Dear Phyllis,
Ron Blough used to say, “Bill doesn't have
much of a testimony himself, so he is always giving the testimony of others.”
Yes, that is true. Not a great deal has happened in this past week so I am
resorting to giving another testimony of others.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote to you about
God's lolly pops. John Cathcart used to say, “God seems to give lolly pops to
people that is something more for their enjoyment than hard, dry, spiritual
labour. I told you that my lolly pop at the moment is Paul and Marisa. Man
howdy, they are something else! I don't believe I have ever seen anything like
them. I know of no system of soul winning that envisions people coming to
Christ like what has happened to them. I know them very well, and have heard
their testimony several times, but it still doesn’t make sense.
Marisa was like a Claymore mine. You touch
it, and it goes boom. They used to live next door to Scott and Kae. Scott
frequently invited Paul to come to the Friday night Bible study, but I felt it
was a waste of time. He didn't enjoy it, and somebody like that will never get
saved. Marisa was a devout Buddhist. Scoot and Kae were moving and sold their
house to Almsteads. Marisa was over talking to Kae one day, and Kae said, even
though they were buying their house Scoot and Kae did not want the Almsteads
putting in a spirit house on that property. Technically, once they bought it,
they could do anything they want with their own property; and there are
extremely few houses in this muban (housing area) that don't have spirit
houses. But Scoot and Kae did not want their former property defiled with a
spirit house. Something snapped inside Marisa through that conversation. She
came home getting all over Paul for not warning her that Buddhism was of the
devil; and he was allowing her to go to hell, because he went to the Buddhist
wat (temple) with her. She was an instant Christian.
Paul was greatly confused at what happened to
his wife. Suddenly she was getting up every morning at 4:30 to read the Bible and went to church every Sunday. He
came to me saying his wife wanted to get baptized, and asked what baptism was.
I asked, “Why does she want to get baptized?”
“Because she wants to be a member of the
club.”
I told Paul, “Forget it man. God has got you
in His cross hairs, and there is no way you are going to get out of this.” He
got saved by default.
I might have told you this story before but
it is a good one. About a month ago, his 12 year old daughter was awake in the
middle of the night, when the door to her bedroom opened and a man in black
walked in. Paul came to talk to me about it the next day, and asked if it was
real or she was dreaming. (She swore she was wide awake.) I said, “I believe it
is real. Stories like that are not that unusual.” He later asked her, “Weren't
you afraid when that happened?” She replied, “No, I laughed at him. I'm in
Christ!” That is amazing for a 12 year old girl.
I go over there every Saturday night for
Bible study and our times have been wonderful!
The only other dramatic, instantaneous,
direct, conversion, that I ever heard like that was Linda Rogers.
In 1973 we got stuck in the states for two
years when Rosemary was sick. There was a fancy young couple that always sat in
front of us in church. He was a fancy dude wearing loud Hawaiian shirts, and
she always had a huge stack of Marie Antoinette blond hair stacked up on her
head. It was a good church where we were going and they were regular attenders,
but I often said to Rosemary,“That couple aren't saved.” Apart from the usual
“Hi, how-are-you-today” greeting I never really spoke to them.
Six years later were we home again from Japan Japan
Like I thought, they weren't saved, and after
we returned to Japan they stopped going to church all together. One day a
friend called her inviting her to go to another Baptist church with her the
next Sunday. Linda accepted the invitation, and suddenly had an intense craving
to go to church. She said that week was the longest week of her life. Every
morning she would wake up and wonder how many more eternities she would have to
wait until Sunday came. But the big day finally arrived. She got up early in the
morning, got dressed, and waited for her friend to come. But nakanaka
(Japanese. I don't know how to say that in English) she didn't come. Linda
despaired that her friend would never show up, and about gave up hope when she
finally came. But then, oh, what a slow driver. She thought she could walk
faster than that lady was driving. And every cotten-picken light in town was
red. At last they got to the church, but her friend started talking to another
lady in the parking lot. She thought the service must surly be over, but
actually it hadn't started yet. And then the song leader droned on and on
forever. By the time the preacher got around to speak, Linda was about to have
a litter of 15 kittens. It was a fairly large Baptist church with over 1,500
people there. But Linda simply couldn’t take any more. The pastor hadn't told
his first joke when she jumped up, and ran down the aisle. She fell down at the
altar screaming “Jesus! Jesus! Save me!” The pastor, and everyone else, were
startled; but Jesus everlastingly saved Linda.
