The Word That Turned the World Upside Down

The Word That Turned the World

Upside Down How could one word transform millions of people around the world into persons willing to die for

their convictions, and other millions into bloodthirsty persecutors anxious to eradicate those

who believe in the power of this word?

The world was once powerfully shaken by a little band of men from Palestine

who carried news embodied in one rather obscure word. Their terrified enemies in Thessalonica (a city located in modern-day Greece) confessed the impact of its proclamation: "These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also" (Acts 17:6, R.S.V.).* The dynamite-laden messengers: Christ's apostles, espe-cially Paul and his colleague John.

The word that performed this • mighty feat was one little known

in the ancient Greco-Roman world—a Greek term, agape (a ga' pa). It meant "love"; but it came to carry a spiritual wallop that overwhelmed people's minds, catalyzing humanity into two

▪ camps, one for and the other against the idea. Those that were

Robert J. Wieland, author of numerous books, is the Seventh-day Adventist all-Africa editorial consultant. He lives in Nairobi, Kenya. CO 1982 by Robert I. Wieland.

BY ROBERT J. WIELAND

for it were transformed overnight into recklessly joyous followers of Jesus, ready to lose property, go to prison, or even to die a tortured death for Him. Those catalyzed against it as quickly became cruel, bloodthirsty persecutors of those who saw light in the new concept of love. None who heard the news about agape could ever be neutral.

The mysterious explosive in this spiritual bomb was a radically different idea of love from that that had been dreamed of by the world's philosophers or ethics teachers, a new invention that took friend and foe alike by surprise. It wasn't that the ancients had no idea of love; they talked about it plenty. In fact, the Greeks had three or four words for love (our modern languages usually have only one). But the kind of love that came to be expressed in the word agape mercilessly exposed all other ideas of love as either nonlove or antilove.

All of a sudden mankind came

to realize that what they'd been calling love was actually veneered selfishness. The human psyche was stripped naked by the new revelation. If you welcomed the spiritual revolution, you got clothed with agape yourself; if it made you angry, having your robes of supposed piety ripped off turned you into a raving enemy of the new faith. And no one could turn the clock back, for agape was an idea for which the fullness of the time had come.

When John took his pen to write his famous equation "God is love" (1 John 4:8), he had to choose between the several Greek words describing love. The common, everyday one—ergs—packed a powerful punch on its own. Something mysterious and powerful, ergs was the source of all life. It swept, like water from a broken dam, over all obstacles of human will and wisdom, a tide of emotion common to all humanity. If a mother loved her child, her

Cove' 1981 N.Y. Wayne Eastep, inside photograph © 1982, by Tom Radcliffe THESE 'TIMES / SEPTEMBER 1982 3

love was eras, noble and pure. Likewise also the dependent love of children for their parents and the common love of friends for each other. Further, the mutual love of man and woman was a profound mystery to be reckoned with.

Is God eros? asked the ancient pagans. Yes, answered their philosophers, including the great Plato, because eros is stronger than human will. It produces the miracle of babies. It makes families and friends. And it dwells in everyone by nature. Therefore it must be the spark of divinity.

For the ancients love was pretty much what it is for us today: the "sweet mystery of life," the elixir that makes an otherwise intolerable existence possible to endure. Plato hoped to transform the world by a kind of love that he considered "heavenly ergs." Words derived from ergs today have an exclusively sexual meaning, but Plato tried to get the world to climb out of that trap by a spiritually uplifting idea, something noble and inspiring. It was based on climbing up higher, getting out of the mire of mere physical sensuality, being attracted to a greater good for the soul.

But John could never bring himself to write that God is eros. He astounded the thinkers of his day by saying, God is agape. And between those two ideas of love there stretches a vast gulf wider than the east is from the west.

The apostle's idea was revolutionary in at least three ways:

1. If one loves with agape, he has "boldness in the day of judgment" (verse 17). Without it, one cringes in terror when confronted with ultimate judgment; with it, he walks fearlessly into God's presence past all His holy angels, utterly unashamed and confident.

2. "There is no fear in love [agape], but perfect love [agape] casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love [agape]" (verse 18, R.S.V.). Fear with its concomitant anxiety is the substratum of human existence in

all ages. Fear too deep to understand can make us sick, gnawing at the vitals of the soul until one's physical organs weaken in their resistance to disease. Years may go by before we can see or feel the disease, but at last the weakest organ of the body breaks down, and doctors must go to work to try to repair what agape would have prevented.

3. Every sublime moral and ethical goal of humanity is nothing without agape says Paul in his famous love chapter of 1 Corin-thians 13 (R.S.V.). One can "speak in the tongues of men and of angels," "have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge," have "faith, so as to remove mountains," "give away all I have, and . . . deliver my body to be burned," and yet not have the all important ingredient: agape. He ends up "nothing." And agape has a phenomenal quality of enduring "all things," for agape "never ends."

How did agape differ so much from the common idea of love? How could the apostles' idea possibly be such a threat to Plato's noble concept? The answer is found in several clear-cut contrasts between the two ideas.

A. Ordinary human love is dependent on the beauty or goodness of its object. We naturally choose for friends those who are nice to us, who please us. We fall in love with our sexual opposite who is beautiful, happy, intelligent, and attractive, and turn away from one who is ugly, mean, ignorant, or offensive.

In contrast, agape is not awakened by beauty or goodness in its object. It stands alone, sovereign, independent.

The ancients had a story that illustrated their most sublime idea of love. Admetus was a noble, handsome young man with all the personal qualities of excellence. He fell sick with a disease that the oracle of the gods pronounced would be fatal unless someone could be found who would die in his place. His friends went from one to another, inquiring, "Would you be willing to die for

Admetus?" All agreed that he was a wonderful young man, but "Sorry," they said, "we couldn't die for him." His parents were asked, and they said, "Oh, we love our son, but sorry, we couldn't die for him." Finally his friends asked the beautiful girl who loved him, Alcestis. "Yes," she said, "because he is such a good man and because the world needs him so, I am willing to die for him!"

Crowed the philosophers: "This is love—willing to die for a good man!" Imagine their shock when the apostles came along and said that that wasn't it at all. "One will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love [agape] for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us," "while we were enemies" (Romans 5:7, 8, 10, R.S.V.).

A message like that either captured your soul or turned you into an implacable enemy!

B. Natural human love rests on a sense of need. It feels poor and empty of itself and requires an object to enrich its own life. A husband loves his wife because he needs her, and a wife loves her husband for the same reason. Two friends love each other because they need each other. Each feels empty and alone without his counterpart.

Infinitely wealthy of itself, agape feels no need. The apostles said that the reason God loves us is not because He needs us, but because—well, He is agape. "You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9, R.S.V.). To this day we are staggered by the idea of a love that "seeketh not her own" (1 Corinthians 13:5). Even churches seem drawn almost irresistibly to representing God's love as a seeking-its-own thing, a motivation inspired by a divine acquisitive instinct. God saw a hidden value in us, it is assumed; and He was simply making a good bargain when He bought us.

THESE TIMES (ISSN 0040-6058) is a monthly (except June, when semimonthly) publication of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. Price US$17.75 per year. Second-class postage paid at Washington, D.C. C 1982, Review and Herald Publishing Association (6856 Eastern Avenue NW., Washington, D.C. 20012, U.S.A.). Volume 91, No. 10, September, 1982.

4 THESE TIMES / SEPTEMBER 1982

We come to resemble what we worship, so multitudes profess to worship such a God because they too are seeking a good bargain. Their religion is the soul of acquisitiveness—what they want to acquire is heaven and its rewards—and a self-centered motive is what keeps them going. When agape breaks through into this egocentric milieu, the reaction is pretty much what happened when it broke upon the ancient world.

C. Natural human love rests on a sense of value. Many Africans still follow the ancient bride-price system; which faithfully mirrors the more subtle basis of all our other cultures as well. The amount of the bride price to be paid is proportionate to the expense of education the girl's parent has invested in her. A few cows suffice for one who can barely scrawl her name; astronomical dowries are demanded for girls who have been to Oxford or Cambridge. We also pigeon hole one another. Few treat the garbage man as courteously or patronizingly as we do the mayor or governor. If, like water seeking its own level, "ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others?" asks Jesus (Matthew 5:46, 47). "Men will praise thee, when thou doest well to thyself" (Psalm 49:18).

In contrast, agape is refreshingly different. Rather than being dependent on the value of its object, it creates value in its object.

Suppose I have a rough stone in my hand. I picked it up in a field. If I try to sell it, no one would give me even a nickel for it. This is not because a stone is inherently bad, but because it is so common it is worthless.

Now suppose that as I hold this rough stone in my arms, I could love it as a mother loves a baby. And suppose that my love could work like alchemy and transform it into a piece of solid gold. My fortune would be made.

This is an illustration of what agape does to us. Of ourselves we are worth nothing other than the dubious chemical value of our

bodies' ingredients. But God's love transforms us into a value equivalent to that of His own Son: "I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man than the golden wedge of Ophir" (Isaiah 13:12).

Doubtless you have known some example of human flotsam who has been transformed into a person of infinite worth. John Newton (1725-1807) was one. A godless seafarer who dealt in the African slave trade, he became a drunken wretch who fell victim to the people he tried to enslave. At length agape touched his heart. He gave up his vile business, transformed into an honored messenger of glad tidings. Millions remember him for his hymn that discloses the "fine gold" that he became:

"Amazing grace! how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am

found; Was blind, but now I see.

" 'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved; How precious did that grace

appear, The hour I first believed."

D. Natural human love goes in search of God. All heathen religions are based on the idea of God's being as elusive as a cure for cancer. People imagine that God is playing hide-and-seek and has withdrawn Himself from human beings. Only special ones are wise or clever enough to discover where He is hiding. Millions go on long journeys to Mecca, Rome, Jerusalem, or other shrines, searching for Him. The ancient Greeks outdid all of us in building magnificent marble temples in which they felt they must seek for God.

Again, agape proves to be the opposite. It is not humans seeking after God, but God seeking after man: "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10). The shepherd left his 99 sheep that were safe and risked his life to find the one that was lost; the woman lit a

candle and searched her house until she found the one lost coin; the Spirit of God searched for the heart of the prodigal son and brought him home. There is no story in all the Bible of a lost sheep required to find his shepherd!

Paul was obsessed with this great idea: "The righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?' (that is, to bring Christ down) or 'Who will descend into the abyss?' (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach)" (Romans 10:6-8, R.S.V.).

That "word of faith" is as closely related to agape as a typeface is to its matrix. Faith is the response of a contrite human heart to this tremendous revelation of agape; and Paul's point is that this tremendous "word is near you." It is the evidence that God has already sought you out where you have been hiding. The Good Shepherd is always on safari looking for us.

E. Our human love is always seeking to climb up higher. Every first-grader wants to enter the second grade; a child who is 11 says he will soon be 12. No job seeker wants demotion instead of promotion. The State politician longs to get into the national game, and probably every national senator at some time dreams that he might make it to the White House.

Incidentally, this idea of agape has been dying out among many professed followers of Christ because a pagan notion has subtly infiltrated their thinking. I refer to the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. If there is no such thing as real death, then Christ did not really die. If He went to Paradise the day He was on the cross (as many mistakenly believe from reading a misplaced comma in Luke 23:43), then there was no true emptying of Himself, no true death on the cross, no dying the equivalent of the second death, which is the real thing.

