1001 Bible Questions Answered Order Printed Copy
- Author: William Pettingill, R. A. Torrey
- Size: 1.24MB
- |
Others like 1001 bible questions answered Features >>
About the Book
"1001 Bible Questions Answered" is a comprehensive guide that addresses a wide range of questions related to the Bible. Written by William Pettingill and R.A. Torrey, this book provides clear and concise answers to common queries about the Bible, helping readers deepen their understanding of scripture.
Darlene Deibler Rose
Darlene Diebler Rose: Unwavering Faith in Godâs Promises
âRemember one thing, dear: God said he would never leave us nor forsake us.â Those words were spoken on March 13, 1942, and were the last words Darlene Diebler would ever hear from her husband, Russell, as they were permanently separated in Japanese prison camps during World War II. She was a missionary in her early twenties. She did not even have a chance to say goodbye. Consider her own reflection on that heartbreaking day:
Everything had happened so fast and without the slightest warning. Russell had said, âHe will never leave us nor forsake us.â No? What about now, Lord? This was one of the times when I thought God had left me, that he had forsaken me. I was to discover, however, that when I took my eyes off the circumstances that were overwhelming me, over which I had no control, and looked up, my Lord was there, standing on the parapet of heaven looking down. Deep in my heart he whispered, âIâm here. Even when you donât see me, Iâm here. Never for a moment are you out of my sightâ (Evidence Not Seen, 46).
Obedience to Godâs Call in All Circumstances
Darlene Mae McIntosh was born on May 17, 1917. At age nine she put her trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as her light and salvation. One year later, during a revival service, she sensed Godâs calling to give her life to missions. On that night she promised Jesus, âLord, I will go anywhere with you, no matter what it costsâ (46). How could that little girl know what the Savior had planned for her in the not too distant future?
âThrough it all, Darlene was sustained by God, who never left her nor forsook her, just as he promised. He remained her light and salvation.â
Darlene married a pioneer missionary to Southeast Asia named Russell Deibler on August 18, 1937. She was only nineteen years old. He was twelve years her senior. The Deiblers eagerly returned to Russellâs pioneer missionary work in the interior of New Guinea. Darlene accompanied Russell into the jungle to establish a new mission station near a previously unevangelized, primitive tribe that had only been discovered just a few years earlier. Darlene, the first white woman any of them had ever seen, grew to deeply love the local people.
When World War II broke out in that part of the world, the Dieblers chose to stay. And when the Japanese soon took control of the area, the Deiblers were put under house arrest. Later, Japanese soldiers herded all foreigners into prisoner-of-war camps, separating the men from the women and children. During the next four years, Darlene endured separation from her husband and, eventually, widowhood.
The brutal conditions of a WWII Japanese internment camp included near-starvation, forced labor, inhumane conditions, false accusations of espionage, serious illnesses, solitary confinement, and torture. Through it all, Darlene was sustained by God, who never left her nor forsook her, just as he promised. He remained her light and salvation.
God Is Sufficient in All Circumstances
After receiving the news of her husbandâs death, Darlene was falsely accused of being a spy and taken to a maximum-security prison where she was kept in solitary confinement. Written over the door of her cell were the words in Indonesian, âThis person must die.â Frequently she was taken to an interrogation room and accused of spying. Upon her denial, her interrogators would strike her at the base of the neck or on her forehead above the nose.
There were times she thought they had broken her neck. She walked around often with two black eyes. âBloodied but unbowedâ (141), she never wept in front of her captors, but when she was back in her cell she would weep and pour out her heart to the Lord. When she finished, she would hear him whisper, âBut my child, my grace is sufficient for thee. Not was or shall be, but it is sufficientâ (141).
âWhen she finished, she would hear him whisper, âBut my child, my grace is sufficient for thee. Not was or shall be, but it is sufficient.ââ
Time and time again God showed himself to be powerful and faithful to Darlene. Once, within moments of being beheaded as a spy, she was unexpectedly taken from the maximum-security prison back to her original prison camp. The Lord again had heard her prayers, leading her to a level path against her enemies. Over and over again, Darlene could look back at her life and see how God had strengthened and sustained her
as a young bride at age nineteen.
when she headed to the jungles of New Guinea at twenty.
when placed under house arrest by the Japanese when she was twenty-five.
when she and her husband were separated into separate prison camps in 1942, never to see each other again in this life.
as she ate rats, tadpoles, dogs, runny oatmeal, and maggots, and other unimaginable foods.
through dengue fever, beriberi, malaria, cerebral malaria, dysentery, beatings, torture, attacks of rabid dogs, false charges of espionage, the promise of beheading, solitary confinement, Allied bombings, and many other inhumane abuses.
when told of the death of her beloved husband and his own tortures and sufferings.
when he brought her home to America but kept the fire of missions burning in her soul.
when he brought another missionary into her life, Gerald Rose, whom she married (1948) and returned with him to New Guinea in 1949.
as she labored on the mission field of Papua New Guinea and the Outback of Australia for over forty years, evangelizing, teaching, building landing strips, delivering babies, facing down headhunters, and loving them to Jesus.
