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The Amish Voice 6
Great is the LORD, and greatly to be
praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.
Have you ever thought about how great
our God is and just how much he actually
loves us? We tend to imagine that he is a
certain way and does things the way we are.
We know it is wrong to create an idol and
bow ourselves down to it, but how many
times do we do that in our minds by imagin-
ing God to be a certain way? Too many
times we tend to put God in a box or draw a
line in the sand and say that God is inside
these parameters. The next thing we know
God is over there somewhere using a person
that does not fit inside our box. And what do
we do? Many times we write it off as from
the Devil because, by the way, the Devil is
powerful too.
We have to be careful that we don’t make
the same mistake the Pharisees and Scribes
and the religious leaders of Jesus’ day did.
They had it all figured out how the Messiah
was going to be, and when he was standing
right in front of them doing great signs and
wonders, they still rejected him and ended up
being the ones responsible for crucifying
him. How many times do we do the same
thing by rejecting a person and writing them
off as being deceived or just plain lost?
When Jesus came to Saul on the road to
Damascus as a blinding light, he did not ask,
“Why are you persecuting the church?” He
asked, “Why are you persecuting ME?”
Jesus said, “
Verily I say unto you, Inas-
much as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren, ye have done it
unto me.”
When we reject a person that does not fit
our description of what a Christian is sup-
posed to look like, act like, or believe in,
then we have just rejected God if he lives
inside of them.
For example, today it is estimated that over
250,000 people accept Jesus as their savior
every day. That is equal to the entire popula-
tion of the Amish worldwide! Most of these
people live in Africa or Asia. Only fifty years
ago, there were twice as many white or
Western Christians as the non-western Chris-
tians, but today there are seven non-western
Christians for every western Christian.
My question is, “Would these people be
accepted in our churches if they happened to
walk in?” Many of them become
Christians under the
threat of heavy per-
secution, not much
differently than our
Anabaptist
forefa-
thers.
To establish this fact
further, in Rev.5:9 it
says,
“And they sung a
new song, saying, Thou
art worthy to take the
book, and to open the
seals thereof: for thou
wast slain, and hast re-
deemed us to God by thy
blood out of every kindred, and tongue,
and people, and nation.
Now, if there are people there from every
nation, tongue and people group that ever
existed, it makes you wonder why the only
people in our churches are from our back-
ground and have to speak our language to be
able to belong.
I’m afraid we are going to be in for the
surprise of a lifetime when we get to heaven,
and we discover that there are just as many
Chinese speaking people in heaven as there
are German or English speaking people, or
Spanish speaking peoples.
It is estimated that 6% of humanity lives in
all of North America, but over 60% live in
two of Asia’s countries; China and India. In
China, the fastest growing church in the
world is the persecuted underground church
that gathers in forests and caves and secret
places where they gather and worship God
for hours and days on end. It is estimated that
there are twelve to eighteen thousand new
converts come to Christ every day. Ninety
percent of them become Christians because
of seeing miracles happen either to them-
selves or a direct family member. Very
few have Bibles, and when a person
with a Bible comes to town
they will come together and
listen to the Bible being
read for days on end.
Let’s take the conserva-
tive number of twelve
thousand per day; that
would mean every three
weeks there would be
252,000 new Chinese
believers. The estimat-
ed
population
of
Amish people is be-
tween 250,000- 260,000 people world-
wide.
I am not saying we have to become like
them but just want us to realize there are
other people out there who are also Chris-
tians that do not look, act or speak our lan-
guage, and I, for one, do not want to be
found guilty of rejecting God’s people who
have been redeemed by the precious blood of
Jesus.
One departing thought that I would like to
leave us with is; “If Jesus himself walked
into our churches, would we accept him?”
Jonathan Helmuth
Dundee, NY 14837
(607) 351-1593
How Great Is Our God?
—by Jonathan Helmuth
Thomas
Ed-
ward Lawrence
was born on
August
16,
1888, in Eng-
land.
When
Lawrence grew
to manhood, he
joined the Brit-
ish Military and
soon
became
famous for his
daring actions in Arabia. During the war,
Lawrence formed close friendships with
many of the LEADERS of Arabia, and, when
the war was over, he brought some of these
LEADERS back to England to show his ap-
preciation for their support.
While in England, Lawrence gave them a
tour of England; at one point, they even visit-
ed the Queen. On the last night of their visit,
Lawrence offered to give them anything they
wanted to take back to their desert homes. At
which point, they led him up to the hotel
room, into the bathroom, and pointed to the
faucet in the bathtub and said, “We would
like to take that faucet with us.” Their think-
ing was that the faucet would provide them
with running water in the desert.
What the dessert men didn’t realize is that
the faucet was superficial. And what I mean
by that is: behind the faucet was…
plumbing…a hot water
The Magic Is Not In The Faucet
—by Joe Keim
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