The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul makes

(Continued on page 28)

THESE TIMES / SEPTEMBER 1982 5

ONE MAN CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE

When Businessman Robert Bainum heard about the plight of the Indochina refugees, he decided the time had come for him personally to help rescue the dying

"boat people" of Southeast Asia.

BY GENE M. DAFFERN

Photography by Wayne Eastep

Robert Bainum eased his Chevrolet into the congested traffic on the beltway circling Washington, D.C. He ignored the traffic that hot day in August, 1979. Instead, he listened intently to a taped sermon about an Asian holocaust.

He was stunned when he heard the pastor say that each month thousands of Vietnamese refugees were dying in the Gulf of Thailand. By the time he reached his home in Silver Spring, Maryland, Bainum had decided that he must go to Southeast Asia and help rescue the "boat people" who were escaping Vietnam to find freedom in Thailand and Malaysia.

For two months, though, he stalled. Bainum, a Seventh-day Adventist businessman, did not want to leave his wife and five grown children and his thriving business for an extended and

Gene M. Daffern, a graduate of the Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Loma Linda, California, is a resident doctor in anesthesiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center. © 1982 by Gene M. Daffern. This article first appeared in Spectrum.


dangerous mission. Then in October, while in Los Angeles on a business trip, Bainum decided once again that he must go. That day he purchased a ticket and stepped into a jet headed toward Bangkok. He had no well-defined plan, no organization to back him.

Nevertheless, during the next two years, Bainum's accom-plishments would far exceed his dreams. He would work as a volunteer in Thailand, not once, but six times, and raise more than $900,000 for refugee relief—donating a considerable amount himself. Most importantly, he would found two refugee relief organizations that would send more than 200 volunteers into Thailand. And, yes, he would even rescue hundreds of boat people. In the course of these events, Robert Bainum would become an example of Christian activism and philanthropy.

When Bahmm boarded the plane in Los Angeles headed for Bangkok, he wasn't certain how he would help. He thought he

might charter a boat and sail with it to rescue refugees on floundering boats. Pirates were plentiful, stealing refugees' money, gold, and jewels, often ramming and sinking their boats. He had been told that refugees on 80 percent of all boats attempting the 300-mile crossing of the Gulf of Thailand were subjected to robbery, rape, or murder. But he says, "I was much more worried about what would happen to me if I didn't answer the call within me than what would happen to me if I did answer it."

Arriving in Bangkok, Bainum sought out people involved in existing relief organizations. They told him of the great needs of the Cambodian refugees, the "land people" who were fleeing across Thailand's eastern border, sometimes at the rate of 10,000 per day.

Having no good plan of his own to rescue boat people, Bainum instead volunteered his services to the Seventh-day Adventist World Service (SAWS) regional office in Bangkok. Dick Hall, then SAWS

"I reached the point in my life where I decided I had earned enough money. I decided to use my talent to help people less fortunate than myself."—Robert Bainum

Southeast Asia director, gave Bainum the job of supervising the organization of an 80-bed SAWS hospital in the Khao I Dang Refugee Camp. The camp, eight miles from the Cambodian border, is the largest in Thailand and at one time was populated by more than 100,000 refugees.

Bainum, a successful businessman, knew how to organize. For ten years he had run businesses in housing construction and real estate. Then he had begun building nursing homes. Today he is owner and administrator of the Fairfax Nursing Center, a 200-bed, 40-apartment nursing home in Fairfax, Virginia, and one of the major stockholders of Manor Care, a corporation with 60 nursing centers, batled in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Bainum spent several weeks recruiting workers, securing construction material—"liberating" it from United Nations red tape—supervising construction, and outfitting the hospital with beds and supplies. Because he had

seen to it that a dirt walkway was constructed from the road to the SAWS medical unit, important visitors usually inspected the SAWS hospital instead of the other hospitals in the camp. Among the visitors were the sister of the king of Thailand; Earl Gilmore Wheeler, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1964 to 1970; and Leonard Woodcock, U.S. ambassador to the People's Republic of China.

Since Pastor Hall had asked Bainum to find a way to get food inside Cambodia, Bainum asked every important visitor how he could manage to move supplies into Cambodia. Ambassador Woodcock referred Bainum to an aide who put Dick Hall in touch with people who knew how to cross the border.

One night Hall and Bainum drove 17 miles through the jungle on a tractor, accompanied by armed guards and a Cambodian guide. At the border they were met by 40 soldiers of the non-Communist Khmer Serei, who provided protection from the

occupying Vietnamese Communists and the Communist Khmer Rouge who were fighting for control of the region. The Khmer Serei soldiers helped Bainum's party haul food, clothing, and medical supplies to Sok Sonn, a village of about 5,000 starving persons, situated just inside Cambodia.

Hall and Bainum met with Son Sann, the leader of the Khmer Serei and former prime minister of Cambodia under Prince Sihanouk. Son Sann was grateful for what they had done and later entrusted them with $10,000 to bring more food to the village. The men were shocked by what they saw in Sok Sonn and made plans to continue supplying the village.

Before returning to the United States, Bainum met Jerry Aitken, a SAWS volunteer in Thailand on a one-month leave from his business in Berrien Springs, Michigan, and hired him to keep Sok Sonn supplied with food. Aitken, an Adventist who had been a missionary to Thailand for five


This Thai fishing boat is similar to those used in acts of piracy. Tools aboard the boat (inset) are often used as weapons.

THAILAND

Piratical Murders and Rape at Sea The worst hazards the boat people face are not the elements

With 67 other refugees, Nguyen Phuong Thuy, 15, slipped out of Viet Nam in a 33-foot boat. The craft was well into the Gulf of Thailand and the presumed zone of safety when it was attacked, not by pursuing Vietnamese but by a vessel carrying eight Thai fishermen. The pirates kidnapped Thuy and another young girl, then sank the refugees' boat with the rest of the Vietnamese still clinging to it. "I can't forget the look on my little sister Tran's face when she slipped below the water," Thuy said later. "I still can't sleep. The pirates were so cruel."

Nguyen Phuong Thuy, 15, is one kidnapped victim who lived to tell about her horrible experience.

Cruel indeed. Thuy was seized last May. During the next three and one-half months, she was gang-raped numerous times a day. She was kept in a dark locker where the temperature hovered around 100° F. and fed a subsistence diet of rice and water. When Thuy passed out, she would be roused by being drenched with a bucket of saltwater and then raped again. Her kidnapped companion was treated the same way and then thrown overboard. Thuy was bartered, along with baskets of fish, to 14 other boats, where her ordeal continued. When the last pirates set her ashore, Thai authorities jailed her as an illegal immigrant. Two weeks later she was finally sent to a refugee holding camp in Songkhla in southern Thailand.

Nguyen Phuong Thuy is not alone. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), women on 81 percent of the boats reaching Thailand in the first nine months of 1981 were raped, most of them many times over. A total of 552 were attacked in front of their relatives; another 200 were carried off to other fishing vessels. The attackers, many of them carriers of venereal diseases, often left the women infected as well as brutalized. Many victims became pregnant. A report to the relief agency CARE by a doctor who worked at the Songkhla camp vividly described an attack on one group of young women: "All they could sense at the time was the stark fear of being faced by naked, sweating, foul-smelling men; the look on the rapists' faces as they laughed and leered; the shock

of slappings and beatings; and finally the tearing pain as violation after violation took place in the most forceful and crude manner."

The plight of the boat people began after the fall of Saigon in 1975, when increasing numbers of South Vietnamese began fleeing the oppressive Hanoi regime in rickety fishing craft. By 1980, Thailand was overwhelmed by nearly 300,000 refugees from Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia. Government policy in Bangkok shifted, and Thai fishermen, who once came to the aid of the refugees, were given three-day sentences if they towed a leaking refugee boat to shore.

The Thai government, extremely sensitive about the fact that pirates are active in the Gulf, exerts enormous pressure on U.N. officials and workers with private relief agencies to keep the atrocities unpublicized. Nor have the Thais taken much action to stop the assaults at sea. One promising venture was an antipiracy unit, supported by a $2 million U.S. grant, that included two spotter planes and funds to repair an aging coast guard cutter. After some success against the pirates, Bangkok asked the U.S. for another $1.3 million in June. The Reagan Administration countered with an offer of $600,000. Thai officials said the funds were insufficient and the program died.

Meanwhile, Nguyen Phuong Thuy is slowly recovering from her nightmare. Recently, she wrote to her family in Viet Nam: "My dear mother, don't think about coming by sea. Escape or not, you surely will be dead, but I think it's better to be dead in Viet Nam. For me, I will never forget my travail on the sea. Don't follow me, my dear mother." (Copyright 1981 Time Inc All rights reserved I


Black and white photo. by Alexander Bowie, TIME Magazine

When refugees first arrive in Thailand, they pass through the Songkhla camp (above), the main camp for the refugees.

years before returning to the United States, speaks Thai fluently. His one-month leave in Thailand had stretched beyond two years, and he is still in Thailand as one of the directors of a refugee relief organization Bainum was to found.

The trip to Asia, the first of many, became a turning point for Bainum. "I reached the point in my life where I decided I had enough money and didn't need to make any more, adding money to money. I decided to use my talent as an administrator and manager for the good of people less fortunate than myself. I believe it is necessary to share the wealth I have. In fact, I feel that it's very difficult for me to remain a Christian and not share—especially when half the world is hungry and in need of basic shelter. To be a rich Christian in an age of hunger is almost impossible."

While in Thailand, Bainum was told by Red Cross and United Nations workers that there were only a few operating trucks in Cambodia, making it extremely

difficult to distribute the UN food that was being air-lifted into Phnom Penh, the capital.

One Sunday morning following his return to the United States, Bainum offered the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., $200,000 if they would purchase trucks and help to transport the food. Twenty-seven people supported the project, calling it Church of the Saviour—International Good Neighbors (COSIGN).

While Bainum was and is a Seventh-day Adventist church member, he had previously participated in the Church of the Saviour's Jubilee Housing Program, an apartment house cooperative project for the poor in Washington, D.C. When Church of the Saviour Pastor Gordon Cosby inspired him through his sermon in August, 1979 (heard while he was driving the beltway), Bainum was ready to act.

As it turned out, the newly formed COSIGN was unfortunately unable to supply the desperately needed trucks because of Cambodian Government red

tape. COSIGN turned its energies to other relief projects, some of the time combining its efforts with those of SAWS in Thailand. Jerry Aitken became a COSIGN employee and continued to supply food to the village of Sok Sonn, which Hall and Bainum had helped inside Cambodia.

For the next 18 months Aitken, with COSIGN, cooperated with Dick Hall, who was still leading SAWS in Thailand. In all, they transported nearly 80 SAWS doctors and nurses across the Cambodian border to Sok Sonn and constructed a makeshift hospital there. Denominational lines blurred: one third of COSIGN's volunteers were Adventists. Bainum arranged for a COSIGN office in a building on the Ekamai compound owned by Bangkok Adventist Hospital, ten miles away.

Filling the gaps. Bainum was determined that COSIGN not compete with the other relief organizations in Thailand. "We just wanted to fill in the gaps in areas that weren't being taken care


Those who do survive the passage across the Gulf of Thailand, such as Lenh A. Kiu, 14, tell terrible stories of thievery and rapings.

A friend of Mu is shocked at her account of being gang raped in the spring of 1981.

of." One of those gaps was the lack of drinking water in the refugee camps and Thai villages. With the influx of thousands of refugees, existing wells dried up as the water table dropped.

