January 23, 2002
Reading
“So great a cloud of
witnesses” (Heb 12:1)
As I think about the reality that I am a child of God, one whose sins have been forgiven and who can enter the presence of Almighty God and call Him “Father”, I begin to think of my spiritual family. I think back to the early Christians such as Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Timothy, etc, those who blazed the trail of the gospel in a heathen world, many of whom suffered ignominious deaths because they propagated the love of Christ. I think of men like John Wycliffe, John Oldcastle, John Huss, William Tyndale, Bishop Ridley, Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer, all of whom were executed because they refused to deny the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Men such as Martin Luther, John Owen, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, John and Charles Wesley, George Whitfield, Charles Spurgeon and many others who boldly preached the Word of God, many enduring suffering and excommunication from the “church”.
I think also of the millions who have lived their lives quietly, loving the Lord with all of their heart but whose names are not recorded in the history books but are written in the Lamb’s Book of life. I think of those who love the Lord and whose hearts are rendered apart as they see their sons and daughters led off into slavery because they confess Jesus to be their Savior. Small pockets of saints who meet in basements knowing that should they be caught reading the Bible or praying they would be imprisoned with the threat of death. Today, Christian missionaries languish in prisons throughout the world because they preach Christ crucified.
Prayer warriors such as John Hyde of India, George Mueller of orphanage fame, Gladys Aylward, Corie Ten-Boom, William Carey, Hudson Taylor and David Livingstone who traveled into the unknown world to share the love of God to those who may kill them for doing so. Of recent memory who can forget the five missionaries martyred in Ecuador, the three who gave their lives in 1996 as they preached the salvation message in Columbia and others who have sacrificed their lives as they obeyed the great commission?
I am greatly humbled to be counted as ‘one’
with this great list of witnesses. I am also honored to be counted as a fellow
son by adoption into the family of God. But greater by far am I astounded that
I am ‘one’ with Jesus Christ. I am in Him and He is in me! As a son I am
positioned with Him at the right hand of our Father, blessed with every
spiritual blessing in Him, protected by Him and loved by Him. He intercedes for
me, comforts, strengthens and encourages me. I am one with Him! Surely, fellow
Believer, when considering such magnificent things, we
are forced to ask with Ruth, “Why have I found grace in Thine eyes? (Ruth
Such a cloud of witnesses – all Old Testament saints, New Testament saints, every man, woman and child who have ever been made a child of God by faith in Jesus Christ. I, even I, am a member of the family of God. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!