December 2014 – Tri-Valley Baptist Church

They Can’t Get Away This Time!

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Dec 282014

As we approach 2015 the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is being attacked from all sides! We continue being attacked by opposing groups with their own agendas. Radical New Atheist Crusaders attack the Church as never before, encoraging those who are forsaking the faith, to profess their apostasy by joining in a de-baptism service and celebration. Proponents of the same-sex marriage agenda continue to call the Church “haters” and “bigots” for defending the position of the Bible’s teaching on the subject and defending traditional marriage. Before it is all over our Churches, who hold to the Biblical position, will likely lose their tax-exempt status over this issue. Abortionists continue to assault the Church claiming that to protest abortion is in reality robbing women of their autonomy over their own bodies and denying them, what they call birth control, ( coming in the form of an abortion-causing pill); In reality the Church is only protesting a war on the unborn, that has killed more than all the wars, between all nations, over all the generations of history, put together! Then tooo Pseudo-intellectual professors, teaching our students in our country’s colleges, continue to try to silence people of faith, by insinuating they are morons and imbeciles, if they disagree with the scientific theories they teach as unaltering facts and remain true to the clear teaching of Scripture, even if they cannot reconcile both positions at this time!; God is Not Dead! is a movie that applauds Christians for not rolling-over and surrendering to the bullying of these pseudo-professors! Most of the Universities in our country started out as institutions, founded by Christian thinkers, who were seeking Unity out of Diversity in learning. Then of course we are facing left-wing political attacks from politicians in our own country; and violent murderous radical islamic terrorists hell-bent of eradicating all Christians from the face of the earth. This onslaught upon the Church has left the Church of Jesus Christ stunned and discouraged, waving the white flag of surrender, and cowering behind locked and closed doors, trembling at every threat, praying for Jesus’ soon return to rescue them from their self-imposed exile from the world. The Church has not been in this terrified a state since the Upper Room ,the week following Calvary’s public crucifixion of Jesus, the Head of the Church. What is the Church to do?

General Douglas MacArthur was no stranger to opposition and great odds. After Batan, Corrigedor, and Iwogema, and one defeat after another to the hands of the Japanese Imperial Army, MacArthur decided to regroup and return and win the war in American fashion! One one occasion he said, “We are not retreating-we are advancing-in another direction!” At another critical battle he was reported to have said to his troops-“The enemy is in front of us, the enemy is behind us, the enemy is to the right of us, and the enemy is to the left of us…THEY CANNOT GET AWAY THIS TIME!” That is our command! “Forward-don’t let a single one of them escape!”

Everytime God’s people faced a crisis God would appear to them to assure them of His presence and power. Once they had seen the INVISIBLE they were ready to face the IMPOSSIBLE! When God needed a deliverer to go back to Egypt and deliver His people out of the hand of the enemy-the most powerful nation on the face of the earth in that day-He appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush. After convincing Moses of His presence and power-Moses returned to the challenge and the rest is history! Let me assure you that “Bushes are still Burning!” God has not left Himself without witness on this earth. God’s presence and power are still manifested in mighty ways to mankind if we will turn aside to see. Elsa Wilcox put it powerfully in these words-

“Earth is crammed with Heaven

Every common Bush is Aflame with God.

But only they see who take off their shoes!

The rest stand around and pick blackberries!”

We must sound the trumpet for Christians to arm themselves. We must amount an offence and “be ready to always give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason for the hope that lieth in you” ( I Peter 3:15). You can rest assured that the forces of unbelief are hard at work. Listen to Christian apologist Wilbur Smith-“It is a strange thing, but these men who insist that we are not to impose our belief on others, never hesitate to impose their disbelief on others. They write books to spread their wretched denials. They stand in the classroom to impose their skepticism on the plastic minds of the immature students. They go up and down the land, giving lectures, writing articles in outstanding periodicals, to impose their agnosticism upon youth looking for something to bellieve in” (Therefore Stand p. 485). The Christian faith requires tough minds, and the stakes are high. The everlasting souls of young people, and those young in the faith, hang in the balance. It is high time we enter the battle, armed with abundance of evidence that God has supplied, and with the kind of assurance and enthusiasm becoming our faith!

