Ebook: The Kingdom Strikes Back — Signs of the Messiah at Work
Historical setting: circa 1988. This chapter recounts ministry in Haiti during that period. Its descriptions of conditions, programs, and statistics reflect the time when the book was written.
Blindness. It tends to make men dependent. It sometimes reduces them to beggars. Blindness was common in Palestine in Jesus' day and remained widespread when this book was written, circa 1988. Eye infections, disease, and limited access to treatment contributed to widespread blindness.
Was it by chance that Jesus referred to blindness in His response to John's disciples? I don't think so. Opening blind eyes was one definite sign of Messiahship. As Old Testament prophets spoke of the end times and the coming new age, they talked of blind eyes that would be opened. Had Jesus not brought sight to the blind, He would not have been the long-awaited Savior.
Jesus healed many people whose lack of physical eyesight kept them in darkness. The Gospels record several occasions when Jesus restored sight to people who were blind. A good example is blind Bartimaeus, whom Jesus met on the Jericho road. That day, Jesus gave him sight (Mark 10:46-52).
Did Jesus limit Himself to healing only physical blindness? Look again at the Gospels, and you'll see that Jesus also dealt with spiritual blindness. He warned that "If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit" (Matthew 15:14). He was not referring to physical blindness but to religious leaders blinded by their lack of spiritual insight and their sinful pride.
So, as Jesus spoke to John's disciples, He doubtless thought of Old Testament passages such as Isaiah 29:18: "Out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see." Such passages connect restored sight with God's work of renewal, inviting reflection on both physical and spiritual blindness. As God's kingdom continues to strike back today, sight in both senses — physical and spiritual — is being restored.
A blind beggar touched by Jesus struggled to explain what had happened to him. He finally blurted out: "One thing I do know. I was blind, but now I see!" (John 9:25). To many Haitians touched by the Kingdom during those years, that explains what happened to them. Once, they were blind. Now they can see. The Messiah has come. He is opening blinded eyes. The Kingdom is striking back.
Some time ago, my mother sent her 100th pair of used eyeglasses to Dr. Paul Gamertsfelder. One hundred pairs? No, my mother didn't discard eyeglasses that fast. Instead, she collected them from friends all over central Oklahoma. Then she boxed them up and mailed them to Dr. Gamertsfelder, a Nazarene optometrist in Ohio.
When those glasses arrive from my mother and others like her, Dr. Gamertsfelder and his staff check and label them. Dr. Gamertsfelder and his colleague, Dr. Paul Mason, spend their annual vacations in Haiti. There, they use their skills, training, and donated eyeglasses to restore clear vision to Haitians with vision problems.
Out in rural villages, with an eye chart thumbtacked to a coconut tree, these optometrists see as many as 200 people in a day. Many go home proudly wearing used glasses collected by people like my mother. For Haitians with impaired vision, the gift of clear vision received from Dr. Gamertsfelder is a real miracle of the Kingdom.
There are, to be sure, documented cases of God intervening dramatically in Haiti to restore full sight to blinded eyes. During Jesus' earthly ministry, healing sometimes came that way. He simply spoke. His words were enough to make men whole. Other times, Jesus chose to touch the diseased or nonfunctioning body part. He put His hand on a leper. He stuck His fingers in the ears of a deaf man. He touched the eyes of a blind man.
Today, God still works both ways to heal physical blindness. Sometimes, He intervenes dramatically. At other times, He uses the dedicated hands of men like Paul Gamertsfelder. In either case, whether by His word alone or through the touch of a Kingdom envoy, it's time for praise and adoration.
Physical blindness can handicap a person. Other kinds of blindness, however, wreak greater havoc. The confusion — even terror — reigning across the globe today is evidence of a spiritually blind world. Zephaniah foretold that sinners would "grope about like those who are blind," vainly groping and stumbling along (1:17).
In 1955, a young Haitian army officer walked into a service at the Avenue Dessalines Church of the Nazarene. Duroc Placide responded to what he saw, heard, and felt in the church. Captivated by the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in that church, he soon gave his heart to the Lord.
