In Which I celebrate Church History and Great Christians | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

“There is Always Enough” Heidi Baker’s Transforming Vision

Heidi Baker

Generally, Christ gives people very specific visions and revelations to strengthen them for the next phase of their journeys.

However, Heidi Baker’s wonderful vision of Christ has been both applicable and comforting to me in a very different calling–as a businesswoman and writer.

Here it is, with some background: Heidi has a complete physical, and perhaps emotional breakdown and is “sick and exhausted” after over twenty years of 18 hour days serving the poor, in Indonesia, Hong Kong and then Mozambique.

She goes to the Toronto Airport Fellowship because Rolland has just returned from there, “full of faith and compassion,” having had “a dramatically great time with God.”

In her book, There is Always Enough, she describes being on the floor before the Lord for hours, “unable to move. His presence was so heavy upon me. He demonstrated that he is my only strength. He is my hope. I depend only on him. I can do nothing without him.”

“One night I was groaning in intercession for the children of Mozambique. There were thousands coming toward me and I was crying, “No, Lord, there are too many.”

“Then I had a dramatic, clear vision of Jesus. I was with Him, and thousands and thousands of children surrounded us. I saw his shining face and his intense, burning eyes of love. I also saw his body. It was bruised and broken, and his side was pierced.”

He said, “Look into my eyes. You give them something to eat.” Then he took a piece of his broken body and handed it to me. It became bread in my hands, and I began to give it to the children. It multiplied in my hands.

Then again the Lord said, “Look into my eyes. You give them something to drink.” He gave me a cup of blood and water, which flowed from his side. I knew it was a cup of bitterness and joy. I drank it, and then began to give it to the children to drink. The cup did not go dry. By this point, I was crying uncontrollably. I was completely undone by his fiery eyes of love. I realized what it had cost him to provide such spiritual and physical food for us all.

The Lord spoke to my heart, and said, “There will always be enough, because I died.”

I was refreshed and ready to go back to Mozambique. I expected to see a wave of new, amazing miracles right away. Instead, all hell broke loose.”

Lol!

Martin Luther: A Psychological Profile

By Anita Mathias

Martin Luther

Last night, Roy and I watched a PBS DVD on Martin Luther. Excellent.

I don’t know when we have last had to pause a documentary because we were laughing so hard. We found the comments of the scholars hilarious.

The documentary goes through Luther’s childhood with unloving, lower middle class, but ambitious upwardly mobile parents who wanted him to become a lawyer to fulfil their dreams for him.

Portrait of Martin Luther’s parents of Lucas Cranach

After a dramatic conversion, during a lightning storm, he commits his life to God. (Good move!) “My father raged and acted like a fool. How was he to know that one monk in the family would bring him more fame and shame than a thousand advocates.” Luther writes.

Luther then joins one of the strictest monastic orders in Europe, the Eremite Augustinians of Strict Observance.

Luther did whatever he did 110%. (That must be the secret of the people who accomplish several lifetimes’ work in one.)

And so he throws himself in a regimen of praying, fasting, confessions, whippings, watchings. He says, “If ever a man could be saved by monkery, it would have been I. If I had continued any longer, I would have killed myself” He later blamed his ascetic practices for permanently ruining his health.

He is disgusted by the worldliness, extravagance and cynicism, he sees on a trip to Rome as a young monk, and for the first time starts doubting Catholic teachings–in particular, the buying of indulgences to rescue a soul from purgatory.

The floodgates of doubt open. “Who knows if it is really so,” he wonders.
* * *

Excessive introspection and obsession with his own sinfulness was ruining his mental, spiritual and physical health. He heart-breakingly writes, “I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailor and hangman of my poor soul.”

Luther went to confession to his superior, Von Staupitz as many as twenty times a day, spending up to six hours a day on the practice. He wrote, “I was myself more than once driven to the very depths of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated him!”

Von Staupitz appointed the young monk Professor of Bible Studies in the new university of Wittenberg, hoping it would provide a distraction from Luther’s recurrent theological brooding and devastating introspection.

Johann Von Staupitz

Luther horrified declared that so much work would kill him. To which Von Staupitz replied, “Quite all right, God has plenty of work for clever men in heaven.”