If we are to do this successfully and challenge our generation it will require two ingredients-resolution and relevance! Martin Luther, who challenged his generation with Truth, while facing almost single handedly, (of course he had many reforming fellow-soldiers joining him in the battle), not only “stood-fast” but also struck an offensive that changed the entire world of his day. We would do well to listen to his convicting words on these two subjects.

First of all it will take a genuine resolution on our part to become involved in this imperative work! Listen to what Luther said, “Christemdom must have people who can beat down their adversaries and opponents and tear off the devil’s equipment and armor, that he may be brought into disgrace. But for this work, powerful warriors are needed, who are thoroughly familiar with the Scriptures and can contradict all false interpretations and take the sword from the false teachers-that is, those vey verses which false teachers use and turn them round upon them so that they fall back defeated. But not all Christians can be so capable in defending the Word and articles of their faith (creed), they must have teachers and preachers who study the Scriptures and have daily fellowship with it , so that they can fight for all the others. Yet each Christian should be so armed that he himself is sure of his belief and of the doctrine and is so equipped with the sayings from the Word of God that he can stand up against the devil and defend himself, when men seek to lead him astray”. ( A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, Illustrations and Meditations from the Life of Martin Luther. Compiled by Pastor Mark Anderson and Marjorie Young).

The other quote relates to genuine relevancy. There is a quote often debated whether Martin Luther ever spoke this quote in any of his writings. So far it has not been found. But word of mouth from other authors attribute it to him and indeed it sounds like him without a doubt. Here it is-“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there is the loyalty of the soldier proved! And to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point!” Is that not one of the greatest quotes you have ever heard? It is one of the most convicting statements concerning our taking a genuine stand for Christ ,where and when it counts, that I have ever heard!

2015 will be a renewed “call to arms” for the Church to Stand up and Speak up for Jesus. Especially on the points we are facing the fierciest attacks. That will require resolution and relevancy. Remember the words of Thornton Wilder, ” in Love’s service, only the wounded soldier can serve”. As Amy Carmichael has said, “When we get to heaven our Saviour may ask us upon arrival -“Hast thou no scar?” 2015 should give us plenty of opportunity to earn our Red Badge of Courage!

Looking From the Outside – That’s Not How it Was!

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Dec 212014

A British soldier who had fought under the Duke of Wellington in his campaigns against Napoleon lived to be a very old man. Toward the end of his life, he was taken to see Lady Butler’s famous painting, “The Square at Quatre Bras”, which was one of the battles in which he had seen action. As he looked at the picture, with its serried ranks of red coated soldiers, he slowly shook his head. Then he said, “It didn’t look like that to us. You see the lady that painted that picture was looking at us from the outside. All we could see were the faces of the Frenchmen coming at us. No sir! It didn’t look like that to us!” As we make our annual pilgrimage to Bethlehem, to the stable, to bow at the Manger where the baby Jesus lay we need to take that kind of perspective. We are looking at them- “from the outside”. We have looked at it that way for too long- “from the outside” We have been grossly misled and misinformed by sentimental and spurious nativity scenes pictured in paintings and Christmas cards. The Great Masters and their unknown counterparts, who design Christmas cards, have all been guilty of looking “from the outside”. We imagine that the birth of Jesus happened at a time when the conditions were almost idyllic. But if we could ask Joseph and Mary they might tell us-“you are looking from the outside-it didn’t look like that to us!”

Handel H. Brown, in his book When Jesus Came, (c. 1963), described quite accurately the setting surrounding the birth of Jesus. He wrote, “Politically, Palestine was seething with unrest. Economically, the great masses of poor were getting poorer. The few rich were getting richer. Socially, there was a great chasm between the highly educated Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians on the one hand, and people of the land, as they were contemptuously called, on the other hand. The only thing that united the Jews were their common hatred of Rome!” Will Durant adds to that Jewish perspective, a more world-wide perspective when he wrote, “For decades the world Augustus lived in, and Jesus would be born into, the world of the Mediterranean basin, was wracked by wars, destruction, brutality, and immorality…the lusty peninsula was worn out with years of civil war. Its farms had been neglected; its towns had been sacked or beseiged; much of its wealth had been stolen or destroyed; administration and protection had broken down; robbers made every street unsafe at night; highwaymen roamed the roads and kidnapped travelers, and sold them into slavery. Trade diminished, investment stood still, interest rates soared and property values fell. Morals, which had been loosened by riches and luxeries, had not been improved by destitution and chaos. Few conditions are more demoralizing than poverty that comes after wealth. Rome was full of men who had lost their economic footing and then lost their moral stability; soldiers who had tasted adventure and then learned to kill; citizens who had seen their savings consumed in the taxes and inflation of war and waited vacuously for some returning tide to bring them back to affluence; women were dizzy with freedom, multiplying divorces, abortions, and adulteries.”