Within a short time, Duroc began showing some leadership gifts. He played a role in planting a new church on the other side of Port-au-Prince in a suburb called Martissant. He began praying about a call to preach. By 1960, Duroc was sure of God's call to the ministry, so he enrolled in Haiti's Nazarene Bible Institute in the foothills above Port-au-Prince.
Upon graduation, a church called him as pastor. From the start, he was a dynamic leader. So three years later, when the Avenue Dessalines Church, where he was converted, was looking for a new pastor, they turned to Duroc Placide.
After some fruitful pastorates, he felt led to spend a couple of years in full-time evangelism. Then he helped found the church at Cap-Haïtien, a major city and Haiti's old colonial capital on the north coast. In 1977, the Haiti North District capped Duroc Placide's ministerial career by electing him as district superintendent.
Duroc Placide led the North District to redouble its church planting and outreach efforts. By 1984, it needed to be divided into three separate districts. Rev. Placide became superintendent of one of those new districts. That year, he also spearheaded a drive for simultaneous baptismal services in Nazarene churches across Haiti. His fervor and urging led Haitian Nazarene pastors to baptize 2,749 people on the last Sunday of September 1984.
Sounds like a terrific, successful life, doesn't it? It is. There's just one sour note in it. Like the apostle Paul, Rev. Placide lived with a persistent affliction (2 Corinthians 12:7). Through years of successful evangelism, church planting, and district leadership, Rev. Placide was slowly going blind. Finally, at the apex of his career, total darkness closed in on him.
Duroc's sight problems began while he was in the Haitian military. One day a horse threw him. When his head hit the ground, the blow damaged the sight center of his brain. His eyesight started slowly deteriorating. Doctors tried unsuccessfully to halt the degeneration. The general church even provided air transportation for him to see an eye specialist in Florida. It was too late. Irreparable damage had been done. Sadly, nothing could stop his eyesight from deteriorating further. Nazarenes began joining together in prayer on his behalf. Still, the darkness continued closing in. Finally, Duroc Placide became totally blind.
Paul of Tarsus had an impairment of some kind too. We don't know for sure what it was. He described it as a thorn in his flesh. Though Paul prayed intensely for the removal of that thorn, God did not take it away. God answered Paul's prayer by assuring him of sufficient grace and power made perfect in weakness. In a similar way, Rev. Placide's impaired eyesight has shown how human weakness can open the door for God's grace and power.
I've watched that blind preacher carefully make his way up and down rocky mountain trails visiting churches. At his elbow was always a young pastor. That young pastor became his eyes on those trails, helping him over boulders and around tree roots. As Duroc Placide grew older, he finally had to retire. Physical healing never came to his eyes. With the passing years, however, his spiritual vision became clearer and clearer. When Duroc Placide stepped into the pulpit or met around a table with church leaders, all uncertainty and tentativeness disappeared. What a powerful spiritual leader he was.
At the time this book was written, he was still holding revival meetings, helping those whose spiritual and moral blindness is more tragic than his physical blindness. Isaiah spoke of people "who have eyes but are blind" (Isaiah 43:8).
I've rejoiced as I've listened to young pastors testify to Rev. Placide's key role in their decision to become preachers. By the late 1980s, men influenced by Rev. Duroc Placide were filling the pulpits of several Nazarene churches in Haiti. Through this one blind man, the Kingdom has brought sight to many. The blind are seeing. The Messiah has come!
When this book was written, circa 1988, few nations had lower literacy rates than Haiti. Even the most optimistic reports at that time said that no more than 20 percent of Haitians over age 15 could read and write. There are historical, religious, and economic reasons for this.
When the French colonists brought thousands of Africans in chains to Haiti, the only interest they had in those slaves was their muscle power. They did nothing to educate them. Slave owners even tried to prohibit their slaves from learning to read and write. Then the unthinkable happened. In 1791, a slave revolt broke out in northern Haiti. More than a decade of bloody struggle followed. Napoleon later sent an army to regain control, but French forces were ultimately defeated. Haiti declared independence in 1804, becoming the first independent nation established through a successful revolt by enslaved people. Most of its people, however, could not read or write.
