Transcription
From Mount Ellis in Montana, the voice of prophecy comes to you, the voice of one crying in the wilderness of these modern days. And prepare ye the way of the Lord.
As you leave tonight, we'll put in your hands a little report from the voice of prophecy. We hope that you will continue to remember us as we go forward in faith. Will you bow your heads with me?
O Jesus, blessed Redeemer, sent from the heart of God, hold us who bow before Thee near to the heart of God. My wife and I were driving to a speaking appointment a while back. She was driving. She said, "What are you going to talk about?" I said, "I'm going to talk about how that some people don't have enough faith to not be healed, so all God can do is heal them." She said, "That's awful; you're not going to say that." Well, I said, "Yes, that's that's the idea." Well, she said, "That's terrible. How will the people feel who have been healed?" I said, "That's their problem."
Well, as our discussion continued, she began to drive faster and jerkier, and it led me to try and say it better. I wish I could say things better, but there is a major point here at stake. It takes a lot of faith to not be healed. It takes a lot of faith to not be delivered. It takes a lot of faith to not have your prayers answered the way you had hoped they would be. Isn't that true?
And before we're finished, I hope that we can take a long look at a serious misunderstanding that we have had. Some of us grew up on bedtime stories, and I'm not going to tell you who's, and we got the impression that if you're good, everything's going to go good, and if you're bad, everything's going to go bad. And that's not true. Bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people.
We have forgotten that all of Jesus' disciples, His closest followers, died a martyr's death except one, and he was banished. We forget that the Apostle Paul, who wrote 14 books in the New Testament, was denied his prayer request after several times, and God basically said, "Stop praying." We forget that Elisha, who received a double portion of Elijah's spirit, did not go to heaven in two chariots; he died after a long lingering illness, maybe cancer, and he was so godly that when they put the body of the dead soldier beside him in the grave, the soldier came back to life. You remember that story.
We forget that John the Baptist, about whom Jesus said there was never one born greater, was beheaded alone in the dungeon. And we forget that Hebrews 11 is not all peaches and cream, if you please. We love to dwell on the great faith chapter and the great things that happen, but how often have we read the last few verses? Uh, it changes right in the middle of the stream, if you please, and pay in in verse 35.
Verse 35: "Women received their dead raised to life again; and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise."
Now we don't usually read those. We love the stories of the grasshoppers that come up to the fence, and they stop there because the person that lives there pays tithe. Why, we love those stories; we tell them over and over again. And that's why it is very refreshing to hear the other side of the story, where there was the tithe-payer, God-fearing man, and the grasshoppers came, jumped the fence, and ate all of his crops too. And the neighbors came by, and they said, "Now what do you have to say?" He said, "If the good Lord wants to graze His grasshoppers on His own property, that's His business. In the meantime, I will still love Him and trust Him just the same."
It just might be that God has a greater need for people who have enough faith to not be saved or delivered or healed. He might need more of that group than of the group who have the faith to be healed. And so I would like to focus on that misunderstanding. Now, if you read the book *Desire of Ages*, the chapter on John the Baptist, you come to the closing pages where some interesting comments are made. It talks about how that Jesus would gladly have delivered John the Baptist from the dungeon, but for the sake of thousands in the future who would need to have his noble example, he was not delivered, and he knew that. John the Baptist would bear the test. And then it says this: "Not Enoch, who was translated to heaven, nor Elijah, who ascended in a fiery chariot, were greater or more honored than John the Baptist, who perished alone in the dungeon. And of all the gifts that heaven can bestow, fellowship with Christ in suffering is the most weighty gift and the highest honor."
You mean it is a high honor to die of cancer? You mean it is a high honor to be beheaded alone in the dungeon? Do you mean it is a high honor to be sawn asunder, to be tormented, to be stoned, to be eaten by the lions? Yes. Why? Because there's something far bigger than getting our prayers answered the way we wish. There's a great controversy going on, and God needs a big honor guard who will continue to love Him and trust Him regardless of what happens to them, so that the devil's charge is not founded at all, that people serve Him and love Him because of what they can get out of Him. You know, the rice-Christian thing. And it's about time we got over this thing of thinking that if you had enough faith, you'd be healed. No, if you have enough faith, you might not be healed; you might join the honor guard instead.