COSIGN volunteers, led by Aitken, began drilling wells. At first they drilled by hand, using a hand drill devised by Cliff Maberly, an Adventist missionary minister from Australia. In this way nearly 50 wells were dug in six months, not only inside refugee camps but also in poor Thai villages that were losing their water to the refugees.

Eventually a Japanese Buddhist organization donated $75,000 for a large well-drilling rig and $20,000 to operate it. The Seventh-day Adventist Quiet Hour radiobroad-cast, based in California, added another $75,000 for operations. Recently COSIGN received addi-tional funds to purchase a second well-drilling machine.

In June, 1980, dunng Bainum's third trip to Thailand, he acted on his original impulse to help the boat people. He arranged for


volunteers to move one of the well-drilling machines to the port of Songkhla in southern Thailand, the location of the main refugee camp for the boat people. Workers dug wells inside the camp and in the adjoining communities.

Bainum also discovered a need for English classes. Volunteers taught refugees during their three-to six-month stay in camp, preparing them for immigration to English-speaking countries.

In Songkhla, Bainum daily saw the victims of Thailand's fishermen-pirates crowding into the camp. Firsthand he heard the stories of robbery, rape, and murder. When he returned to Washington, Bainum suggested that COSIGN sponsor a rescue boat. He was so concerned about the violence against the unarmed refugees, he said, that he thought he would be willing for the rescue boat to be armed, prepared to conduct citizen arrests of the pirates if necessary. Not only did the proposal fail to be approved but the meeting of the COSIGN board broke up in some disarray.

Volunteers International. While continuing to lend his support to COSIGN, Bainum decided to form yet another organization—Volunteers International—one that he felt could be more flexible and could provide less costly ways to send volunteers to Thailand. The key concept of the organization is that every volunteer pays his own expenses for a minimum of a month. If volunteers agree to assume the $13 a day it takes for board and room, Volunteers International will arrange with U.S. airline companies to fly to Thailand at minimal cost.

Since its organization in October, 1980, Volunteers International, a nonprofit, tax-exempt foundation with an annual budget of $600,000, has been headed by Bainum, who is president and chairman of a nine-member board. In 1980, Dick Hall left SAWS to become Asian director for Volunteers International, and Jerry Aitken departed from COSIGN to become associate director.

Three other full-time, salaried

employees now work for Volunteers International. Most members of the board are volunteers. Glenn Rounsevell, vice-president of the organization, is owner and director of a 12-grade private school in Fairfax, Virginia. He volunteers his time to recruit and interview volunteers. He has traveled to Thailand five times in the past two years, first drilling wells and setting up English schools for COSIGN and later beginning English schools for Volunteers International.

The majority of the foundation's board is comprised of Seventh-day Adventists. Many of its volunteers are also members of the denomination, although Volunteers International welcomes those who are Christians in other denominations, and humanitarians, such as Rounsevell, who is a member of no denomination.

The volunteers are placed with other relief groups in Thailand, but also work in the projects run directly by Volunteers International: teaching English, drilling wells, digging reservoirs, and operating a mobile dental clinic.

Among Adventist institutions, the faculty and students from Union College, Lincoln, Nebraska, have responded with notable enthusiasm. As of January, 1982, a total of 22 volunteers from across North America were working in three refugee camps, according to Rounsevell.

Some of the projects of Volunteers International have been successful because of a discovery Jerry Aitken made on a business trip to Japan. When he learned that the United States Army was closing one of its hospitals in Japan, he convinced United States officials to give the $1.5 million worth of hospital equipment, along with several trucks and other vehicles, to the Bangkok Adventist Hospital. The military even agreed to ship the equipment to the hospital at its own expense.

The army surplus included several buses, one of which local Thai officials asked Volunteers International to convert into a mobile dental clinic and outfit with the modern dental equipment

from the army hospital. Volunteer dentists recruited by Volunteers International can now extend dental care into not only refugee camps but poor Thai villages. As a footnote, Bainum states that more than 1,200 persons have become Seventh-day Adventists, baptized by Aitken, an ordained Adventist minister, during the course of his work for the Vietnamese refugees in south Thailand.

Early in 1981 Bainum became concerned about the health care of rape victims arriving in Songkhla Camp. Little attention was being given to the estimated 1,000 rape victims in the camp of 7,000 persons. In March, Volunteers International sent Bainum and three rape counselors to Songkhla. Candy Spitz, Jackie Miles, and Cathy Craigs, all from the Washington, D.C., area, interviewed rape victims and their family members for ten days and furnished Volunteers International with a written report.

The report suggests that a self-help guidebook for the rape victim and her family is needed that would contain a step-by-step procedure to help victims verbalize what they are feeling and what they experienced. The three women recommended continuing counseling for the three-month period of confinement in the refugee camp and a follow-up system in the United States, such as a national toll-free number to provide referral to a local counselor.

After working with three different agencies, including two that he founded, to extend help to thousands of refugees, Bainum still remains concerned about the need that he first heard about from the taped sermon while driving his car that hot Washington day in 1979.

He has taken some direct action to assist the boat people who continue to suffer and die in the Gulf of Thailand. He outfitted a 200-foot cruiser with an airplane radio and sent up a Cessna 180 to look for refugee boats. The plane, with its pilot and three spotters, flew out of Malaysia to report refugee boat locations to the rescue cruiser. Unfortunately, the

cruiser ran aground on its first voyage. The plane, however, continued to fly two or three times a week for a month.

The plane spotted refugees in trouble and then radioed for help. Once, a Norwegian freighter was diverted by the plane to a drifting boat and rescued 111 refugees. Another time 39 women were discovered stranded on a tiny rock island. The plane succeeded in getting a boat to pick up the women, who had been victims of gang rape. On another occasion 60 refugees were spotted in a boat that had been rammed. All were eventually saved. In all, the plane's spotters located and rescued 339 persons.

Later when the Thai Government established an antipiracy unit with two planes and two ships, largely paid for by the United States Government, Bainum stopped sending his search plane aloft. Since then, however, the Thai Government has stopped its antipiracy program.

No planes have flown to locate refugee boats in distress since September, 1981, although thousands of Vietnamese escaping their country to find freedom in Thailand and Malaysia risk rape and death on the seas. Bainum now hopes that increasing attention in the United States can be focused on the savage attacks on the boat people and that public opinion will eventually force the United States and other governments to do something effective to stop the piracy.

While Bainum is disappointed that he has not been able to rescue more refugees, he is grateful to have been able to assist people who want to volunteer to help Asian refugees. Furthermore, he remains optimistic about what Christians can do. "Anytime you complain about something wrong, you usually have the power to change it," he says. "It isn't enough just to feel bad. We all have a tremendous amount of power to change things. The longer I live, the more I have found that evil things can be changed when you start to do something about them." 111'


UPDA"F HOW CHURCHES FACE THE CRUNCH

Marlys Harris ("The Squeeze on Churches

and Synagogues," Money, April) notes that giving to religious institutions has risen "to a total of $24.5 billion in 1981, nearly 50 percent of all money donated to charity last year. But giving has not kept pace with inflation, causing many congregations to totter and a few to collapse for lack of funds."

Harris lists some characteristics of churches that are more liable to be "shaky": churches located in the Midwest or the Northeast; "a mainline Protestant church"; "a Protestant church in an area where religious TV programs are popular"; "a Roman Catholic church with a parochial school"; "a Reform temple or Conservative synagogue." She also includes a chart of annual church donations (by household). Highest on the list are Seventh-day Adventists ($2,400), with Presbyterians ($690) in the middle, and Episcopalians ($295), Roman Catholics ($275), and Unitarian Universalists ($275) on the low end.

Report on Marijuana "More than 25 million

Americans spent some $24 billion in 1980 for the illegal privilege of regularly smoking marijuana. Another 25 million have tried the

News items appearing in UPDATE represent current events of general interest to the readers of THESE TIMES and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions and views of the editors. Since the items come from a variety of news sources, the editors do not assume responsibility for inaccuracies beyond our control that might inadvertently be reproduced on these pages.

drug at least once, making it the most widely used illegal substance in the country," according to the March 8 issue of Time.

The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences recently "issued a long-awaited, 188-page report on the effects of marijuana. Its main finding: widespread use of the drug 'justifies serious national concern.' . . . The 22-member study committee . . . analyzed 1,000 scientific studies of the health effects associated with marijuana and called for further research. Among its conclusions:

"Behavioral Effects. The principal active element in marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabino' (THC), like alcohol, impairs motor

coordination, the ability to follow a moving object and to detect a flash of light. Since these functions are necessary for safe driving, the report notes, their impairment 'may suggest a substantial risk.' . . .

"Marijuana hampers short-term memory, slows learning and produces distortions of judgment, including reactions to panic and confusion. Conse-quently, there is special concern since much of the heavy use of marijuana 'takes place within the school setting.' . . . Mild withdrawal symptoms that sometimes occur among heavy users indicate the drug can lead to physical dependence. . . .

"Heart and Lung Damage. Like heavy cigarette

Illustration by Jeff Dever

smoking, chronic heavy marijuana use may lead to cancer of the respiratory tract and seriously impair the lungs. It can raise the heart rate and blood pressure, as does stress. . . .

"The report emphasized the need for more detailed long-term study because marijuana is widely used, and its components remain in the body for long periods, accumulating at levels that may be far higher than the levels after a single dose. . . .

"Medical science's uncertainty about the serious risks of marijuana has apparently been noted by at least one segment of the population. Also [recently] released . . . was a University of Michigan study that revealed . . . regular marijuana use among 17,000 high school seniors across the country has dropped from a high of 11 percent in 1978 to 7 percent last year. The most frequently cited reason: the teen-ager's concern about possible adverse effects of marijuana smoking on physical and psychological health." Pr

Photograph by Ralph Blodgett 12 THESE TIMES / SEPTEMBER 1982

%BE SL—j

MY LIFE IS A SPIDER'S WEB

Outside our family-room window a tremendous

spider's web knit together two shrubs. The spider had long vacated, but his masterpiece lived on, a tribute to his artistry. I looked at it for a time, admiring the delicate orb with its spokes and interlocking whorls. Silk—that exotic commodity that the spider leaves behind him wherever he goes and with which he spins his lure. Various spiders can produce dry threads, sticky threads, and beaded threads. And when a spider's creation is complete—his fragile snare—he trips across it at will on special hooked claws attached to each foot. Oil upon his body protects him from sticking to the strands, which are fatal to his prey.

Much as I dislike the little fellows, I'm intrigued with their skills. Do they view the web as a piece of art or simply as a most efficient means of acquiring their dinner? Most likely the latter. But I who have no need of its utilitarian significance am free to concentrate upon its beauty. It's a lace doily hung to dry between green boughs.

But time has taken its toll. There are tears in the intricate design and something has broken one essential strand from its grip

lune Strong, of Batavia, New York, is a lecturer and author of the books Journal of a Happy Woman,

Mindy, Where Are We Running? and Project Sunlight. She enjoys people, writing, gardening, and sewing.

on the shrub, setting the whole thing slightly off kilter. Tiny bits of debris lodge here and there, and down in one corner a dead insect flutters in the wind. Perhaps a pirate spider came along and consumed the builder.

