Double-Edged Sword

 

[1]

Hebrews 4:12-13 Contemporary English Version

¹² God's word is alive and powerful! It is sharper than any double-edged sword. His word can cut through our spirits and souls and through our joints and marrow, until it discovers the desires and thoughts of our hearts. ¹³ Nothing is hidden from God! He sees through everything, and we will have to tell him the truth.

 

We recently attended a Wycliffe Associates Summit here in California. They accentuated the transformation native speakers undergo when they read the Bible in their own language. The translators especially are changed because they have spent genuine time actually understanding God’s word and then expressing it in their own heart language.

Some of my fellow believers ask me if it wouldn’t be better to donate what I give for Bible translation to church evangelism instead. As we discovered in Tanzania many years ago, where people used an English or a Swahili version of the Bible to study for themselves. I heard them say, “But this is in the language of our oppressors.” Indeed, the English were the most recent rulers of Tanzania, and Swahili is a language created by the Arabs who used it in the slave trade. It can be difficult to learn about love and grace in a language normally associated with oppression.

But then, some argue, what if people misinterpret the meaning of the text? That is the same argument the Catholic Church made in order to restrict the use of Scripture throughout the Dark Ages. Some experts claim there are over 9,000 Christian denominations in the United States alone (over 33,000 worldwide). See what happens when each person is able to read the Bible and form his/her own opinion about the Truth of God?

God’s Word is alive! It is causing people to think about what message God has for them. It is the Holy Spirit’s duty to teach each person what he wants them to believe as well as what He wants them to do. It is only the active intervention of the Holy Spirit in our lives that prepares us for heaven, that applies God’s grace to the individual believer.

Just as God used human instruments to write His words contained in the Bible, God has given people the privilege for making His Word available to every to every nation, kindred, tongue and people[2] in their heart language.

Thank You, Lord, for giving us the opportunity to help spread Your Word to all of mankind. And Thank You also that it is not our assignment to police how Your Holy Spirit chooses to use this Word.

---

[1] https://clipground.com/images/gods-words-clipart-3.png

[2] Revelation 14 :6 “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,”

 

Enough for Every Good Cause

 

[1]

2 Corinthians 9:8 Good News Translation

⁸ And God is able to give you more than you need, so that you will always have all you need for yourselves and more than enough for every good cause.

 

For many years we lived like the poor. During our graduate study years, we had to borrow against future service just to pay the rent and eat. A bit later we went on food stamps for a while. In Africa, we were often living hand to mouth. For five years we couldn’t afford a car. At Atlantic Union College I took on a moonlighting job to enable us to buy a house—the cheapest we found on the market. During this time, we paid a full tithe, and never went hungry or naked or homeless.

Since then, God has increased our allowance steadily. When our last child finished college, we were able to channel that tuition amount into a retirement savings account. When we paid off our house, we were able to channel the house payment into the retirement account. In this fashion, although we had been unable to save for retirement initially, when we retired, we had a nest egg that has seen us through the first ten years of retirement without embarrassment.

Since retirement we have stepped out in faith at the Spirit’s urging and supported Bible translation in an ever-increasing amount. We have not shirked our tithing responsibility. Last year our charitable donations totaled over 50% of our adjusted gross income. Never before, even in our wildest imaginings, did we ever think God would make us capable of achieving this goal.

This year we have expected that Satan would redouble his efforts to stop our giving. In January we totaled our car and bought a newer one; inflation is making our retirement savings stretch over fewer of our needs. In spite of this we are relying on God’s promises, like this one in 2 Corinthians 9:8, and God’s amazing grace to meet our needs.

We are grateful, Lord, for Your promise to give us “enough for every good cause.”

 

---

[1] https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/may/together-for-gospels-bible-translation-unity-illuminations.html

Weapons to Fight in the Light

[i]

Romans 13:12

Good News Translation (GNT)

¹² The night is nearly over, day is almost here. Let us stop doing the things that belong to the dark, and let us take up weapons for fighting in the light.

When I was probably about 8 years old we had a student at Helderberg College who taught our Sabbath School class. He was very persuasive and very knowledgeable. He also had an unshakeable faith in Jesus Christ and His soon return. He looked at current world events—around 1950—and assumed that all the prophecies about Christ’s return had already been fulfilled. He stated that he guaranteed categorically that Christ would return within 5 years at the very most. It made a huge impression on me, or I certainly wouldn’t remember it all these years later.

I got much of his expressed certainty, but I do remember wondering whether it would really happen. The thought of Christ’s coming struck fear into my life rather than wondrous hope. Christ’s coming meant He would judge me, and I knew that my life and thoughts would reveal that I wasn’t ready. What it did mean to be ready? In my young life it meant that I would no longer be sinning—something that still hasn’t happened. I did not understand what the grace of Christ means to every Christian. It is this grace that makes me ready in spite of my sinful nature.

