The Divine Chains Of Eternity! ~ 2019 Revisit

Today before our Sunday Schools started I was chatting with Ben Gallardo, our Adult Sunday School Leader.  On my laptop, I was showing him the video movies I have downloaded of the four Gospels.  I am currently using the Gospel of John (2003) video as I help lead the Seniors' Sunday School class.  In our class we viewed the first 25 minutes of the video, then that Sunday and the next we read through and discussed John chapter 1 verse by verse.   I believe this made the verses come to life more effectively to visually see them played out in the movie - adding another dimension to our verse by verse study of John. 

In our conversation I shared with Ben that, although I have a number of commentaries on the Gospel of John, my favorite is H. A. Ironside's commentary "John" first published in 1942.  And Ben mentioned that he likes Ironside's work also.  And his work is amazing considering that Ironside had no formal seminary education.  In 1924, Ironside began preaching under the direction of the Moody Bible Institute. 

In 1926, he was offered a full-time faculty position at the Dallas Theological Seminary, which he turned down, although he was frequently a visiting lecturer there from 1925 to 1943.  In 1930-1948 he served as pastor of Moody Church in Chicago.  In 1930, Wheaton College presented Ironside with an honorary Doctorate of Letters degree, and in 1942 Bob Jones University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree. 

That led Ben and me into a discussion of Dwight L. Moody, a great evangelist and Bible teacher who, without a formal education and no seminary training - became one of the most influential evangelist in the world.  Moody, despite his own lack of formal education, preached revival meetings around the world, was instrumental in founding schools for both men and women, and his work eventually led to the founding of the school which became Moody Bible Institute and later birthed Moody Theological Seminary. 

You know that God was the guiding force behind both H. A. Ironside and Dwight L. Moody in all they accomplished and the way they continue to influence our Christian world long after their deaths.

My discussion today with Ben made me think back to a church bulletin insert I wrote in 1999, "The Chains Of Eternity."

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In 1999, as an elder in the Fil-Am Church of Corona (now the Corona International Christian Fellowship) one of my tasks was doing the Sunday Worship Service bulletin.  Viewing this task as an opportunity to edify and encourage folks in our fellowship, I usually included an insert in the bulletin sharing the Gospel or some other information which I felt would be helpful, edifying, and/or instructive to our fellowship members.   For the October 10, 1999, Sunday bulletin I included an insert titled "The Chains Of Eternity."   Below is a slightly edited reprint of that 1999 bulletin insert:

THE CHAINS OF ETERNITY

Life is a continuous chain of events - cause and effect.  If one event in the chain is changed, the effects will be innumerable.  Fictional novels have been written about people who are able to go back into their past and do something differently.   I am sure we all have such fantasies at time, i.e., if only I had taken this path and not that one.  Several  years ago their was a television show, "Quantum Leap," about a scientist who was able to time travel into the past.  But he was warned that no events were to be changed - for the effects on the world could be catastrophic. 

There was another television show on the PAX network called “Twice In A Lifetime.”   The story line is about a person who has had, or is having, a trauma in life, i.e., dying of cancer, suffering the lingering effects of a youthful abortion, lost a child through neglect, and many more traumatic events.  The people are divinely granted an opportunity to go back into their past anonymously for an opportunity to convince their youthful self to alter his/her lifestyle to prevent the troubling event from occurring in their older life.

Why am I having these thoughts on the chain of life’s events?  Because we, as born-again Christians, are links in a real, divinely designed chain of events.  To illustrate, let’s follow a chain of events which involves a man who is familiar to all of us, Billy Graham.  Although this chain began in the Garden of Eden, we will jump into it in the 1860s, and follow it through Billy Sunday, to Mordecai Ham, to Billy Graham, to events which have influenced your life, and to events happening in your life today.

In the late 1860s a young lady, Sarah Dunn, was decorating her family home in Waterloo, Iowa, when she felt the Lord was calling her to a ministry.  It seemed that she heard an audible voice asking, “What are you doing to decorate your heavenly home?”   Thoughts of perishing souls marching into an eternity without Christ began to flood Sarah’s mind.
 
Later she moved to Chicago, and in 1873 she met and married Colonel George Clarke, a real estate business man.  He shared her spiritual desires and together, in 1877, they opened a Mission Sunday School in a small storefront in Chicago, which would seat about 40 people.  There the homeless and downtrodden found warmth and the love of God through George and Sarah Clarke.