It's a little like my life, this web. My life, which is supposed to be as delicately lovely as the spider's stitchery. My life, which came from the hand of the Creator. But an enemy has come and snipped here and there at essential points, and so my existence, also, is out of kilter. I can't really blame the enemy, however, for my

web is secure against his attack as long as I exercise the necessary precautions. But every time I grow too busy to pray, the frail threads are weakened and made vulnerable. When my Bible takes only its weekly outing to church, resting between times on the shelf, my web begins to accumulate bits of worldly clutter—television, scurryings to and fro, obsession with nonessentials, and much reading centered on earthly matters. And the "dead flies" of old sins cling in the corners of my living. I sense the entire structure about to

topple, and I cry out to Him whose skilled hands strung the strands.

The spider will not return to the flawed web at my window. Assuming he escaped marauders, he may have spun a dozen lovely wheels since forsaking this project (some orb weavers spin a new web daily, taking about one hour for the task) but the Weaver of the complex network of my life does not reject His own creation. He stands ready, at my faintest cry, to repair the damage I inflict upon His handiwork. Patiently, lovingly, He restores the weakened threads, and with a puff of His Spirit whisks away the destructive debris. The "old-sin" flies are the hardest—not hard for Him, but hard for me. So firmly are they attached to the sticky threads of my life that His work is painful and tedious. Sometimes I cannot seem to let go, and He allows me to rest, but He will return again and again, unless I reject His help, until the web of my life finally matches His original design for it.

Sometimes—oh, shameful thought—I'm satisfied with the broken strands. It's so comfortable to swing in the sun and wind without His restorative work—but it's dangerous. And I've never known the happiness of matching the pattern—thus "comfortable" is only a foolish human evaluation on my part.

So let's get on with it, Lord. Even if it hurts. May this disintegrating web at my window remind me day by day that to be cut off from You is to die.

Illustration © 1982 Gary Yealdhall/Eucalyptus THESE TIMES / SEPTEMBER 1982 13

Jerry lived at the VA hospital in Florida for a long time. He'd served a hitch in the war,

married, had a daughter, and was struck down by muscular dystrophy at age 31.

I first met Jerry through my teen-age daughter, who worked after school as a volunteer at the hospital. One day she told me about Jerry. How he scooted around the halls in his electric wheelchair and joked with the patients and staff. How truly amazing he was! But, she said, it troubled her that Jerry was more and more confined to his bed. And he never had any visitors—even on holidays. Maybe I could bring him a Bible or some tracts, she suggested. He liked to talk about Paul's Epistles. Jerry admired Paul.

So I did, and it was the beginning of a remarkable experience for me.

I found Jerry in the television room, and my daughter introduced us. From what she'd said about his shenanigans, I was hardly prepared for my first visit. Jerry was in a wheelchair—I'd expected that. But he was completely encompassed by it. No longer was he the chair's master, but slowly it had taken over. The only control came from the little mechanical box located on the chair's arm. Jerry's gnarled and spasmodic fingers patiently attempted to steer. His legs long ago had ceased to be functional and were under him, hidden by an old wool blanket. Where his shins should have been two lumps were poking out. I guess these were his feet. The upper portion of his torso was bent almost in half, making his once massive shoulders and chest hunched.

Happiness—that was my first thought of this man. Even though his body had been robbed by muscular dystrophy, he held steadfastly to his joy, spilling it over to everyone around him.

I followed Jerry back to his room so we could talk. I could barely keep up with him as he raced

Dianne Vasi, who says her priorities are God, family, and writing, is a housewife and free-lance Christian writer living in Tifton, Georgia. © 1982 by Dianne Vasi.

erratically down the hall, dodging in and out of the people-clutter, merrily waving with his elbow and speaking to those he passed.

Finally he was settled in bed. Drinking large gulps of water and wiping his mouth, he said, "It's nice of you to visit me. I like your children. Yeah, they are nice kids." He'd met my two sons when they picked up my daughter one afternoon.

I smiled back. Since I couldn't think of anything to say, Jerry questioned me about the Bible in my lap. We talked for several hours that day. About his youth, marriage, divorce, and the Lord. This was the reason for Jerry's peace, he said. "You gotta have the Lord in this place"—his eyes rolling to encompass the room—"or else you'd go crazy."

On and on he went, stopping only for huge drinks of water.

On the second trip I was no longer shy. Jerry talked about his daughter. She was a lawyer in Cleveland, "a good one, too." And his wife. She'd divorced him after he'd become incapacitated, and he didn't blame her.

I asked, "Jerry, why doesn't your daughter come to see you?"

He shook his fuzzy head, and I saw tinges of gray in the sunlight. "She's too far away, and who wants to come a thousand miles to look at an old cripple lying in bed?"

He pointed to her photograph taped to the wall. She wore a graduation cap and gown. "She writes, though," he added, reaching for a small pile of cards from past birthdays and other holidays. He'd saved every one.

"Go ahead and look at them, I don't mind," he said.

And that was how I got to know Jerry. Twice a week I would stop by and I really looked forward to our chats.

On one occasion I asked the doctor about Jerry. Without being specific, he admitted that Jerry wouldn't be around forever. Probably a year or less. No more. Yes, Jerry knew.

It was then I decided that whatever I could do to improve this man's life, I had to do. So

with books, news of our family life, Bible reading, and home cooking (which he loved), I tried to bring bits of cheer into his life. At least that was the way it started. It wasn't long before I realized Jerry was sharing his joy with me. I had a lot to learn from him.

On his birthday I made a chocolate cake, his favorite. Other patients, plus some of the staff, joined in singing happy birthday to this dear man. He had made many friends there. Jerry's eyes glistened, and his jokes really flew that day. He'd made it to 52, and was thinking about 53.

After it was over and the ward had quieted down, I was ready to say goodbye for the day. Jerry asked me to stay a moment longer to have a prayer. I did.

When I finished, we raised our heads, and Jerry had a large tear in each eye. I'd never seen him cry before.

"What's the matter?" I asked, holding back my own tears.

"I had such a good time today. You are so nice to do this for me," he said, patting my hands from his bed. His dark skin felt rough but he was gentle. Words came slowly now. The disease was also taking his voice.

"These times mean so much to me." He turned and stared across the room. "I know I ain't got long here, but I'm not afraid of death, because I'm a Christian. I'm gonna trade this pukey body for one that really works. I'm not afraid, except that—"

"What is it?" I whispered. "Well"—he licked his chapped

lips—"I don't want to—" He turned to me, pleading with his eyes. "Please! Please don't let me die alone!"

My tears sprinkled on his forehead as I bent to kiss him. His large eyes followed my every move. This marvelous man was soft inside and afraid. He was reaching out to me for strength, yet he was much stronger than I.

"I won't, Jerry. You can bet on that." I scribbled our phone number on a piece of paper and tucked it into his hand.

"Here. When the time comes, you give me a call. I'll be here." I smiled. "OK?"


He Didn't Want to Die Alone BY DIANNE VASI

A smile crossed his mouth. "You came," he whispered. "You really came."

He nodded, and I could see him relax into his pillow. "Thanks. Thanks a lot," he said coarsely.

Within a month my husband was notified that he would be transferred to another city 200 miles away. We had to tell Jerry, and I dreaded that visit. But like the true soldier he was, he made jokes and laughed, putting aside the separation and enjoying the now of our company.

For three months after our move, I wrote Jerry often, almost daily. Several times I called, and we all spoke to him.

Then one Friday evening the call came. It was the nurse. She said that Jerry had asked her to phone us if ever the end was

drawing near. My husband piled us into the

car for the trip to the hospital. When we walked into Jerry's room his eyes opened and a smile crossed his mouth. He seemed just a faint trace of his former self.

I reached out for his hand. I was crying.

"You came," he whispered. "You really came."

"Sure, Jerry. Did you think for one moment we wouldn't?"

His jokes were stilled that night as he lay there dying. Close to the morning hours he turned and whispered for the last time, "Could we say a prayer like we used to?"

We all bowed our beads around the bed. We prayed slowly so

Jerry could keep up with us. Taking turns, we all held his

hand through that night. It was impossible for him to hold ours, but we knew that he meant to. Early the next morning he went into a coma. Crying and praying we waited for the end, still holding his hand. I was sure he knew we were there.

Late Saturday evening the machine whined out the flat sound of death. We cried and prayed, thanking God for Jerry's release.

On the trip home we said little. Yet through the sadness I felt joy. Jerry's joy. For we had been able to make one man happy, because he didn't have to die alone.

Even in death Jerry had given us a gift. Tr


An estimated 20 million Americans are on a "serious" diet on any given day of the year. For

these dieters we offer some common-sense tips.

COMPILED BY BRUCE LANSKY

1. Make a Commitment If achieving your weight goal is

important to you, it's worth working for: Even on days when your willpower has hoisted the white flag of surrender . . . you can't give up. Successful dieters try to pull themselves out of tailspins that would cause less serious dieters to quit. If you keep bouncing back, you're bound to succeed.

2. Love Yourself The best reason to diet is

because you love yourself and want to look and feel better. Since dieting involves discipline in the areas of eating and exercise, make sure to avoid a self-indulgent orgy of denial by doing plenty of pleasurable "nonfood" activities that will help you feel good about yourself. Remember that someone you know loves you a lot.

3. Picture Yourself Thin Close your eyes, relax, and

visualize yourself on a scale, weighing in on your target weight. Notice how good it feels to fit into clothes you want to wear and to look slim and healthy. If you can

Bruce Lansky, compiler of the book Successful Dieting Tips, joined a team of editors and asked hundreds of dieters what killed their last diet. This article is part of his book. © 1981 by Bruce Lansky. Reprinted with permission of Meadowbrook Press, Deephaven, Minnesota.

visualize this scene once or twice a day, you'll soon begin to believe that it can be true—and you'll find yourself acting in ways that make it come true.

4. Choose a Diet You Can Live With

The fastest way to bomb out on a diet is to choose one that is so distasteful to you that you can't imagine sticking to it for long. To succeed, you've got to find a diet you really believe in. And that diet has to provide balanced nutrition that will enable you to keep going over the long haul—without making you anemic, dulling your sex drive, turning you into a grouch, or giving you other harmful side effects.

5. Get on a Winning Team Ask your family and friends for

help and understanding. Diet with a buddy. Join a support group. Call on your "higher power." The more help you have, the better your odds for success.

6. Be the "Boss" of What Goes Into Your Mouth

If you don't open your mouth and put food into it, you won't eat. If you eat too much, it's not the "fault" of the cook, your hostess, or the waiter. Blaming

others is a way of avoiding responsibility for your eating.

7. Know Your Weaknesses Admit you have weaknesses.

What are the foods you can't resist? When do you lose control? What situations defeat your diet? Keeping an eating record will tell you where, when, why, and how you get into trouble. Then you can successfully make your plans to avoid the problems or be prepared when they arise.

8. Build Up Your Self-control Start looking for temptations

you know you CAN overcome. Leave something on your plate at the next meal. Pass up bread at dinner or cookies for snacks. Take pleasure in these triumphs because they strengthen your willpower. Soon you'll be able to refuse dessert even though everyone else at the table is groaning with pleasure.

9. Lose Weight by Burning More Calories Than You Eat

Inactivity is a frequently unrecognized cause of obesity. Many active people can eat more calories than sedentary people and weigh a lot less. It's pretty hard to overeat while you're running, swimming, biking, or walking—who wants to lug that

18 SECRETS OF SUCCESSFUL DIETING

extra weight around? Exercise is one of the strongest tools in your dieting kit.