You talk about a transformed woman; now there
was one! But there was no peace in heaven. Linda was on her knees day and night
crying to the Lord to save her husband . He was as confused and shaken as Paul
was when Marisa got saved.
Jake was carpenter. About three months after
Lind was saved, Jake was up on a roof one day. Three
thirty in the afternoon, Jake suddenly stood up, unbuckled his nail
apron, and said to his crew, “See you guys. I'm going to quit early today.”He
climbed down the ladder to get off the roof.
The next morning he was on his way to work
when he was suddenly killed in a horrible accident. He was DOA (dead on
arrival) at her hospital.
A pastor happened to be there who had gone to
the hospital unusually early to pray with a parishioner who was going in for
surgery that morning. He was headed out the door when he heard an announcement
asking if there were any clergymen in the hospital, to please report to the
administration desk. The pastor heard the request, turned around, and went to
the desk to ask what the problem was. The lady there explained that they had
just brought a man in dead; they had called his wife, and – as a courtesy
gesture – they wanted to have a clergyman to break the news to the bereaved
woman. He asked if he could see the body. They told him it was pretty ugly, but
the body was in the morgue. He went in the morgue, lifted the sheet, and looked
at the face. Then he went to the front door to wait for the widow.
Ten minutes later Linda came roaring up on
the scene. The pastor stepped forward and said, “Mrs. Rogers, I am Pastor
Robertson. Your husband is with Jesus in heaven.” Linda glared at him and
replied, “Preacher, you are a liar! My husband is an unsaved man and is in
hell.” Pastor Robertson responded, “Mrs. Rogers I have something to tell you.
Yesterday afternoon at 4:00 o'clock , your husband went
to a phone booth and looked up the first church he could find listed in
alphabetical order in the Greenville Yellow Page phone book. At 5:00 yesterday afternoon I led your husband to Jesus Christ.
He died a saved man and is in heaven.”
Oh, my goodness, I never heard anything like
it! What a miracle! Here was a pastor Linda had never met. Jake had called him
totally at random. The pastor was never in the hospital at that hour of the
morning, but the Lord had him there to tell Linda about Jake's accepting Christ
the day before. That was one of the most astounding acts of grace I ever heard.
That testimony had taken about 20 minutes to get that far, and Rosemary was totally
dissolved in tears. She had gone through every napkin on the table and was
about ready to blow her nose on the tabled cloth. But then came the punch line.
Linda said, “After the Lord took my husband
to be with Himself, you and your family have replaced him in my heart. I have
lived with you every day since Jake died.” Linda was not on our prayer letter
list. I didn't know she knew our name. We had never really formally met. But
somehow she manage to get a copy of every letter I ever sent out. She had
faithfully followed every place we had been, and every event we wrote about.
Linda told us that the first thing to cross
her mind every morning was the Bill Cook family in Japan
Crash! I was floored! A woman that I had
hardly spoken to – that I thought she didn't know our name –had adopted us to
the degree that she said we had replaced her husband in her heart. Stunned is
hardly the right word. I turned to Rosemary and said, “If we do anything while
we are in the states this time, the one thing we will do is to give this dear
sister maximum time, and spend as much time with her as possible.”
And then came the next big surprise. That was
the last time we ever saw her. She was going to a different church than we were
at the time. Why she wound up at the Christian Fellowship church supper that
night I never found out. We didn't get her phone number, and she didn't have
ours. Somehow our paths went in different directions, and I never saw her face
again. Some years later I heard Linda Rogers remarried; but not long after
that, she joined Jake in heaven I don't know what took her life, but she died a
fairly young woman.
Heaven will be filled with many surprises. We
have our programs, convictions, and ways of doing things. But God's ways are
much different. God is totally sovereign in running His own Kingdom. He saves
some of the most unlikely people in the most unusual, unassisted, ways. Paul
and Marisa are a huge bewilderment to me. They are the last ones on this planet
that I would expect to see them be firebrands for Jesus. Linda and Jake Rogers
were just worldly, half-churchish, Americans. The unusual conviction of sin
that the Holy Spirit gave to Linda, and then the most miraculous way he saved
her husband, are an epic in my book of remembrance
Who knows what will happen next. But it sure
is fun.
bill
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