Von Staupitz’s plan, modern scholars say, was that Luther would be so shattered that he would no more time for guilt and introspected, and would collapse and sleep soundly.

Work always operated on Luther as Prozac.

In this case, studying scripture shows Luther that the Catholic church taught much that simply wasn’t so.

* * *

He realized: This whole thing is not about you and the church. It’s about you and God.

Salvation is a gift from God, a gift received through faith. The church has no right to intervene or interfere.

To receive salvation, you simply put out your empty, open hands and receive this gift which God wants you to receive.

Once Luther realized that the spiritual life and salvation is a matter between God and the individual he said, “I felt myself to have been born again, and to have passed through open doors to heaven already.”

We all need to come to this realization, and when we come to it, there is a great revitalization of our spiritual lives, and fresh joy and peace.

The church should never take the place of Christ as the protagonist of the central drama of our spiritual lives. If/when it does, our faith is fair on the way to becoming toxic.

* * *

And so, in accessible language, Luther writes the 95 Theses, the blog posts of the day. He attacks the Church’s excesses, in particular, its greed in the sale of indulgences.

If he had attacked their theology, they may well have ignored him. But he got them where it hurt–he encouraged people not to give it their money.

Big business! A typical market day scene in Germany before the Reformation.

Big Business–The Catholic Church of Luther’s Day.

Rome, predictably, was infuriated.

“I never thought that such a story would rise from Rome over one little scrap of paper! ” Luther wrote.
* * *

For Martin Luther, the mounting fury of the Catholic church inspired not doubt and fear, but an extraordinary courage that would only grow stronger with every attack he faced.

He had the strong idea that if the Christian life was lived authentically, then you must expect to suffer.

Luther seized the criticism of him almost as a confirmation of his vocation as a reformer. The more the church tried to silence Luther, the more he became convinced that he had a vocation which needed to be seen through.

Despite the Papal Bull of excommunication, despite the fact that his life would be in danger if he fell into the hands of the Catholic Church, Luther continued with his attacks on it.

“I decided to believe freely and to slave to the authority of no one , whether council, university or pope. I was bound not only to assert the truth but to defend it with my blood and death,” he wrote.

He had an extraordinary combination of high idealism, resolve in the single-minded pursuit of an ideal, and naivete!!
* * *

Luther squared up to the church with a style of opposition it had never encountered before, a surprisingly modern style of opposition.

He discovered a new and powerful weapon on his side–the printing press. For movements to spead, their ideas needed to spread.

The printing press invented in Germany by Gutenberg 30 years before the birth of Luther was to Luther’s day what the internet is to our day. It meant that ideas could travel. They could not be stopped.

As the presses spread his 95 Theses throughout Germany, Luther watched and realized that they could provide him with a vast new audience.

He next wrote, “An Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation,” a devastating attack on the pope and the church.

“German money in violation of nature flies across the Alps.”

He attacked the number of secretaries the pope had provided by German tithes (a criticism which could be levelled at some of the princelings of our modern churches).

Luther wrote, “I was not trying to get praise and fame through my writings and little books for almost everyone I knew condemned my harsh and stinging tone.”
* * *

Alistair Macgrath—”He wrote very well, he wrote very wittily, he wrote very rudely. Many people found themselves fascinated with this man who would use such crude language when arguing with the Pope and with the church.

Luther says, “If Rome is not a brothel above all brothels one can imagine, then I do not know what brothel means.”

“The pope should stand up like the stinking sinner he is.”

“The pope should restrain himself and get his fingers out of the pie.”

The scholars on the programme comment “He’s savvy; he’s grown up among books and writing from a young age; he’s good at instinctively sensing what words and arguments will work best for whom.”

“He is an incredible writer. He uses earthy ordinary language; he’s just fun to read out loud; he’s sarcastic, he’s witty, he’s profound. If you get attacked by Luther, you are just torn up one side, and down the other.”