10. Learn New Ways to Shop and Eat

The more you learn about food and nutrition, the easier it is to adopt better shopping and eating habits. You can't binge on sugary, salty, or fatty "junk food" you left on the grocery shelf. Many dieters achieve long-term weight loss when they learn how to prepare and enjoy more wholesome, nutritious foods.

11. Save Calories by Substituting

Little substitutions mean a lot. Baked potatoes with chives but no sour cream, diet soft drinks instead of the sugary kind. It isn't hard to find 100 calories a day to cut by simply switching from something extravagant to a calorie-saving alternative. And 100 calories a day adds up to about 15 extra pounds around your middle in 12 months. If you know your way around the calorie charts, you'll be able to use your brains to beat the bulge. And if you're up on low-calorie seasoning tricks, you may even enjoy the difference.

12. Write Your Own Rule Book Successful dieters have rules for

when, where, how, and what to

eat—and what to do if they slip up. These rules can help you resist temptation. Write your own rules down and keep them where you can see them every day. You won't feel so terrible if, after eating an "illegal" ice-cream sundae, you go for a brisk half-hour walk or take some other action specified by your own diet rule book.

13. Remember: Out of Sight, Out of Mind

No one's willpower is perfect. Keep tempting snacks and treats off kitchen counters, out of see-through canisters, and out of the front row in pantries and refrigerators. And choose your position at parties and restaurants so you don't have to look continually at irresistible hors d'oeuvres or desserts.

14. Weigh in Regularly Your scale will tell you how

you're doing on your diet—if you consult it. Successful dieters want lots of feedback—as a token reward for when they're making progress and as a warning for when they're backsliding. You may not consult your scale regularly because you're afraid of receiving "bad news." But if you don't weigh in today and identify

the problem, the news could be much worse tomorrow.

15. Listen to Your Stomach Learn how to tell the difference

between a genuine "I'm hungry" message from your stomach and a phony "Feed me" message you get when you see, smell, or hear about food. Your stomach may feel satisfied, but if your eyes, nose, and ears are "hungry," what do you do? Listen to your stomach.

16. Say "No, Thank You!" These three words work

wonders. Most people who serve you food genuinely want to please you. If you tell them you're not hungry because you filled up on that terrific salad, you give them praise and save your diet without hurting any feelings.

17. Don't Mix Drinking and Dieting

Let's face it: alcohol lowers inhibitions and muddles judgment. Drinking when there's food around can be like lighting a match near a gas tank. Why take the risk?

18. Start All Over Again Tomorrow

Your burden is lighter when you diet one day at a time. All dieters slip up. Tomorrow you can start over with an absolutely clean slate! Tr

now

DOES THE BIBLE TEACH THE

TRINITY DOCTRINE?

Many conflicts and controversies have raged over the past hundreds of years about the subject of the Trinity. But most of these problems involve questions

that the Bible neither asks nor attempts to answer.

Two's company, three's a crowd." So goes the old saying. Those who have

noticed how often three children trying to play together end up two against one can appreciate the wisdom of this maxim.

Most Christians believe in and worship the Trinity—God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Is three a crowd here too? Why not just one God? Isn't the whole idea of three confusing? How can God possibly be one and three at the same time? We can hardly begin to get our minds around such a concept. And even if we understand it, what difference could such an abstract concept make in the way we live from day to day? That is what we wish to explore.

Admittedly the concept of the Trinity brings with it some problems. First, it is hard to reconcile with monotheism. Do Christians believe in one God or three? Is it possible to be a trinitarian and a monotheist at the same time?

Second, discussion of the subject throughout church history has often focused on such abstract theological jargon that it has been hard to see what possible practical value this doctrine might have.

Third, the doctrine has often led to serious misunderstandings. For instance, many have made God the Father seem to be cruel, harsh, and exacting, in contrast to a loving and kind Jesus. In fact, I find that most Christians admit to having had childhood images of God the Father that made Him the bad guy and Jesus the good guy.

Finally, it is difficult to find the doctrine of the Trinity explicitly spelled out in the New Testament. The most explicit verse in the King James Version, 1 John 5:7, is lacking in virtually all of the more modern versions of the New Testament. This is owing to the fact that this verse does not appear in any of the ancient Greek manuscripts of 1 John and is apparently a later addition to the text.

John Brunt serves as associate professor of theology at Walla Walla College, College Place, Washington. He is the author of A Day for Healing. © 1982 by John C. Brunt.

What the Bible says. In spite of these problems, there can be no doubt that the New Testament clearly speaks of three distinct members of the Godhead. We should note carefully, however, not only what the Bible does tell us about the Trinity but also what it does not tell us. Nowhere does any Biblical author even try to explain the inner workings of the Trinity. The Bible is totally devoid of discussions on how God can be three and yet one, whether the three should be considered of one substance or of one essence, or whether the term "persons," "beings," or "modes of existence" best describes Their actual nature.

The scriptural emphasis is quite different. It focuses on the function of each member of the Trinity in our salvation. It reveals how we can relate to each member. In other words, the concern is not theoretical, but practical. We make a mistake when we think of the Trinity simply as a doctrine. The Bible teaching of the Trinity is good news that shows how we can live with confidence and victory because of what each member of the Godhead is doing for us. This functional interest in the Trinity pervades the New Testament.

One of the most revealing passages about the function of the Godhead in our salvation and our lives is Jesus' farewell discourse to His disciples found in John 13:31-17:26. Jesus and His disciples had just finished the Last Supper and were on their way to the garden where Jesus would be arrested. Jesus was trying to prepare these disciples for the future, both immediate and long-range. As He spoke of His soon departure and the purpose of His life and ministry, He related His work to that of the Father and the coming Spirit. Let's take each member of the Trinity and notice some of what we learn about Them, Their relationships to one another, and Their relationship to us from this important passage.

God the Father. First, we look at God the Father. Jesus' farewell speech repeatedly emphasizes what had already been explained in the most famous verse of the

Bible, John 3:16, namely, that God the Father loves us and sent the Son to save us. God is not a cruel God whose wrath must be appeased by Jesus. God loved us so much that He took the initiative to send Jesus to us. He knew that sin had blinded us to what He was really like and how much He loved us. So He sent Jesus to us to die for us and to reveal God's true character. This brings us to the second member of the Trinity.

Jesus' function is to bridge the gulf of sin that separated us from the Father and blinded us to His love. Jesus and the Father are so close that Jesus can tell Philip, "He who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:9).* Two important implications follow from this.

First, the relationship between the Father and the Son is closer than any relationship we know in the human realm. We might look at two identical twins and observe that if you know one of them you know both of them, but their parents would probably have a different idea. They could point us to differences of personality, taste, and temperament. But Jesus and the Father are so close that to have seen Jesus is to have seen the Father. No earthly father and son are that close. Although the analogy of father and son is useful in helping us to understand the relationship between Jesus and God the Father, it is not a perfect analogy. We are not dealing with human relationships here. The Father and Jesus are one in a way that goes beyond anything that we know on earth or can understand.

Second, if the relationship between God the Father and the Son is this close, then every view that makes any kind of differentiation between their attitudes toward us is fallacious. God cannot be the stern God of wrath whom Jesus placates.

God the Son. Many have assumed this fallacious idea of God's sternness from the fact that Jesus, the second member of the Godhead, is a mediator between us and God. But Jesus' mediation

*The Scripture quotations in this article are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946, 1952 0 1971, 1973.

Mustration © 1982 David Stree6Streetworks THESE TIMES / SEPTEMBER 1982 19

Homing Pigeons Homing pigeons have been used for hundreds of years to carry messages back to their home base. During wartime pigeons would be kept at the battlefront, and when it was necessary to send a message to headquarters, which was the pigeons' home, a note would be attached to a bird's leg and it would be released.

Men have been guessing for centuries about how pigeons know where they are going. Some speculated that they used the sun, some said they used landmarks, and some even felt that the pigeons had built-in magnets that were sensitive to the earth's magnetism. As it turns out, all three of the theories are correct.

Experiments have shown that homing pigeons can tell where they are, and thus fly to where they are going, by looking at the sun. They also recognize familiar landmarks when they get to an area where they have been before. And recently it has

been shown that homing pigeons actually are sensitive to the earth's magnetic field. You see, the world is a giant magnet. That is why compasses always point north. Evidently the pigeon (and probably other birds as well) has a sensing system that, like a compass, tells it which direction is north.

With all this information, plus a sense of time—yes, birds have built-in clocks, also—the homing pigeon is able to travel more accurately than the sea captains who used to sail the seven seas using the sun, a compass, and a watch.

But the pigeon does it automatically. No one has to teach it to tell time or to read a compass.

Christians may also have a keen sense of spiritual direction as to what is right or wrong. This sense is an enlightened conscience directed by the Holy Spirit as one seeks that directing and always follows it.

does not reconcile God to us, it reconciles us to God. Jesus even points to a day when such mediation will be unnecessary and His followers will approach God directly; in other words, a day when His work of mediation is complete:

"In that day you will ask in my name; and I do not say to you that I shall pray to the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from the Father" (John 16:26, 27).

Thus we see a difference in function between Father and Son. The Son comes to this earth and becomes human to bridge the gulf and reconcile us to the Father. The Son is differentiated from the Father. He can even say that the Father is greater than He is (John 14:28); yet He is God in every respect and is so close to the Father that to know one is to know the other.

But usually it is not Father and Son who cause us difficulty when we attempt to understand the Trinity. We can see why there was a need for God to actually become human and break through to us with a revelation of Himself. Thus we can see reason for two members of the Godhead. But why three? That is what baffles us, especially when the Holy Spirit is such a confusing mystery.

God the Holy Spirit. Jesus' farewell speech tells us a lot about the need for the third member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, and also about the Spirit's function. Again, the emphasis is not on abstract questions of the nature of the Spirit, but on His work for and relationship to us.

Jesus actually tells the disciples that it is to their advantage that He go away so that the Spirit can come:

"Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you" (John 16:7).

What possible advantage could there be in Jesus' leaving? As John tells the story, it is obvious that even the disciples who walked with Jesus while He was on this

earth didn't understand Him. Often events occurred that they did not understand at the time. For example, when Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem, the disciples did not understand the significance of the event. We read in John 12:16:

"His disciples did not understand this at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that this had been written of him and had been done to him."

It was the special work of the Holy Spirit to help the disciples understand the significance of Jesus' ministry and make Jesus real to the disciples in a way that they had not known Him even when He was present. This is what Jesus means when He says:

"But the Counselor, 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 14:26).

In other words, the disciples would actually know Jesus better

after He was gone! The Spirit could then help them understand the meaning of Jesus' ministry. John believes that this truth has important implications for us, as well. We have never seen Jesus. We have never walked the roads of Palestine with Him. But this seeming disadvantage puts us at no disadvantage whatsoever. For even the disciples who did walk the roads of Palestine with Jesus were dependent on the Spirit for an understanding of Jesus' life.

You see, during Jesus' life so much of the people's and even the disciples' emphasis focused on the externals—Jesus' miracles and the hope that He would soon set up a kingdom. Imagine what it would be like if Jesus were physically here on earth today. Everyone would want to see Him, touch Him, or grab a piece of His clothing.