Unfortunately my teacher hadn’t put this verse into either his or my thoughts about getting ready. “Let us take up the weapons for fighting in the light.” A weapon of great consequence is the “Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God” (Ephesians 6:17 KJV). Now close to 70 years later, it appears that we have a new tool in this Sword. Devout men and women of God are demanding that we provide Scripture to each people group in their own heart language. Furthermore they are anxious, willing, and able to step in and provide the manpower to produce these translations. Truly this is a modern outpouring of the Holy Spirit to provide the most powerful weapons “for fighting in the light!” With these weapons against him, Satan is hard pressed like never before. He is redoubling his fiendish efforts to defeat Christ and us. But we have the infinite power on our side, and we can indeed overcome by Christ’s amazing grace.

Thank You, Lord, for giving us this new and most potent weapon against the enemy of all human kind in our day.

---

[i] https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2016/march/wycliffe-associates-leaves-wga-bible-translation-son-of-god.html

Christmas Letter

Christmas 2016

Last year Christmas day found us in Madagascar. Our very dear friends Pam and Gideon Peteresen invited us to climb the mountains to the east of the Zurcher Adventist University (UAZ) campus. We had a student along since none of us speak Malagasy so he could translate for us. We crossed the highway and walked down into the valley where we crossed a very angry looking river on a couple narrow logs.

Sylvia Crossing the River on Logs

Then we hiked along a narrow mud ridge separating two rice paddies. We passed several homes and some communal graves. We climbed the steep slopes of the mountain until we finally came to a grass covered meadow that sloped fairly steeply back towards UAZ.

Wil in Front of Our Flat at UAZ

While eating our delicious lunch we idly watched a tropical thunder storm pouring rain on the UAZ campus then realized that it was coming directly towards us.  However there was nothing we could do to escape its path. In due course we were soaked to the skin. The trails were all on red clay, which now became extremely slippery, and our shoes built up great layers of clay.

At the University Gate

We spent three months at UAZ as English teachers to the freshman and sophomore students. We also toured a rain forest and a dry forest, both of which sported several Lemur species.

Ruffed Lemur

In many ways our stay in Madagascar reminded us of our 5 year stay in Tanzania way back in the late 1960s. If you wish to read more about our experiences in Madagascar, please see the Sojourn to Madagascar entries in December 2015 and January to March 2016 blogs at http://wils-thoughts.blogspot.com.

Two Ring-Tailed Lemur Babies Riding Piggy-Back

We found the people to be very friendly and helpful. The 150,000 Adventists in Madagascar are quite conservative and often spend all day Sabbath at their churches. UAZ is serving an essential role in providing leaders for the church and its missions in the Indian Ocean and increasingly to the Francophone portion of worldwide Adventism. It was a great privilege to have a brief chance to help their program. If you are interested in volunteering in Madagascar, contact Pam Petersen at headinghomesoon@gmail.com

One of Several Churchs Founded by UAZ Students

Allée des Baobabs in Madagascar at Sunset

Returning From the Trip to See the Baobabs and Lemurs With the Bairagees

On our way home from Madagascar we spent 17 days in and around Cape Town, South Africa. We spent most of the time with long time friends. We toured Butterfly World on our way to climb Paarl Rock. Joy didn’t feel up to climbing, but then, spurred on by our example, she and Rodney joined us at the top where we had a grand panoramic, if smoggy, view of the Western Cape including Helderberg Mountain and Table Mountain.

Rodney & Joy with Sylvia on Paarl Rock

Joy and Rodney are Pam’s parents. On Sabbath Lincoln, Rosemary, and Gwen hosted a potluck with his Sabbath School class. Many of the members are our friends, so it was a great reunion.

African Penguins

The first part of the next week we tried to visit Cape Point but picked a holiday to do it, and half of Cape Town was also trying to get there, so we watched kiteboarding at the Cape’s most popular beach instead. We also stopped at a breeding colony of African penguins. They were called jackass penguins when I was a kid because their call sounds like the braying of a donkey.

With Rodney & Joy in Kirstenbosch Gardens

We reveled in the beauty of Kirstenbosch Gardens that specializes in the beautiful and rich Cape flora. Heather took us out to a posh resort in Arniston where we were able to tour Cape Agulhas and the area surrounding the southernmost tip of Africa.

With Heather at Arniston

The next Sabbath Gideon had invited us to his mother’s home in Ottery, a suburb of Cape Town. Gideon and Pam had come from Madagascar especially to see his mother since she was very sick with cancer. The whole Petersen family showed up, and we had more excellent food than we could eat. We toured Cape Town in the afternoon with Pam and Gideon.

