Human & Rousseau. Cape Town.
3. Peterson, John W. (1966) Great Hymns Of The Faith. ‘The Haven Of Rest’. Singspiration.
Zondervan Publishing House. Grand Rapids, Michigan.
4. Van Onselen, L.E. (1960) A Rhapsody In Blue. Howard Timmins. Cape Town.

Monday 14 April 2014

In The Garden

Trying to convince an atheist that God exists is like trying to convince a fish that the ocean exists.

- Ray Comfort.

They say that, as soon as one begins to feel unworthy and unimportant, one should just stop paying one’s debts … the backlash from the business sector will be so ferocious and swift that one will never doubt one’s monumental importance to society ever again.

Mankind’s urge for personal significance in this Universe will probably never wane. Nobody wants to be just a number; just about everyone craves significance and self-worth of some sort, some way or the other. This of course never fails to remind us of the Holocaust and the Nazi concentration camps where humans, created in the image of God, were reduced to the bland serial numbers tattooed on their bodies.
Since I was born in 1947 in South Africa I was mercifully spared the horrors of the period, but I am nevertheless particularly reminded of those disturbing books about WWII I had read in my youth and adulthood, such as Spark Of Life, a 1952 novel by Erich Maria Remarque about 'Prisoner 509' in a Nazi concentration camp; Inside The Third Reich by Albert Speer; The Scourge Of The Swastika by Lord Russell of Liverpool; Enemy At The Gates: The Battle For Stalingrad by William Craig; The Last Days Of Hitler by Hugh Trevor-Roper; The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom; The Diary Of Anne Frank and the many others e.g. on such topics as D-Day (the Normandy Landings) and other battles etc.

Most people of my generation ought to be able to still remember the movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the Anthony Quinn rendition) from the 1831 novel of the same name by Victor Hugo. From what I can remember is that the hunchback bell-ringer (Quasimodo) derived his significance as a person (and probably his upkeep too) by performing the back-breaking menial chores associated with life inside the Notre Dame Cathedral (Notre Dame Cathedral de Paris), his pride and passion probably the ringing of the monstrous bells in the bell-tower upon which he seemed to first leap like a circus acrobat and then ride, swing and ring bodily from its precipitous heights.

In a scenario completely different and of another era, I also read the interesting narrative of how, during the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), also known as the Second Boer War, in South Africa, General Jan Smuts and his small band of Boer-soldiers were cornered by the British in the Stormberg Mountains of the Eastern Cape. In his book, Jan Christian Smuts, J.C. Smuts, son of Jan Smuts (Smuts: 73), writes:

“This happened near Dordrecht in the Stormberg Mountains. They were surrounded on a high plateau by forces under Colonel Monro with little hope of escape. Here a courageous hunchback volunteered to lead them down a remote mountain path, bobbing ahead on a horse in the biting rain and wind, and bringing them out on a route as near the vertical as horses have ever had to negotiate. They gratefully bade the hunchback goodbye and left him bobbing back in the darkness on his crutches. Darkness luckily hid the abysses they negotiated and by daylight they had sprung the trap and for the moment hoped they had finally eluded the British.”

Now I wonder:

(i) What if that hunchback was born and raised for just a moment like this … nobody remembers his name, he was just ‘the hunchback’ who had saved the group from imminent death. But, who knows, maybe he has already been inducted into Heaven’s Hall of Heroes, forever to be remembered with the dignity he deserved but never enjoyed on planet Earth.

(ii) Notice how the Boer soldiers experienced the ‘darkness’ in particular on the precipitous and dangerous mountains (“Darkness luckily hid the abysses they negotiated … “). On the one hand the darkness impaired sight and reduced visibility … on the other hand it mercifully hid from sight the fearful abysses they negotiated. Do we not often as believers perhaps experience the awful ‘Stygian darkness of despair’ in our lives for the very reason … to hide and spare us the unsettling sights of the fearful abysses of life we are negotiating?

Nevertheless, this song, In The Garden, like its ‘sister-song’, Garden Of Prayer, will always remind me of the one place in life where one can seek the comfort and solace of God in prayer amid the hustle and bustle of daily life. I have a prayer journal in which I write many prayers, reminiscences, disappointments, dreams etc. and if there is one place I retire to regularly without fail it is this little ‘garden of prayer’ of my secret old prayer journal … it is the only place in the world where I really (cosmically) feel safe, cherished and significant.

Jesus reminds us:

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” (Matthew 6:5-8 KJV, www.e-sword.net).

YouTube 1
YouTube 2

In The Garden

I come to the garden alone,

While the dew is still on the roses;

And the voice I hear, falling on my ear,

The Son of God discloses.

He speaks, and the sound of His voice

Is so sweet, the birds hush their singing;

And the melody that He gave to me

Within my heart is ringing.

I’d stay in the garden with Him

Tho the night around me be falling;

But He bids me go ‒

Thru the voice of woe,

His voice to me is calling.

CHORUS

And He walks with me and He talks with me,

And He tells me I am His own,

And the joy we share as we tarry there,

None other has ever known.

Bibliography

1. Andrews, Allen (1969) Quotations For Speakers And Writers. Newnes Books. Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. London.

2. Peterson, John W. (1966) Great Hymns Of The Faith. ‘In The Garden. Singspiration. Zondervan Publishing House. Grand Rapids, Michigan.
3. Smuts, J.C.(1952) Jan Christian Smuts. Cassell & Co., London.

Sunday 13 April 2014

A Shelter In The Time Of Storm

Speak well of your enemies, sir, you made them.

- Oben Arnold, fl. 1963.

I’ve always believed that poverty ultimately cannot and will not triumph over wealth … it simply has not got the capital! In God’s eternal economy, evil will not triumph over good; sin will not triumph over unrighteousness and darkness will not triumph over light. The question is: What about the long-delayed Second Coming of Jesus Christ? Can we still trust His word for Him to return to planet Earth?

The most obvious reason for the long ‘delay’ is of course to allow people to come to repentance:

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9 KJV, www.e-sword.net).

I believe, however, that, apart from the fact that the Second Coming will have to slot in with God’s overall cosmic agenda for the Universe and His Universal Church (the Ecclesia), there is another reason why this (apparent) long delay of the Second Coming was deemed necessary: It was necessary to enable God to demonstrate to believers the integrity of His Word and the veracity of His promises … over time, a very long time.

You see, it usually is easy to keep any promise for a day, a week, a month, a season; but to keep a promise over millennia takes some character, commitment and serious dedication to a very special and precious cause. Now, won’t it be wonderful to enter Eternity one day with a Saviour who had not only given His life for His Church and Bride, but also had kept the promise of His Second Coming to His followers … through two incredible millennia, and perhaps longer? That would prove a level of character, commitment and dedication (by Jesus of Nazareth) to give one’s life for! He’s the shelter in the time of storm, forever.

YouTube

A Shelter In The Time Of Storm

(Vernon J. Charlesworth, 1838-?/Ira D. Sankey, 1840-1908)

The Lord’s our Rock, in Him we hide ‒

A shelter in the time of storm;

Secure whatever ill betide ‒