Just a few nights before the tragic and senseless killing of Robert Kennedy, I saw him appear at a rally in southern California. Here


BY BILL LOVELESS

there was no one hostile to him, and yet the need for bodyguards was evident. At one point well-wishers surrounded the car in which he stood. One person grabbed to try to get a piece of his coat. In the process he knocked Kennedy over, but the people surrounding the car were so tightly packed that he fell on top of them rather than to the ground and was not hurt.

Imagine how much worse the crowds would be if Jesus lived on earth today. The focus would be on His personal presence and not on the issues that His life and death and resurrection raise for us. But through the Spirit, Jesus can become real to us so that we realize His spiritual presence and understand the significant issues of His life for us.

This is why the nature of the Spirit is kept a mystery. The Holy Spirit does not draw attention to Himself but points to Jesus. Again, the relationship between these two members of the Godhead is one of absolute unity. In fact, Jesus can go so far as to refer to the coming of the Spirit by saying, "I will come to you" (John 14:18). The work of the Spirit is to bring the presence of Jesus to us so that we understand Him even better than did the disciples when they were with Him.

Many conflicts and controversies have centered around the subject of the Trinity. Some have even resulted in bloodshed. But most of these have involved questions that the Bible neither asks nor attempts to answer.

We may never know the answers to all those questions this side of heaven. But there are some important truths that we do know. The Bible's concern is much more practical. It sets forth three members of the Godhead and gives us the privilege of seeing what each one is doing for us. But even beyond that, we have the privilege of coming to know God's love for us and of living in a saving relationship with Him as the Holy Spirit gives us an understanding of Jesus and Jesus reconciles us to the Father. In this case three is not a crowd. It is, rather, God's way of reaching us with His love. Tr

To help you get the most out of THESE TIMES, we offer "Reflections," a guide to deeper understanding of individual articles. Actually, we'd like to challenge you to probe these issues that can enrich your life and make them more fulfilling. Please read each article first, then consider Bill Loveless' suggestions. Bill is a master at inspiring people to think—and what is even more amazing—to enjoy doing it. The Word That Turned the World Upside Down page 3

1. The Greek term agape means 2. The opposite of love is—

a. hope. b. fear. c. peace. d. joy.

3. Ordinary human love might cause one to die for a , but agape motivated Christ to die for His (Romans 5:7, 8).

4. God loves us because— a. we are important to Him. b. we need His love. c. He is agape.

5. God's love transforms us into a value equivalent to that of His own Son. True or false.

6. List an example of agape that someone has recently shown to you

Does the Bible Teach the Trinity Doctrine? page 18 1. The Godhead is made up of God the , God the

and God the 2. Jesus and the Father are so close that Jesus could tell Philip,

" (John 14:9). 3. The analogy of father and son is a perfect way to describe the

relationship between Jesus and God the Father. True or false. 4. Jesus' mediation reconciles—

a. God to man. b. man to God. c. man to man.

5. The special work of the Holy Spirit is to help us the significance of Jesus' ministry and make Jesus to us.

6. Can you recall a time when the Holy Spirit seemed close to you? If you have found "Reflections" helpful, we offer one more suggestion: We

have available an expanded version of "Reflections" called "Discussion Guides." These guides are designed to act as aids for study groups. Perhaps your church or community club would find these guides a perfect catalyst for sprightly conversation and continuing study. Certainly they are worth trying.

FOR DISCUSSION GUIDES SEND IN THIS COUPON: Please send me the Discussion Guides along with THESE TIMES for 3 months for group participants.

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NES

LESSON FROM THE TOUR

The apostle Paul, writer of fourteen books of the

Bible, occasionally alluded to athletic contests of his day. In fact, he did often enough to cause us to wonder whether he would have been at least a casual reader of modern sports' pages. One wonders, too, what sacred lesson he would have drawn from a professional golf tournament. I thought about that as I took vacation time recently to follow the touring professional golfers at Washington's Congressional Country Club during the Kemper Open.

Paul, you recall, urged Christians to realize that contesting for victory in Grecian games of foot racing, boxing, wrestling, and throwing the discus meant more than making a spasmodic effort. Contestants were willing to undergo hardships and severe training in order to increase their chance of securing the prize. The game of life likewise, he said, must be a struggle from start to finish without relaxation along the way. One pictures Paul (whose comment about finishing the course has nothing to do with golf) as a vigorous, barrel-chested individual who probably could run long distances with ease.

Despite the fact that golf numbers its devotees in the millions, it has had its share of detractors. James Reston called golf a plague invented by Calvinistic Scots as a punishment for man's sins. Journalist Westbrook Pegler said it was the most useless outdoor game ever devised to waste the time and try the spirit of man. President

Woodrow Wilson said, "It is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill-adapted for the purpose."

Admittedly, golf on the professional tour is a frustrating business. The difference in ability between one man and another is almost infinitesimal. At every level of the sport, from top stars to middling veterans to newcomers on the circuit, there are countless inexplicable cases of men with similar skill getting almost completely different results in both fame and fortune.

In 1981, for instance, Bill Rogers was player of the year, yet his scoring average was just one tenth of a stroke per round better than Bob Murphy, who won nothing and was forty-ninth on the money list. Murphy even played in more tournaments.

The game's attraction for the millions of golfers worldwide continues. Its charisma has been capsulated by Pastor George Monaghan, of Calistoga, California, in a prayer given before dinner at a golf installation banquet:

"0 God, who made the earth round and hurled it into space with infinite power and accuracy, bless us who are gathered here tonight, whose aim is to imitate Thy divine action on the golf course.

"Grant us a portion of Thy power, smoothness, and accuracy. Give us poise, perseverance, and patience in our golfing efforts. Implant in our hearts a love for this great game—but a greater love for our fellow

man on and off the golf course. May brotherly love reign supreme in all our golfing and kindred activities.

"Bless our staff, our officers, our champions, our duffers. Increase their proficiency and decrease their scores. Lengthen their woods and straighten their irons. Control their approaches and guide their putts. But above all, 0 Lord, bestow on them a saving sense of humor and balance that they may always golf in the spirit of charity, humility, and reverence for Thy name.

"Finally, Lord, bless this spirited social gathering and this food that we are about to take in the realization that all good things—even a good golf score—come from You. Amen."

Christians, of course, always note with interest evidences of attention to spiritual things by athletes in various sports. Golf is no exception. For 16 years professional golfers have met on Tuesday nights for Bible study, testimony, and prayer. Such well-known players as Rik Massengale, Kermit Zarley, Larry Nelson, Bob Gilder, Wally Armstrong, and Morris Hatalsky, to name a few, participate.

Massengale, who has three tour victories, but has not had much success lately, admits that "if it weren't for the Lord, it would be a pretty tough racket." He has been a Christian eight years and feels that he is one of the most blessed persons in the world, with a Christian wife and four healthy youngsters. Some of the

players have become Christians since joining the professional circuit.

Finally, what lesson would the great apostle Paul gain from the tour? Perhaps it is this: Golf is an intriguing game, but it is only a game, with only one champion at each tournament. The important thing is to play the game of life with Christ as your leader. And since He urges everyone to accept Him, everyone can be a winner.—K.J.H.

Nobility Obligates We Christians believe that

nobility of character will reach its finest hour when a sampling of God's people at the end of human history, when Satan unleashes all his fury at mankind, will be living examples of obedience to God's commandments.

The supreme model of this type of nobility can be found in Christ. He it was who touched the untouchable leper, who made friends with those who had lost their reputation and self-respect, who could walk unscathed through a murderous crowd. Writer Ellen G. White indicates that. He moved amid the world of excitement, of violence and crime, as the sun moves above the clouds.

And then she gives us the key to Christ's conduct by pointing out that His will was always swallowed up in the will of His Father.

Let us not be frightened by the problems that confront us, but rather give God thanks that He has matched us with this hour.—K.J.H.


CONTINUE BEING FORTHRIGHT AND BRAVE

May I congratulate you on the courage you

have demonstrated by publishing the moving article "Dachau" by Jamie Buckingham (April, 1982). Not only did you bring to your readers the horror of the past by madmen, but you also brought to our attention the madness of the present, since the terror of an absolute person, government, or agency is not confined to a particular continent.

The author was on target: The Internal Revenue Service is "highhanded" in its methods, and yet who dares to raise a voice of protest against this agency that is a law unto itself? Continue being forthright and brave. We need such valor for THESE TIMES.—Dan C. Robles, Sr.

Clear and Precise THESE TIMES is one of our

favorite magazines; it is so clear and precise on our fundamental beliefs and so up-to-date on most issues.—Grace Pearman, Salem, South Carolina.

Not All Psychiatry Is Bad

Your article in the March, 1982, issue of THESE TIMES on psychiatry and brain surgeons ("Do Psychiatrists Make Good Brain Surgeons?") is a very poor article, and it certainly does no credit to your magazine.

I am not here to defend psychiatry, for I can be as critical of it as the author can, but I think it's as much a mistake to lump all psychiatry into the same basket as it would be to say that all religion is a farce

because much of it through history has had its major weaknesses or fallen short of the ideal.—Clarence E. Carnahan, M.D., Loma Linda, California.

Thanks for Finding Me When I Needed You

After reading the February and March, 1982, issues of THESE TIMES, I have found new peace again in a place where so little light ever shines in one's life. No other magazine does so much for my soul, or seems to revitalize my life so much. I think everything in THESE TIMES is excellent.

Thank you for finding me when I needed you. —Carolina Bowen, Western Institute, Tennessee.

I'm a Zebra! Your special issue "A Day

to Remember" (May, 1982) was a good idea, but part of it was "the last straw" for me—the part about the Green family, describing them as "middle class" (opening paragraph). If they are middle class, I'm a zebra! A computer expert, nurse, Jacuzzi, racquetball, family membership in a club—all this in the same family makes them higher than middle class.—John Larsen, Kalamazoo, Michigan.

It Causes Me to Study Some friends have been

sending me THESE TIMES for some months. I always read it from cover to cover. I belong to a different denomination but feel we are all parts of the body of Christ.

I do not always agree with

the viewpoints presented, but I always go to the scriptures presented and study some more, so your magazine has really stimulated more intensive Bible study than I probably would have done.

My thanks to all concerned.—Evadne McKinley, Stevensville, Montana.

Someone Thinks a Lot of Me

I've waited so long—three years, perhaps more—to thank the lovely person who sends me THESE TIMES. Since I do not know who thinks this much of me, I pray this note will find its way into your magazine.

Although I am not of your faith, my husband and I read and enjoy your lovely magazine. I was touched this month by "Smiles in the Mailbox," by Ann Bateman (January, 1982), and I too like to drop little notes to people who have touched my life. Since reading this, I have been encouraged to step up my note writing and really not just to think about it, but do it. So you, dear person, whoever you are—thank you for the lovely magazine. Please forgive me for waiting so long to thank you.—Lois and Wallace Bearden, Tallahassee, Florida.

My Life Is Brighter I enjoy June Strong's

column in THESE TIMES. I cried every time I reread the one where her children were grown up. And incidentally, I too faced a lump in my breast as I read the column in which she describes facing the unknown—and

surgery. I didn't try to put it all into words, because it's impossible, but her book Mindy was such a bright spot in my rather depressing winter. My life is brighter because of her.—Carolyn Higby, Oswego, New York.

Uplifted My Spiritual Journey

Thank you very much for all the help you've given to me and my family. Your articles have uplifted my spiritual journey time and time again. Thank you again.—Constance Hanks, Hyampom, California.

