A LIFE ABSOLUTELY UNRELATED TO MATERIALITY Dr. WA Criswell recalls, “As I sat one time in a mission meeting in the heart of Africa, by my side was Dr. Theron Rankin, who headed our foreign mission board. And up there was a brilliant young fellow giving a report, a physician, a doctor, a missionary doctor. And Dr. Rankin said to me, “You look at him real good like. You look at him; listen to him.” He said, “That young fellow was one of the most brilliant of all the graduates of a famous medical school in the East. And when he received his medical degree, there were clinics and hospitals and institutions that sought after him. But he gave his life instead to be a medical missionary.” And at that time, the salary of a missionary was one thousand dollars a year, a thousand dollars a year, a whole year, a thousand dollars. Dr. Criswell said this missionary doctor came to see him at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. And he introduced him to his church. And when he did, he said, “I don’t feel worthy to stand in his presence. It is a life absolutely unrelated to materiality.” It binds us, meaning, and its fountain, and its living, and its glory, and its abounding grace and love in things above, in God, in Christ, in the Lord. Could I say one other thing? “Whoever drinks of the water of this life shall thirst again” [John 4:13]. Its rewards are so fleeting, but “whoever drinks of the water that I give him, shall find in his soul a fountain of water rising to everlasting life” [John 4:14].
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 10:54:09 +0000
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