Luther next writes, “On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” an attack on Catholic sacraments. If you are going to build, you sometimes have to demolish and this was a work of considerable destructive harshnbess

Luther started something that snowballed throughout Germany.
* * *

Luther was summoned before the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V at the famous Diet of Worms. Cardinal Aleander, representing the Pope, showed Luther a pile of his books, and asked him if he wrote them, and was willing to recant. Interestingly, for he was just a human being after all, and one potentially facing death at the hands of an unjust institution, he asks for 24 hours to consider his response. Which is famous.

Luther at the Diet of Worms

“I do not accept the authority of Popes and councils for they have often erred and contradicted themselves. I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive only to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything for to go against my conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.”

One of history’s greatest declarations of exhausted defiance!!

Luther’s statement marks the dawn of a new era, the ordinary person standing up against authority.

It’s a grand moment when an individual ends up standing for something much larger than himself.

He fully expects that the Church will sentence him to death as a heretic, as it did the Czech reformer, Jan Hus (who also appeared at a Council under a guarantee of safe conduct). However, the vote is inconclusive. Luther is free, though his life is in danger from the Catholic church, which combined spiritual, administrative and judicial authority (a dangerous situation).

* * *

Wartburg Castle

Luther’s patron, Elector Friedrich the Wise now “kidnaps” Luther–using masked horseman– and spirits him away to Wartburg Castle, where he lives anonymously and quietly, hidden away from the world.

Going from the peaks of glory, attention and notoriety to anonymity and invisibility is a frequent Christian experience.

So Luther goes from the drama and intense experience, the elation and energy of the Diet of Worms to a solitary existence hidden in the Wartburg Castle. He regresses into depression, despair and anguish, introspection and melancholy, and had a strong sense that the devil was tormenting him.

And yet again, he snapped out of depression by using the Prozac which had worked in the past: Work.

He threw himself into one of his greatest enterprises yet–a translation of the Bible into German, thus making scripture accessible to the common man.
* * *

And while he was in the Wartburg, Germany’s Peasant Revolts commenced, sparked by Luther’s ideas and writings. Luther was horrified as he saw the destruction the reformation entailed. His ideas turned out to be more radical than he had realized.

Disappointly, he does not support the revolting peasants, but attacks them in vicious prose.

“I simply taught, preached and wrote God’s word. I opposed indulgences and papists, but never with force,” he wrote.
* * *

Concluding comments from the scholars on the program:

Luther’s story reminds us of the power of individual charisma, charisma which can travel on the written page.

Luther is an elementary force, embodied in language, offering a vision of salvation which is liberating, which resonates, which seems real to so many people. Once you see it that way, you can’t see the world differently.

Luther is irrepressible, he is outrageous, he is witty, and very funny.

He held onto his sense of rage, and his ear for a good phrase. He remained devoted to his principles, and to speaking out.

“When I die, I want to be a ghost, so that I continue to pester the bishops, priests and godless monks so that they can have more trouble with a dead Luther than they had before with a thousand living ones,” Luther wrote.

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The Colosseum, the Jewish Revolt, the Diaspora, and Christianity

By Anita Mathias

Okay, we did the Colosseum today, partly because it was one of those “When in Rome” things. On reflection, we rather wish that we had done the Basilicas.

However, there is no way to grasp the sheer magnitude of the place without seeing it in real life.

The nearly 2000 year old structure was so solidly built that despite the depredations of earthquakes, fires, riots, war, and the plundering of its apparently inexhaustible supply of ready cut travertine blocks for St. Peter’s, the Barberini and Cancelleria palaces, and pollution and the vibrations of cars and the metro, it’s still relatively intact. “A noble wreck in ruinous perfection,” Byron called it.

Construction commenced in AD 72 with the booty from Vespasian’s brutal crushing of the Jewish revolt.

70, 000 Hebrew slaves did the heavy work at the Colosseum, hauling 50,000 cartloads of pre-cut travertine from the quarries at Tivoli 27 km away.

Interestingly, these were the people Paul wrote his letter to the Romans to.

Vespasian chose the site of a lake that lay in front of Nero’s Aureus Doma, Golden Palace, where Nero had erected a Colossus, giant statue, of himself as a Sun God (hence its name).

It was inaugurated in 8 years, a short time for such a massive building by Vespasian’s son, Titus.