The Lord Led Me I have been receiving

THESE TIMES in my home for more than a year and really enjoy it. I was raised in the Lutheran Church, but I'm so glad the Lord has led me into the greater light the Bible has to offer those who are earnestly searching for truth.

It saddens me when I read letters like that from John H. Ferrell wishing to have his name removed from your mailing list (April, 1982).

I was searching for the church that taught the Bible the way God intended it to be taught. The Lord led me to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and I'm so glad to have found that born-again relationship with my Saviour.—Susan Chain, Norfolk, Virginia. TIC

Address all correspondence for this column to: Letters to the Editor, THESE TIMES, 6856 Eastern Avenue NW., Washington, D.C. 20012. Items selected for publication may be edited for clarity and length.


Henry Martyn's Incredible Race With Death Years later a great Indian Christian Church with millions of members would stand on the spot \\ here I lemy labored, alone, to bring the gospel to nations that possessed no Bible in their language.

1;1 I ()ft, II() \111 I \ DICK

Go home to England," the white doctor frowned. "India is killing you!"

Young Henry Martyn, chaplain to the British troops in Patna, India, wiped the sweat from his eyes and glanced at the thermometer. "Yes, I know; 126° F in the shade. But I've been in India only three years. There's so much left to do."

"You're killing yourself," the doctor persisted. "At least, why don't you ride about in a palanquin? * A chaplain should be dignified."

"Our Lord walked on His feet." Henry tried hard not to smile. He

Lois Dick is a free-lance writer living in Newton, New Jersey. © 1982 by Lois Hoadley Dick.

was tired of hearing the doctor say he was racing against death. Why, he was only 28 years old, and 60 million Hindustani people did not have the Word of God in their own tongue. Already Henry had learned the language, and after a long day's work he studied the Bible in English, Hebrew, and Greek, translating it word by word into Hindustani. Sometimes he spent ten hours on a single chapter.

Henry Martyn never dreamed he would end up a scholar—in India, of all the awful places! As a schoolboy in Truro, England, he had been sickly and underweight. His mother feared he was tubercular. His father, a coal miner at first, worked hard to become head clerk in a merchant's office.

Henry didn't have an easy life at school. The other boys teased him in order to be amused when Henry lost his temper and began swinging his skinny fists.

He hated math more than anything in the world and was ready to quit school, when a senior student offered to help him. "No thanks, I'm really quitting this time. Math is my father's favorite subject, though, even when he used to be just a coal miner."

"Why don't you show him you're just as smart?" the older boy suggested.

Henry thought it over and just to surprise his father, he began to study hard. To everybody's amazement, Henry won first prize in the final math examination.

Now Father will brag! Henry thought smugly. He'll take all the credit and say "A chip off the old block" or something like that.

But before Henry could get home for the Easter holiday, a letter announced that his father was dead.

Deep inside, Henry loved his father, and his sudden death made life seem all too short. It could happen to him! What was the point of spending years studying math or studying anything? At home he searched out a neglected Bible and read it without under-standing. Then he tried to pray. He had the strange feeling that Someone was listening. The Jesus Christ of the printed page stepped right into his life, and Henry found He was very much alive!

As he prayed, God helped Henry with his studies, and by the time he attended Cambridge University, he was the most brilliant young man there. He decided to become a lawyer.

But God had other plans for Henry, and called him to India. I could never be a missionary, Henry thought sadly. Missionaries were paid only ten shillings (about $1.20) a week. And Henry's unmarried sister had no one to take care of her. His duty was to his sister. As a lawyer he would make good money and live in a nice house in peace and safety.

The Lord began to work again in Henry's life, and he was offered the paid position of chaplain of the East India Company. In 1805 he

joined a convoy of 150 sailing ships headed for India and found himself—at 24 years of age—the spiritual leader of them all!

Nine months of adventure followed: storms, starvation, disease, the death of the captain, vicious fights among sailors, blistering heat by day and icy chills by night, and battle combat. At Cape Town, where Henry went ashore with the soldiers, he was almost shot as a spy.

Part of his work involved the inspection of ships. He saw how men on the lower decks lived crammed together like animals without fresh air or decent food. Henry carried a lit candle even during the day as he stumbled through the smelly darkness of the depths of the wooden ships. The

sailors were amazed to see him bringing them fresh water to drink. No one ever cared about them before.

Henry organized a worship service for the officers. He offered to do the same for the sailors, who were nicknamed "Jack-tar."

"Sailors are stupid," objected the chief officer. "God never intended for common people to read the Bible."

Henry showed him in the Scriptures that the gospel was to be preached to "all" men.

"Surely not black people and natives of other countries!" the officer cried.

"That is why I left my country and friends forever," replied Henry. "That is why missionaries go all over the world."

The officer just shook his head, puzzled. He couldn't imagine that people were equal in God's sight, that everyone had a right to hear the gospel. Henry fought this attitude all during his missionary years. He knew all men could learn to read, think, reason, and live together as brothers.

In April, 1806, the ships reached India, and Henry went to live with a minister in Calcutta. India's 300 million souls without Christ haunted him!

One day he followed a religious parade down the street. A juggernaut rolled along on wooden wheels, pushed and pulled by a howling mob. A juggernaut was a heavy cart painted with obscene words and pictures on which rode the Hindu idol Vishnu. (The word juggernaut means "lord of the world.")

A little brown-skinned boy stumbled and went sprawling under the huge wheels, and Henry darted forward with a shout. "Watch out! Stop!"

The excited people paid no attention, and the child's broken body was thrown aside. To Henry's horror, three more people threw themselves under the lumbering wheels, and their skulls were instantly crushed.

"They are an offering to the gods," smiled his Indian friend. He pointed across the river to a finger of smoke and fire rising in the hot air. "A funeral. They are

burning the dead man—and his wife."

"She is . . . alive?" "Yes, of course. Our religion

demands it. The widow doesn't mind. She climbs up on top of the pile of wood by herself, but sometimes they do have to hold her down."

Henry saw hundreds of beggars, holy men who never washed, sitting cross-legged and naked in the brutal sun. Some had never moved for years, their legs frozen in that position. Some holy men held arms straight up in the air to gain favor with the gods, their arms locked permanently in an attitude of praise. Others showed their devotion by keeping their fists clenched tightly for years with the fingernails growing out the backs of the hands. How awfully religious these people were!

Henry walked home, sickened. Could one person hope to stop all this and convert such people? If the people only had the Bible in their own language!

Henry moved to Patna and served as chaplain in the British military hospital and at night began to translate the Bible into Hindustani. Nighttime brought very little coolness, and he lost weight and felt exhausted all the time. Take a vacation? Never! The doctor was wrong. If he were racing with death, why, he'd win,

as he won at math! Finally, he had finished the

Bible translation. God then spoke to his heart about learning Arabic, the language of not only Arabia but Syria, Persia, Turkey, Tartary, parts of China, half of Africa.

Just then he was transferred to the town of Cawnpore to serve as chaplain to the men of the Fifty-third Regiment. After a journey of 300 miles during the hottest season of India, he arrived half dead and for two days lay on the floor of the captain's house, unable to move. A week later he reported for duty, and at the first church service eight strong, hardened soldiers passed out from the stifling heat.

Henry began to study Persian and Arabic in his spare time. Sometimes he thought of England's coolness and rain, misty fogs and green meadows, and the strange words coiled up and down the page like cobras. He began to think the doctor was right. Often he felt so hot with fever that chills raced up and down his body.

One night his native helper, Sabat, read the Bible verse that said the gospel should be preached to the poor (Luke 4:18). Sabat looked up at Henry. "You are a Christian teacher, but you do not preach to the beggars? Why?"

Henry's heart convicted him. "I shall preach to the beggars," he promised, knowing that still

26 THESE TIMES / SEPTEMBER 1982 Photo spread pages 24-25 by Luis Ramirez

another task might just mean his death.

With the temperature 92° F in the shade, Henry preached to 400 beggars that weekend. Not one showed any interest. But he continued to preach, and one day a young Moslem sheik, well-groomed and intelligent, wandered by out of curiosity. The sheik saw a thin, white fellow trying to preach, coughing on the yellow dust of the road, drenched in his own sweat.

"The white man gives his time and his money for India," he thoughtfully remarked. "And his life."

Though not one beggar came to Christ that day, the young Moslem gentleman did. He saw Christianity put into practice.

Henry hardly ever rested. In 18 months he had translated the entire New Testament into Arabic and Persian. Now he was master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Hindustani, Sanskrit, and Arabic. He was only 29 years old. And he knew he was racing against death.

The doctor scolded him again, angry at such stubbornness. "You will have to leave India this time. I insist upon it! I will not approve your stay here a minute longer."

"I am ready to leave India," Henry smiled.

Up jerked the doctor's chin, and he clasped his hands together as doctors do when they have won an argument. "Well, splendid, splendid! A nice sea voyage, sunbathing, tea at four o'clock every day, walks on the deck by moonlight. You may even improve. You'll see I was right."

"Yes," Henry repeated agreeably. "I'll leave India—for Persia!"

"Impossible! Are you a madman? Persia is hell upon earth at this time of year!"

"I'm going to Persia [now Iran], where they speak Persian, so I can make corrections in my translation of the Bible." Henry explained it all patiently, as though the doctor were a child. "You see, doctor, I have a motto: Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God."

In January, 1811, Henry sailed from Bombay in a very small ship

through the Indian Ocean, into the Persian Gulf, and settled at Bushire. In spite of terrible headaches from the vicious heat, he met with Persian scholars who read his translation of the Bible into Arabic. They read and laughed.

"Why, it's terrible. A child could have done better than you. You will have to travel to Shiraz, where the learned Persian doctors can help you."

Shiraz. One hundred and fifty miles across the mountain. "I must go, and quickly," said Henry.

The Persian scholars glanced at each other. Obviously the poor white fellow knew he was dying and was in a hurry. What a holy book it must be, if the white man would risk his life for it!

Henry hooked on to the tail end of a thirty-mule team carrying supplies to the British ambassador and loaded his books and Bibles on to the last mule available. The temperature each noon rose to 126° F. in the shade, and he lay across the back of the plodding mule, unconscious. His servant kept him alive by pouring water over him whenever he could. Up in the mountains the nights froze him to the saddle, and his fever rose higher and higher.

On the ninth day the mule team reached Shiraz, a paradise city of gardens, trees, and fountains. Henry recovered quickly, and began work on the New Testament. Nine months later it was finished, and he also translated the book of Psalms into Arabic. He was the first English clergyman ever to visit Shiraz. Now he knew he was racing with death. If only he could live until he placed the Persian Bible into the hands of the great shah, who could approve it.

Henry, worn out and very sick, dragged himself up on his mule and rode for thirty days to reach Teheran, 400 miles away.

"Go away, infidel [unbeliever]," was the greeting at the royal palace. "You are not worthy to see the shah. Take your book to the British ambassador."

Another 300 miles for Henry. He was near death when he finally delivered the Bible into safety. The ambassador then presented a

beautiful and decorated copy of it to the shah, whose answer surprised them all: "This New Testament is an excellent translation. My servant shall read it to me from beginning to end."

Henry took time off to rest and soon felt much better. All this time he had written letters to Miss Lydia Grenfell back in England, his boyhood sweetheart. Perhaps now he had won the race against death, he could return to England long enough to be married, and take his bride to India.

