How to Rest in God - Charles Spurgeon Devotional - "Morning and Evening"

The Life and Death of William Tyndale

Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese Navy airman who directed the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour

"... reaching forth unto those things which are before ...
toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus "
(Philippians 3:13-14)

 

Vol. 5, No. 5, Sep. - Oct. 1976
EDITOR: Mr. Harry Foster

EDITORIAL

THE other day I read of the death in western Japan of Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese Navy airman who directed the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in which over 2,000 American service men were killed. It was Fuchida who flashed the code message: 'Tora, Tora, Tora', which signified the complete success of the attack and the sinking of at least three American battleships.

Right to the end of the war -- and beyond it -- Fuchida was an aggressive godless man, but then, in God's infinite mercy, he was led to Christ. For many years he travelled all over the world, testifying to saving grace and forgiveness through the cross of Christ.

Some years ago I met Captain Fuchida in Scandinavia, and it was then that I heard the whole story from his own lips. It was a marvellous and most moving account which filled my heart with praise to Christ. It is quite impossible for me to repeat it here and, in any case, I imagine that it must be available in printed form. What I must mention, though, was the pivotal point upon which his conversion turned.

In the U.S.A. there was -- and perhaps still is -- a Christian woman whose parents were wickedly executed by the Japanese army. They were an elderly couple who had long served the Lord in the Philippines and who had remained there when the Japanese overran the country. They were seized, falsely accused of being spies, and summarily executed. When the news reached N. America, their daughter decided to devote herself to caring for the few Japanese prisoners-of-war in her own country, and she did this until they were repatriated at the end of hostilities.

It was through this that Mitsuo Fuchida heard about her. Full of bitter arrogance, the former Japanese commander began to prepare for revenge on all Americans by trying to collect evidence of the way in which the Americans had treated their prisoners-of-war. For this purpose he made it his business personally to interview each of the returned prisoners and -- to his surprise -- there were no accounts of atrocities but many tributes to the helpfulness of this devoted Christian woman. What surprised and mystified him most was the explanation which she gave to these Japanese prisoners of her reasons for her labours of love among them. It was the Japanese, so she told the men, who had cruelly killed her parents, but she knew what their last prayer had been before they were executed and, because of that prayer, she knew that she must devote herself to loving and caring for needy Japanese with whom she could make contact.

The whole idea of such kindness was foreign to Fuchida's way of thinking. He brushed this aside, but what continued to perplex him was the American woman's confident affirmation that she knew the substance of her parents' last prayer. How could she know this? The question baffled him and yet he could not dismiss it from his mind. It nagged at him and seemed to have no solution until he found from a tract which someone gave him that it was possible to obtain a copy of the Christian book called The New Testament.

He availed himself of this opportunity and began to read from Matthew 1 onwards. He was growingly affected by what he read but completely absorbed by his quest for the mysterious prayer. He completed the Gospels of Matthew and Mark without having found the answer to his problem. So he read on into Luke's Gospel, increasingly softened in his heart as he did so, but always asking himself the question: How did the American woman know what her parents had prayed? Then he reached chapter 23:34 and, in a flash of heavenly revelation, he saw it all. Jesus had prayed: "Father, forgive them" even as He was being crucified. So that was how Christians prayed for their enemies! That was what Christ had prayed for him: 'Father, forgive Mitsuo Fuchida'. He no longer thought of the American woman or the Japanese prisoners-of-war, but of himself, a fierce enemy of Christ, whom God was prepared to forgive in answer to the prayer of the crucified Saviour. At that very moment he sought and found forgiveness and eternal life by faith in Christ.

This, then, was the story behind the marvellous conversion to Christ of this simple Japanese brother, made all the more moving to me because of the halting English in which he related it. As he concluded the long and absorbing narrative, he added: 'I have no gift as a preacher, so I cannot give messages about the Saviour, but I can tell how He has given me peace and forgiveness through His cross, so that others may come [81/82] to know him too.' Captain Fuchida's voice is no longer heard on earth, but we praise God that his faithful testimony continued firmly to the end.

His was a wonderful story, but the secret of it lay in the fact that those American Christians obeyed Christ's command to love their enemies. Paul the apostle also had a wonderful testimony, which could be traced back to the Christlike prayer of Stephen as he too was being unjustly and cruelly murdered. Saul of Tarsus had heard those words with his own ears: "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge" (Acts 7:60), and they became as goads to his conscience till he, too, found peace and forgiveness through the blood of the cross. In Fuchida's words: 'So that is what Christians pray for their enemies'! Do they? Do we?