Lincoln and Rosemary took us around to their special sites during our last three days. We drove through four beautiful mountain passes and stopped for lunch at Gideon’s Famous Franschhoek Pancake House, not to be confused with the Gideon in previous paragraphs. We also got to pet alpacas and llamas. Now it’s your turn to figure out what the difference between them is.

With Lincoln & Rosemary Feeding Alpacas

Against my better judgment, I allowed myself to be elected the president of the Fellowship of Adventist Missionaries to Africa (FAMA) at the meeting held in 2014 at La Sierra University. Just before we went to Madagascar, our very capable editor passed away. So in Madagascar I spent a lot of time and energy trying to get the FAMA address list. Then I sent out several Newsletters mainly to apprise our members of our next meeting in Fletcher, NC.

We left home on May 17 to drive to the FAMA get together which started on June 2. We headed towards Indianapolis and then south to Tennessee and eventually our niece’s home in Roanoke, Virginia. En route we got to visit relatives and very good friends. When we didn’t overnight with people we knew, we “camped” in Walmart parking lots. We were driving our F-150 pickup with a cap on the back that covers our bed. We suffered from some very cold nights as well as some extremely hot nights in these parking lots.

FAMA Meeting in Fletcher NC 2016

Thanks to excellent help from many sources, our FAMA meetings were very spiritually rewarding and allowed us to form new friendships as well as renew many old ones. The meetings lasted from Thursday night until Sunday morning, the first weekend of June. When we left there we drove south from Fletcher and paid a very brief visit to new FAMA Newsletter editor, Lorna. She is proving an excellent editor with lots of new ideas and artistic talent.

We continued south to Orlando, Florida. In April we had spent a weekend with a group that facilitates Bible translations in many parts of the world where the Bible is still not available to people in their mother tongues. We stopped at Wycliffe to see firsthand what was happening. Wycliffe Associates has pioneered a radical new translation technique that relies on native speakers of these languages. The average time for translating a Bible has been around 25 years per language and is very expensive. The old technique is too expensive because translators must be supported by others all this time.

 The new technique produces a very passable gospel of Mark in the target language in about two weeks. It uses a computer printer to produce a copy that is passed out to Christians who speak the target language. These critique it and then encourage and support their translators who, with due diligence, can turn out the New Testament in less than a year and the whole Bible in two years. Since the expenses are borne by the local churches, they feel an integral part of the whole production. We are very excited by the obvious blessing of the Holy Spirit on their efforts. Their goal of having a copy of the Bible in every language that people want a translation in by 2025 now seems to be a real possibility.

Wycliffe Associates Bible Translators

We got home before our 51^st wedding anniversary on June 27. A month and a half later I, Wil, came down with West Nile Virus (WNV), a mosquito borne disease. It originated in Africa but is now found in almost all of the states in the U. S. The county health department here keeps close track of the spread of the disease. WNV hit me very hard. I remember taking a group from the church to the San Bernardino County Museum on August 18 to see their new mastodon exhibit. I was feeling sick on that day. Then I remember essentially nothing until the second week of October. I was in hospital for three weeks before they finally diagnosed WNV. It is a rare disease in Riverside County, where I was the fourth person diagnosed with it this year. I hallucinated a lot and spoke absolute garbage. Then they put me in a rehabilitation center for another 6 weeks, where I slowly regained my senses and learned to walk again. I lost 30 pounds (14kg) of muscle during those weeks in hospital. I just wish the loss had been around my waist!

Sylvia Supporting Wil in Rehab

The picture was taken after a total of eight or nine weeks in hospital and rehab.

A headache and dizziness have haunted me constantly ever since my memory kicked in again in early October. Recently I had another MRI done on my head to try and pinpoint the cause of the problem. From reading on the Internet it appears that these symptoms may be with me for a year or longer. My family has been very supportive, especially Sylvia and Elwood who have spent long hours day after day with me. I returned home the end of October. Since then I have been to Joshua Tree National Park three times. I don’t have the muscular strength to climb anything, but I do enjoy the hikes that are somewhat level. I also spend time almost every day hiking in the hills around our home. Our dog, Cleopatra, who has been with us for over 15 years, is ailing and has a hard time doing the longer walks.

Thank you for your prayers for our well being and my healing. We covet your further prayers on our behalf. We pray that you will have a lovely Christmas and a prosperous New Year, 2017. We treasure each of your greetings.

Our Address is still:

Wil & Sylvia Clarke

5547 Wentworth Dr.

Riverside, CA 92505

Phone: 951-687-4556

e-mail: wil.clarke@gmail.com