I WAS THINKING 15

DID GOD ALLOW THE TSUNAMI – and etc?

"Is God in control?" I believe He is, but eight scholars ask the question in a new book. Another recent publication by a leading world religious philosopher deals with 'the problem of evil and the problem of God'. Is God a problem then? The book's problem is the various misconceptions of Him (a gripping subject which I have mentioned before and will again).

One prominent Muslim cleric said that Allah had actually sent the tsunami as a punishment against Muslims who did not apply the Shariah law. I hope his explanation cheers everybody up! It is a vivid example of the difference between Allah and the Lord; Allah the God of vengeance and the Lord the God of love.

Evolutionist Professor Dawkins declared that the tsunami challenged the Christian teaching of a God of love. If the press reported it correctly, this was a vacuous remark useless to everybody and on the level of comments typically made in pubs 'when men have well drunk' rather than that of a professor! The newspapers gave him a platform and loud hailer but switched off all Christian response. They left the public with a counsel of despair.

With this awful loss of life, the thought that anyone with an ounce of sensitivity could presume to mock Christians about the God of love is appalling. While people are mourning the loss of Christian family members, to attack Christian hope at such a time merely to score a point is despicable. Far from the disaster being a challenge to Christian faith, it reveals it as the only faith that gives courage and comfort. Dawkins' and Darwin's evolutionary theory is pitiless, throwing no arm around anybody's shoulder.

I suppose thousands, perhaps millions have asked why God 'allowed' the tsunami disaster. But is that the question? Did He 'allow' it? I wrote once on "Why does God allow sickness?" and answered that we may as well ask why the Minister for Transport allows road crashes. Perhaps we should just keep his rules. Touché! Obviously none of us 'allowed' the disaster, as we could not prevent it – perhaps. But popularly God is supposed to be able to do anything and 'Almighty' is what the word 'God' means.

It is certainly not safe to assume God did nothing about it. Only God knows what He did. He does not text our mobiles about what He does. The issue is complicated. We are hearing accounts of providential and even angelic deliverances, alongside news of many Christians dying in the tsunami.

My first comment concerns what I would do if I knew for sure that God had allowed this disaster. What could I do? Take the Omnipotence to task? If God is God I can do only one thing – trust Him. I had better! Any other option would be extremely odd, like falling out with the universe. He alone knows the business of being God. We would have to be God to understand His business.

The world was enormously strange, frightening and threatening to people in the days of the Psalmists. One wrote Psalm 46 which fits the tsunami occasion. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof". It sounds like an anticipation of the tsunami disaster.

On the other hand if this calamity happened outside His control, it did not leave God helpless. His purposes will absorb it. He collects every circumstance as the material for His eternal purposes, working all things according to the good counsel of His will.

My business being Bible exposition, I am asked what I myself think about this gigantic convulsion of the Indian Ocean. Firstly, the Bible is not a compendium of explanations. Nobody really knows enough to elucidate God's role in everything that goes on, which is obviously complicated. Our confidence is in Him - and all things, evil and good, are in His hands.

Before we even ask the question, our knowledge of nature and the planet is inadequate. Did human activity help create the tsunami? Environmental factors and human meddling cannot be dismissed. That fatal wave resulted from an enormous underwater landslide and the subterranean movement of the tectonic plates on which the continents rest. These plates move constantly as part of the structure of the planet. Could human agencies have triggered off the convulsion? We can't say they did not. But in any case, what should God do anyway? Re-create the world?

Then I cannot ignore the fact that great as the tsunami horror was, it is still only part of the troubles that afflict mankind, and death comes to all sooner or later. On average 1676 individuals died every day in the UK in 2003, about 7 times the number of Britons swept away by the tsunami. Death and bereavement are our human lot. Death is the mist hanging over every dawn. We are "subject to death all our lives" scripture says.

As for God, He gives our lives and has the right to take them away, but multitudes are killed by human action. Even then God is not baffled. Scripture says: "He makes the wrath of man to praise Him". Even the crucifixion of His own beloved Son - the most appalling wickedness perpetrated on earth and an apparent supreme triumph of evil - God foresaw and wove into the glory of His will. In the words of the Messianic Psalm 22, Christ called to His Father: "Why are you so far from my roaring?" But from that tree planted on the hill of Calvary, the whole world has received fruit, a new spirit of sacrifice, love and hope, not to mention its God-ward objectivity of reconciliation and redemption.