Into this mix came Caesar Augustus. He was the son of Atia, the daughter of Julia, the sister of Julius Caesar. He was chosen to be heir to the throne, so to speak, and came to power when Julius Caesar was assasinated. His full name was Gaius Julius Caesar Octavius Augustus. He was known as Augustus. That was a name the Roman Senate had conferred on him on January 16 , 27 B.C. The word had never been used of a living person. It was reserved for religious shrines and groves that were thought to be possessed with divine power. The word itself means “reverend” or “venerable” or “sacred”. Upon his triumph over Anthony and Cleopatra he was hailed as Savior of the Republic, and later the Savior of the World. His birthday became hailed as The Day of Good News (euangellion) for the son of god, the Savior of the world had been born to usher in the golden age of Rome. For the first time in over 200 years the doors to the Temple of Janus, the god of war were closed. He ushered in the Pax Romana world-wide-The Peace of Rome. He conceived and carried out a scheme of political reconstruction which kept the Empire together, secured peace and tranquility, encouraged trade, increased culture, and preserved civilization for over two centuries. Someone has described him as a ruler who was a mixture of the English Poet Robert Browning and the American President Theodore Roosevelt! His scepter swayed the movements of world affairs for the good and benefit of mankind. But in reality he was NOT the Savior the world needed.

During the same era, a Roman poet, famous for his writing the Aenid, also wrote a very intriguing prophecy about a coming child to be born. Virgil, in his Fourth Eccolade writes: “Justice returns, returns old Saturn’s reign, with a new breed of men sent down from heaven. Only do thou, at the boys birth in whom the iron shall cease, and the golden age arise…He shall receive the life of the gods, and shall see gods co-mingling with himself. He shall be seen of them, and with His Father’s worth shall reign over a world of peace…The serpent shall die too, …and the treacherous poison plant…assume thy greatness for the time draws nigh, dear child of the gods…all see with rapture the coming time!” Virgil did not know that if he had been given “length of days” amounting to 20 more years he would have lived to the birth of Christ-the real Savior he was speaking about. The great Church Father Augustine thought that this pagan poet was writing about Jesus, as did Dante, who wrote the Inferno. As Caesar Augustus, celebrating his lofty position as Savior of the world, commanded the entire Roman world to go to the cities of their ancestry to be enrolled in an empire-wide taxation-an insignificant couple traveled to Bethlehem to obey his demands, and while there the time of her pregnancy was completed and she gave birth to the real Savior of the world. Angels from heaven announced his birth as “Good news of Great Joy” for the “Savior has been born who is Christ the Lord!”. While Caesar demanded that the world bring him gifts and worship his unique reverential position as Augustus-Wise men, magi, from the Far East were traveling- following a heavenly star- to come and bring gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh to the one really worthy of all veneration, because He and He alone was the fulfillment of all the world needed and longed for!

When Augustus died on August 19, A.D. 14, at Nola, a few miles from Rome, he did not know that in Galilee there was a carpenter’s apprentice, in His teens, whose followers would spread out to the ends of the earth and claim His infinite glory for centuries after the Empire of the Caesars had crumbled into dust. G.K. Chesterton said it so well when he wrote

“There fared a mother driven forth,

Out of an inn to roam;

In the place where she was homeless,

All men are at home.

For in that crazy stable close at hand,

With shaking timber and shifting sand,

Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand

Than all the square stones of Rome!”

