In 1970 I was sent with my wife Lindsay
to work in the far southwest corner of Uganda , in what seemed to me at the
time to be a remote town named Kabale, over 5000 feet up in a hilly area and
close to the equator. It was a journey
into the unknown for us.
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| Kabale main street |
We discovered that Kabale had been in the 1930s at the
centre of a remarkable growth in Christianity which became known as the East
African Revival. Missionaries had
brought the message of Christianity to Uganda many years earlier, and it had
taken root in a very receptive community, but for all that, the attitude
members of the Church of Uganda at the time was that "provided they were
baptised and confirmed and not discovered
in any particular wrongdoing, they were Christians." 1
One of the key figures in the Revival was Dr Jo Church, a
pioneer missionary doctor (who with his wife Decie befriended us and looked
after us in Kampala
when our daughter Janine was born in August 1970). Jo
had been deeply involved in the Revival, which had involved many Ugandans in
repentance from drinking, lying, adultery and cheating, and had involved many
expatriate Christians in repenting of their 'colonial' attitudes of superiority
to, and aloofness from the very Africans amongst whom they lived and worked.
Dreams.
In 1935 Jo had been stirred by a vivid dream in which he had
been challenged to forgive properly people with whom he had quarrelled in the
past. 2 We discovered
that meaningful dreams had been
experienced by many others at that time
too.
"Strange reports began to come in from little country churches
of Kigezi (Kabale was the county town of Kigezi).
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| Kigezi villages |
'Christian' leaders confessed they had never been born again at all. Sums of
money, stolen years before, were returned and a great longing was born in those
who loved the Lord to go out all over the district and tell others about Him.
….Through those teachers, now born again, cleansed from sin and consecrated to
God, Christ himself reached out to the people. Men, women and children flocked
to the churches, many brought there by dreams. Many were in paroxysms of grief
and remorse as they saw their sins. There was great joy in a little church when
a man of evil repute stood up and recounted how he had been told in a dream to
look up the number of a certain hymn and sing it. He woke and got up at once
and found that the hymn was
I lay my sins on Jesus, the spotless lamb of God
And as he sang, he turned to the Saviour." 3
Dreams and visions in
the Bible
Lindsay and I were well aware that dreams, visions and
direct communications by God are mentioned several times in the Bible. There
are a various ways in which God sometimes speaks to people.
There's the story of Samuel, which starts with the words
"In those days the word of the Lord was rare; there were not many
visions" but then goes on to describe the young Samuel being spoken to
directly by God. 4
There's the well known story of 'Joseph and his technicolor
dreamcoat': Joseph's prophetic and accurate dreams got him into a lot of
trouble, but eventually the outcome of his dreams determined not only Joseph's
destiny but the destiny of the whole tribe of Hebrews, later to be known as the
Israelites. 5
Then there's the other Joseph - the one who married Mary the
mother of Jesus. It's recorded that he
was guided no less than four times in dreams at about the time when Jesus was born. 6
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| Joseph's Dream - Rembrandt |
Fred Lemon
I remember reading some years ago the extraordinary story of
Fred Lemon (Some of his books are still
available online second hand) As an old lag and lifetime
criminal, unsurprisingly he found his way into Dartmoor prison in the days when
prisons were prisons. Quite suddenly, out of the blue, he physically met the
Living Christ who came into his cell and Fred was tremendously converted. Later
he received a complete healing from a debilitating back condition and he became
a much sought after preacher.
Chariots of Fire
Most of us have seen or heard of the film 'Chariots of
Fire'. From where did this title come? The film is about the devout Christian
runner Eric Liddell who won a gold medal in the 1924 Olympics (Later he went on to do missionary work in China)
The film's title was inspired by the line,
"Bring me my chariot of fire," from the William Blake poem adapted
into the popular British hymn 'Jerusalem';
the hymn is heard at the end of the film.
Blake himself got the original phrase from the Bible, where there are
two references to visions of chariots of fire, in 2 Kings 2.11 and 2 Kings 6.17, part of which reads
Elisha's servant got up, went out of the house, and saw the Syrian
troops with their horses and chariots surrounding the town. He went back to
Elisha and exclaimed, “We are doomed, sir! What shall we do?”
“Don't be afraid,” Elisha answered. “We have more on
our side than they have on theirs.” Then he prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes and let him see!” The Lord answered his prayer, and Elisha's servant
looked up and saw the hillside covered with horses and chariots of fire all
around Elisha.