Really, not long ago, Harold Richards Jr. said to me at the voice of prophecy, he said, "On my 80th birthday, I promise to take you anywhere you want to go to eat." I think he was making a statement. He was 70 when he died the other week, and it looks like the place we're going to go to eat is the tree of life. But he had thousands of people around the world praying for his recovery, and he had not—he had enough faith to not be healed and to hold on to God's hand till the end.
Like his father went to visit his father not long before he died, and after we talked a little bit, I said, "Do you have anything to tell the people that I see, the people who love you and I've listened to you?" He said, "Yes, tell him that the old man has been reading his Bible lately and that it still says the same thing, and if it's true, we ought to all be finding a refuge in Jesus." And then he said, "If you hear that Richards has gone to his final resting place, don't believe it, not even if you read it in the *Review and Herald*." People were writing in about that time. They said, "We thought that he was going to be alive when Jesus came." He heard about it. He said, "Tell him not to worry; I am going to be alive when Jesus comes."
There have been many people in the honor guard who've had enough faith to join that noble company. I'm going to tell you a story tonight which is uh, rather fresh; it happened last year. It's hard for me to tell, but I like to tell it nonetheless because it demonstrates, I think, in a very interesting case history about the honor guard and about how that heaven is no farther from earth today than it was when the angels sang over the plains of Bethlehem. His name was Travis, Travis Allen. His father, a beloved teacher at Auburn Academy, science teacher; his mother, a nurse; his pastor, my son; for which reason we got a running account over ten months' time of the unfolding of this story. Travis's best friend was my grandson, Chris, and so we found ourselves very much involved in the struggles of a young man, 18 years old, who they discovered had children's leukemia. They tried the usual treatments; nothing helped, and he began the painful downward struggle which went on for ten months. The church got together, and they prayed; the elders went; they anointed with oil; nothing changed. And as his downward struggle continued, he began to be concerned about his eternal destiny. Someone came along and tried to help him by telling him of—if he just—to make sure his sins were all forgiven and confessed. And this didn't seem to help any. Have you ever heard of that approach? Oh, I wonder if I forgot one.
Then one day, as he was struggling with this thing about what's going to happen to me in eternity, and the pastor had a long talk with him and was able to get through to him with the good news that our eternal destiny is not based upon anything we do; it is based totally upon what He has done and our acceptance of what He has done, the lights came on, and Travis began to rejoice. And because uh, it seemed like it was a revelation to him personally that he could have the certainty of salvation because our salvation is not based upon what we do; it's based upon who we know, and he began to get acquainted with Jesus like he had never thought of before, talking to Him in the day, talking to Him in the night, and peace came. But in spite of the fact that he had peace, he also had moments when he was frightened. His mother, Trenda, because she was a nurse, got permission to stay by his bedside in the hospital 24 hours a day, which she did, although once in a while he was able to go home for a couple of days, but he would end up back at the hospital, and his mother would try to bring hope and comfort to him.
One night in the middle of the night, he uh, awakened his mother and said, "Mom," and she shook herself and prayed that God would help her to be alert enough to be of some help. He said, "Mom, I'm scared; I don't want to die at 18." And she said, "Son, if you go to sleep, you'll wake up right away again, and you'll look into the face of Jesus. Can you imagine that, son? Try and visualize waking up and looking into the face of Jesus and Jesus looking into your face." "Okay, Mom." And um, he would find comfort. This happened more than once, and each time it happened, she invited him to visualize looking into the face of Jesus. Our grandson went to visit him a number of times and went alone and would visit for a while. And one day he was talking to Travis, and Travis said, "Chris, we've been best friends since the fifth grade. I'd like you to promise me something." "Okay, what is it?" He said, "I want you to promise to meet me in heaven because I want to hang out with you there." Well, Grandpa couldn't have even come close to that altar call. Chris promised.
