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<GLEANINGS-FOR-THE-DAY>
15 February 2003
Today's Bible verse:
"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Rom 12:1)

 

In this issue:

1)  <Devotional> "Horses and disbelief"- Keith Cox

2)  <Bible-Study> "Letters to the 7 churches in Asia" (Pt-19) - C. E.Wigg

3)  <Exhortation> "A thief"  (Pt-1/2) – *

1)  <DEVOTIONAL> <SLICE-OF-INFINITY>

HORSES AND DISBELIEF

Keith Cox

Truth is stranger than fiction.  Or so it is said.  Reality is more ironic than fiction.  Or so I say. Consider an anecdote told by Edward Skidelsky in Book Reviews: As he was leaving his lodgings in Turin on January 3 1889, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche caught sight of a cabby beating his horse.  Forgetting his former invectives against pity, he ran across the street, and weeping, threw his arms around the animal's neck in an act eerily reminiscent of a scene from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.  He then lost consciousness and had to be carried back to his room.  When he awoke he was no longer himself.

Nietzsche had gone mad.  Sadly, one of the most fiery minds of the 19^th century had burned itself up. 

And so Nietzsche went insane unknown and unread, but by the 1960s his influence had grown to such a degree that Time devoted an issue to the fierce debates that Nietzsche's work had incited.  Time even put his most famous line on the cover, "God is dead."  By this Nietzsche was not saying that an omnipotent being had once lived and now was dead.  He was saying that the incredible idea of God had infused the West with life for centuries, and now the idea's vitality was all spent.  The idea of God was dead. 

As the herald of the death of God, Nietzsche also heralded the death of Christian morality.  The only real Christian, he believed, had died on the cross, and the rest of us were just slavish imitators.  So the whole lot of Christian ethics, he believed, ought to be destroyed.  But as the above anecdote relates, he did not fall far from the tree.  The irony is two-fold: one, his fit of pity for the horse is just the sort of moral sentiment that his philosophical writings impugned.  So he went crazy violating his own principles.  The second and richer irony, is the similarity between this scene and a pivotal scene in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.  In it, the main character Raskolnikov, a man attempting to live by an ethic similar to Nietzsche's, protests weepingly when he sees a horse beaten. 

Neither Raskolnikov in fiction, nor Nietzsche in reality, could escape the demands of morality.  Goodness and evil so deeply infuse reality that even their antagonists cannot elude them. 

Even if you deny the reality of goodness and evil with your philosophy, you cannot deny them with your life.  You see, Nietzsche was wrong.  God is not dead.

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Copyright(c) 2003 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. A Slice of Infinity is a ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

2) <BIBLE-STUDY>

"THE LETTERS TO THE SEVEN CHURCHES IN ASIA"  - (PART 19)

Charles E. Wigg

The practice of what is taught in the word of God gave great power to the testimony. The constant study of the Scriptures, and the ministry of the gifts, made the Assemblies to be perhaps one of the best-taught bodies of believers anywhere in the world. The training and preparation of the Lord's servants for His service, for service wherever He may send them, took place in the local Assemblies. People learned the teaching of the scriptures, and how to exercise their gifts, in the meetings of the Assembly, in open-air witness, and in Sunday school, sister's meetings etc. Candidates went straight from the local Assembly, to the mission field, and they stayed there. Either to establish a pioneer work, or to work under the instruction and influence of godly more senior and more experienced brethren who had preceded them.

Satan could not bear to see his kingdom being assailed, nor could he bear to see God finding such pleasure, and being glorified by and amongst His people. So he quickly began to fester jealousy and other divisive things amongst the believers. It is sad to say that he was quite successful. Thus over a period of time, the believers broke up into opposing or competing groups. So that brethren who once walked together in happy fellowship, would no longer have anything to do with each other. Thus we have the Philadelphia period, that will continue until the Lord comes for His Church. Because wherever Christian believers are prepared to follow what the Scriptures teach, the blessings promised to that Church will be theirs. [To be concluded]

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[Reproduced by permission]

3) <EXHORTATION>

A THIEF (PART-1 OF 2)*

I would never have dreamed he was a thief. Our acquaintance had all been so friendly and casual. It started one evening at my front door. It was a Tuesday in August. "An entertainer turned salesman," was his smiling approach to me. But I was not one to be taken off guard so easily. I prodded him about his background. "Who are you with?" I asked. It came out that he had ties with several of the largest distilleries. He also had an account with a prosperous tobacco company. "At present," he continued, "I'm an agent for a leading national magazine."

So I let him come into the living room and listened to him for a couple of hours. On learning of his connections, I took pains to tell him of my Christian faith and love for Christ.

"There is no place in my life for such things as liquor or tobacco," I told him deliberately. "As a Christian, my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit." I was sure these words would bother or affront him. But no, he was totally undisturbed by my convictions. He would hold his views, I could hold mine. This status quo was to mark our subsequent discussions.

In a light-hearted moment he slipped off on an off-colour story. I was quick to inform him such things did not go in my home. In fact, I cut him off sharply.

As you may imagine, I had reservations on the truth of many of his stories. Still, I must admit his experiences often excited me. After having an interesting evening together I invited him to come back the following night. "It may have a helpful influence on him," was my naive hope.

It took my wife's words to remind me that his return visit conflicted with our church's mid-week prayer meeting. "I should attend," I confessed, "but I must stand by the invitation I have given this friend." I shared with her some of the things he had said to me. Well, to put it lightly, she was reluctant to accept him. "I just don't trust him," she would say. She grew steadily more concerned as he took up more and more of our family life.

My entire day was boring in comparison with my evenings with this character. He had an imagination that was captivating. I would sit and laugh myself sick at  all his crazy experiences.

There were other times that my hair would stand on end. His scrapes with the FBI  and the law were absolutely breath-taking.

If his stories were true, he was also an "extra" in motion pictures. But he  couldn't talk about this without including sex. This forced me to cut him off  time and time again. [To be concluded]

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[*Reprinted from Counsel magazine by James R. Marin.]