The following striking extract, from a letter dated 11th March, 1932, is from the pen of our aged and revered brother, Mr. A.E.Walker, who passed into the presence of his Lord and Master on 7th June 1933 in his 85th year. We feel it ought to have a wider sphere of usefulness than being confined to the one to whom it was addressed.
This is all the more so as many of those who are the Lord’s have been called to pass through exceptionally trying circumstances as the aftermath of the Great War. Unemployment, stagnation of trade, have crippled many, and put them in very trying circumstances, not brought about by their own acts, which have greatly tested their faith.
How God delights to support His people in and through the trial the following extract testifies.
“Though you and I have troubles and problems, it is wonderful how the Lord grants to us both those mercies, such as health, which seem direct evidences and tokens of His kindness, so that we can go on, amid and in spite of the many difficulties that would hinder us, but for Him.
“His word has been wonderful to me. Do you know once during the War, we did not know what to do? No orders came and no money!1 I felt that if the Lord did not open the arm of the Red Sea for me, we could not go on.
“I was walking along the street one day, and suddenly the word, ‘calamities’ came into my mind, and I thought there was a promise somewhere about them. I looked it up and found the wonderful SHELTER Psalm,
‘Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me: for my soul trusts in Thee: yea, in the SHADOW of Thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast. I will cry to God most high; to God that performs all things for me’ (Ps. 57:1-2).
“I lived on that heavenly food, beloved brother, for a solid month, and then the wall gave way, and the way of salvation opened.
“Well, so we go on, and so we triumph through Christ, and shall thank Him for it all, and tell the story of His grace when we get home.”
Our beloved brother has got home to tell the story of God’s wonderful grace. We are left in the scene of pressure and trial a little longer, and we can say with deep gratitude and confidence,
GOD IS ABLE.
We recall the quiet confidence of the three Hebrew young men in the presence of the infuriated monarch, and with the knowledge that a burning fiery furnace lay before them. Listen to the quiet determination of their words:
“O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter.
“If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace and He will deliver us out of thine hand, O King… But if not, be it known to thee, O King, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up” (Dan. 3:16-18).
We like those words,
“But if not.”
How magnificently they were carried through the supreme test. Better than being saved from the fiery furnace was their walking unburnt and unscathed through the flames that had destroyed the stoutest soldiers of the realm, who were deputed to cast them into the holocaust. Nay further, to walk in that furnace in the divine company of the Son of God was triumph indeed!
Our brother went through the fiery furnace of affliction, confiding, as he said, under the shelter of God’s wings, finding a refuge there until
THESE CALAMITIES WERE OVERPAST.