Stating this publicly may get me kicked out of my church J , but among the six adults/ teenagers in my household, I am the least likely to be called a gushing fan of Amy Carmichael. But, despite myself, I have been drawn into a rare book of hers that our good friend HB loaned to one of my girls. The book is called Things As They Are and was one of her most controversial. It was written in response to a request that someone tell the “real story” about the work of the Gospel & Missionaries in India. Don’t read it if you don’t want to be disturbed . . .

Anyway, after several weeks away from this blog my original intention in this entry was to merely post a fairly long section from the book. Things As They Are is generally a very practical & realistic, but this particular section tells of a dream Carmichael had in a very poetic way & captures the chilling truths of the book in a couple of pages.

However, as I was thinking of this, another topic that I have been wanting to write about for sometime came to mind ( this will be a later instalment when & if I get to it again). Namely, the following question :

Why do the lefties & cultist practice true religion with more diligence than those with the Truth ?

It is very troubling when you think of the fact that when you hear about someone caring for/ adopting orphans, helping single mothers, or victims of war, famine, natural disaster, persecution, etc. it is quite likely that it will be :
Muslims or other cultists; Hollywood leftists or other bleeding heart liberals; open Marxists & Communist; advocates of the so-called “Social Gospel” and other pseudo-Biblical Christian teaching.

And not Reformed Christians with a Biblical Worldview, sound theology, Biblical Churches, and vision for their families, etc.

YES. I know that these other groups are trusting in their works and/ or trying to advance an agenda/ use the people that they are helping. BUT they do somehow understand the example/ teaching of Christ that we have missed. Dominion & leadership come through service. When we love, we earn the right to teach & have a more likely hearing. (not to mention James’ challenge to try and “show me thy faith without works” while he will “show thee my faith by my works”).

On the “Bible Answer Man” radio program one of the tag lines used to be “are you willing to do as much for the Truth that the cults do for a lie ? ”. How shall we who understand Grace answer this question ?

Last week the men of our church held the first of two retreats to discuss a Biblical approach to Evangelism & to pray. We used two chapters of Spurgeon’s excellent book :

The Soul Winner as a guide. One of the most startling statements that wasn’t from the book was when Pastor John said :
We find it easy to criticize & pick apart the wrong approach to evangelism that is so common in American Christianity, but it is much more difficult to do things better.How much more could this be applied to the commands/ admonitions about :

Justice, mercy, caring for orphans & the fatherless, rescuing those being dragged unjustly to death (like unborn children), loving the least of these, visiting the sick & imprisoned, loving the unlovely (including our enemies), touching the untouchable, and ultimately “the least of these”.

Before I make this overly long blog post even longer by posting a couple of pages from the above mentioned Amy Carmichael book, please indulge me a bit longer by considering some Maddening Math :

There are anywhere from 1 to 1.5 million recorded surgical abortions in an average year. This is likely far below the actual number. Yet other than voting Republican, very little has been done to help these fatherless, helpless, voiceless children who will be viciously tortured to death.

the REPORTED children "legally" aborted since 1973 would equal the population of these states

There are over 130 million orphans in the world – including approximately half a million in North America.

Beyond these, numbers, there are nations in Africa in which a large percentage of the population (over a million each in several small countries) are children who have lost both their parents to AIDS — a big chunk of them have HIV. These children will grow up in squalid conditions as beggars, or in a room at an orphanage. If they do not die miserably before they reach adulthood, they will be ripe recruits for radical Islam or vicious Marxism.

If these kids survive, will they become Christians, Communists, or Mohamedian terrorists ?

It is quite likely that several thousand people will starve to death today . . .

Here in America, the land of opportunity, generations of poor & uneducated people are cunningly enslaved by a socialistic state that wants to be God and corrupt politicians that use the poor to gain/ keep power.
 The “poor” in America are now overwheight (how’s that for an oxymoron) and completely dependant upon anti-Christ government programs that pretend to help them.
Biblical literacy in America is at an all time low. As a result, the visible church is weak & inept. The swelling number of open atheist and people who flaunt evil grows in strength and boldness. While the number of people who nominally profess faith in Christ dwindles. While social ills and family breakdown among professing Christians matches or exceeds that of the culture at large. From divorce or materialism Church people are following (or even leading) the cultural disintegration.

The result — not the cause — is a growing tyranny/ socialism from government at all level and an increasing vileness in popular culture, higher education, etc.

Discouraged yet ?