While the Haitians won their political independence, they remained culturally tied to France. Only a tiny minority of Haitians ever mastered the French language. Still, the French language and culture were placed on a pedestal. If you craved social status, you had to speak French. Haitians who spoke only Creole, the language of everyday life, were looked down upon. Such cultural and linguistic snobbery created a tiny elite who knew French. The masses who spoke only Creole remained illiterate. Although Creole had been written for generations, reading materials remained scarce. In the 1940s, Methodist missionaries H. Ormonde and Primrose McConnell developed a practical writing system, later revised with literacy educator Frank Laubach. Their work helped expand opportunities for people to learn to read and write in Creole.
Almost every one of Haiti's constitutions has decreed compulsory education. Unfortunately, the government has never found the money to carry out that mandate. The Christian emphasis on reading Scripture provided a strong incentive for literacy and for producing printed material in the people's heart language.
Not being able to read gives you a kind of blindness. You may have eyes, but your brain cannot interpret what you see on the printed page. As far as comprehending the printed page is concerned, you may as well be blind. If you cannot read, you have less direct access to written information about technological advances, health and medical advice, and agricultural breakthroughs. You also depend on others to read or explain Scripture to you.
When these scales of illiteracy drop from your eyes, that's a miracle! In Haiti in the late 1980s, miracle-working literacy programs were restoring sight. The Kingdom is striking back. God is using the efforts of Nazarenes to open new horizons of the printed word to thousands of people. Nazarenes in Haiti fight the blindness of illiteracy on two fronts: with adults and with children. The largest and most consistent effort comes through our programs that help children learn to read and write.
On several occasions, Jesus used children to illustrate a message about the Kingdom. Perhaps the best-known is Matthew 19:14. There, Jesus says, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these" (NIV).
Children are special to the ministry of the Church of the Nazarene in Haiti. Almost everywhere the church has gone in that Caribbean nation, a school has been started. One school is even named the Phineas F. Bresee Elementary School. This concern for educating children expresses the church's commitment to literacy and Christian service. Around 1988, each of the approximately 250 Nazarene elementary schools was a sign that the Kingdom is invading Haiti with power. There was also one Nazarene-sponsored high school in Port-au-Prince. About 25,000 Haitian children studied in these schools, more than in Nazarene schools in any other country at that time.
Few of these schools have decent buildings. Most have only dirt floors. The students sit on simple wooden benches. Flimsy pieces of Masonite hardboard serve as chalkboards. Unfortunately, the demand for schools has far outstripped the number of trained teachers. In isolated mountain villages, any adult who can read may wind up as a schoolteacher.
That is far from ideal educational practice. Even in less-than-ideal conditions, however, the blind are beginning to see. Rural Haitians, whose high rates of illiteracy blinded them, now begin to see. Dawn is breaking in on darkened understandings.
Even though these schools face enormous problems, we are making progress in improving their quality. At that time, we had a university-trained specialist helping improve the quality of education in the schools. He organized in-service training opportunities for teachers. He also served as the Nazarene spokesperson in government education offices.
One way we are helping our schools is by providing hot lunches. The majority of parents cannot pay more than a minimal tuition to send their children to school. Sometimes, even $1 per month is a prohibitive amount in a country with a per capita annual income then estimated at about $350. Little government support is available. There are, however, several groups working in Haiti to help schools and particularly to subsidize hot lunch programs. Several of these are helping Nazarene schools. These include Compassion International, CARE, Church World Service, and a Dutch group called Word and Action.
Nazarene Compassionate Ministries has a Nazarene Child Sponsorship program in which Nazarenes around the world are invited to sponsor school hot lunch programs in Haiti. In return, they get a photo of the children in that school and a description of what their help is doing. Around 1988, about 100 Nazarene schools had hot lunch sponsors.
As I reflect on my childhood, I remember my mother drilling into me the importance of proper nourishment. Eating right would help me do well in school, she said. So, people sponsoring hot lunches for Haitian Nazarene schoolchildren invest in both nutrition and education.
The Kingdom is striking back. The blind are beginning to see — and they're getting a good lunch, too!
Remember the Philistines? They were real troublemakers. David had just been anointed king when those Philistines "went up in full force to search for him" (2 Samuel 5:17). Having the Philistines bother them was nothing new for Israel. The Philistines had long troubled Israel. Now, by occupying the Rephaim Valley between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, they challenged David directly.