A Christmas Fraud

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Dec 142014

A couple of years ago, when planning our January Bible Study on Ecclesiastes, I had heard that Joe McKeever, one of our professors from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and a Director of Missions in Louisiana, was coming to my old association-Sandy Creek Baptist Association in the Jacksonville area. I e-mailed to see if he might be available to also come to Bloomington to speak and share with Tri Valley Baptist some of his perspectives on our January Bible Study. We were unable to work it out but he agreed to come another time. We are still trying to work some opportunity to have him as our guest. He is one of my favorite Christian writers who can stimulate your interest in asking and answering all the right questions when it comes to topics that are relevant to our challenging times. Recently while reading some of his articles on Christmas subjects I came across a fascinating debate he was considering. Who really wrote the poem-“The Night Before Christmas”, (originally titled “A Visit From Saint Nicholas”). The poem was originally published for the first time in the Sentinel newspaper of Troy, New York, on December 23, 1823. If you look it up in the encyclopedia, or on Wikipedia it says that Clement Clarke Moore, a preacher from New York City, composed the poem for his six children in 1822. The only problem with that, says Joe McKeever is that there is something vastly wrong with this poem-it was not written by Clement Clark Moore! It is a fraud! Who wrote it? Not long after Clement Moore took credit for the poem, claiming it as the work of his own pen, another family claimed that it was written by a member of their family-Major Henry Livingston Jr. He had recently died, and an employee of his began to work with Moore and introduced to him the poem that he eventually took full credit for writing.

How do we know who really wrote it? That is where the forensic linguist Don Foster comes into the picture. September 2001 issue of the “Smithsonian” magazine carried a fascinating article about Don Foster titled“Don Foster Has A Way With Words”. The article testifies to Mr. Foster’s expertise and detective abilities to identify authors of contested or anonymous literature. Foster studies word choices, phrasing, and numerous other aspects of writings and can accurately determine the authentic author. Using these scientific techniques Foster was able to identify Ted Kaczynski as the author of the Unabomber Manifesto. He identified Joe Klein as the “anonymous author” of “Primary Colors”. The first thing that Foster did was to study the personality traits of the two men in question. Preacher Moore, he says was humorless, stern, moralistic, and “a man who never had a fun day in his whole life”. “In fact”, Foster says, “he was against it!” On the other hand, Livingston was a Dutch journalist, an artist, a flute player, a free spirit, and “an-all-around merry old soul if ever there was one”. He delighted in entertaining children. After examining the writings of both men Foster began to see a pattern emerge. The odd punctuation in the poem originally printed in 1823 matched Livingston’s writing habits, but not that of Moore. The phrases are consistent with material Livingson had read and borrowed from other authors, but not anything he found in any of the other subjects that Moore studied, taught, or wrote about! Foster was coming to the conclusion that a fraud had been perpetrated. Then he found the“smoking gun”. In the first printing of the poem in the Sentinel, two of the reindeer are called “Dunder and Blixem”. When Moore began to take credit for the poem in his 1844 book “Poems”, he changed the spelling to “Donder and Blitzen”. There in lies the clue. “Dunder and Blixem” are Dutch for “thunder and lightning”. They are exclamations of surprise or anger or delight among the Dutch. Clement Clark Moore knew German but not Dutch. Henry Livingston was Dutch! That clinched it for Foster, and my friend Joe McKeever too! Joe says, “The author of ‘The Night Before Christmas’ is Henry Livingston Jr. If your copy attributes it to Moore it is wrong. Clement Clarke Moore was a thief for claiming credit for the work of another!”

I did some checking into some of Moore’s writing and did find that he wrote another poem in the similar genre as the “Night Before”-it is called“The Pig and the Rooster”. It has alot of the same cadence and punctuation and ryme as the ‘Night Before’. But then again, did he steal this poem from someone else too? It too seems out of character for him. But then the next question is “does it matter?” McKeever says, “Not to the children”. They enjoy the poem even if it was anonymous. Concerning royalties-the poem is in the public domain now so authorship doesn’t matter for this reason. But Joe says, “If getting the facts straight and telling the truth matter, even in small ways, it does count!” Both Foster and McKeever feel that Moore did it for the glory and attention the poem was getting in the public arena. To be credited with it would make one famous. It has certainly done that for him-at least until now. It is unlikely that will change because after all is said and done most would conclude we will never know and it really doesn’t matter. That is the point I am taking from Joe’s article. Most treat Christmas, Jesus, and the truth of the Gospel the same way this authorship question is treated. Was Jesus really a historical person? Was He who He claimed to be? Was He God come In the Flesh? Is He the Only Saviour of the World? Are the Gospel narratives accurate? Was Jesus Really the Son of God? Does it really matter? After all, our modern world says, “Whether he was virgin born; whether he was the Son of God; whether all the details of the Christmas story is accurate or not-it is still an inspiring story and Jesus was still a good-teacher whether He was the Divine Son of God and Savior that the Church has made him to be” Does it really matter?