In this issue we conclude the series of messages on the Sermon on the Mount given by Alec Motyer. The standard is high. It is too high for any man or woman apart from grace. But we have been given abundance of grace in Christ and so are expected to obey His commandment: "Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 5:45). 'Pray for them, not against them. Set yourself to bring them the greatest benefit which it is within your power to bestow. ' (J. A. Motyer. See page 86.)

None of us has to face an execution squad, and very few of us have loved ones cruelly done to death as the American woman had. But daily we are involved in experiences which can become occasions for nursing grievances or bearing grudges. To our shame this is what we are prone to do. I fear that this may be one of the reasons why we so rarely see the conversions of a Saul of Tarsus or a Fuchida of Japan. The probability is that we shall never love those who offend us if we do not first pray for them. In this case the parents prayed, the daughter put the prayer into practice, and the Holy Spirit used the testimony to change a man who had for long been an enemy of God and a killer of his fellow men into a lover of Christ and a messenger of forgiveness and peace. We are all on trial. Do we merely call Christ, Lord, or do we do the things which He says?

In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks' wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely - free of any changes, free of any charge (except necessary distribution costs) and with this statement included.

Austin-Sparks.net 

"But I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

"But I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil:
but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek,
turn to him the other also."

WHAT is taught us in the Sermon on the Mount? Is it not this, that we dare not be satisfied with anything less than that which meets the demands of the new life which God has put within us? The Sermon does not teach us that, provided we do what is right, then all is well. Men would say: 'Why present the other cheek when someone has smitten you on one? Surely it is enough if you accept the blow meekly without retaliating?' But God says otherwise. If, when you are smitten on the one cheek, you do no more than bow your head and depart, you will find that the inner life will not be satisfied.

Many people tell us that the standards of Matthew 5 to 7 are too difficult. They are quite beyond us: to obey them is sheer impossibility. I admit this. They are quite impossible to the natural life. But there is the point -- you have an inner life, and that life tells you that unless you do as the Sermon on the Mount requires, you will find no rest. It is not just a question of right and wrong, but of likeness to your heavenly Father.

Watchman Nee 

https://www.austin-sparks.net/

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Isaiah 6

6 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

 2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. 

 3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

 4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. 

 5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. 

 6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 

 7 And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. 

 8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

 9 And he said, Go, and tell this people, Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. 

 10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed. 

 11 Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate, 

 12 And the Lord have removed men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

 13 But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.

Call To War (Summon Your Power, O God) - Scripture In Song

Sonship, Outside the Camp of Traditional and Earthly Religion

The Kingdom That Cannot be Shaken

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 2 - Sonship, Outside the Camp of Traditional and Earthly Religion

Reading: Hebrews 12:26-29.

We come back to this letter to the Hebrews, and we can narrow the whole thing down to it. In the first place, is there not some peculiar and wonderful significance about the preservation of this letter in particular? You see, it was written for a special occasion, and that occasion was one historically very near to the time of its writing. If, as many believe, its date was between 66 and 70, then it was very near in time to the actual carrying out or fulfilment of the thing for which it was written; that is, it was written because Jerusalem and Judaism in the order in which it then existed was about to be shattered to pieces and scattered to the ends of the earth, it was preparation for that, and that took place in 70. So the letter, written so near to the occasion, fulfilled its purpose within a very short time.

Why, then, should it last out till now? Why should it occupy the place that it occupies now in the preserved and protected writings of the New Testament? Some have been lost, we know. Why did not the Lord let this be lost, seeing that it had fulfilled its purpose? I venture to say that this letter is living now. It is not a letter that has no life in it, as though it had served its purpose and could now be put aside. It is a tremendous letter as a spiritual document today. What does it mean? Why was it written? Certain Jews had turned to Christ, and in turning to Christ had turned to the fulfilment of all their Jewish patterns, all their Jewish types and figures and shadows, passed from the substance to the reality. Then ardent Jews came along and sought to make it very hard for them. It meant ostracism, boycott, persecution, and much suffering; and a great effort was launched to Judaise Christianity, that is, to link Christianity on with Judaism and preserve, maintain, perpetuate all the Jewish orders in connection with Christianity.

The letter, as you see, was written against such a movement, and to strengthen those believers in the faith, and it set forth the fact in a very comprehensive way that Jesus fulfilled, embodied, transcended all the spiritual values of the Jewish foreshadowing and types, and put them aside, and that henceforth for the Lord's people it was not a matter of a tabernacle or a temple, an altar and its sacrifices, a priesthood in rota and all that outward order of things, but it was all in Christ in heaven, of spiritual value.