After a seesaw standoff, King David sought the Lord's guidance. The Lord told him to have his soldiers take up attack positions. They were to wait until they heard marching in the tops of the balsam trees, then move quickly. The sound would signal that the Lord had gone ahead of them to strike the Philistine army (2 Samuel 5:24).
That's what happened. In that battle, Israel shattered the Philistine forces. David's victories greatly weakened the Philistine threat. As promised, those rustling sounds in the treetops foretold complete victory for God's people.
I've heard rustling sounds in Haiti's spiritual battlefields. Those sounds tell me that God still leads the way into battle. For me, they are sure signs that God's army continues to win victories. One such rustling sound I hear comes from pages turning in Bibles and New Testaments. It's a sound I've often heard in churches all across Haiti.
As noted earlier, even the most encouraging literacy figures said 80 percent of Haitians over age 15 could not read or write when this book was written, circa 1988. Contrasting with that dismal figure is the fact that, in many Haitian Churches of the Nazarene, more than half of the members were literate. That was a literacy rate more than two and a half times that of the general population. Motivating Christians to learn to read is, of course, the ability to read the Bible. For most Haitian believers, a Bible or New Testament becomes one of their most prized possessions.
Once, I sat in our Petionville church in the foothills above Port-au-Prince. There, each week Sunday School closes with a statistical report. Among the figures they give is the number of Bibles and New Testaments that people brought to church that day. On this particular Sunday — a very ordinary Sunday — 216 people came to Sunday School. Number of Bibles and New Testaments? One hundred and forty-nine! That day nearly seven out of every 10 people had brought a Bible or New Testament to church. Later in the worship service, the pastor announced his Scripture reading. I listened to that beautiful rustling of pages softly echoing beneath the corrugated tin roof.
As I listened to those rustling pages, I wanted to jump up on the pew and shout, "Hallelujah!" Visitors to Haiti in that period saw it reeling from political, economic, and ecological ills. To a country like that, the Lord's coming in power and strength is good news. That rustling in church told me that God was leading His people to battle. The blindness of illiteracy gives way to people reading God's Word for themselves.
The writer of Hebrews reminds us: "For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword ..." (Hebrews 4:12, NIV). Not long ago, the Lord made it possible for us to put more than 30,000 of these weapons in Haitian hands. One year a Florida group gave us about 6,000 Creole New Testaments. Then, Bible Literature International helped us buy 10,000 more New Testaments to give away. Two years later, the same group helped us again with a grant to buy 15,000 Creole New Testaments.
La Gonave is a large island in the bay of Port-au-Prince. On that island, we have a strong district of about 50 churches. Of the Nazarene pastors on La Gonave Island, 18 had recently completed an extension study program that gave them the education needed for ordination. During the four years of their studies, they met twice a month in a central mountain village for two days of classes.
On a trip out to La Gonave to check the progress of that study group, I took several boxes of New Testaments. Getting to the village of Grand Source is never easy. First, you drive about an hour and a half up the coast from Port-au-Prince. There you have to wade out from a rocky beach and board an old, leaky wooden sailboat. Then you settle down for a two-hour ride to Anse-a-Galets on the coast of La Gonave.
In that fishing village, you'll find an ancient, battered Land Rover sitting under the shade of a lonely tree. You'll have to prayerfully coax the engine into starting, then nurse it along for about 45 minutes up a rocky mountain trail to Grand Source.
That particular afternoon when we arrived in Grand Source, the extension class was already underway. The pastors sat poring over their books. Eventually, darkness forced the teacher to shut his notebook until morning. Accompanied by the pastors, I walked up the hill in front of the church. There, ladies from the church were cooking supper for us. While we sat around waiting to eat, I got the boxes from the back of the Land Rover and divided the New Testaments among the pastors.
As I finished giving them out, the cooks showed up with plates piled high with rice and beans. I had five or six New Testaments left over. I didn't know whether those ladies could read or not. I gave each of them a copy anyway. Thanking me profusely, they went back to work.
After the meal, we sat around talking and drinking strong, black Haitian coffee. Then the pastors drifted off into the darkness to their sleeping places. I had a small room in the little house where we had just eaten the evening meal. My room had an adequate bed. I knew it was perhaps the best bed in the whole village.
