Holy, Holy, Holy

3 Dec, 2000

Dear Ted & Phyllis,

It is hard to believe that we into December year 2000 and soon it will be 2001. Forty years ago I was 100% convinced that we would have new bodies and Christ would be in charge of Washington and Tokyo (along with everything else on earth) by now. It was hard to see this dispensation running much past 1984, but manichi (1 chance in 10,000), if it did, we knew one thing for certain, “Christ will certainly be here before the year 2000”. But, oh, the millions that have been brought into the Kingdom since then. China has been opened to the Gospel and there has been a harvest of souls that Hudson Taylor in his wildest imagination could not have envisioned. But if we thought the return of Christ was near in 1960, how much closer have we come, and our salvation is that much nearer than when we first believed.

Today I am in Nara. In three days I will be back in Southeast Asia for another interesting venture. I’m sure I have told you about my involvement in trying to help the Americans soldiers who have been abandoned in Laos and Vietnam since the Vietnam War 28 years ago. On my last trip I approached the head of the secrete police for prefecture where these men were seen a year and a half ago. He didn’t respond to my offer of a “very handsome reward” if he could help us get them out, but did make a significant statement by saying, “Those men are in Vietnam.” I replied, “Yes, I know they are on that border but we would appreciate any help you could give us.” At that, he terminated our conversation by saying, “I don’t know anything about it.” With that door closed the next options is to try to go in and personally contact these men and their hosts. Naturally speaking this is a totally ridiculous venture, but the most stupid story I know in the Word of God was about five women who went to a grave to anoint a body that was sealed with a huge stone, the Roman seal, and two guards. But as they went they met the Person they were going to anoint. All I know is that I hope to go and expect to meet someone the Lord has sent before to help me. Some people have asked if I had guidance to go and all I can say is that there are two options – to do nothing, or to do what I can. Which do think a Christian should do? 

This morning I was speaking in a church we built here in Tenri 14 years ago. The pastor asked me to share a testimony and – unfortunately – it wound up being the morning service. The testimony I shared was one that I heard from Roald two years ago, but to lay a foundation I started out by observing the description of the four living being worshiping God before the Throne in Rev. 4. Their activity is identical to what Isaiah saw and shared with us in chapter 6 of his book. These beings cry ceaselessly day and night, “Holy, holy, holy”.

Years ago I thought the most spiritual thing I could do was to pray like these seraphims so I mimicked their prayer. It didn’t work. After I said “Holy, holy, holy” about thirty or forty times it got real old. For years I never could understand this scene until one summer we were over to Kashiwazaki for a Bible camp. While we were over there a typhoon came up the Sea of Japan and the next day the effect of the waves came ashore. We had been swimming at that beach every day, but this day was something like I had never seen. Those waves must have been thirty feet high and looked like Mt. Fuji coming ashore. I stood there awed as one of these towering waves came crashing in and all I could say was “Sugoi!” (awesome, fantastic). Then another huge wave came crashing in and I said, “Sugoi!!” Then for the next twenty minutes my entire vocabulary was reduced to one word – SUGOI. I tried to say something else but nothing else fit the occasion. I mean to tell you IT WAS SUGOI. The awesomeness of the occasion dictated that something must be said. I simply could not watch that in silence but words escaped me to describe this overwhelming scene. The only word I could come up with to express the impact on my soul was sugoi. It was there that I first realized what was going on inside these living creatures who stand in the presence of God and worship Him with veiled faces. The dominant impression of what they are looking at is the holiness of God. Being overwhelmed with that, they can only gasp “Holy, holy, holy”. But after they have said it several thousand times they are still frustrated by their inability to fully expressed what they are looking at. The reason my prayer was so stupid is that I wasn’t seeing what these seraphims were looking at. It was like two men standing looking at the Grand Canyon. One fellow can see and the other guy is blind. The first man is overwhelmed and says, “Wow, look at that!”, but the other fellow standing right beside him is totally unmoved – he doesn’t see a thing. That is why this prayer is so meaningless to us – we simply don’t see what the angels see.

But I fear our concept or definition of holiness is flawed. I used to think God was holy because He didn’t drink beer, smoke or look at porno. A friend of mine said, “I have a dog that doesn’t do any of that but I wouldn’t call him holy.” I asked another friend what he thought holiness meant and he said the absence of defilement or dirt. But if we are going to define defilement we have got to establish a standard of what is clean and what is dirty. There we have a problem today where we have accepted relativism and nothing is really right or wrong. When we throw out biblical morality we have thrown away the ruler and we have nothing to measure things by. All forms of sexual perversion are fine now it is wrong to call it dirty. Without the law of God we have no way to determine what is right and what is wrong. If we accept that holiness has something to do with biblical morality, then, what we have is the angels judging God by His own standard. It is their assessment of what they think of God in the light of His own law. It is the report card on God.

If we only had the Old Testament we might think that obeying God was an ikenai religion (you shouldn’t do it), but the New Testament teaches us that LOVE is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:8-10). So we see that true holiness is NOT WHAT WE DON’T DO BUT WHAT WE DO DO. And the nearest synonym or verb description of love basically means to give. Love is not receiving but giving. So we see the dominant characteristic of God that so overwhelms the seraphims is the things that God does. As they watch this Living One Who has created all things for His glory and for the honor of His Son these seraphims are inexpressibly impressed with His character revealed by His acts; and they can only cry, “Holy, holy, holy!”

 It is most significant that both verses 6 and 8 of Rev. 4 tells us that these living creatures are “filled with eyes". This is most significant. It means that they see the big picture. Unfortunately we only have two eyes and both of them are pointed in the same direction. That means we have a very limited field of vision. But the seraphims have eyes all over and they see things we don’t. I think it is safe to say that they are in a better position to judge God than we are.

To share with you the testimony that I told at the church in Tenri this morning I will enclose in a different envelope a general letter I have sent to my sister and her family to be read at Christmas. Lord willing, I hope to be in the jungles of Laos on Christmas day so I won’t be able to send them any Christmas greetings. Therefore I have written this amazing testimony that Roald learned when he was in China two years ago. It is about a Christian man who gave his only son to a man who hated him and was responsible for having him thrown in prison for 24 years. When he came out it appeared his life had been a disaster and from our human perspective it didn’t look like a real kind thing the Lord did for him. But on Christmas eve five years ago the Lord pulled back the curtain on His workmanship to let us see what He had done. This testimony has affected me more deeply than anything I have ever heard. The first night I heard it I was so dissolved that I was komaru after the service and thought, “Now how in the world am I supposed to get out of this building?” I should have known better than to try to tell this story from the pulpit and had a hard struggle getting through the message. I went through a glass of water trying to maintain enough composure to be able to speak.

This may be my last letter to you. I am not so naïve as to be flippant and suggest you are not going through a difficult trial. There is nothing I can say to you that you don’t know far better than I do, but sometimes when we are horizontal our field of vision is restricted even more than usual. I know that you know we can’t see the big picture at the moment. We don’t have the eyes that the seraphims have and we are not in a position to accurately assess all that God is doing. But I believe He is doing one of the greatest works of your life for you right now and some day we will look back and with deep gratitude say, “Lord, thank you for the year 2000. It was the best we ever had.” Should it not be this way? I believe it is true that everyday with Jesus is better than the day before.

 I don’t know when I will see you next but I know it will be a good one when I do. In saying “in closing”, I am only referring to this letter, but I want to thank you all again for the great honor and privilege you have extended to me and all the joy we have enjoyed together in our fellowship in Christ.

                                                                                            My love is with you always,   bill