It gets worse. The maddening math is not all of the grim statistics above, but rather these facts :

There are, conservatively, 65 million professing born again, Bible-believing, evangelical Christians in America. Lets say, for the sake of argument, that a little under 10 percent of these are truly believers or at least sincere seekers at some level of sanctification & with some level of love for Christ/ love for their neighbours.
That’s 6 million people. Even in a sinking economy, these 6 million Christians are the wealthiest group of Believers with the most free time in the history of the Church.
IF these 6 million people average $30 K per year income & they would give merely one percent of their money above their tithe & one hour a week to:
Biblical Evangelism,
Apologetics/ teaching Biblical doctrine/ a Biblical worldview, IN THEIR COMMUNITIES/ CIRCLE OF INFLUNCE.
Defending the unborn

Adoption/ Orphan care

Other acts of love, service, & Gospel kindnesses

It would provide $1.8 BILLION for the work of the Kingdom & would be like hiring 150,000 full time Christian workers. What good could be accomplished that might be more important than an hour of watching American Idol or ESPN ? More important than one more gadget or doo dad that we just have to purchase ?

BUT, it is not all about numbers. Far from it. Overwhelming numbers can tell us two lies. First, that the problems are too big/ too many I cannot do any good; and second that things are too far gone for Christ to act. . …

The first lie is related to the second. — and both of them are what makes the Math so Maddening.
Jesus told us the poor would always be with us, but we are to care for individuals in need.

The brutal Communist Dictator Joe Stalin once said : “one death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”

We cannot solve all these massive problems –only God can do that. We need — as desperately as anytime in my lifetime, for God to send His Spirit & a gracious revival. Let us not doubt, but cry out to our Father for revival & reformation. For Him to walk among His people & draw many of His enemies to Himself.

Mark Rushdoony wrote once that too many Christians think &live like evolutionists. That is, we look at our circumstances & try to discern reality from them. We look at how bad things are & determine “God can’t possibly move now” forgetting that our God is in the business of stepping into history — in His own time, with His own purpose, and for His own Glory –and quite unexpectedly changing the course of events in the lives of men & nations by regenerating sinners.

That having been said, we cannot use God’s Sovereignty as an excuse for passivity. God uses means.
Likewise, we cannot use the “Maddening Math” above overwhelm us or trick us into complacency. We cannot force, cajole, or otherwise influence the actions (or lack thereof) of millions of our fellow Believers. We cannot preach the Gospel in an effective way to millions. Or disciple millions who do not have a Biblical view of things ( many of whom actually hate it). We cannot save millions of orphans or unborn children.

We can, and must, do what we can. We must — first — seek to know and love Christ more. We must plead with God — as children to a kind Father — for the Gospel to come in Truth & Power and for Him to act our of His vast treasury of Mercy. Then, we must love our neighbours as we have scarcely ever loved before.

We can tell someone about Christ today. We can learn to understand how the Bible applies to all of life more thoroughly & teach these Truths to those in our circle of influence. We can stand against a culture & a government that grows more tyrannical daily as they seek to supplant the King (Ps. 2). We can stand for justice & mercy.
We can love & serve one hurting person.; come to the aid one hopeless & untouchable; speak out for/ possibly save one unborn child or one orphan. .   . . . .

Miss Carmichael’s dream :
Things As They Are pg 41 through the first paragraph on 44

The tom-toms thumped straight on all night, and the darkness shuddered round me like a living, feeling thing. I could not go to sleep, so I lay awake and looked; and I saw, as it seemed, this:

That I stood on a grassy sward, and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom; only cloud shapes, black and furiously coiled, and great shadow-shrouded hollows, and unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth.

Then I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step . . . it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over!

Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.

Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge. I could not. I was glued to the ground, and I could not call; though I strained and tried, only a whisper would come.

Then I was that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were far too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned; and the green grass seemed blood-red to me, and the gulf yawned like the mouth of hell.

Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees, with their backs turned towards the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them it disturbed them, and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down. “Why should you get so excited about it? You must wait for a definite call to go! You haven’t finished your daisy chains yet. It would really be selfish,” they said, “to leave us to finish the work alone.”

There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was to get more sentries out; but they found that very few wanted to go, and sometimes there were no sentries set for miles and miles of the edge.

Once a girl stood alone in her place, waving the people back; but her mother and other relations called, and reminded her that her furlough was due; she must not break the rules. And being tired and needing a change, she had to go and rest for awhile; but no one was sent to guard her gap, and over and over the people fell, like a waterfall of souls.

Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; it clung convulsively, and it called–but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass. And the girl who longed to be back in her gap thought she heard the little one cry, and she sprang up and wanted to go; at which they reproved her, reminding her that no one is necessary anywhere; the gap would be well taken care of, they knew. And then they sang a hymn.

Then through that hymn came another sound like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was–the Cry of the Blood.

Then thundered a Voice, the Voice of the Lord: “And He said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brothers’ blood crieth unto Me from the ground.”