Scripture shows God working within limits. Like Christ said of Jerusalem "I would, you would not". If we stray from under His wings how can He guarantee our safety? Jesus heard of a wall falling and killing some men. He had no philosophic comfort, but said "Except you repent you will all likewise perish". At the beginning as a young pastor I was told I must 'defend the ways of God to man'. I tried, but God does not need me to defend Him.

Far from understanding God we don't understand one another. I knew my wife pretty well, but she had an instant and acute shrewdness beyond my plodding reason. What man ever had perfect penetration of a wife's esoteric thought processes? That's just a woman, never mind God! But my obtuse male inability to follow my wife's logic never caused my faith in her to falter or in her judgment, nor in God's.

The Bible shows God all the way through exercising limitless power but within limits imposed upon Himself by His love and mercy. "He delivered his strength into captivity". He is the only God I acknowledge, though often quiet when men clamoured for His action. "Awake O Lord!" the Palmist cried.

God asked "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" The answer is, read His Word and learn His ways. That is what the Bible is for. It is not a code book of secret passwords to acquire money or success. 'Follow on to know the Lord" and then we can anticipate His action. Having power does not oblige God to use it. We all have things that we can do but choose not to. His wisdom governs His exercise of power. To know God is to trust Him. "Though he slay me, yet will I trust him!" said Job.

We do wrong, but God cannot deny us our right to be human beings by stepping in every time we chose to do wrong. We would cease to be what we are. The Scripture principle is: "The wrath of men shall praise Him". He does not stop wickedness, but it never baffles His purposes. The world is what it must be to function as a living world, and we must accept the world as it is. To demand a different, accident-free world is ridiculous arrogance. It is up to us to keep ourselves safe.

Prayer releases God's help in this world. He gives us dominion and authority to inhabit this world and He can intervene in it. He is on-call for when we need Him. We are here for Him and He is here for us.

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DEI GRATIA!

This is my very personal account about which I hesitated to write.

I sought advice and in fact received everyone's encouragement.

This story is wonderful but not surprising knowing it is typical of God and His ways.

Police banged on my locked doors in the early hours, three years ago, to break the news to me that my wife in hospital had slipped away. Instantly I became a pauper. She had been my wealth, and now life was evacuated of all significance and pleasure, despite, or even because I had had to care for her night and day. For 14 years of her declining health, symptoms multiplying, I ached to get close to share her feelings. It left me stressed, often physically sick and had even fainted off with anxiety about her.

Then within that annus horribilis four other Canty members died, including a brother and a gifted special sister. Then illness struck. Gruelling hospital checks revealed quite advanced prostate cancer. Later other symptoms appeared with more hospital checks, internal examinations and X-ray scanned for possible intestinal cancer. X-rays also showed extensive arthritis on my left side, and blood tests revealed anaemia. For several years the stabbing pains of chronic neuralgia had also assaulted me.

On top of these diseases, physical reactions to bereavement pounced like waiting predators: claustrophobia, panic, feelings of intense sickness, lassitude and inertia. I forced myself to work to keep the lurking hounds of depression at bay. Then other ailments became allies in their onslaught; gout, swollen legs and water retention.

Illness was an embarrassment to me. For decades I had re-pioneered Divine healing in the churches and was eminent in that field. Then there was my previous testimony; from the age of three, hammering headaches and indescribable nausea regularly persecuted me, but I had finally proved God was my healer with never even another headache. For 50 years of preaching, evangelising and travelling the earth, I never missed a scheduled service through ill health. This record rendered the development of multiplied illnesses a trial of faith and a double distress. I began to suspect age decline and break-up.

Physical problems were one thing, but worse, circumstances colluded against me. I was outside any church after a lifetime and after planting two dozen churches. I had no place, no role and no activity within the denomination I had helped to father through its most difficult days. I felt crushed, surplus to requirements. Nothing to do, I just sat at home, seeing almost nobody day after day, I told God I may as well join my wife.

Then, at my lowest ebb, a Baptist minister phoned with a word he insisted positively was of God. I was not interested. After delay I decided I may as well do what he said. It proved to be of the Lord, the dawn of a new day and a wide open door, as I will explain.

One morning driving home from the doctor's surgery, thanking the Lord aloud for the doctor's help, suddenly, quicker than I could think, God spoke to me in exact words: "Well, I told you I would look after you didn't I?" Until then the house had been unfriendly and desolate, no wife to open the door, but that morning as I went in I became conscious of God's presence. An inescapable realisation gripped me. God was favouring me, taking up my cause, re-shaping and re-ordering life for me.