Before the building of the Colosseum, gladiatorial and other bloody sports took place in the Forum in wooden stands specially erected and taken down for the occasion.

The colosseum was designed over four levels, seating up to 70-80,000 people. “Tickets” were free–carved on wood, with the entrance, row, aisle, and seat under. There were 80 entrances, beneath the magnificent arches. Thus 80,000 people could be seated within minutes, with admirable Roman efficiency (now inherited by the Swiss, Germans and US military??).

The word arena is derived from the Latin for sand, which covered the floor to soak up blood.

And here, the gladiators greeted Caesar with their famous greeting, “Hail Caesar, we who are about to die, salute you. Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.”

In the hundred day games that inaugurated the Colosseum, 9000 beasts were massacred, 12 a minute, and during the 450 years it was used, several breeds of African elephants and lions were rendered extinct.

As Christianity took hold, the gladiatorial games gradually grew less popular. They were eventually banned in 404 AD, and animal fights ended in the next century.

Isn’t it amazing that people who now weep at the suffering of animals could once see bears tied to bulls, fighting to the death, dogs set against wolves, lions taking on tigers, all to the death!

Has Christianity contributed to an evolution and softening of the heart? I hope so.

* * *

Interior of the Coliseum, with a partially reconstructed arena floor in the foreground

Coliseum — interior archway leading to the arena.

The Jewish historian Josephus who was present at the festivities and the display of the Jewish booty after the crushing of the Jewish revolt writes,

“As dawn began to break, Titus and Vespasian emerged, crowned in laurel wreaths and wearing the time-honored purple clothes, and walked to the Octavian colonnade. There the Senate, the magistrates and those of Equestrian status were waiting for their arrival.

A tribunal had been erected in front of the colonnade, with ivory chairs placed on it for them. As they walked forward to take their seats, all the soldiers raised an immediate cheer, paying abundant testimony to their valor, while Titus and Vespasian sat unarmed, dressed in silk garments and wearing their laurel wreaths. Vespasian acknowledged their acclaim, and, although they were keen to continue cheering, made a sign for silence. As all fell completely quiet, he rose, and, covering most of his head with a veil, made the traditional prayers. Titus followed him in doing likewise. . . Afterwards, donning the triumphal robes and sacrificing to the gods stationed at the gate, they sent the procession on its way through the theatres to give the crowds a better view.

In Rome, The Arch of Titus
celebrating the Roman
victory over the Jews still stands

It is impossible to do justice in the description of the number of things to be seen and to the magnificence of everything that met the eye, whether in skilled craftsmanship, staggering richness or natural rarity. For almost all the remarkable and valuable objects which have ever been collected, piece by piece, by prosperous people, were on that day massed together, affording a clear demonstration of the might of the Roman Empire. The quantities of silver, gold and ivory, worked into every conceivable form, were not like those usually carried in a triumph, but resembled, as it were, a running river of wealth. Purple cloth of extreme rarity was carried along, some of it fashioned by Babylonian skill into accurate pictorial representations. Translucent gems, embedded in diadems or other objects, were borne in such profusion as to dispel any idea that they were rare. . . In charge of each part of the procession was a number of men in purple and gold costumes, while those selected for the triumph itself wore choice clothes of astonishing richness. Even the prisoners were worth seeing – no disordered mob, but the variety and beauty of their clothes diverted the eye from the disfigurement of their injuries.

The greatest amazement was caused by the floats. Their size gave grounds for alarm about their stability, for many were three or four stories high, and in the richness of their manufacture they provided an astonishing and pleasurable sight. Many were covered in cloth of gold, and worked gold or ivory was fixed on all of them. The war was divided into various aspects and represented in many tableaux which gave a good indication of its character. Here was a fertile land being ravaged, here whole detachments of enemy being slaughtered, others -in flight and others being led off into captivity. Here were walls of colossal size being pounded down by siege-engines, here strongpoints being captured, and here well-defended fortifications overwhelmed. On one float the army could be seen pouring inside the walls, on another was a place running with blood. Others showed defenseless men raising their hands in entreaty, firebrands being hurled at temples or buildings falling on their owners. On yet others were depicted rivers, which, after the destruction and desolation, flowed no longer through tilled fields providing water for men and cattle, but through a land on fire from end to end. It was to such miseries that the Jews doomed themselves by the war. . . Standing on his individual float was the commander of each of the captured cities showing the way he had been taken prisoner. . .