In 1880, they moved to a larger facility in a building vacated by the notorious Pacific Beer Garden.  Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist of the 1800s, recently back from an evangelistic crusade in England, suggested they change the name to Pacific Garden Mission, which is the name of that mission to this day.

Here, as very frequently happens, several momentous eternal chains seem to overlap.  During the Dwight L. Moody crusade in England, Horatio G. Spafford, a wealthy Chicago businessman and a friend of Moody, was going to England to help him in the crusade and to give the Spafford family a vacation to recover from the  death of their only son and the financial loss they had suffered in the great Chicago fire of 1871.  Due to last minute business problems Spafford sent his wife and four daughters ahead on the ship as scheduled, promising he would follow on the next ship. 

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean, the ship carrying his family sank and their four daughters were lost at sea.  Heartbroken, he immediately took the next ship to join his wife.  It was on this voyage, while reflecting on his great loss, that God gave Horatio Spafford the peace of mind to write the words to the great hymn we all have sung so many times, “It Is Well With My Soul.”  How many of us have found peace and assurance from the words of that hymn?

In the late 1800s Billy Sunday was a professional baseball player for the Chicago White Stockings (now the White Sox).  He was a heavy drinker, a carouser, a fast-lane-liver.  As the story is told, in 1886 Billy Sunday was drinking in the seamier part of Chicago when he first heard the Gospel from the Pacific Garden Mission’s roving Gospel Wagon. 

That night Billy Sunday visited the Pacific Garden Mission, liked what he heard, and finally one Sunday evening publicly invited Jesus into his heart.  He continued to visit the mission, became an eager Bible student, and frequently gave his testimony at the mission.  Later he left professional baseball and the lucrative income to work for the YMCA.  In 1910 he started his own full time evangelistic ministry.

In 1923 Billy Sunday held a Revival Meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, and one of the men saved at this revival meeting was Thomas Wilson, father of Grady Wilson, a long time friend of Billy Graham and a fixture in the Billy Graham evangelistic team.  Thomas Wilson and a group of other Charlotte businessmen, all of whom had come to the Lord at Billy Sunday’s meeting, formed a group called the Billy Sunday Laymen’s Evangelistic Club, later to be renamed the Charlotte Business Men’s Committee which is still active today.

In 1934, the depression was on and many people had little faith to carry them through the hard times.  The Charlotte Christian men’s group, most of whom were saved at the Billy Sunday meeting in 1923, held an all-day prayer meeting to discuss inviting Dr. Mordecai Ham to Charlotte for a Revival Meeting (they were not yet called Crusades).  Even though the local ministerial association was not in favor of the revival meeting, these Christian laymen made it happen.  Vernon Patterson, leader of the laymen’s group, later prayed that “out of Charlotte the Lord would raise up someone to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth.”  That prayer, most certainly, was answered in Billy Graham.

The Mordecai Ham Revival Meeting lasted eleven weeks and two of the converts of this evangelistic outreach were Grady Wilson and Billy Graham, who at the time even though both were teenagers in Charlotte, did not know one another.  Yet they soon became strong friends and through divine guidance their spiritual growth and lives seem to run in the same path.  Through college and early pastoral endeavors their lives became entwined and a few years after Billy started his crusades Grady Wilson joined his team and was very much a factor in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association Crusades.

In the late 1940s an organization called Christ For Greater Los Angeles wanted to have a revival meeting in Los Angeles.  They invited Angel Martinez, a dynamic Baptist evangelist in Texas, to be their speaker.  He turned them down because his heart was more in church revival rather than large mass meetings.  In his place, they invited Billy Graham. 

During the early weeks of that revival meeting William Randolph Hearst, a powerful newspaper tycoon and a non-believer, was led, even though there is no evidence that he ever attended any of the meetings, to instruct the editors of his many newspapers to give Billy Graham full-blown, all-out coverage in their newspapers.  That crusade, publicized by the Hearst newspaper empire, catapulted Billy Graham into the national and international spotlight.  God was working.

In Los Angeles Suzy Hamblen, a Christian lady and the wife of Stuart Hamblen, famous radio celebrity and songwriter in Hollywood, came to the meetings.  One night she went to the Prayer Tent and asked them to pray for her husband to be converted.  To make a long story short, she finally got Stuart to attend one of the meetings where God laid conviction on his soul. 

