A LETTER

(Submitted by Mr. Moerdyk)

Kalamazoo, February 22, 1939

Dear Reverend and family—Greetings!

We recently received your appreciated letter. It always gives us pleasure to receive tidings from someone of God’s people, especially if they testify therein of the mercies of God revealed to the heart of a poor sinner. Therein the Lord has delight, to make His people humble and small so that they become the right subjects wherein He can glorify His grace.

O! how good it is when the Lord makes His face to shine upon us and gives us to see His faithfulness to the covenant in Christ Jesus; and such to a people who are hard of heart and stiffnecked, and who leave the right path and wander away as sheep. The poet of Psalm 119 testified of this when he sang, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep.” How blind we are!

The way which looks to us as the right and straight way is nothing else but hellish darkness and a path of death. When the Lord, through the Spirit, gives light to see, only then do we see what dark paths and crooked ways they are which men take for the right and straight way.

Yea, that people again might be brought into the furnace to experience what God means when he says, “I will visit their iniquity with stripes.” What a grace then, when the sinner does not bite in the rod, but acknowledges that he has earned the stripes from a righteous God, and then bows before and humbles himself under God.

The Lord will be found by a people who feel guilty; and when they need the blood of Christ to cleanse their soul of guilt, then He will be gracious unto them and they will again walk in the light of His countenance. Never will He utterly take His loving-kindness from them, but saith to them:

“Open wide thy mouth of longing;
I will satisfy thy need.”

Many are the needs then, because such a soul is starved and must be fed, whereto the Lord condescends to quench their thirst from the fountain of living waters, and speaks to their heart.

In your letter to me you mentioned from Isaiah 54: “The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, etc.” Our soul must exclaim, “It is good for me that I have been aflicted.” and “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept thy word.” A living soul doth not only love God’s law and command, but also the precious Gospel, because he finds Christ therein as the end of the law. God does not see any sin in his Jacob nor transgression in h.s Israel.

Now you could ask me, “Did you experience this in your own soul?” Then I must say, “No, I am not aware of it, although I have had a glimpse of it. However, to have a glimpse of it is not like having it in possession. But when I see that there are no grounds for assurance, then I become very frightened.

Yesterday while sitting in bed (I have not been very well lately and have had the fit, but happily I am gaining again) I was reading a sermon on the impossibility from our side to be reconciled with God. Yes, it is impossible that a sinner, as he is become through the fall and as it is now between God and his soul, can be saved. From our side the possibility is completely cut off. Yet I received courage and that because of the fact that I could look back and see how the Lord revealed Himself unto me in the beginning of my conversion. When everything was cut off, and I had to justify the Lord in the punishment of my unrighteousness, when it seemed to me to be impossible to be reconciled with God, and when I thought to sink into hell under God’s just judgment, then, O wonder of grace!, the Surety was revealed to my soul and also the possibility that I could be saved through Christ. Yesterday I also saw how great the faithfulness of God is, in Christ Jesus. Mountains may depart and hills be removed, as all ground outside of Christ shall depart and be removed, but God’s faithfulness shall not depart in all eternity, since they are based on Christ Jesus and His merits. He will not alter anything that went out of His mouth in regards to His people, because He is faithful.

But also the wicked, considering God’s threatenings, shall one day find that God has spoken that it shall be ill with them. Blessed are they whose hearts are touched under the powerful callings that come to them through God’s faithful servants. How sad are conditions in our day, and what coldness and deadness appears. Oh! that our head were water and our eyes a fountain of tears that we might weep day and night because of the breaches in the church as they are in our day.

Many are content without any experience of misery on account of their sins. Oh! how little are understood the many things necessary to know that we may live and die happily. Many are sinners in mind and see a lovely Jesus, but they do not knov his true worth, because they have never seen themselves as lost sinners. If we try to correct than, they become angry with us, accusing us of ‘knowing it all.’ Thus the mouth of the wise is often stopped by these cutting remarks and by their own shortcomings.

We have known people who considered themselves true Christians, but when we asked them what grounds they had, they became angry and would not speal to us for a time, which grieved me. Later it vas revealed that the seed fell in good ground; and thus was proved that the Lord knows how to change enemies into friends. We have also met some who remained enemies. Is not that tragic? We may ask and continue asking, “Lord, nake me upright!”

It is a wonder that our mouth is not stopped, also in the work as officebearer. In this I must also confess, “Guilty, guilty, guilty!”

May the Lord bring all His people unto His holy footstool and keep us from going further astray. That we, by the light of the Holy Spirit, may be led to understand our own heart, wherein the greacest breach is to be found.

You asked me about brother K. He has been sick for some time, but he had a good sickbed for his soul. The Lord is good and righteous, and the brother may at times marvel at the wonder. We all hope with you, that the Lord will restore his health so that he may again go in and out among us. We can not miss him yet, but the Lord does according to his good pleasure. Remember us all at the throne of grace, and may the Lord hear and answer for his own sake.

Now, Reverend, I am going to conclude, hoping you receive these lines in the best of health. The Lord strengthen and bless you, and give you much fruit of your labors.

Greetings to you and all the friends of Zion. Your unworthy friend,

Note: This brother left the life of strife some years ago and shall eternally rejoice with the redeemed.

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