100 Prison Meditations: Cries of Truth from Behind the Iron Curtain (17 page)

Dove-Like Israel

Israel and the Holy Spirit are both likened to a dove, as if to say that they belong to the same species. The Holy Spirit is God. We too are partakers of the dove-like divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).

The Bridegroom says to the bride who is a symbol of His nation, “You have dove’s eyes” (Song 1:15). Why is Israel called a dove? “Song of Songs Rabbah,” a Jewish book of wisdom, explains: “The dove is faithful. Israel was likewise faithful to the Holy One, praised be He, at Sinai. For they did not say that ten commandments, or twenty or thirty were enough for them, but they said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do and be obedient’ (Exodus 24:7). The dove is distinguishable among all other birds. Israel is likewise distinguished by deeds. The dove is modest. Israel is likewise modest…The dove does not leave its nest even if someone has taken its brood. Israel likewise continues to visit the temple site even though the Temple has been destroyed. The dove journeys and returns to its nest. Israel likewise ‘shall come eagerly like birds from Egypt and like doves from Assyria’ (Hosea 11:11). Others are attracted to the dove; likewise, converts are attracted to Israel. The dove, unlike other birds, offers its neck for slaughter without struggling; children of Israel likewise give their lives for the Holy One, praised be He. The dove does not leave its mate; Israel likewise does not leave the Holy One, praised be He.”

Belong to the dove, like Israel of God!

Humility

One of the main characteristics of a great man is his humility. Abraham is considered the founder of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions. What was his opinion of himself? “I who am but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27). David was a king, a poet, a man after God’s heart. His opinion of himself? “I am a worm, and no man” (Psalm 22:6).

We arrive nowhere without a humble acknowledgment of our unworthiness. A politician once asked a bishop, “What can I do to obtain wisdom for ruling this country?” It was raining. The bishop told him, “Go outside in the rain for half an hour and stand with your head up in an unprotected place.” The politician did this. When he returned, the bishop said, “Did God grant you some wise instruction?” The man answered angrily, “The only thing I could think about was that I am a fool.” The bishop nodded, “Quite a discovery for a first try.”

Start like Paul with the recognition, “I am an abortive” (1 Corinthians 15:8, in the original). Only then will you be able to take upon yourself the burden of being famous. Sir Thomas Moore, martyred under Henry VIII of England, said, “We must stand fast at the risk of being heroes.” Heroism is not something to be sought, but to be accepted though it endangers the more precious virtue of humility.

Remain humble, knowing that whatever your aims and however many skills you employ, you will not attain your earthly aims.

Engels was right when he wrote to the Russian revolutionist Vera Zasulitch on April 23, 1885, “Men who bragged about having made a revolution, always realized next day that they did not know what they were doing, that the revolution performed had no resemblance to the one they intended. This is what Hegel called the irony of history, an irony only few historic personalities avoided.”

This applies not just to social revolutions. Not only have men like Lenin and Hitler died disappointed. Certainly the Church is not what the Church fathers intended. How unlike it is to the first church full of love in Jerusalem.

Luther intended a reformation within the Catholic Church and died very unhappy about the chaos that resulted from his efforts. Wesley too was disappointed. Mission founders have similar experiences.

Do not be proud. We are not made for successes, at least not for lasting ones. We are all shaped as vessels for the use of the Master. His purposes are fulfilled in our lives: “It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

Be humble and remember that even your humility does not come through your own merit. Then you will be a chosen vessel.

Strange Commandment

You may sometimes wonder about the commandments God gives His prophets, whom men are taught to regard as models of life for their people. The first word the Lord ever said to the prophet Hosea was, “Take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry” (1:2). Hosea complied. But why should a prophet have to do such a thing?

I believe the best explanation is given in the Talmud:

When he realized that he had sinned Hosea rose to ask mercy for himself. The Holy One, praised be He, said to him, “Before you ask mercy for yourself, ask mercy for Israel.”

None of the great men and women of God could be completely exempt from sin; they needed it. It was in the providence of God that they should know it, so that their hearts would be soft for the multitude who sin. Taught by their own experience of life, they ceased to condemn, but began to intercede for those who trespass against the will of God.

You also may have received some strange guidance from God. Perhaps its purpose was to teach you humility.

Jesus Incognito

Jesus often wished to remain incognito. He passed through Galilee with His disciples “and He did not want anyone to know it” (Mark 9:30). Might some people have Jesus near them even now, without knowing that it is He?

Angels too like to walk among men unrecognized. It is written: “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels” (Hebrews 13:2). Jesus is the Lord of angels—He might have taught them to pass incognito.

Like all who wish to remain hidden, Jesus uses pseudonyms. Even “Jesus” is a pseudonym. Isaiah foretold that a virgin would bear a Son “and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). How can someone who does not bear this name be the person who fulfills the prophecy? If Mr. Smith is announced, the arrival of Mr. Taylor is not what you were entitled to expect. But before the birth of this child from a virgin, an angel tells Joseph, “She will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus…Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying:…they shall call His name Immanuel” (Matthew 1:21–23). Strange.

Nor is the name “Jesus” the last name He will bear. Jesus appears to His apostle John saying that he who overcomes in the fight of faith will be made a pillar in the temple of God, adding, “I will write on him My new name” (Revelation 3:12).

In eternity Jesus will have another name. Jesus (
Yeshuah
in Hebrew) means “Salvation.” In eternity there will be no one to be saved. Apart from the name inscribed on those who overcome, “He had a name written that no one knew except Himself” (Revelation 19:12). We say “Jesus,” but this is only the name under which He made Himself known to us. It is not His only name.