First, intestinal cancer. All tests proved negative. Then four months ago a letter in personal terms from the consultant surgeon of the cancer department expressed his pleasure that prostate cancer with a PSA of 48 had reduced to a normal 1.08, with liver and kidney function perfect, further hospital visits unnecessary. Then followed a second letter. The local clinic of doctors wrote saying that their tests now showed everything fine - anaemia , blood pressure, cholesterol and sugar. Wonderfully at the same time all neuralgic pains ceased, no more leg swellings, water retention or gout, nor to this moment, and not a single twinge of any rheumatism.

The sum total is robust health, better than I have had for years, with vigour and eagerness for work. Life has opened up a further phase ahead. I have awaked in the morning literally euphoric with the joy of the Lord. The lost desire for life, music, art and poetry has returned and I am rehearsing the violin and piano and wanting to sing. I was told that singing God's praise keeps the devil away. I believe that. Mine would keep anybody away. Exciting thoughts, ideas for paintings and writing flow again like streams in springtime after winter.

God has restored my zest as a full time writer and Bible explorer. My partnership with a well known international evangelist has seen our books, booklets and a mass of other material reaching tens of millions in over 130 languages, possibly equalling any Bible teaching on earth, and now other ventures are afoot.

God's goodness is all anybody ever says, His presence so real. His Word brings a joy that echoes even in the emptiness left by my wife's death. To God's glory I have to speak the truth.

I can now say that the Baptist pastor's word was from the Lord. It led me to a wide door where some 2000 people now look to me as a pastor and where my long experience, memories and knowledge have found a place of usefulness and benefit. God knew my greatest need and brought me many lovely friends, more than I ever had or knew.

These are the astounding reversals God has wrought. Those who know me personally have also expressed amazement. Everything I touch seems blessed. I live from hour to hour in praise of God's goodness, so deeply thankful for His gracious care.

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE TAKE BREAD AND WINE?

It shocks me when a pastor invites people to come and help themselves to bread and wine from the table, like a smorgasbord or cafeteria. Jesus in the Gospels and the apostle in Corinthians treated it as a special ordinance, a holy moment of tremendous significance. The emblems should be ministered. Servers take over the role of Jesus in the upper room saying "Take this, eat, drink. It is me."

Never did any simple act provoke such controversy. Theology, metaphysics, even war have raged around the Lord's Table. Someone working towards a PhD asked me whether I followed the teaching of Luther, Calvin or Zwingli. For me, none. Whichever, it would amount to no more than a slight mental or imaginative difference, which is surely not the object.

From the time of Augustine (4^th century) Christ was seen as present in the emblems spiritually. The ancient Catholic belief of transubstantiation was conceived 500 years later to match the age of superstition and the clamour for the mysterious and supernatural. After 1059 it became a dogma and priests claimed the power to transmute bread and wine into the real body and blood of Christ in the sacrifice of the Mass. Why they thought eating His actual flesh would benefit them I cannot imagine. Jesus said "The flesh counts for nothing." John 6:63. Luther rejected the Catholic dogma as 'Aristotelian'. (Thomas Aquinas laid down the argument for transubstantiation from the teaching of Aristotle). Luther still believed Christ was physically present in the Eucharist. This is 'consubstantiation.' He argued that as Christ has a human body of flesh, it is in the flesh that He is present.

Calvin said also that Christ's body was present and received but spiritually, not actually. Then the Swiss reformer Zwingli denied any such metaphysical notions, saying Communion is only a symbolic act to remember Christ as absent.

What does happen is a matter of discussion and of differences in evangelical circles. The Pentecostals have no accepted definition and I am not the oracle to settle five centuries of debate.

Communion is accepted widely as a 'sacrament' and a 'means of grace', even in many evangelical churches but for me as a Pentecostal the whole subject takes on a deeper richness. The phrase 'a means of grace' is a common and easy phrase. But it is a weevil word corrupting beliefs. Grace was the centre of theology until the Pentecostals showed the work of God was by the Holy Spirit, not by any other emanation or force. The 'means of grace' meant ways to accumulated grace sufficient to give souls access to heaven, that is by religious acts, fasting, prayers and so on. Taking communion was particularly a good 'sacrament' a meritorious physical act conferring automatic effects.

Pentecostal thought, as I have known it for a lifetime, is that no physical act has any reward without the operation of faith. Salvation is by faith, not by any act, but faith must act to bring salvation. Bread and wine were important in Scripture from the day when Melchizedek the priest of Jerusalem brought bread and wine to Abraham, confirming God's promise of the land to Abraham. As a tent dweller he could farm neither bread nor wine.