But instead of coming to the Lord, Hamblen bolted and headed to the mountains to hunt.  Halfway to the mountain retreat a blizzard forced him to return to Los Angeles.  He felt God’s hand in all this and went back.  Hamblen and his wife went to visit Billy Graham and some of the crusade team at their hotel.  That night Stuart Hamblen invited Jesus Christ to be his Lord and Savior.  After that he did nothing but Christian music.  One of his songs I’m sure you will recognize, “It Is No Secret What God Can Do.”   How many times have you sung that song?

Billy Graham calls the people who come forward at his altar calls “inquirers.”   He explains this with the story of Sam Jones, a Methodist evangelist.  At one of Sam Jones’ meetings a drunk staggered up to him and belched, “Mr. Jones, I am one of your converts!”  Jones looked him over and answered, “You look like one of my converts.  But it’s plain to see that you are not one of the Lord’s.”   In Billy’s thinking, after you have been established in your Christian walk for a year or so, and involved in a local Christian fellowship, THEN you can be called a convert.

Point of interest, Greg Laurie in his Harvest Crusades does the same for those who come forward at their crusades.  Many counselors and an extensive follow-up effort works to link those coming forward with a local Christian fellowship where they can become active believers.

At the 1952 Washington DC Crusade, Billy met Senator Willis Robertson, father of Pat Robertson of the “700 Club.”   Senator Robertson was the one who introduced Billy into the Washington political community.  This led to his one-on-one personal friendship with many congressmen, senators, cabinet members, and presidents.  Even though we most often see evidence of influence from the other side, the Prince of Darkness, in Washington - I know that God, through Billy Graham, has greatly influenced many decisions in our federal legislative bodies.

Tom Phillips, president of Raytheon Corporation, was saved at a crusade.  He later was prominent in leading Chuck Colson, one-time top aide to President Nixon, to Christ.  We all know of the wonderful work Chuck has done for the Lord through his Prison Ministries.  God’s chains have many links and many intertwined connections.

At a 1957 crusade Ethel Waters, world-renowned singer of movie and Broadway fame, came to the meeting.  After experiencing the crusade, she asked if she could be a member of the choir.  For the rest of her life she was considered an honorary member of the Billy Graham Crusade family, singing at many meetings.  If you are younger, you might not recognize Ethel Waters’ name.  But even if not - I bet you will remember a song she introduced in the Broadway play "A Member Of The Wedding."  That song is “His Eye Is On The Sparrow.”

In the late 1950s my wife, Dory, attended the Billy Graham Crusade in her native Philippines.  At that crusade, Billy Graham touched her life and through her he has touched me.  Now, I am a link in that divine chain.

One of the early workers in the Billy Graham Crusades was Dawson Trotman who set up their first system for following-up the people who came forward at the crusades.  Dawson Trotman founded the Navigators and through the Navigators my friend, Pastor Ed Dacio, became a born-again Christian during his college years in the Philippines.  Through that chain, everyone at the Corona International Christian Fellowship, where Ed is pastor, is a link in the Billy Graham spiritual chain of events.

You have your own chain of life’s events.  Everything you do, day to day, affects many other people as you travel through life.  Each event, or connection, is a link in God’s divinely planned chain of life.  Make sure that you are prepared for that task.  Be in the Word of God, the Bible, daily - be in communication with God, through prayer, daily - and then you will know that you are in the will of God, daily.  If you do this, you will never be a weak link in His eternal chain.

In The Guideposts Treasury of Faith Ralph L. Woods wrote the perfect description of “A Genuine Christian.”

One evening during the latter part of his life in the late 1800s, John Ruskin, artist, scientist, poet, and philosopher - sat at a window in his home watching a lamplighter, with torch in hand, ignite the street lamps on a distant hill.  Since it was dark the lamplighter himself could not be seen, but his progress up the hill could be observed as successive lamps were lit.

After a few minutes Ruskin turned to a friend and said, "That illustrates what I mean by a genuine Christian.  You may not know him or ever see him, but his way has been marked by the lights he leaves burning."

“Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”  Matthew 5:16

Have you taken a serious look at your eternal chain of events?  You may be surprised who has influenced you - and who YOU have influenced and pointed toward the cross.

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,

Bill 

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