That is where the words of C.S. Lewis speak so loud and clear to our world. Lewis wrote, ” I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him; I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things that Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is the Son of God, or a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to”. This Christmas, as every Christmas since Jesus was born, the world is faced with the question “What think Ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?” We are caught on the horns of, not a dilemna, but as Josh McDowell says, on the “horns of a trillemna”. Jesus is either a Lunatic who thought he was God, but obviously was a madman, and was not; or a Liar who knew He was not God, but so lived and plotted His life to deceive the world into thinking He was, and He convinced many of disciples that that is who He was; or He is the Lord of Glory, and any open-minded investigation of the historicity of the Gospel account does matter! What you believe about Jesus, and what you do with your encounter with Him now will determine what He will do with you in your encounter with Him in eternity. The horn of the Trilemna should end for us as it did for Thomas- as he kneeled before the glorified and risen Lord and confessed “My Lord and My God”.

The Most Honorable Profession?

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Dec 072014

One of the most respected and honored professions in the United States over the years has been the police officer. Their motto has been to “serve and protect”. In the past they have been viewed as public servants who risk their lives everyday, for very little pay, and even less thanks. Recent cases where Michael Brown was killed by officer Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Mo.; Eric Garner being killed, while crying out “I can’t breathe”, as officers wrestled him to the sidewalk to handcuff him, for selling individual cigarettes in Staten Island, New York; Tamir Rice, a 12 year old boy who was garnishing a pellet gun, that looked like a real gun, was shot to death by Officer Timothy Loehman in Cleveland, Ohio; and the shooting death of Akai Gurley in Brooklyn, New York. Gurley and his girlfriend were descending a dark stairwell, due to a out-of-order elevator, at the Louis H. Pink housing project in East New York, when Officer Peter Liang, an Asian-American police officer, opened the stairwell door, and somehow his gun went off killing Gurley. These incidents have caused the public, right or wrong, to view police officers in a different light. Especially when Timothy Loehman was discovered to have been declared and unfit officer in Independence, Ohio, only to move to the police force of Cleveland, Ohio instead. Make no mistake about it-being a police officer in these turbulent times is more challenging than ever to say the least! The majority of them serve long hours, for little pay, and risk their lives everyday and are not honored and appreciated. The thing so disheartening about these incidents is that those who have taken an oath to “serve and protect” the public are becoming too often the instrument of death. Here is the Oath of Honor-“On my honor, I will never betray my badge, my integrity, my character, or the public trust. I will always have the courage to hold myself and others accountable for their actions. I will always uphold the contstitution, my community and the agency I serve”. Defining terms–honor is my word is my guarantee. Betray means break faith with public trust. Integrity means same in private as public. Public trust means charge of duty imposed in faith toward those you serve. Accountability means that you are answerable and responsible to your oath. The next time you are tempted to undervalue our police force think of what your community would be like if there were no police force to look out for law enforcement and protection from the ever-increasing spirit of evil pervading our world.

Another repected and honored profession in the United States is the Fireman. Whether the fireman be vocational or volunteer, these men and women are vital to our safety. What school girl and boy cannot remember their first field trip to a firehouse, to tour their facilities, and years ago to get to slide down the pole! But these public servants too have taken an oath to protect the community. Most are sworn to a Firefighters Oath that goes something like this: “I….do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the State I live in, against all enemies foreign and domestic and faithfully discharge my duties as a firefighter…to the best of my skills and abilities, so help me God”. Then some swearing in ceremonies are inclusive of a firefighters’ prayer that goes something like this-“Dear God, we pray for these newly sworn firefighters. We pray that you will protect each of them as they go into uncertain incidents and dangers as they fulfill the duties they have sworn to uphold. Give them clarity of mind to recall their training, courage to face their dangers as they go into harm’s way to fulfill their jobs. Keep them safe and deliver them as they deliver those they rescue. Amen”. Who can forget the brave firefighters that rescued those in the Oklahoma City bombings or the brave ones that gave their lives in the inferno of the Twin Towers at Ground Zero. Countless many owe their lives to these brave men and women who have sworn an oath to risk their lives to protect ours.

