Copied from Highland Community Church Sunday Bulletin

 

Anything but righteous.

Joe Bayly, the late Eternity magazine columnist, visited some German Christians who had been devoted soldiers in the German army during World War II. Two of them had been put up for promotion to become second lieutenants in the Nazi army. The commandant told them he would approve the promotion on one condition: that they join the Officers’ Club. Being a member of the club would require them to attend some weekend dances. These young men believed that dancing was wrong because it could led to immorality. Because of their convictions, they turned down the promotion. Later in their military careers these same men were assigned to the death camps where thousands of Jews were stuffed into ovens and killed. Even though they did not directly participate in the slaughter, they knew what was going on. Yet they never voiced any protest. When Joe Bayly talked to them many years after the war, they looked back on their experience with no regret, convinced that they had made right decisions. For them, not conforming to social pressure and refusing to dance was an act of righteousness. And conforming to patriotic mass murder and remaining silent while thousands of Jews burned in ovens left them with no feelings of unrighteousness. When we set our own standard of external righteousness, we are capable of any evil. When we are filled with His righteousness, no good is too great. –Haddon Robinson

     Tennyson’s wish.

When Lord Tennyson was on his death bed, friends at his bedside asked, “Is there anything you wish?” With solemnity, he replied, “Yes, a new vision of God.” Is not this the need of each one of us? We see man high and lifted up, and his triumphs are thrilling the people. We need, urgently, a hearttransforming, character-ennobling vision, which will cause us to see ourselves as God sees us, and which will cause us to cry out with Isaiah, “Woe is ME! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6:5). –Walter B. Knight

     The vision of God.

The “great awakening” sprang into being when Jonathan Edwards saw God. Scotland fell prostrate when John Knox saw God. The world became the parish of one man when John Wesley saw God. Multitudes were saved when Whitefield saw God. Thousands of orphans were fed when George Müller saw God. Is it not time that we got a new vision of God–of God in all His glory? –from The Baptist Standard