The Great Pretenders - Part 1 by Tracy Schell (http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/5685/pretend.htm)
This article appears at the url above on the webpage of the North
Courtenay Avenue Church of Christ in Merritt Island, Florida
About the Author
Tracy Schell was a victim as an infant of Werdnig/Hoffman syndrome, a rare disease which prevents the development of muscles. This has resulted in many side effects. He has never been able to walk, has been confined to a wheelchair virtually all of his life except for the last few years during which he has been confined to the bed. But he has a keen, active mind and a wide range of interests.
More importantly, he is a God fearing, Bible believing young man who has a magnificent spirit. He calls and writes from his bed, encouraging his brethren and favorably affecting their lives. One recently reclaimed brother gratefully confesses that he was the major influence in the recovery of his spiritual health. Tracy is a member of the body of Christ, attended services and worshipped with us at North Courtenay as long as he could, and now participates in worship each Lord's Day with brethren who gather to join him in the praise of God and the study of his word. -- Jere E. Frost, February, 1992
The Great Pretenders
When one is faced with an illness for which medical science offers no hope, people will look for other alternatives, anything, which will offer some glimmer of hope. This can lead people down the road in search of the elusive miracle. This is the situation my parents found themselves in shortly after learning of my diagnosis at the age of 17 months as having a disease typically fatal by the age of three. Given no hope by the best specialists in the field at Shands Hospital in Gainesville, they turned to their belief in God for miraculous help.
In Search of a Healing
My mother, having been raised Baptist, with other relatives having somewhat charismatic beliefs, hoped that the miracles like those in the Bible might still be happening today. After all, many today claim to have these miraculous Bible abilities and many claim to have been healed by miraculous means. Although I was quite young I can still remember a few of these attempts at healings and I want to share with you my memories of what was to be learned from them.
A well meaning friend of the family gave my parents a copy of a book called "Healing Hands" by George Chapman of London, England. Having some flight benefits which were about to expire, my mother, brother, sister and I all went to London.
At the time I was four years old and my memories of those times are like snapshots of people, places and things. I remember it as my first plane ride on a 747, a one night stay in New York, arriving in England late at night at an old fashioned Country Inn, and room service bringing up hot tea and sandwiches, playing on a carpeted staircase, two large dogs which roamed the downstairs pub and dining room, a taxi ride, double -decker busses, the palace, the changing of the guard, and many other things, mostly trivial. One thing I remember almost nothing about is George Chapman. I remember being in an office, and that is about it. I know from my mother that I did see him. I have always thought it strange that I can remember the color of the curtains in the hotel room (white) but nothing of this visit. I think the reason for this is obvious. Nothing miraculous happened, nothing even noteworthy or memorable.
When I was around six I was taken to see Kathryn Kuhlman. She was perhaps the leading faith healer of the time (along with Oral Roberts). Incidentally, she was the mentor of a current well known faith healer, Benny Hinn of Orlando. I remember a large auditorium and seeing people on canes, crutches, and many in wheelchairs. I can recall talking with a young man in a wheelchair whose loved ones had obviously taken him to many crusades of this type because he knew the routine well.
On this occasion my grandmother went with us. She believed in this type of preacher. She often watched Oral Roberts and others like him. She was a diabetic who had to take daily insulin shots. She made it onto the stage with "Kathryn the Great" and had hands laid upon her. She fell back as if struck with some great power. I remember asking afterwards what it was like, and she said it was like being shocked or struck by lightning. I am sure to this day that she honestly believed that. But the fact remains that she continued to take insulin till the day she died. No attempt was made to get me, or anyone else with a visible handicap, on the stage. No one was cured of anything I could see. Certainly, I was not, the young man in the wheelchair near me was not, nor was my grandmother.
Yet friends and well-wishers always insisted their congregation could get the job done. So there were other attempts locally. I recall a Pentecostal friend invited us to her church where people were supposed to write on a piece of paper the miracle they needed. It would be granted! I wrote, "I want to walk." But neither I nor anyone else with a visible problem was helped. Another failure. It was always the same.
Reflecting on the Failures
What effect did these failures have? On my parents, none. Their faith in God remained strong. Yet the faith of some people is shattered while others look for some slight, or even imagined, improvement as a rationalization to continue looking for a miracle. For some reason, people see these failures as stemming from either one of two possibilities, namely, (1) a lack of ability on God's part, or (2) as some failure on their part, such as a lack of faith. Yet there is a third possibility which most people overlook: God is not performing miracles by or through these men; they exercise no miraculous power at all.
[Editor's note: Bro. Schell will conclude his thoughts on this subject in our next issue.]
Tardiness: Think About These Things! By Warren Berkley
Reprinted from the February,1999 issue of The Expository Files
(http://www.geocities.com/~expository/)
When I lived in Mulvane, Kansas (Wichita area), I would often attend gospel meetings with my step-father, Judson Woodbridge. He loved to hear gospel preaching, even if he had to put up with my timing and schedule. I would say, "Jud, I'll pick you up at 6:30." He would agree, and then at about six, my phone would start ringing. "Well, are we going?" he would say. "Yes Judson. I'll be there at about 6:30." This would be repeated a couple of times before 6:30. He would get in the car at 6:30 and say something like: "What happened? Where have you been? We're never going to make it on time." At about 7:05 we would arrive in an empty church parking lot. Judson would look around and then say, "Why are we here so early?"
Judson's sense of timing in his old age may be one extreme. To me, it is far more tolerable than the common practice of folks arriving for worship after the worship has already started. In most places there is a pattern: a few arrive 20 minutes or earlier before time to start; most of the others arrive about five minutes before time to start; and everybody else gets there within the first ten minutes of the assembly. There are about three problems associated with this:
(1) When you come in late, you have missed whatever happened before your arrival. (2) The entrance of people into the auditorium after worship has started can be distracting to those already present. (3) It may be, tardiness reflects an attitude that needs to be corrected. This is almost certainly the case if the tardiness is habitual in getting to worship and Bible study, but absent in other areas of life.
The excuse may sometimes be offered, "they are late everywhere they go." Yet the fact that some bad habit is consistently practiced is no justification for it. If I had a business with several employees, I would not overlook late arriving workers because they are always late for everything! I doubt that those who come into the assembly late come into work late every morning. Where a paycheck is involved folks seem to be motivated to be on time.
At the local church, we don't give paychecks to those who attend. But there are great promised rewards for those who take God seriously enough to be anxious and prompt to be there when it is time to offer Him our praise. Think about all of this.