That was the content of the letter in brief. Its object was immediate. How far it achieved its object we do not know. It is possible that some of those believers went back in spite of the repeated warnings, and perished with Jerusalem and Judaism. It is probable that many of them were saved by this letter, so that when Jerusalem, the temple and the Jewish system was shaken, as the Word says, and ceased to remain, their link was with heaven, with a living, risen, exalted Christ, and it meant nothing to them of loss that all that did go. The immediate purpose was accomplished. Why maintain the letter? Why keep it alive? Why preserve it? That is the question we have to answer, and the answer is that the letter does not merely deal with an historic instance. It deals with an abiding tendency. It is something which is always the peril of God's people, whether they be Jews or Christians. The value of this letter today is that it is a letter no longer to Jewry, no longer to Israel but to the Christian church, and that is why it lives, because God knows that that tendency is a persistent one in the direction to which these Hebrew believers were being tempted, and in the direction to which they were almost being driven. So that something very concrete arises. It is this: that Christianity can become exactly what Judaism became, and God is against that. And it brings us back to the central point of our earlier meditation. It is one of the master-strokes of Satan against the Lord Jesus, and the principle result of his work is tradition. By that I mean the making of things into a system run by man. Now that covers a lot of ground, a lot of history. Christianity has become a repetition of Judaism. Organised Christianity today is what Judaism was when this letter was written: an historic thing, a systematised thing, a whole system of beliefs, truths, doctrines, activities, movements, which are very largely but an imitation of something.

We come to the New Testament. As to the things taught in the New Testament, we say these are the New Testament doctrines and we are called upon to subscribe to these doctrines. Now we are not going to attempt to cover the ground of what the New Testament doctrine was. Fundamentalism as such draws a circle around New Testament doctrines, but then there are a good many that go beyond that. Then we come to the New Testament and we see not only doctrines but practices, and we say, This is the practice of the New Testament. Then we come again, and we see the activities, what we may call the work which was carried on or carried out in New Testament times by the apostles, by the church. And then we come again and we see what the church was in New Testament times. We have a presentation of the church as it is here on the earth.

Now those four things since New Testament times have been taken up as a system and imitated: that is, there has been the forming of the doctrine into the creed, the Christian creed, and it is accepted, and we say, I believe in so-and-so! Why do you believe in it? Because it is in the New Testament. Well, that may be quite good so far, but you proceed beyond that. This was the practice of the church in New Testament times: therefore we can do likewise. This is how the church was organised (I am doubtful about that word, but we will use it for the moment) in New Testament times. This is how the church came into being, and how it was ordered and arranged in New Testament times, therefore we do the same. We have our churches on that basis, we imitate. And then as to the work, whatever it might be, evangelism and all the other activities on the side of the work of Christianity as a movement, we see this is what happened, we do the same, we imitate. And so for centuries the thing has become a system like that, of imitation, and that is what I mean by tradition.

That can just be Judaism repeated in Christendom. That is what Judaism was. Remember that Judaism came from God out of heaven at one time; it came by revelation, and it came in power, and it was accompanied, as this letter points out, with the voice of a trump, with fire and smoke, shaking and earthquake. It came with the accompaniments of God Himself, all terrible, a consuming fire: and yet it became that, a thing which had to be overthrown, for the overthrow of which God had to shake the earth. It became the thing which was the occasion of the chief conflicts of apostolic times. Paul's battles were on the field of Judaism. Yes, a thing which originally came from God, now one of God's main difficulties, doing more harm than it is worth, set aside, repudiated. You have only got to look at Jewry today and see how much respect God has for Judaism as such. Well, Christianity came from God, out of heaven, and this letter says that Judaism came through man but this faith came from the Son of God Himself. That is the comparison. He that spoke then on the earth, Moses; how much more in the case of Him that speaks from heaven. "God, who in time past spake unto the fathers in the prophets... hath at the end of the times spoken unto us in his Son..."; yet the peril and possibility and tendency is exactly the same in both cases, the end can be similar, and God will yet shake Christendom to its foundations, that it shall be shattered as He has done with Judaism. That is the testimony here. Yes, all our creeds, all our imitation of the New Testament. God never meant anything of His in this dispensation to be an imitation. He meant it to be the real thing. The difference between the real thing and the traditional is between life and death. Tradition is in one realm and life is in another. It depends entirely upon whether it is earthly or heavenly.