Another thing that happened was as the months went by and things became worse and worse, you would wake up sometime with this uh, sort of dark thought: "Why me?" Have you ever been in that situation? Have you ever known anyone who was? "Why me?" And as he struggled with this one night, it came to him sort of like his own little vision that if God needs someone to go through some hard experience and still love God and trust Him just the same, then why not me? And they reminded me of something that happened in our family. We had a handicapped daughter who was born with a condition called PKU, for which they do blood tests nowadays, and she had brain damage in her early infancy. It was comparatively light, but she'd been handicapped and also smart enough to know that she wasn't smart. And one day when she was a teenager, she was struggling, wondering what would happen with her life in the future, and I was trying to help her, and I got a little bit spectacular about the end time when everyone meets for the first and last time at the end of the thousand years. You know, millions of people on the outside of the city looking in and millions of people on the inside looking out. And on the outside of the city, they're going to be people shaking their fist at God and saying, "It's not fair; it was too hard for me to follow You in the days in which I lived." "Why, in the days in which I lived, the thoughts of people's hearts was only evil continually—the days of the flood—how could I be a follower of You? It's no fair that I'm out here." And God doesn't take time to discuss it or argue with them. A voice from the inside of the city says, "Noah, would you please stand up on the wall?" Noah stands up on the wall, and things get real quiet out there. And so we went down the line. I said, "There are some people outside the city who lived in the days of Ahab and Jezebel, and when it was terrible, people followed Baal, and they're shaking their fist at God and saying, 'I couldn't be a Christian; I couldn't follow You; too hard in the days in which I lived; everybody was worshiping Baal.'" And a voice from the inside says, "Elijah, could you please stand up on the wall?" And things get quiet outside. You go down through the stream of time; you come to the Dark Ages when the 100 million martyrs gave their blood for Christ. There were people on the outside; they're shaking their fist at God and saying, "It was too hard to be a Christian; the days in which I lived, they would have put me to death; they would have thrown me to the lions; they would have burned me at the stake." And a voice from the inside says, "Huss, Jerome, Cranmer, Latimer, would you stand up on the wall?" And they stand up, and there's nothing more to say outside. On the outside, there's someone who'd died of cancer, and before they died, they shook their fist at God and said, "If You're going to treat me this way, You can hang it on Your nose," and they curse God, and they die, and they're outside the city, and they say, "It wasn't fair; it's too hard for me." And for those kind of people, God needs to have someone on the inside who went through the same experience that stands up in the wall that never wavered in their faith and trust.
Well, I got to the good part. I said to my daughter, "On the outside of the city, there's a young lady who suffered brain damage when she was an infant, and life was too hard for her; she felt alone and rejected, and she's shaking her fist at God and saying, 'It wasn't fair.'" And right there she said, "That's okay, Dad; I got it," and she was weeping. She said, "I got it." Uh, well, it was this picture that came to Travis. Yeah, if God needs people who will still love and trust Him just the same, then why not be—why not me?
Not long ago, I was going through my garage trying to get ready to move. I had 150 boxes to go through. My wife said, "You haven't opened these in 10 years; dump them." I said, "I can't do that; I am sure there's something in the middle of every box that I cannot live without." And sure enough, here was one of them. I found it. It was a little poem that someone had given to me one time. I guess it was written by someone who wrote a lot of poems, even some songs; their name was anonymous. I had a hard time understanding it at first; it's kind of deep, but it must be the poem that meant a lot to some of the people in the honor guard. So I would like to recite it to you. I'm going to do it twice. I'm going to do it at the end too, just to give you a chance to understand the poem. It goes like this:
There is a peace that cometh after sorrow,
Of hope surrendered, not of hope fulfilled;
A peace that looketh not upon tomorrow,
But calmly on the tempest that is stilled;
A peace that does not live enjoys excesses,
Nor in the happy life of love secure,
But in unfailing strength the heart possesses,
From conflicts won while learning to endure.
A peace there is in sacrifice secluded,
A life subdued from will and passion free;
It is not the peace that over Eden brooded,
But that which triumphed in Gethsemane.
Thy will be done.
And this is the peace that continued to come to Travis's heart as he struggled. The senior class uh, were trying to decide what to do on their annual "Do Something Stupid Day," whatever that day is, you know. Travis was a senior; our grandson was a senior. Guess what the class decided to do? They go to the hospital and visit Travis. They all went in; he was overwhelmed; he was also embarrassed; he had no hair, so he put on his baseball cap; he was skin and bones, and his class gathered around, and they talked, and they reminisced, and they tried to encourage him, and he couldn't believe that his class would choose to do that.