However, so much for that. I would like to make bread and wine more meaningful. Jesus is present, though not IN the emblems, but with us, where two or three gather in His name. We partake physically with faith, and benefit physically and spiritually.

When Jesus instituted this ordinance He was alive, and the disciples could not 'eat' Him or drink His blood. But communion is far more than a remembrance of Christ as Zwingli said. We partake of physical elements by faith and receive the physical and spiritual realities of Christ. The act is important. It is as close as anything could come to signify the physical realities of the Gospel. It is a truly Pentecostal act, our bodies receiving as well as our spirit.

At the Lord's Table, I open myself completely in surrender to God. I don't just eat, thinking that in some way it will do me good, any more than just the act of listening to sermons has any sacramental and automatic effect. I admit that listening to some sermons has been a trial of spiritual character, but merely hearing adds nothing to my heavenly grace banking account. Any religious rite must be joined with a conscious faith act.

It is precisely to ensure that we do draw near for physical and spiritual blessings that Jesus told us to do this, partake of bread and wine. As I eat, my eating becomes an act of my spirit to reach out to Jesus. Eating bread is so natural and simple, a child can eat. That is what it means, come simply, naturally to God who feeds us on the bread of heaven as we open our mouths and open our souls consciously to Him. I don't come merely for a new cleansing. I am cleansed already or I dare not come at all.

Some eat thoughtlessly assuming that the bread is holy and in a mysterious way they imbibe God. One of my church members would not let the birds eat the remaining crumbs from the communion table, but always ate it herself – with milk. But God is not to be manipulated automatically and helplessly by a piece of bread, Paul says Christ dwells in our hearts by faith, not by ritual. I myself think of Him as coming and coming as the everlastingly coming One, flooding my soul in a never ending stream of life. "Moment by moment I've life from above", that wonderful hymn says.

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FADS!

A book being hyped is against "Fads" - the disapproving name for charismatic innovations and fashions. Full page advertising encomiums, and my own feeling about 'fads' prompted me to buy a copy. I went through it, and as my deplorable habit is, I scribbled comments on the fair page and passed a few on to the author, Baptist pastor Ian Stackhouse of Guildford. The book carries high praise from ten eminent scholars – mostly Baptist, including David Pawson, Dr. Nigel Wright, (Spurgeon's College) Greg Haslam (Westminster Chapel) and Canon Tom Smail. This is not a review and any way my voice would hardly be noticed in such glamorous company.

The ground bass for his theme is that 'fads' are taking over the charismatic churches, pushing normal Christian concerns aside with the fond hope of swift growth and revival. He calls for a return to basic pastoral work, the 'means of grace', worship, and the 'sacraments'.

I've said myself that methods convert nobody and cannot bring a sales rush through church doors. Hopes of such easy church expansion are naïve. Ian Stackhouse says things like that in his 250 pages. Methods, church structures, schemes and new machinery produce no more than old-fashioned manpower Gospel witness. New births begin with the Word, according to 1 Peter 1:23.

I once listed quick-result schemes but new ones appear on the market with the latest book. Ian Stackhouse feels that 'fads' absorb effort that should be spent building the right sort of church which will then impact the outside world. Presumably he is in a position to judge charismatic motives but my own experience leaves me hesitant, and he does not produce any actual evidence to convince me of his judgment.

Having written several books on the call to preach the Gospel, one with a circulation of about four million, I looked for encouragement for evangelism in the Stackhouse book, but found little emphasis. He writes in scholastic style and with little Scriptural quotation.

It is incontestable that the Bible provokes us to reach out with the Gospel as our major activity. The Lord came from heaven to seek and save by the will of the Father. To be motivated by the same aim can hardly be incorrect. Listening to 'God Channel' television preachers, either my luck is out or invariably I find them saying less and less about the Gospel and ministering more and more along the lines Ian Stackhouse suggests. But surely - isn't that itself another 'fad'?

Arthur Wallace promoted the idea that revival only needed new church structures – 'new wine skins' as he misinterpreted Christ's words. That theory created church upheaval 20 years ago. The idea that new schemes will bring crowds en masse to church is utopian.

Nevertheless I insist that that is no reason to refuse new means. If churches adopt a 'fad' to win converts, successful or not, it is a healthy sign. Paul said "that by all means I might save some". 'Fads' for the supreme purpose of Gospel witness are justified. Always of course if the fad itself is not a distortion of Scripture teaching, for I have objected to some on those grounds, as for instance schemes with cult-like features.

How can we perfect a church if we neglect Christ's last great command to preach the Gospel to every creature?