I felt drained that night. It had been a long, hard trip. Yet I had a hard time going to sleep. As I pulled the sheet over me, two of the cooks sat down at a small table not far from my window. One was a teenager. The other looked old enough to be her grandmother. Lighting a kerosene lamp, they brought out their new treasures, those Creole New Testaments.
The teenager was the more literate of the two. In the dim yellow light of that flickering oil lamp, she began to read aloud. She stumbled along as the old woman watched her haltingly figure out the words one by one. The girl's voice was stuttering, uneven. Yet I detected a sense of awe as words from that New Testament leaped off the page at her.
Mixed emotions overcame me. A lump rose in my throat as I listened to those two reading aloud just outside my window. It was exciting. Yet I was also very tired. I yearned for sleep, but those voices outside my window kept me awake. Finally, I drifted off to sleep listening to them read. Once, those ladies had been blind. Now they were seeing. The Messiah had come. His kingdom was striking back.
One Sunday morning, I heard rustling sounds in a village called Marlique. Not long after we arrived in Haiti, missionary John Burge gave out several boxes of New Testaments at Marlique. Our church there perches on a mountainside above Port-au-Prince, about a 20- to 30-minute drive from our Bible college campus. One Sunday, I preached there. As I sat on the platform, looking over the crowd, I noticed people carrying New Testaments. They had received them in that earlier distribution effort.
Some of the covers of those paperback New Testaments had come off. A few of the copies even had a page or two of Matthew missing. The last chapter or so of Revelation was gone from some of them. Nonetheless, those books were God's Word. His people had carried them to church to read together that morning.
As the service leader announced the Bible readings, I listened to that beautiful rustling sound of turning pages. The Lord had come. He was present in power and strength. He was marching with His troops against the enemy.
The first Protestant missionaries landed in Haiti over 100 years ago. Written materials in Haitian Creole were then scarce. The culturally prejudiced elite Haitians snootily regarded Creole as simply corrupted French. They thought teaching everyone to speak French properly would make Creole disappear. They were wrong. French and Creole certainly share a lot of vocabulary roots. Creole grammar, however, has little in common with French grammar. They are two different languages.
For many years, the only Bible available in Haiti was in French. At the time this book was written, only about one Haitian in 10 could readily understand French. Even fluent French speakers use it as their second language. Their mother tongue is Creole. For even the most bilingual of Haitians, Creole remains the language of the heart and emotions.
By encouraging people to belittle Creole as merely badly spoken French, Satan kept a whole nation from having God's Word in their heart language. As long as people dismissed Creole as just ineptly spoken French, efforts to promote literacy in it faced resistance. The devil was not to be successful, however. In the middle of the twentieth century, Protestant missionaries helped develop and promote a practical writing system for Haitian Creole. Right away, they set to work on Bible translation. In 1960, the first Haitian Creole version of the New Testament appeared.
A translating team went to work on the Old Testament. Satan was furious. The project met one fiendish obstacle after another. Once, a computer glitch erased the entire text.
Kingdom business can only be held back for so long, however. In early January 1986, news came that the first shipment of Creole Bibles was on its way from Asian printing plants. The day those Bibles arrived in Port-au-Prince's harbor, the city was abuzz with the news. Pastors and laypeople flooded bookstores, trying to buy copies. Within four days, the first printing of 55,000 sold out.
The Kingdom had struck back. Satan thought he could keep a nation in the dark. He was wrong. All across Haiti, people are reading the Bible in their heart language. Praise the Lord!
As you pray for Haiti, thank the Lord that a promise is being fulfilled. That promise says: "Then the eyes of those who see will no longer be closed" (Isaiah 32:3). Those who have been in physical darkness, spiritual darkness, and intellectual darkness are having their eyes opened. Truly, the Messiah has come. We have seen the signs. . . . [ continue reading ]
| The response of Jesus to John's followers is mirrored today on a Caribbean island. Those who have been in physical darkness, spiritual darkness and intellectual darkness are having their eyes opened. . . . [ more ] |
This ebook is on global missions outreach. It shows how the words of Jesus about Kingdom signs illustrate what was happening on the Caribbean island of Haiti during the period described. These six chapters plus a foreword and conclusion demonstrate that the Kingdom is indeed in our midst.
