Heartthoughts: Lightbearers

"What is that?  Is that a Bible?" the student inquired of our friend, who was substituting at a middle school recently.  She had set the students on an assignment and had taken out her Bible.

"Why do you have it here?" the boy went on, to which she answered, "So I can read it!" "Well, I'm an atheist," he announced.  "I come from a family of atheists."  Our friend  knew the boy to be highly intelligent and a voracious reader.

"He has a very advanced vocabulary for a boy of his age," she said, "He uses the biggest words! He reads all kinds of books, including the study of religions! He even read the Bible verse I had opened!" Then she concluded, "I'm going to see that he gets a C.S. Lewis book, maybe The Screw Tape Letters, I think that would get through to him."

What a coincidence!  I told her that just that day we had seen Rabbi Jonathan Kahn, author of The Harbinger, on television giving his testimony.  He had been raised Jewish, and as a child had heard all the heroic stories of Old Testament figures.  But at age eight, when he didn't see any of the power of God manifested in his religion, he declared himself an atheist.

As he grew up, he read everything he could get his hands on: Science, biographies, literature and even philosophy.  Then one day he was crossing a railroad track in his car, when, too late, he saw a bright light. The train was upon him, and he found himself calling out to God. Although injured, he survived the impact.  He finally had to admit there was something or Someone responsible for "all this." Then he read Hal Lindsay's The Late, Great Planet Earth, and became a believer in Jesus Christ.

These stories remind me of Paul, or Saul, as he was known before God changed his name.  He was a learned man, "a Pharisee of the Pharisees," taught at the feet of Gamaliel, Acts 22.3.  In his religious zeal, he persecuted the early Christians and was on his way to bring them in chains to be punished when a great light from heaven made him fall to the ground, Acts. 22:6.  In  it, Paul saw the Lord (I Corinthians 9:1).

As a result of meeting Jesus that day, Saul of Tarsus became the great Apostle Paul, writer of most of the New Testament.  Who knows what the inquiring schoolboy of today might become or when he might see the light?  After all, it was no coincidence that his substitute teacher "just happened" to be a Christian and "just happened" to bring her Bible that day!  Rather, I think it was a divine appointment!