Fifteen hundred miles of dangerous travel separated him from Constantinople, where he could book passage on a ship for England. He hired a Turkish servant named Hassan, and on horseback they set out, but Henry soon became sick again. The brutal servant, in a hurry for his money, beat the horses mercilessly and forced Henry to keep going. Out of his head with fever, sleeping in filthy stables at night, wading flooded rivers, Henry hardly knew where he was. They passed Mount Ararat, where Noah's ark rested, and stopped for food at a town named Tokat, although the plague raged there.

The last words he wrote in his diary were: "All alone. God, . . . my Company, my Friend, and Comforter."

The race was over. Henry Martyn died ten days later at age 31 on October 16, 1812, among strangers. He was buried in an Armenian cemetery.

A great Indian Christian church with millions of members later stood on the spot where he first worked so hard. Another church opened at Cawnpore, where he had preached to the beggars. His translations of the Bible spread all over the world to bring spiritual life to millions of people.

In 1837 his Journals and Letters was published in two volumes, plus two volumes of sermons and some tracts about Christianity and the Mohammedan religion.

Henry Martyn, the boy who hated math and wanted to quit school, ran a race with death—and won. Tr

. A palanquin is an enclosed litter carried on men's shoulders.


(Continued from page 5) Christ's sacrifice out to be a sham, a pretended stage play of enduring the wrath of God for sinners when in fact He was sustained throughout by confidence of reward. But when the darkness overtook Him on Calvary, the light of His Father's face was in fact completely withdrawn. His cry, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" was no actor's wail. Isaiah was right: "He hath poured out his soul unto death" (Isaiah 53:12), even "the second death" (Revelation 2:11).

The infiltration of this false idea from ancient paganism began soon after the apostles' time, for Jesus warns the first of the seven symbolic churches of Revelation: "Thou hast left thy first love [agape]" (verse 4). When God's enemy saw the power packed in that idea of love, he led the early church into apostasy on that essential point. We can document, step by step, the progressive abandonment of the idea of agape by the Church Fathers. Augustine worked out a synthesis of agape and self-centered love that became the foundation of medieval Catholicism. Luther tried to restore agape to its right place, but sad to say, his followers returned to the doctrine of natural immortality, and again agape nearly died out. The world is now ripe for its arrival.

By now we can probably begin to sense the gulf that separates human love from agape: unless enriched with agape, it is really disguised selfishness. Even parental love can be a mere seeking our own.

Our present epidemic of marital infidelity is evidence enough of the self-centered aspect of sexual love. Often friends' love for each other is based on egocentric motivations. In contrast, agape "seeketh not her own" and "never faileth" (1 Corinthians 13:5, 8).

Having said all this, one additional contrast between human love and God's love remains: Natural human love desires the reward of immortality: agape dares to relinquish it. This was what overturned all the value systems of antiquity!

God has not written an encyclopedia article for us with a systematic exposition of agape. He instead sent His Son to die on a cross so we can see that love. The true meaning of that sacrifice is that it is infinite, complete, and eternal. Christ went to the grave for us, not because He deserved it, but because we did. In those last few hours as He hung there in the darkness, Christ drained the cup of human woe to its dregs. The bright sunshine in which He had walked while on earth was gone. All thought of reward to come fled His mind. He could not see through to the other side of the dark and awful grave that gaped before Him. God is agape, and Christ is God, and there He is—dying the death we deserve. (The fact that the Father called Him back to life the third day in no way lessens the reality of His commitment on the cross in our behalf!)

Now we come to something disturbing. It's not enough for us to say, "Fine, glad He went through that; but you mean I must learn to love with agape? Impossible!"

We sinful, self-centered mortals can learn to love with agape, for John said: "Love [agape] is of God, and he who loves [with agape] is born of God and knows God. He who does not love [with agape] does not know God; for God is love [agape]" (1 John 4:7, 8, R.S.V.). Moses is a prime example of one who learned it.

The Lord gave him a test one day. Israel had broken their covenant by worshiping a golden calf, and He proposed to Moses that He wipe them out with a divine "H-bomb," and start from scratch with a new people—Moses' descendants. Moses got the idea that Israel's sin was too great this time to be forgiven. The temptation to take the place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was a very real one. He saw himself as facing a justifiably angry God who liked him, but had enough of Israel. It seemed vain for Moses to beg for Israel's forgiveness. So what did he do? Accept the proffered honor, and let Israel go down the drain?

Moses was torn to his depths. He never cried so much in his life. Listen, as in broken sobs this mortal like ourselves tries to change God's mind:

"Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, they have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin " Here Moses breaks down; he can't finish the sentence. (This is the only dash in the entire King James Version!) He glimpses the horror of an eternal hell stretching before him if he shares Israel's fate. But he. makes up his mind. He chooses to be lost with them: "And if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written" (Exodus 32:31, 32).

Moses stood the test. I can imagine the Lord throwing His arms of love around His weeping servant—He had found a man after His own heart.

Paul had found that same agape in his heart, for he also wished himself accursed from Christ for the sake of his lost people (Romans 9:1-3). Everyone who sees the cross as it truly is, and believes, finds the miracle of agape reproduced in his own heart. This is how the world will be turned upside down again, "for the love [agape] of Christ constraineth us" that we "should not henceforth live unto [ourselves], but unto him which died for [us], and rose again" (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15).

We miss the point of the New Testament if we miss agape in it. We also stay in the dark about what faith is, for New Testament faith is a human heart appreciation of that "breadth, and length and depth, and height" of the agape of Christ (Ephesians 3:18, 19). There can be no justification or righteousness by faith without a true heart appreciation of it!

As the apostles fanned out telling the story, the cross became the world's moment of truth. In that lightning flash of revelation, every man saw himself judged. The cross became the final definition of love; and that's why that word agape turned the world upside down. Let it turn your life upside down! Tr

The Scripture quotations marked R.S.V. are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyrighted 1946, 1952 © 1971, 1973.


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INEntIVE We've said it before and we will say it again: We just can't write enough about Jesus, our Redeemer! When Robert Wieland writes about the word that turned the world upside down in the first century (page 3), he is really talking about Jesus, the Word of God made flesh. Incidentally we are considering printing his article as a tract so that it may be available in an inexpensive form and distributed like the leaves of autumn.

Have any of us adequately considered the infinite price Jesus paid for our salvation? Can we imagine the Son of man, with all His sensitivity, the One who had known the brightness and glory of heaven, the unspeakable delight of intimate fellowship with the Father, willing to give it all up—forever—so that we sinful, disobedient human beings might have eternal life?

Can we with our dull senses begin to comprehend the limitations placed on Jesus now and forevermore because of what He did for us on the cross? Leslie Weatherhead puts it like this: "Christ, by becoming a man, limited the thing which to Him was the most precious thing in the world, His unhampered, unhindered communion with God the Father. . . . What a hush falls upon the spirit when we even try to understand what happened when the eternal Son became man!"

The more we think of it, the more we long to fellowship in person with our gracious Saviour. Author Bruce S. Wright said, "I once heard the little blind hymn writer Fanny Crosby give her testimony. She was then more than 90 years of age, and she stood before a great audience at packed Carnegie Hall in New York City. In a high-pitched, though not unpleasant, voice she said:

'Someday the silver cord will break, And I no more as now shall sing; But, 0, the joy when I shall wake Within the palace of the King! And I shall see Him face to face, And tell the story—Saved by grace.'

"I shall never forget the particular emphasis that she gave to the little word see. She thrilled us to our very finger tips. 'I shall see Him face to face."'

Truly we can't write enough about our Lord. Dr. S. D. Gordon tells of an old Christian woman whose age began to tell on her memory. She had once known much of the Bible by heart. Eventually only one precious bit stayed with her: "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." By and by part of that slipped its hold, and she would quietly repeat, "That which I have committed unto him."

At last as she hovered on the borderland between time and eternity, her loved ones noticed her lips moving. They bent down to see whether she needed anything. She was repeating over and over again to herself the one word of the text: "Him—him—him." She had lost the whole Bible except one word. But she had the whole Bible in that one word.


The Year the Raccoons Came BY MARCELLA N. JANES

I thanked God—not only for sending the raccoons when we needed them but for helping us to recognize His watchcare over our lives when we least expected it.

Life had tumbled in on us. The previous summer I had been in an automobile accident which had meant first a wheelchair, then a walker, then a cane. The incapacity didn't bother me as much as the constant pain, which often made concentration impossible.

Finally my doctor recommended an operation, and I came face to face with one of my worst fears. You see, since I am unable to take pain medicine, I have to lie in the hospital bed for days after an operation, making sure I don't bother the other patients by screaming.

At that low point another emotional upheaval thrust itself into our lives. Our daughter Karen at college, who had planned since she was twelve to be an accompanist, was diagnosed as having arthritis in her hands. As most parents know, a mother is more vulnerable to her child's suffering than she is to her own. How I wanted to be with her in Texas as she dealt with the probable defeat of her hopes and dreams! Emotionally and physi-cally drained, I dreaded each day.

And then the raccoon came. Our son spotted her first.

"Mom, turn around! There's a raccoon at the sliding glass door!"

What nonsense! In nineteen years we had seen the deer disappear as more and more

Marcella Janes is a free-lance writer living in Issaquah, Washington. © 1982 by Marcella N. Janes.


houses and dogs had taken over their territory, but never, never, had we seen raccoons. Thinking Nathan was making a rather stupid joke, I looked around. An engaging little face and two tiny paws were pressed against the glass and bright eyes watched our every move!

Of course, we fed her, chuckling to see her nose bob up and down as she munched dry cat food after scooping it up in her paws. For "dessert," an egg—carefully put aside until last. She rolled it around the porch, then cracked it open and licked the delight inside. A scratch of thanks on the door, and she waddled off down the steps.

My letters to Karen became full of the antics of "our" raccoon. Before long I realized that two of them were panhandling at our door. Size wasn't the only difference; "Dad" smashed the egg to get at the goodies inside, while "Mom" bit into it. And, when they finally showed up together, he ate first.

One day "Mom" was so hungry she inadvertently placed her paw on my hand as I was putting the food dish down. I felt scared for a moment, but she apparently remembered I had not tried to touch her and didn't attack, as so many wild animals would have done. Her trust warmed my heart.

I'm ashamed to say that I didn't recognize for a long time that the Lord had sent the raccoons. That dark winter they were the bright

spot to chat about, the daily event to be anticipated with delight, the humorous paragraph in my letters to Karen.

As usual, God tailored His help to the persons needing it. All our cats have been mistreated strays who were starving for love as much as they were for food. Now we were given wild creatures who from the first trusted us more than did the orange cat we still had to feed at the other side of the patio, for he would rather starve than be around humans.

One late spring afternoon "Mom" brought her new cubs across the street and up the driveway. In the carport my delighted husband and son stood still as she led her children past them, across the patio, and up the steps to the sliding glass door. We watched entranced as tiny noses wobbled up and down, and miniature hands scooped up food. I thought of the courage "Mom" had shown when she had nothing and was menaced on all sides by dogs and people. She hadn't given up, but had taken risk after risk. Now she had her delightful cubs and hope for the future.

"Mom" looked at us with pride, then pushed her offspring to the stairs again. As they disappeared around the corner, I thanked God—not only for sending the raccoons when we needed them but for helping us to recognize the bright spot He had given us when we were in the shadowed valley. Tr

Photograph © 1982 Lynn M. Stone/Animals, Animals

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The Word That Turned the World Upside Down

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