“You have heard that it has been said, Thou shalt love
thy neighbor, and hate your enemy. BUT I SAY UNTO YOU,
love
your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and
pray for them which despitefully
use you and persecute you”. (Matthew
5:43-44)
Men that behead children? Men
that slaughter, rape, dismember, enslave innocent people? Who ram
airplanes into tall buildings, who
destroy and do dispictable acts of
violence in the name of their god?
Love them? Bless
them? Do good to them? Pray for
them?
Righteous indignation rises up inside
of me: Absolutely not! They should be wiped off the face of the
earth! Destroy them all! Get rid of such
people! Are you telling me, Lord, we should just lay
down and let them continue their reign of terror?
This is what has troubled me
most.
Until now.
For it suddenly occurred to me that
hundreds of years ago it was such a terrorist that brought
the gospel to me, a Gentile. That a man, so obsessed with
his religion, he “ravaged the church, entering house after house, dragging off
men and women and put them in prison”. A man who watched, and held the
coats of those who stoned a young Christian named Stephen
to death and personally stood and watched them doing it. And who,
afterwards, went to obtain legal permission to go to Damascus and root out
those Christians who had escaped dangers in Jerusalem.
This terrorist gathered a cohort of
men to accompany him to carry out this purge. But on that road, as they
neared Damascus, this terrorist, “breathening out threatenings and slaughter
against the disciples of the Lord” was suddenly struck by a blinding light
from heaven, and he fell to the earth and heard a voice saying unto him,
“Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest:
it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks”. (Acts 9)
Pricks?
As I re-read this story, I
wondered. What were these “pricks”? Could it be Stephen’s last words he overheard him pray? “Lord, lay
not this sin to their charge”. That perhaps this terrorist Saul
might have wondered, how could he do that?
One man’s last prayer was for those
killing him. And so was Jesus’: “Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do”.
I remember reading the testimony of
that Japanese squadron commander of the Pearl Harbor attack. After the
war, he was called to the war trials in Tokyo. On his way out of the court
house, as young airman named Jake DeShazer was standing, handing out tracts he
had
made which said, “I was a prisoner of
the Japanese for 3 1/2 years. But I love the Japanese people”. He
had found Jesus as his Lord while in that prison, and his tract was to tell
how it happened. He spoke of Jesus’ crucifixion and His last words,
“Father, forgive them. For they know not what they do”. He urged whoever
read the tract to find a Bible and read about it. That Japanese man,
Mitsuo Fuchido, went and purchased a Bible, returned to his hotel room, and
read that story, fell down beside his bed, and found Jesus Chrit in his
heart. Both men later became evangelists in the country of
Japan.
So I wondered.
For this terrorist Saul later wrote in
one of his letters to Timothy:
“..the weapons of our warfare
are not carnal, but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds”.
Could anyone ever understand
it better than him?
Is there a
powerful meaning I have overlooked—that our loving,
sincere prayers for these cowardly, brutal terrorists might possibly cause
another “Damascus road event” in some of their lives?
I cannot take part of Jesus’ words and
leave that which I don’t like. And to pray it with
sincerity?
For myself, it will be difficult to
do. But if I cannot, then I must pray someone will pray for me—for I
surely am the one needing a bright light and a voice from heaven
too.
MARY E ADAMS
