Jesus Is Better

Credit my daughter Kelsey with bringing it to my attention.

It reminded me immediately of the argumentation in Hebrews.

Jesus is not only better; He is best. Listening to this inspiring and motivating clip reminded me of those particular times in my life, when I encountered Jesus. The first in conversion, seeing Jesus standing before me, facing me, with hand raised like He was knocking. The morning in the seminary apartment, when Jesus was there, invisible, and yet more present than if He had stood before and with me in the flesh, an experience that lasted for about a half-hour. There was the dream of standing in a semi-circle of people with my wife around Jesus, the Jesus of the temple as a young lad, and we were telling Him of our tragedies (I had lost four members of my family in a terrible murder-suicide event). Then He was telling us how He saw those same tragedies, and we were laughing (a happy laughter, not a sick laughter. Like we had heard the only thing that could ever explain such evils. But what He said, I don’t know.). Suddenly, I thought, “This is the Lord! What am I doing standing here talking to Him?” With that I dove at His feet and woke up. Another time I saw the four people standing with arms outreached, looking up, like they were beholding the face of God. There was also the image of Jesus walking in the clouds above a traffic circle, wearing green and white robes, and He had an angry look on His face. I took it to mean that I would be leaving that place, and I did. Another visitation was when He showed me the three men who were building the building that holds my library, and He said, “They are doing this for me.” Finally, there is the silence, the sound of silence, the still small voice of Elijah’s experience, when I have pleaded for an answer to my present situation that has continued unchanged for 16 years. There is also the sound of silence in response to the nearly forty years of prayer for a Third Great Awakening, the one in which every soul shall be won to Christ, and that shall continue for a 1000 generations. At the same time, there has been a resurgence of the theology of the Awakenings and of the Launching of the Great Missionary Effort, the theology of Sovereign Grace, of Calvinism (though I do not like that term). There has also been the resurgence of churches in the large cities where I have prayed for them by name for years…and all around the world it seems. There is also the grief of arrogance of the young Calvinists, and there is the pain of misrepresentation and outright hostility and hatred of those who are so adamantly opposed to the doctrines of grace.

But when I think of the promises of Holy Scripture which Jonathan Edwards recorded with such telling effect as to produce the Second Great Awakening and the Modern Missionary Movement fathered by one who pleaded those promises, William Carey, and when I think of Adoniram Judson’s statement, when his mission cause was at its lowest ebb, “The cause is as bright at the promises of God.” I am also encouraged by the thought of John Paton going to the South Sea Islands, along with others, who won the cannibals to Christ, and when I think of the Veterans of World War II saying that if they were shot down or if their ship sank, they wanted to make it to an island where the missionaries had been, for that would mean they would be the guests for dinner instead of being the dinner.

And then I think of God’s compassionate sense of humor in Rev.7:9, words uttered to cheer those in the depths of persecution, like cheering the special forces in the midst of a terrible operation that is going seemingly badly.

Excellent understatement, Christiane.

Happy Easter everyone!