At different and crucial points in
my walk, God has sent messengers to lift up Christ as a blazing torch in the
darkness of my path. Years ago, right
after giving up Buddhism, I did a 6 month stint with Jehovah’s Witnesses. I was a voracious Bible-reader and quickly
assimilated JW’s perspective of the scriptures. One night, I was arguing with a Christian guy about whether the
Bible sanctioned blood transfusions since, after all, the Old Testament forbids
the eating of blood. Exasperated by his
refusal to yield to the teachings of my religion, I asked this Christian, “OK,
FINE. WHAT DO YOU THINK THE BLOOD
MEANS?” He said, “I think it’s about
Jesus. Colossians says that the law was
a shadow of spiritual reality in Christ.
So everything about blood in the Old Testament is speaking about the
blood of Jesus.” It is difficult to
relate what went on in my mind as he talked.
It was like watching a puzzle putting itself together. And when the last piece fell into place, I
saw Christ.
After that
conversation, I hightailed it out of JW’s for good and started going to church
with that guy. (See their website here:
http://christaslife.com/). During my time there, I heard a man named JW
Luman speak on a number of occasions, and it was in the middle of one of his
messages that I had another floodlight moment with Jesus. I can’t even tell you what topic he was
preaching on, but at one point JW said of Jesus, “And He is a land, and a
temple, and a mountain, and a man!” To
have all these biblical images gathered up into Jesus Christ had a similar
effect as my conversation about blood years earlier. Where once the Bible appeared as so many Scrabble tiles in a
disordered mess, its letters now aligned in a single message—“JESUS.” (JW is part of Covenant Ministries
International:
God
has no other message for us but His Son, Jesus (Heb. 1:1, 2). This is a message I missed, even as a
serious student of the Bible. I am
thankful for the messengers God has sent and continues to send my way, just when
I need them. My prayer is that I can
thank them by taking up the torch of Christ and continuing to hold it aloft for
anyone who cares to look to it.