The sack of Jerusalem depicted
on the Arch of Titus

Spoil in abundance was carried past. None of it compared with that taken from the Temple in Jerusalem, a golden table many stones in weight and a golden lamp stand, similarly made, which was quite unlike any object in daily use. A centre shaft rose from a base, and from the shaft thin branches or arms extended, in a pattern very like that of tridents, each wrought at its end into a lamp. There were seven of these lamps, thus emphasizing the honour paid by the Jews to the number seven. A tablet of the Jewish Law was carried last of all the spoil. After it came a large group carrying statues of victory, all of them made of ivory and gold. The procession was completed by Vespasian, and, behind him, Titus. Domitian rode on horseback wearing a beautiful uniform and on a mount that was wonderfully well worth seeing.

The procession ended up at the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, where the generals got down. They still had to wait for the traditional moment when the news was brought of the death of the enemy leader. In this case he was Simon, son of Giovas, who had passed in procession with the captives, and had been dragged under the lash, with his head in a noose, to a spot near the Forum. That is the traditional place at Rome for the execution of those condemned to death for war-crimes. When his end was announced and a general cheer had arisen, they started the sacrifices, and after completing them with the customary prayers, they retired to the palace. . .

For on that day the city of Rome made holiday for their victory in the war against the Jews, for the end of civil disorder, and for the rising expectations of peace and prosperity.”

Other trivia: Vespasian partly financed the building of the Colosseum with taxes on using public urinals. The urine was collected and used to dye wool.

When asked by a son how he could bear to make money with such a malodorous substance, he replied, “Pecunia non olet,”–money doesn’t smell. Indeed!

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Pascal’s Memorial–His Experience of God and “Joy, Joy, Joy, Tears of Joy.”

By Anita Mathias

Blaise Pascal

I love Pascal’s Memorial. I particularly love how words and sequential thought fail this brilliant, cerebral, verbal man. He is describing something from a different world–a world beyond words and logic.

What a joy to so lose oneself in God!!

I have dipped my toes into these waters.

Pascal’s experience, however, led to a profound and unshakeable conversion; he could not bear to speak about it, and never did (his account of it was found sewn in the lining of his cloak upon his death).

It’s exciting to read of the joy in store for us in the secret places of God.

The year of grace 1654,

Monday, 23 November, feast of St. Clement, pope and martyr, and others in the martyrology.

Vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others.

From about half past ten at night until about half past midnight,

FIRE.

GOD of Abraham, GOD of Isaac, GOD of Jacob

not of the philosophers and of the learned.

Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.

GOD of Jesus Christ.

My God and your God.

Your GOD will be my God.

Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except GOD.

He is only found by the ways taught in the Gospel.

Grandeur of the human soul.

Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you.

Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

I have departed from him:

They have forsaken me, the fount of living water.

My God, will you leave me?

Let me not be separated from him forever.

This is eternal life, that they know you, the one true God, and the one that you sent, Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

I left him; I fled him, renounced, crucified.

Let me never be separated from him.

He is only kept securely by the ways taught in the Gospel:

Renunciation, total and sweet.

Complete submission to Jesus Christ.

Eternally in joy for a day’s exercise on the earth.

May I not forget your words. Amen.

And here, the actual words he wrote:

L’an de grâce 1654,

Lundi, 23 novembre, jour de saint Clément, pape et martyr, et autres au martyrologe.
Veille de saint Chrysogone, martyr, et autres,
Depuis environ dix heures et demie du soir jusques environ minuit et demi,

FEU.

