Pastors' Blog

It is reported that Christopher Columbus, when he first sighted that landfall, exclaimed:  “Gracias a Dios que hemos salido de esas honduras!”—”Thank God we have come out of those depths!”  And it stuck—that word “depths”—becoming the proud name of the glorious land from which we’ve just returned.  Honduras.  From its jungled mountain peaks above 9000 feet to its white-sanded coastline, from its sprawling estates for the wealthy to its impoverished barrios for the masses, this nation of seven million is a dramatic study in contrasts.

Spiritual contrasts, too.  Which is why a team of fifteen of us—all of us bound together by the sap and branches of the same family tree (Watts-Nelson)—flew into La Ceiba (Honduras’ third largest city) a few weeks ago on a humanitarian-medical-evangelistic mission on behalf of the global ministry, The Quiet Hour.  The strategy was simple:  conduct daily medical-dental clinics in the city, followed by simultaneous nightly evangelistic meetings at five different sites.  Which meant that morning and evening, we communicated in “the language of heaven” (to quote that familiar piece of Hispanic pride) through our medical and evangelistic partners, our translators.

And may I humbly observe that when it comes to a passion for growing the kingdom of Christ on earth, our Honduran brothers and sisters are without peer!  I was assigned the sports arena in downtown La Ceiba.  And each evening as I watched the busses drive in with men, women and children from across the city, I couldn’t help but marvel, not only at the eagerness of the crowd to attend a religious event, but at the indefatigable commitment of the pastors and church members to reach those newcomers night after night.  My assignment was to preach a “decision” sermon each evening (one that ended with an appeal to accept Christ as Savior, to follow him as Lord, and to be baptized) that concluded with an altar call.  An altar call over five or ten minutes here at Pioneer means we start fidgeting with discomfort.  But our altar calls there in La Ceiba (at all our sites) would often last thirty to forty-five minutes!  And the people responded.  In fact, a large swimming pool at the front of the arena just below our preaching platform became a baptistery at the close of every sermon.  Some of those baptized had made their decision previous to that evening—but there were many who made a decision in that arena, came forward, and were baptized on the spot—just like Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8!  It was a sight to behold.  Sometimes I just stood there in awe at the moving of the Spirit.  And at the earnest appeals that both pastors and members alike would make as they moved among those who came forward, as well as among those who remained in their seats.  I have never witnessed anything quite like it!

Our arena meetings became a “first” for Honduras by telecasting each evening live on a local station, owned by an Adventist family—which meant that our reach far exceeded the sports arena.  One evening an “observer” sent from a popular church in town attended the meeting, was convicted by the Spirit, came forward in the altar call for the Sabbath, and was baptized then and there!

When our mission concluded, Peter Simpson, the conference president, reported that 1,053 individuals had accepted Christ and been baptized at all our sites.  Somebody must have been praying!  Fervent prayer teams were on site praying each night, and I know many of you were, too.  Praise God and thank you.  Lessons to be learned?  Perhaps in another blog we can share a few.  But a mission in July confirms God’s promise:  “[They] went everywhere preaching the word. . . . And there was great joy in that city” (Acts 8:4, 8).

What would happen if it rained simultaneously all over the world?  Every nation, every land deluged with a global downpour.  Did you see the pictures out of Texas this week?  Flashfloods up the roofs of mobile homes because of sustained thunderstorms.  People clinging to those rooftops, waiting for rescue boats to sail up used-to-be streets.  Imagine an entire planet awash in rain showers.

Seven or eight months ago a group of Americans in central California began to imagine just such a scene and scenario.  Imagined what would happen to the world if a simultaneous rain shower covered the earth.  They became so moved by the scenes that they began sending out emails to other Americans to imagine the same.  And those emails soon crossed the continental borders of cyberspace, eventually circling the earth.

One of the emails reached my inbox at the turn of the year.  I took it to our senior leadership team and read it to them.  There in our comfortable circle we, too, imagined what the scenes would be were a simultaneous global rainfall to occur.  And frankly, our own spirits were moved to the place we decided that this “Operation Global Rain” ought to be a moment everyone in our parish was invited to join.

After all, didn’t the ancient prophet echo God’s command?  “Ask the LORD for rain in the time of the latter rain.  The LORD will make flashing clouds; He will give them showers of rain, grass in the field for everyone” (Zechariah 10:1).

You can always tell when your lawn becomes parched and brittle, can’t you?  And you don’t need to be a meteorologist to determine that the Darfur region of Sudan is desperately dry and barren.  Even so, all of us can tell when our own hearts and homes and churches and institutions and land have become spiritually dry and brittle, can’t we?  Surely, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain to join forces with congregations across this country and around the world in earnestly claiming God’s promise to pour out the Spirit of Pentecost upon our church and our world before the return of Christ:  “When the way is prepared for the Spirit of God, the blessing will come.  Satan can no more hinder a shower of blessing descending upon God’s people than he can close the windows of heaven that rain cannot come upon the earth” (I SM 124).