A third profession that has taken an oath to benefit and save lives of course is the Doctors that make up our Medical profession. Doctors have been taking the Hippocratic Oath dating back to 400 B.C., known for Hippocrates- often seen as the Father of modern medicine in Western cultures. The original oath went something like this-“I swear by Apollo thephysican, Aesculapius the surgeon, and Hygeia and Panacea, and all the gods and godesses to witness that I will keep and observe this oath” The oath went on to delineate treatment to help with all known medical knowledge. It is interesting that this original oath prohibited the giving of poison for euthanasia, and “any sort of medicine to any pregnant woman, with view to destroy the child”. Though the Oath has been changed to modernize it- Physicians give their lives in the service of improving and saving lives by their scientific and medical knowledge. And even with the disaster of recent health care disasters, we all know we would be in a world of hurt if we did not have dedicated physicians who are willing often to sacrifice their health and lives to serve their patients. I think particularly of those brave Doctors Without Borders that risk their lives battling diseases like Ebola in third world countries due to their love for God and mankind. God bless and protect them.

But today’s message calls all Christians to take an oath of honor to dedicate themselves to a profession that is more honorable and necessary than Policemen, Firefighters, yes and even Physicians. I am talking about the fact that all Christians, believers in the Savior the Lord Jesus Christ, have been called and commissioned to be Witnesses for Jesus Christ. They are Ambassadors of the Saving Gospel of Christ. There are many sub-titles given in Scripture to describe us as witnesses. We are called “messengers of the good news”; “watchmen on the wall”; “fishers of men”; “soul-winners”. All of these figures of speech describe the fact that we are co-laborers with our Lord in “seeking and saving” those that are in danger of perishing eternally. Another term describing witnesses is “missionary”. We often think that missionaries are believers with a special calling-“to share the gospel cross-culturally”. While in a restricted sense that is true, all true believers are to be witnesses to the saving power of Christ as they fulfill their mission, by carrying out the Great Commission of the Lord in sharing Him with their world. When we read of Policemen sworn to saving lives-destroying them we are concerned. If firefighters lose courage to rescue those perishing in a fire we would ask them to resign from the profession. When Doctors administer death like Dr. Jack Kavorkian; or perform abortions and destroy lives like Dr. Kermit Goslin, who was sentenced to life in prison for the first degree murder deaths of three babies in botched abortions (he killed the babies by stabbing them with scissors). The Philadelphia DA seeking his conviction called him a “monster”, not a doctor! We say all doctors who break their oath should be prosecuted. But what of us, who have a calling and profession that not only seeks to help and save lives physically, but as witnesses called to join our Savior in “seeking and saving the perishing eternally” what of us if we are found to abandoning our called profession?

One of the greatest missonaries of all time was William Carey. He felt the call of God to take the Gospel to India. He answered The Baptist Missionary Society’s founder Andrew Fuller plea, with these words- “I will go down (in the well of India) if you will hold the ropes!” In October of 1792 he went. His family did not fully support his missionary fervor; His young son Felix was filled with “obstinancy and self-will’. But he eventually came to faith and was baptised into the Church. He eventually succumbed to the missionary call too. He was found to pick up the Bengali language faster than his father did. In 1807 he was sent to Rangoon (Burma-present day Myamar). His mission work there proved costly and he lost his wife to illness. Seven years later, he lost his 2nd wife and children in a boating accident. Having noticed Felix Carey’s linguistic and medical gifts, (he had introduced the small pox vaccine to Burma), the King of Burma offered Felix an ambassadorship to the Governor-General of Calcutta. The weary Felix accepted, resigning the mission in 1814. He lived in ambassadorial style in Calcutta (“with a red umbrella with an ivory top; gold betal box, gold lefeek cup, and a sword of the state” he wrote to family). His father’s comment on his appointment was “Felix has shrivelled from a missionary to an ambassador”. Soon due to his overspending and his drinking binges he was recalled to Burma and forced to resign. After three years of aimless wandering, Felix returned to the mission to do some translation work and wrote a treaty on Anatomy and Physiology in Burmese. Cholera struck him down and he died at age 37 in 1822.

Like Felix we have a high calling and noble profession, as witnesses of Christ. To abandon that calling and commission, by doing nothing to win the lost, and involve ourselves in any lesser causes is to “shrivel from a witness for God to something less”. To exchange being a witness for Christ in order to become the President of the United States is a “step-down”. We must never forget that. Hey-how about your profession as a witness? Have you been fulfilling your oath?