« DIEU d’Abraham, DIEU d’Isaac, DIEU de Jacob »
non des philosophes et des savants.
Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix.
DIEU de Jésus-Christ.
Deum meum et Deum vestrum.
« Ton DIEU sera mon Dieu. »
Oubli du monde et de tout, hormis DIEU.
Il ne se trouve que par les voies enseignées dans l’Évangile.
Grandeur de l’âme humaine.
« Père juste, le monde ne t’a point connu, mais je t’ai connu. »
Joie, joie, joie, pleurs de joie.
Je m’en suis séparé:
Dereliquerunt me fontem aquae vivae.
« Mon Dieu, me quitterez-vous ? »
Que je n’en sois pas séparé éternellement.
« Cette est la vie éternelle, qu’ils te connaissent seul vrai Dieu, et celui que tu as envoyé, Jésus-Christ. »
Jésus-Christ.
Jésus-Christ.
Je m’en suis séparé; je l’ai fui, renoncé, crucifié.
Que je n’en sois jamais séparé.
Il ne se conserve que par les voies enseignées dans l’Évangile:
Renonciation totale et douce.
Soumission totale à Jésus-Christ et à mon directeur.
Éternellement en joie pour un jour d’exercice sur la terre.
Non obliviscar sermones tuos. Amen.

In which Celebrate Jan Hus, The Czech Republic’s Heroic, Naive and Tragic “John Wycliffe”

By Anita Mathias

Jan Hus is an iconic figure in Prague. He was peasant born, but a follower of the John Wycliffe, the English reformer. He preached in the language of the masses (Czech) against the wealth, corruption and hierarchical tendencies within the church. Though a devout, mild-mannered man himself, he become embroiled in the disputes between the conservative clergy backed by the pope and the Wycliffian Czechs at the University of Prague.

King Vaclav IV supported Hus (who was the confessor to his wife, Sophie). However, when Hus broadened his attack on the Church to attack the sale of indulgences to fund the inter-papal wars, he incurred the enmity of the King (who received a percentage of the sales.) In 1412, Hus and his followers were expelled from the University of Prague, excommunicated and banished from Prague. They travelled throughout Bohemia, spreading the ideas of Wycliffe and the reformers.

Hus naively attended the Council of Constance in 1415, believing in the guarantee of safe conduct from the Emperor Sigismund. He was there denounced as a heretic, and, refusing to renounce his ideas, was burnt at the stake in 1415.

The anniversary of his death is now a national holiday.

Religious disputes, when mixed up with money and power, as, in the last analysis, they often are, can be deadly.

Hus’s most famous dictum was Pravda Vitezi –Truth Prevails–which has been the motto of every Czech revolution since his time. And in the long run, I believe it does!

Thomas Cromwell, Both a Wily Unscrupulous Politician, and a true Reformer.

By Anita Mathias

Roy and I took a 20 week course in The History of Christianity at Oxford University this year.

We were considering Thomas Cromwell whom the lecturer, Ken Barnes, presented as a true believer in the theological principles of the Reformation.

I was astonished. I said, “I thought he was a wily, unscrupulous politician.” Ken laughed. “He was both,” he said.

And that is one of the true and shocking realizations of middle age, that people can be both–both ambitious, let’s say, for advancement in the local or national or international church, and sincere lovers of Christ. Both ambitious of leadership, recognition and praise, and devoted to Christ. Both sincerely committed Christians, and sinners.

All men have sinned, and fallen short of the grace of God. All men are made in the image of God. So, seeing people as black or white, saints or sinners is naive and unintelligent. A noble Christian leader one truly does respect can betray confidences, be tempted by money to flatter and advance the wrong people, make decisions out of self-interest and cowardice, and not confront the wrongs he sees. And even people one views as evil can be moved by pity, compassion, love and conscience.

People can be “both.” I tend to see issues and people in black and white, and in middle age realize that I have been too swift to write people off once I see their feet of clay. I would have written Cromwell off, but without him, there might not have been the Anglican Church in which I am growing spiritually, in the company of present day Mores, Cromwells, Wolseys and Erasmuses.

William Carey–“I can plod. To this I owe everything.”

By Anita Mathias

William Carey is often attributed the title ‘Father of Modern Missions’. He was born into a desperately poor family, and consequently obtained a poor education. He was apprenticed as shoemaker, but simply did not make the grade. He tried his hand at starting and running a school, but it functioned badly. His marriage was a deeply unhappy one, during which his daughter died early, an event which left him bald for life. He was a deeply committed believer, but his subsequent attempt at pastoring a small church hindered his chances of ordination, because by common consent his sermons were too tedious and boring.