Even during His earthly life, Jesus did not always bear this name. “When eight days were completed for the circumcision of the Child, His name was called Jesus” (Luke 2:21). Until that time He had no earthly name. He was simply the Son of God incarnate, the divine Child. He could have been called by any name.

Scripture states, “You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them” (Leviticus 18:5). It is not written “which an Israelite” or “which a believer in Christ” does, but “a man,” any man. Scripture also says, “This is the law of man” (2 Samuel 7:19 in Hebrew). This is not the law of those who believe in the right name, but in the law of man, correct for all men. Although no man can be saved without knowledge of Jesus, there might be people who know Him and love Him as He walks among them incognito, under another name. There are people in all denominations who belong to Him.

Problems Connected With Death

I write the things below not as teaching, but to acquaint Western believers with the doubts and tempests in the spirit through which many Christians pass when in solitary confinement, with death reigning around them.

In the biblical perspective, death is not something to worry about. Perhaps chrysalises practice some funeral rite when one ceases to be along them, not knowing it had become a butterfly. So the believer passes at death to a better existence.

We, the living, also remain in communion with them.

Luther abolished public prayers for the dead because such prayers had been abused for commercial purposes. Greedy priests sold indulgences which were supposed to help the dead escape torments.

However, prayer mentioning the dead has a thorough biblical foundation. Nehemiah prayed, “Now therefore, our God…Do not let all the trouble seem small before You that has come upon us, our kings,…and our prophets” (9:32). When Nehemiah spoke these words, Israel no longer had kings. They were all dead, living in another sphere, but participating in what happened to Nehemiah’s contemporaries. The troubles of the living Jews were shared by their former kings who had passed beyond death.

The verse is not always interpreted like this, but it can be understood in this manner.

The living also share in something that seems to be of great concern to the dead. Boaz said, “Ruth the Moabitess…I have acquired as my wife, to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance, that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brethren” (Ruth 4:10).

It is important that we perpetuate in honor the names of our earthly predecessors and those who brought us to faith.

When I was in prison, I had the strong impression that three men who had been greatly influential in my conversion and were then dead—Isaac Feinstein, Christian Wolkes, and Giuseppe Cavane—were near me, imploring that I keep their good names through remaining faithful in tribulation. Let it be our concern “that the name of the dead may not be cut off from among his brethren.” Because Boaz took this care, the name of the dead husband of Ruth is mentioned in our Bible.

As a rule, dead saints are gathered to their people (Genesis 49:33). They belong to the same church as we and we work together with them for salvation under our common head, Jesus Christ. The saints who have passed away “are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple” (Revelation 7:15). But perhaps there is also another alternative.

We belong to the Body of Christ, who gave Himself for sinners. Perhaps we too can give ourselves for sinners. Paul wrote, “I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:3). Moses also asked to be blotted out from the Book of Life if God would not forgive the Jewish people (Exodus 32:32). In principle this might be possible.

In his 95 Theses which started the Reformation, Luther, who believed in purgatory, approved of the popular belief that Popes Severinus and Paschal were willing to endure the pains of that place for the benefit of the faithful.

The question of our relationship with those who are on the other shore preoccupied us much in prison. Around us many, just the best, died. We could be killed at any moment. This made us think in a manner apart, which probably would not be shared by Christians who lead the ordinary life.

My granddaughter told me: “I enjoy being prayed for by many. I would not like to miss this joy in heaven.” Prayers for the dead might not be of any use to them, but should we do only what is useful?

Strange Idiom

In the text of our Bibles, it appears that God is the author of all our calamities.

God sold the Jews “into the hand of Sisera, commander of the army of Hazor, into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab” (1 Samuel 12:9). Why should God deliver His people into the hands of His enemies?

God says through the prophet Jeremiah, “I will cause to cease from the cities of Judah and from the streets of Jerusalem the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness” (Jeremiah 7:34). We learned that God is represented by Jesus who changed water into wine to give men pleasure. Yet He boasts of making joy vanish.

To understand those parts of Scripture that blame evil on God, we have to remember a peculiarity of the Hebrew language.

The Old Testament Joseph, when in prison with the butler and baker of Pharaoh, predicted to the one that he would be restored to Pharaoh’s favor and to the other that he would be hanged. The chief butler tells Pharaoh that Joseph “restored me to my office, and he hanged him [the chief baker]” (Genesis 41:13). In fact, Joseph continued to remain in prison and took no part in the advancement of the one man, nor in the execution of the other. However, it is in the nature of the Hebrew language to call one who predicts or warns the “author” of the respective action.

Jesus spoke with His disciples in Aramean, a Hebrew dialect. When He told them, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23), the words did not have the same meaning for them as they would for us. The words did not bestow upon the disciples an actual power to absolve or not to absolve sins. This power rests with God alone.

The apostles were called to proclaim the gospel. Those who accepted their message would receive the divine pardon, the others not. The disciples were thus, as in the case of Joseph, the “authors” of the forgiveness or lack of forgiveness of sin.

But now another question arises. The Hebrew language was fashioned by God to be a vehicle of His revelation. Why then does this idiom exist which gives the impression that the blame for evil lies on God just like the authorship of good? There is a deep meaning in it.

We usually hate men who wrong us and retaliate against them. God wishes to exonerate the wrongdoer in our eyes. He wishes that we harbor no bad feelings toward him. So He has formed His chosen language so as to give the impression that the tyranny of a Sisera in olden times or that of a Stalin or Hitler in modern times are His decision. Then we can love even the tyrants and their tools. Our account is only with God, and Him we love.