One day Travis said to the pastor, our son, "I'd like to have another anointing." And my son froze because he knew that nothing had changed with the last anointing, and he he was going to try and and and say something about that. He said, "You know, we had one, and things didn't change." And Travis said, "Oh, no, no; I don't want to be anointed to be healed; I would like to have an anointing service to celebrate the peace that Jesus has given me." Well, they felt like they had waited too long because he began to slip in and out of consciousness, and sometimes the pain was so bad they had to have him almost under, but they decided better go ahead one day. So the father and mother and beloved Bible teacher and the pastor went to have the anointing. There were 200 people praying at the church; Travis was unconscious. Well, they thought, "I guess we better go ahead anyway," so they went to the head of the bed and began to pray. And as soon as they began to pray, Travis sat up, and while they prayed, he put one hand on his father's neck and the other hand on the pastor's neck and rubbed their necks. They finished, and he thanked them for the service.
Some doctors came by, five doctors; they wanted to discuss the remaining options; none of them were any good of what to do next. And as they were trying to describe the choices that they had left, Travis interrupted, and he said, "Don't do anything special." He said, "I'm going to go to sleep, but I'll wake up right away, and I'll see Jesus." And one of the doctors said, "I'm glad that that concept gives you comfort." Travis looked at him and said, "Doctor, that is not just a concept; that's in your Bible." A social worker, oncology social worker, came by about that time, the one that's supposed to help the family and the patient face death. And the doctor looked at her and said, "That you're not needed here." She said, "I beg your pardon; I came by to help the family and help the patient." And the doctor said, "Beg your pardon; you're not needed here." I kind of like that. Bigger resources.
Well, some of those who have been the closest to him through this all, when they realized that things weren't going to change, began to pray that if it could be God's will that God would give him a little extra comfort at the end, like Stephen. You remember Stephen, when he was dying, he looked up, and he saw the heavens open, and he saw Jesus standing up. Remember that? And they kind of prayed that if possible, God would give him a little extra comfort.
It came up to the weekend just before Thanksgiving last, and um, of all things, he was able to go home for a couple of days. So I went home, and on Sunday our grandson went and got a wheelchair and took him in the wheelchair, and they went and did them all. In fact, they spent eight hours together that day and did their best to have some fun and to reminisce. On Monday morning, Travis said to his parents, uh, "I'm not doing very good; you better get me back to the hospital," so they put him in the car, and they headed for the hospital, 40 miles away in Seattle. But they didn't realize that he was bleeding to death internally, and this made him feel like he needed to stop, so he said, "You better find a restroom; I need to stop." So they stopped at a Denny's restaurant, and they went in with him, his arm around Mother on one side and his arm around Father on the other side, and they came into the restaurant. The receptionist said, "You want the table for—Are you okay?" They said, "We need a restroom." "Okay," so she showed them to the restroom. It was a small restroom; no one was in there; there were two stalls; both doors were open. His father decided to pass the first stall and go to the second, the handicap stall. Mother waited at the door. He was in there trying to help his son when underneath the partition he saw a pair of shoes and what looked like a the trousers of a dark blue silk suit, and he was kind of irritated because he had thought he was in there alone and he wanted to be alone with his son. Travis said to his dad, "Dad, I'm not doing good; I can't breathe." And at that point, a voice came over from the other side, had called his name and said, "Travis, you're going to be okay." He said, "Dad, I I can't breathe; you better go call 9-1-1." And the voice said, "Travis, it's all right; I'm here; you're going to be okay." His father went to call 911. A mother came in, and she was trying to help her son, and the stranger from the other side continued to reassure him. And she said, "Son, do you hear what this man is saying?" It was only three to five minutes that the paramedics were there; they happened to be in the area. And as they came in, they brought a stretcher, and they got Travis out and put him on the stretcher. As they did, the stranger came out from the other stall, went to the head of the stretcher, and leaned over and looked into Travis's face, and Travis, who had been looking at his mother, was suddenly riveted on the face of the stranger. The paramedic said, "Are you his father?" He said, "No, I'm his friend." The stranger continued to lean over him and to follow him all the way out to the ambulance, reassuring him and telling him that he was going to be okay. When he got to the ambulance, Travis was unconscious, and the stranger was gone. They went to the receptionist, and they said, "Did you see someone come in here in a dark blue silk suit?" The receptionist said, "People in dark blue silk suits don't come into Denny's." They went to their car, and the ambulance had taken Travis to a helicopter nearby. They compared notes with the paramedics, and they all agreed that none of them had seen the face of the stranger; apparently only Travis. They wanted to try and make it to the children's hospital; it was rush hour now. They drove the 40 miles in 27 minutes, which must have been a miracle. They got there in time for the helicopter to land, and they brought Travis down, and he died in his mother's arms at 10 o'clock on Monday morning.