Despite such an apparently flawed track record, Carey formed a missionary society with himself as the first candidate setting sail to India. This feeble individual translated the Bible into Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese and Sanskrit, as well as portions into 29 other languages! At one stage, he lost ten years’ translation work in a fire – what did he do? Just started again. Then there were contributions to literature, education, literacy, agriculture, getting infanticide outlawed and more. This man’s obedience and perseverance was used to impact the lives of literally millions of people. Before dying, knowing that they wanted to write about him, he wrote the following:

“If one should think it worth his while to write my life, I will give you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness. If he gives me credit for being a plodder, he will describe me justly. Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.”

Helen Roseveare’s Great Questions–Is it worth it? Is Jesus Christ worth it?

By Anita Mathias

I love this story I quote verbatim:

“Her name is Helen Roseveare. Helen Roseveare grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Helen Roseveare became a skilled surgeon. All her life, both before and after she came to Christ, and she came to Christ during her university days, Helen Roseveare had a motto. And her motto was in the form of a question, and the question was this: “Is it worth it?” Is it worth it? And she would ask and honestly answer that question before she did anything. Before she went out on a day with a guy, she would say, “Is it worth it?” Before she would buy a book at Barnes and Noble and read it, she’d say, “Is it worth it?” Before she took a course in college, she’d say, “Is it worth it?”

And by asking and answering that question honestly, she became a very well-educated, disciplined, young woman physician. And after she graduated from Cambridge and got her hospital training, she gave her life to the Lord for missionary service in the northeast corner of the Belgian Congo in the community of Nobobongo. And she served their in the fifties and sixties eleven solid years of sacrificial, loving service to the African people. She did leprosy work, children’s work, built a hospital, built a Bible school. And then, in 1956… in 1964, in 1964 the Simba Uprising took place in the Congo, what we here in distant America called the Congo Rebellion. And the tribal people rose up, and the foreigners were ruthlessly treated.

Now – and Helen Roseveare went through that. Now I didn’t know anything about that, I did’t know anything about her, and I’ll never forget the first time I met her. I was a guest teacher for ten weeks at Columbia Bible College in South Carolina. My wife and I and our four kids were living in the men’s dorm in two dorm rooms that they put together in a makeshift little apartment for us. We were living there for ten weeks while I taught several courses in the school. And one night at nine o’clock at night, word came through the men’s dormitory that all the men were to leave their studies, and to go to the central lobby, because a woman missionary was passing through campus that evening, she couldn’t stay for the next day, and so they wanted the men to hear her give a brief word of testimony about her missionary work in Africa.

Well, to be real honest with you, none of the boys were very excited, you know. And, but the school said they had to do it, so we all went to the main lobby of the men’s dorm, and when we got there, the guys were in there, they were draped over the couches, sitting on the floor, and kind of looking like they didn’t want to be there. And, and then two of the school administrators walked in with Dr. Roseveare standing between the them, and when we saw her, everybody’s worst fears were well-founded, because she looked like a missionary. Whatever that means.

Simple cotton dress. Gray hair pulled back in a bit of a bun. Very thick, coke-bottle glasses, because her eyesight was not good. And she was tired. So somebody grabbed a gray, folding, metal Samsonite chair and put it in the middle of the floor, and, and, and she sat on it, and they said, ah, “Gentlemen, this woman, Dr. Roseveare, has just come through our campus, we just want her to share a little bit of her experience with you tonight.” And so she started to give her testimony. And being the astute woman that she is, about two minutes into her testimony, she knew that most of those guys were not interested at all, and so she stopped.

And she said, “You know what, boys, I don’t want to bore you with the details of my life. You’ve probably heard different stories and so forth. So, it’s late, why don’t we just take another five, ten minutes or so and, and I’ll just answer questions. Maybe, you know, you have a question, I’d rather talk about the things you’re interested.” And this kid immediately stuck his hand up, I feel sorry for him to this day, he stuck his hand up, and he said, he said, “Yeah I’ve got a question,” he said, “You know, we’ve got missionaries coming through here all the time, and, and they’re always talking about, you know, paying the price and suffering for Jesus – what did you ever suffer for Jesus?” She sat there and looked at him and, without any bitterness or any anger, she said, “Well, during the Simba Uprising, I was raped twice.” Everything got real quiet.

