"the Lord provided a great fish"
(Jonah 1:17)
Years ago, when I was still in Bible College, I remember
getting close to completing my educational program. Noticing that I was going
to still be four credits short in order to graduate the following spring, I
went and spoke to my registrar who confirmed my dilemma.
To overcome this
problem, he suggested that I find another college that was offering spring or
summer intersession classes, register myself for them, and then simply transfer
the credits back into my program. He said that so long as it was an accredited
college, and since all I needed was electives and not core courses, it wouldn’t
matter what I took. I could then graduate in the spring with my peers. His
advice made a lot of sense, and so that is what I set out to do.
As I began looking through the offerings of the various
colleges, I noticed that most of the courses being offered were three credit
courses. One course would not be enough, and two would be too many; all I
needed was four credits. Then I noticed that there was a local Catholic college
offering two, back-to-back, two-credit courses. Without really thinking of the
experience to come, I registered.
One was a class on Christology, from a Roman Catholic
perspective, of course. The other, however, challenged me significantly more.
It was called, “Penance and Pastoral Care
of the Sick and Dying.” As a Baptist, what was I going to do with that?
Still, I needed the credits, and so I swallowed hard, and dutifully went to
class.
I remember the instructor, a Catholic priest straight out of
Rome, saying that I was his “token
Evangelical.” As near as I could tell, I was the only student in
that second “Penance” class that came
to school with a Bible. Come to think of it, I don’t think the instructor even had
a Bible on his desk. Consequently, as ideas were being presented, I often put
up my hand, while scrolling through the pages of my Bible, to challenge the
presented concept or to ask a question. Sometimes I could sense the frustration
of my classmates, as I interrupted the lesson yet again. A favorite verse in
those days said, “Test everything. Hold
on to the good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). One could, perhaps, almost say
that, that was my mantra during those four weeks in the Catholic college.
I was reminded again of that spring and my brush with Roman
Catholicism as I read the following from A.W. Tozer. In many ways my instructor
and classmates approached the various discussions much like Tozer mentions here
with the rationalists and their science. My approach, on the other hand, was
the much more literalist approach of, “If
God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” In retrospect, and in
reading Tozer, maybe too many of us are still concerned over the collar size of
the whale. Here’s A.W. Tozer:
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Young people are concerned and some people are worried, they say, about whether we have the infallible Word of God. As far as I am concerned, grant me God Himself, and I am not worried about His writing a book. Grant me Being and Presence of God, and that settles it!
I receive a lot of magazines, most of which I dutifully and joyously never read. I looked at one recently after I came home in the evening, and it had a question and answer department in it. One question was: “Dear Doctor So and So: What about the whale swallowing Jonah? Do you believe that?” And the good doctor replied: “Yes, I believe it. Science proves that there are whales big enough to swallow men.”
I folded the magazine, and laid it down, for that man had come up to bat, but he had struck out beautifully. For I believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, not because science has crawled in and measured a whale’s belly, and come out and said, “Yes, God can do that.” If God said that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, then the whale swallowed Jonah, and we do not need a scientist to measure the gullet of the whale.
Why are we fussing around finding out the collar size of a whale, or how big his neck is? Grant me God, and you can take care of all the whales! Whenever I find men running to science to find support for the Bible, I know they are rationalists and not true believers! Grant me God and the miracles take care of themselves.
“Is healing for us today?” someone asks. My answer to that: “Is God still alive?” And the answer is, “Yes, God is still alive!” All right, then, healing is for us today. Whatever God did and was able to do and willing to do at any time, God is able and willing to do again, within the framework of His will! So what we need to do is get acquainted with God.
A little boy thinks his father can do anything. Now, he can’t, but the little boy thinks he can. If the father tells the son, “I personally whipped Adolph Hitler, trimmed his moustache off, and have him in a cage in Caledonia,” that’s what the little boy is going to tell his chum across the street. He will say with confidence, “My Dad told me, and my Dad can do anything!”
Now, in an infinitely higher and more perfect and holy sense, it is not whether we can understand it or not, it is whether God said it or not. And if God said “I am,” I respectfully bow and say, “O God, Thou art!” I don’t go running around and questioning God’s ability to do anything. Letting God prove Himself through the channels of our lives is the answer. Grant me God, and the task will not be too big!
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Photo Source: Flickr.com
Tozer Quote from: Tozer Speaks, Volume One, p. 26 ff
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