Thank God It Works Series

In his book God’s Word In Man’s Language, Eugene Nida tells

of young Belgian parachutist who was dropped into this country

during World War II to work in the underground against the

Germans. He was captured by the Gestapo and put in solitary

confinement. In the cell next to him was a Belgian pastor, and the

two men discovered that they could communicate with each other by

taping the Morse Code on the wall. On one occasion the parachutist

tapped, “It is hell to be alone with oneself.” The pastor replied, “It

is heaven to be alone with one’s Lord.” The pastor knew the young

man had deep spiritual need. He arranged with members of his

congregation to send a Bible to him. The Bible came, and with it

came the Living Word, for before he was taken to be executed he

tapped this message through the wall: “I am going out to life and not

to death.”

What evidence did he have for such confidence? All he had was

the testimony of a man and a book, and yet he was transformed and

experienced what men have been experiencing down through the

centuries every since Jesus died on the cross. The thief on the cross

had less evidence to go on than anyone. All of his evidence was

negative except for the word of Christ, but that alone was enough to

give him the same assurance and confidence that has come to all

who believe in Christ.

Even though we have tons of evidence for the historical

accuracy of the Bible, this is still not the basic reason for believing it

to be the Word of God. Neither can we say it is the Word of God

because it says so, for a thing is not what it claims to be simply

because it claims it. The primary proof that the Bible is the Word of

God is practical. All who truly believe it and have perfect

confidence in it experience its power. Paul in verse 13 gives us the

three steps that the Thessalonians went through to come to the point

of assurance concerning the Word of God. These three steps are the

three which all must pass through if they would arrive at the place

of perfect confidence.

I. THE WITNESS OF THE WORD TO THEM.

The thief on the cross, the Belgian youth in his cell, the

Thessalonians and everyone who has ever trusted in Jesus has first

of all received a witness. The Word of God must always be

communicated in the language of people before they can respond.

The communication need not be by sound, as was the case with Paul

and these people. When Paul came to them there was no New

Testament. There was no written record of the good news to hand

out, and so all was verbal. Since the word has been put into writing,

and especially since the invention of printing, the Gospel has gone

into most of the world in the language of the people. The Bible has

been translated into well over a thousand languages, and people are

working on the many hundreds left because they know that it is in

the Word of God that there is power, and where there is no witness

of the Word there is no power.

The tragedy of history and of many lives is that they do not

receive the witness at all, or not soon enough. Katherine Mansfield

in her journal tells of coming on a Bible in her mature years while

she was in the mountains fighting a losing battle with tuberculosis.

She wrote, “I feel so bitterly that I never have known these facts

before. They ought to be part of my very breathing.” The

providence of God often works, however, even when men fail to take

the Word where it is desperately needed. There are thousands of

cases on record similar to the experience of Vicente Quiroga. In

1878 after a violent earthquake in Northern Chile he was stationed

to guard a beach littered with rubble from boats which the tidal

wave had wrecked. Among the rubble was a few pages torn from a

book. After drying them he read them and was amazed at the

message. He was confused and showed a friend who told him the

pages came from a book called the Bible. He searched for a

missionary and got the whole Bible. He read it and received Christ,

and he went on to spread the word until 20 years later that whole

section of Chile had received the witness of the Word.

General Lew Wallace, author of Ben Hur, which is one of the

most popular novels every written by an American, never had any

interest in Christianity before he began to prepare for writing his