And then she told us about the rape. She told us how the government soliders came to her bungalow that night, came inside, ransacked it, grabbed her, beat her, threw her to the floor, kicked in all of her teeth. And then two army officers, one at a time, took her to her own bedroom and violated her body by raping her. And then, after the second incident, she was dragged from that bungalow out into a clearing and tied to a tree. And standing around the tree were all the laughing government soldiers. And then, while she was standing there, beaten and humiliated and violated and ridiculed, someone discovered in the bungalow the only existing hand-written manuscript of a book that she had been writing about the Lord’s work in the Congo over an eleven year period. They brought it out, put it on the ground in front of her, and burned it.

And as she saw that book go up in smoke, through clenched teeth, she said to herself: “Is it worth it? Is it really worth it? Eleven years of my life poured out in selfless service for the African people and now this.” And then she told those boys in that dormitory room that night as we all sat there spellbound, she said, “And boys, the minute I said that, God’s Holy Spirit settled over that terrible scene, and He began to speak to me, and this is what He said. He said to me: ‘Helen, my daughter Helen, you’ve been asking the wrong question all your life. Helen, the question is not, “Is it worth it?” The question is: “Am I worthy?” Am I, the Lord Jesus who gave His life for you, worthy for you to make this kind of sacrifice for me?'” And by her own tearful testimony she told us how God broke her heart, she looked up into the face of Jesus and said, “Oh Lord Jesus, yes, it is worth it, for thou art worthy.”

Elisabeth Elliot, whose husband was one of the five men who died trying to reach the Auca Indians, has written a very interesting chapter in a book entitled, “The Unfinished Task.” I tried to get them to stock it at the book table here for this conference but unfortunately, it’s out of print, you can find it in a, in a library, maybe in this church library. “The Unfinished Task,” and in there she’s written a chapter entitled, “Reflections on the Death of Five Missionaries.” And she asks and answers three questions. Number one: Were they called? Number two: Did they obey? And number three: Was it worth it? And in answer to that last question – was it worth it – this is what she writes, Elisabeth Elliot, listen carefully, she said this:

“Finally, was it worth it? Does it make sense that five men with those kinds of qualifications should die for the sake of sixty people? By whose standards can we answer that question? Well, we say, lots of Auca Indians got saved. I’ve heard stories of thousands of volunteers to the mission field. I’m not sure if they’re there today. I know there are some. People everywhere tell me they were moved and changed by the story. Hundreds of young men have told me that the book, ‘The Shadow of the Almighty,’ has changed their lives. I don’t deny that for a moment. Suppose it’s all true – does that make it worth it? Let’s suppose for a moment that not one Auca Indian got saved, that not one person ever heard the story of those five men, let alone was changed by it. Would it be worth it?”

And then she continues to write, “Yes!” She writes, “Yes!” “Why?” she writes, “Because the results of my obedience to God are the business of God almighty who is sovereign. It is the love of Christ which constrains us. There is no other motive for missionary service that will survive the blows of even the first year. We do it for Him.”

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Advice from Helen Roseveare: Above all else, keep the daily quiet time apart with God. Let nothing squeeze this out of your timetable. This is where you grow, where he can teach and change you into his likeness: where he can speak to you, direct you, encourage you, and where he maintains the spirituality of your service. Paul said: ‘pray continually’ (NIV) ‘without ceasing’ (AV) (1Thes 5:17).

Does this sound impractical? Beware! It is scriptural – and the Lord knows just how busy you are! The busier you are, the more you need to pray. We have to learn to use all the spare moments, and to bring everything to God in prayer. There is nothing too small or insignificant to bring to him in prayer. Talk everything over with the Lord – the disappointments, problems and joys. We can pray as we scrub up, as we wait for the traffic lights to change, as we peel the potatoes.

anita.mathias