Travis had asked that the service be held on Friday and that it would close right at sundown, and so that was their plan. The church was packed. There were students that came from Walla Walla College, busloads; others from Southern College and other places. There were 35 of the doctors and nurses from Children's Hospital who came to the service because of how they've been impressed during those 10 months. The senior class came down the aisle and parted on each side and went up into the choir loft where they sat, and they had one empty chair with a rose on it. And during the service, the pastor tried to relay on to the people, the church members and the academy students, some of the things he had heard from Travis's lips during the 10 months. He had taken notes on questions that he had asked Travis. For example, "Has your thinking changed much during these 10 months?" "Oh, yes," he said. "I used to think that the most important thing in life was to number one, have fun; number two, get things; and number three, be cool. And now I know that the only thing that is important is to know Jesus." "Said, what do you think of your senior classmates?" And he couldn't say enough about them. He said, "They are awesome." He said, "I couldn't believe what they did to come spend their day with me," and he said, "I want to see them all in heaven, and if anyone is missing, I'm really going to be bummed." And that was one senior class that did a lot of thinking. They had prayed for a revival on the campus last year, and it came; they didn't know—did not know it would come that way, and it came because there was someone who found enough faith to not be healed.
I told this at the Florida Camp Meeting the other day, and after the meeting, people came back to the minister's room, some of them weeping, and one of them was a lady who told me that for 18 months—18 years—she had watched her father suffer; he never complained. And what a relief it was to get a new perspective. She said, "You can't believe what church members did; they would come by, and they would say, 'If you had enough faith, he could be healed,' or 'He must have some sin in his life where he'd be healed.' Can you imagine?" Then they probably went back and reported one missionary visit. We have had some gross misunderstanding, neighbor. It takes a lot of faith to not be healed.
We were there at Thanksgiving right after all of this, and uh, I asked if we could go out to Denny's, so we went to Denny's; took turns going in the restroom. I stood there by myself and looked and pondered, and I thought, "If someone from the heavenly country would come to this smelly place, they deserve to wear a dark blue silk suit." And then suddenly the picture changed. And because someone did come from a far country to this smelly place called the planet Earth, and because of that, we all have a bright hope for tomorrow. But I would like to leave with you that classic statement in the book *Desire of Ages*: "Not Enoch, who was translated to heaven, nor Elijah, who ascended in a fiery chariot, was greater or more honored than John the Baptist, who perished alone in the dungeon. And of all the gifts that heaven can bestow, fellowship with Christ in suffering is the most weighty gift and the highest honor." And of course, this is based upon a text found in First Peter, the fourth chapter, verse 12: "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy."
You ready for the poem?
There is a peace that cometh after sorrow,
Of hope surrendered, not of hope fulfilled;
A peace that looketh not upon tomorrow,
But calmly on the tempest that is stilled;
A peace that does not live enjoys excesses,
Nor in the happy life of love secure,
But in unfailing strength the heart possesses,
From conflicts won while learning to endure.
A peace there is in sacrifice secluded,
A life subdued from will and passion free;
It is not the peace that over Eden brooded,
But that which triumphed in Gethsemane.
Thy will be done.
Shall we pray? Their Father in heaven, we know it is not Your will that people suffer and die, but we also know that it's Your will that people who go through these things will show that they still love You and trust You just the same. Help us to have the kind of faith we need, please, and save us from the misunderstandings we've had. We'd like to praise You for the honor guard that has gone before, and if You have in mind for any of us to be in the honor guard, please go with us. And thank You that You have provided something far better than a few short—
Years in this, in this place, and for the friendly arms of the cross that point the way to the heavenly country, in Jesus' name, amen.