Nigeria, 2019
The story about
Elisha's servant and his vision has an extraordinary modern parallel in an
event which happened recently in Nigeria 7
A group of 500 Nigerian
Muslim-background Christians, who gathered together for safety after a string
of Boko Haram attacks, were later attacked again by the Islamist militant
group. Most escaped, apart from 76 men, women and children who were taken
captive.The 76 were taken to a Boko Haram terrorists’ camp where they were tortured. The four male leaders of the group were told at gunpoint to renounce their faith in Christ and revert to Islam. When they refused, holding fast to their Saviour, the men were shot in front of their families and friends.
The following week, the wives of the four martyred men were also ordered to renounce their faith or their children would be executed.
These schoolchildren are
from families who were forced to flee their homes because of Boko
Haram and Fulani herdsmen attacks
As the mothers struggled under this
terrible burden into the night, the children came running in and said that the
Lord Jesus had appeared to them and “all would be well”. According to the
account, the Lord Jesus then appeared to all of the group and told them not to
fear, that He would protect them. They should not renounce Him, but stay strong
knowing that “He is the way, the truth and the life”.
The next morning the children, one a girl as young as four, were lined up against a wall by the terrorists and their four mothers were told they could save them if they renounced Jesus Christ and returned to Islam. The mothers refused. The soldiers cocked their rifles and prepared to take aim when they suddenly started to grab at their heads, screaming and shouting “Snakes, snakes!” Some ran away and others dropped dead where they stood.
As one of the soldiers fell down dead, a Christian captive reached down to pick up the soldier’s gun to fire at the fleeing Boko Haram militants, but the youngest child put her hand on his arm and said, “You don’t need to do that. Can you not see the men in white fighting for us?”
All 72 lives were spared and the group is now living in other regions of Nigeria that are safe for Christians. When our English-speaking contact asked their pastor why Jesus appeared to them and not to others he replied, “He does not need to. You have over 200 versions of Scripture and many people able to explain the Bible to you. These people do not.”
The Silence of God
Visions and dreams from God, are by their nature rare and
therefore remarkable. Sometimes God is silent, as he was for a long time with
Job, who longed to know why he had such grievous hardship, but was unable to
get any response from God until God chose to speak to him. 8 Even more significantly, God was
silent when Jesus was on the cross, calling out "My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?" 9
God decides when he will communicate with us. It's not for
us to make demands on God about this, and certainly not to follow the
alternative route of visiting a fortune teller. 10
……..
The practice of fortune telling is forbidden by God. It's in the Bible, Deuteronomy 18:9-13, "When you arrive in the Promised Land you must be very careful lest you be corrupted by the horrible customs of the nations now living there. ….. No one may practice black magic, or call on the evil spirits for aid, or be a fortune teller, or be a serpent charmer, medium, or wizard, or call forth the spirits of the dead. Anyone doing these things is an object of horror and disgust to the Lord, and it is because the nations do these things that the Lord your God will displace them. You must walk blamelessly before the Lord your God."
The future is known only by God. It's in the Bible, Isaiah 8:19, "So why are you trying to find out the future by consulting witches and mediums. Don't listen to their whisperings and mutterings. Can the living find out the future from the dead? Why not ask your God?"
So what about me?
I was once having a conversation with God, and said to him, "You don't make communication very easy. You are invisible, and to most people
most of the time physically inaudible.
So conversation has to be one-way.
I know you spoke directly to Samuel in the Old Testament, and have
occasionally given other people the experience of directly hearing your voice,
but what about me, now, today? Where are you? Miles away on heaven, or right
here? Am I supposed to imagine you standing here with me, or what?"
Two responses came to my mind, which I assume to be God 'speaking' to me in
reply.1. Jesus said that he would be right here, within me and within other believers. So God is actually 'inside' me in a way which I cannot understand. Jesus also said, 'where two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am amongst them.'
2. John 14.18ff: I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you……Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them…. the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
So that's where God is!
1 Canon Bill Butler, Hill Ablaze, p56
2 J E
Church: Quest for the Highest, p115
3
Patricia St John: Breath of Life, p123
4 I Samuel 3
5 Genesis 37
6 Matthew 1.18-2.23
7 Barnabas Fund magazine, March 2019
8 Job 38.1
9 Matthew 27.46
9 Matthew 27.46
10
https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/fortune-tellers
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