“Operation Global Rain” begins here at Pioneer next Sabbath and concludes on 07-07-07.   Pioneer families and members are invited to join this global prayer season by setting aside a time each morning or evening when our prayers can be joined to God’s promises for this mighty outpouring.  A study guide and collection of promises for each evening is available by going to www.operationglobalrain.com.

How will God respond globally to this united week of praying?  That’s for him to determine.  This much I know—your life and mine can become “like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (Isaiah 58:11).  Or in the words of Jesus, “out of [our] heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).  With a promise like that, why not plead for his rain now?

By the time you read these words, I’ll be standing on one of the most sacred sites of truth.  History’s saga of the Waldensees (also known as the Vaudois) remains today one of the tragically glowing narratives to shine out of the dark Middle Ages.  Their very name “evokes memories of an ancient and honorable ancestry, whose devotion, perseverance, and suffering under persecution have filled some of the brightest pages of religious history, and have earned immortality in Whittier’s charming miniature and Milton’s moving sonnet.”  So wrote Leroy Froome in his magnum opus, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers (v 1, p 829).

As you read these words, we—a collection of Andrews University architecture students and faculty—will be gathered in the dark and cool shadows of an alpine cave above the Piedmont valleys in northern Italy.  In that darkness we will embrace two memories: the memory of our Lord Jesus Christ who himself was slaughtered at the behest of church and state as the Savior of the world (in those shadows we will celebrate holy communion); and the memory of over three thousand Waldensian faithful who hid in those very precincts four centuries earlier and who were slaughtered in the infamous and bloody massacre John Milton would eventually immortalize in his sonnet, “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” (which you may read online).  The world and Christendom have long forgotten what began at four in the morning on Saturday, April 24, 1655, in the Italian village of La Torre.  But heaven remembers.  And we who trek to this sacred site must not forget.  Nor should we who live in the relative security of a land we still call Christian.

For in the fulfillment of the Apocalypse’s cryptic warning in Revelation 12—the dark vision of a woman fleeing from the apocalyptic Serpent to the barren wilderness, and there being hidden by God for the long, dark ages of medieval Christianity—in that fulfillment still witnessed to by the silent rocky sentinels of the Piedmonts is the unspoken assurance that the God who has preserved ancient truth through all the bloody centuries since Calvary, is the very God who will proclaim that very truth to this generation through the remnant seed of that very woman.

For as surely as Almighty God called upon the men, women and children of those cloistered valleys long ago, he is calling upon the men, women and children of this generation to embrace the missional legacy of the Waldensian people, captured in their Latin motto, Lux lucet in tenebris.  “The light shineth in darkness.”  Indeed it did.  And indeed it must.  Yet.  In your life and mine.  Shine into the gathering darkness of a culture and world desperate for even the fragments of the only Light that can yet heal this world.

“Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

The number is 3,422. That’s how many members of the U.S. military have paid the supreme sacrifice in the war in Iraq over the last four years. But on this Memorial Day, when the nation remembers our war dead, how many of them did we know? The reality for most of us is that, in fact, we don’t know any of these 3,422 who laid down their lives for country and family. Nor do we know their 25,549 comrades who have been wounded in this war. If we have family over there, all we know is the quiet prayer that God would keep our loved one from adding to either statistic. How can you remember the war dead when you didn’t know them? Pictures help, to be sure. Photos silently moving across the screen of the evening news or lined up in a news weekly put a chiseled face to the statistics. After all, he was somebody’s boy, she was someone’s spouse. Pictures help. But we don’t remember for long, do we? Even when Newseek magazine published photocopies of some of the deceased soldiers’ last letters home, while their names and faces became more personal and the magnitude of their sacrifice dawned upon us more forcefully, we still didn’t remember for long. Do you suppose that’s God’s problem, too? That our memory of the war dead has grown distant and detached. Laid down his life, did he, in the great conflict? Having a picture would sure help. Or a photocopy of a letter home. But just a name? And so we forget. Which is why a piece of broken bread and a cup of wine were once upon a time placed in our hands. “Do this in remembrance of Me,” he commanded (I Corinthians 11:24). So that we would not forget this War’s supreme Sacrifice. And remember the name, if not the face, of the One who landed behind enemy lines and laid “down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Calvary. And the bread and the cup. Of him who died. And rose again. Which makes that war-dead statistic of one utterly unique in time and space—this One who not only laid down his life, but took it up again, his supreme sacrifice becoming humanity’s supreme victory. “So that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Hope, not only for the families of the 3,422, but hope for an entire race of war casualties—which, on this Memorial Day, is surely the most memorable statistic of all!