On February 24, 2004, Darlene Diebler Rose quietly passed away and entered into the presence of the King she so deeply loved and faithfully served. She was eighty-seven years old. All throughout her life, when sharing her story, Darlene would say, âI would do it all again for my Savior.â No doubt many in New Guinea are grateful for her devotion. May we follow this great saint to the nations, for the sake of their souls and the glory of our great King Jesus.
Can Cancer Be Godâs Servant
In March, my beloved wife, Nanci, lost her four-year battle with colon cancer. All 54 years Iâve known her, Nanci loved Jesus. But from a front-row seat, I watched a wonderful â and supernatural â change in those last four years. In 2019, Nanci wrote to a friend and fellow cancer sufferer, The cancer battle has been tough. However, my time with the Ancient of Days (one of my favorite names for God) has been epic! He has met me in ways I never knew were possible. I have experienced  His sovereignty, mercy, and steadfast love in tangible ways. I now trust Him at a level I never knew I could. I saw Nanci meditate on Scripture daily, read great books about God, and journal â writing out verses, powerful quotations from Spurgeon and many others, and personal reflections. One unforgettable morning, after meditating on Psalm 119:91, âAll things are your servants,â she shared with me what sheâd just written: My cancer is Godâs servant in my life. He is using it in ways He has revealed to me and in many more I have yet to understand. I can rest knowing my cancer is under the control of a sovereign God who is  good and does  good. Brokenhearted and Thankful Nine months later, at Nanciâs request and on short notice, our daughters and their families gathered to hear her speak final words of overflowing love for us and unswerving trust in her sovereign King. As one of our grandsons sat beside her, listening to her struggling to speak and to me reading powerful words from her journals, he said, âGrams, if you can trust God in this, I know I can trust Him in whatever Iâll go through.â Another grandson told her, âI will never forget what you said to us today.â Exactly one week later, I held her hand and watched her take her last breath in this world under the curse. Every day during those four years, I witnessed Godâs sanctifying and happy-making work in my wife: âWe rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope . . . because Godâs love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spiritâ (Romans 5:3â5). Nanci and I â and thousands worldwide â prayed daily for her healing. Godâs final answer was to rescue her from suffering and bring her into his presence where itâs âbetter by farâ (Philippians 1:23). Through her afflictions, he achieved in her an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all (2 Corinthians 4:17). She praised Jesus for it, and I will forever do the same, though I miss her immensely. Why God Permits What He Does When our ministry posted Nanciâs words, âMy cancer is Godâs servant,â someone responded, âWHAT? God does NOT give people cancer. Jesus bore our sicknesses and carried our pains on the cross.â âEverything God does flows from his wisdom and ultimately serves both his holiness and love.â That reader is not alone in trying to distance God from suffering. But by saying sickness comes only from Satan and the fall, not from God, we disconnect him from our suffering and his deeper purposes. God is sovereign. He never permits or uses evil arbitrarily; everything he does flows from his wisdom and ultimately serves both his holiness and love. Joni Eareckson Tada often shares the words of her friend Steve Estes: âGod permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.â Godâs âpermittingâ something is far stronger than it may sound. After all, whatever God permits actually happens; what he doesnât permit doesnât happen. In the final chapter of Job, God reveals that Jobâs family and friends âshowed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon himâ (Job 42:11). The author told us from the beginning that Jobâs troubles were Satanâs idea and actions. Yet the inspired wording indicates Satanâs efforts were, indirectly by sovereign permission, Godâs own doing. Many find this truth disturbing, but properly understood, it should be comforting. What should be profoundly disturbing is the notion that God stands by passively while Satan, evildoers, diseases, and random accidents ruin the lives of his beloved children. Charles Spurgeon suffered terribly from depression, gout, rheumatism, neuritis, and a burning kidney inflammation. Yet he said, âIt would be a very sharp and trying experience for me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me . . . that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.â Mercy Outstrips Hardship Nanci and I experienced many glimpses of Godâs sovereign purposes for years before her cancer diagnosis. We saw that my becoming an insulin-dependent diabetic 35 years ago was Godâs plan to increase my dependence on him. And we saw, 30 years ago, that a lawsuit by an abortion clinic for $8.2 million was his way of moving me from pastoring a church we loved into a ministry that reaches further than we ever imagined. Godâs hands were not tied by my genetic propensity for type-1 diabetes (the result of the curse), or by the vengeance of child-killers (the result of human sin and demonic strategy). He didnât merely âmake the best of bad situations.â He took bad situations and used them for his glory and our highest good. His sovereign grace far outstripped our hardships. If this were not true, anyone facing a terminal illness would have to believe they experienced bad luck, and that God is either not as powerful or not as loving as he claims to be. Parents who have lost a child would have to believe the death was a meaningless accident, and that it wouldnât have happened if only the child hadnât been at that place at that time, or if that man hadnât been driving drunk, or if a thousand other circumstances had been different. If onlys  and what ifs  can rule our lives and drive us crazy. Instead, embracing Godâs higher purposes â even when invisible to us in painful and tragic events â affirms Godâs greatness. This is not fatalism. It is trust in the character and promises of our faithful, all-wise God. My friend David OâBrien told me, with his slurred and laboring voice, that God used cerebral palsy to deepen his dependence on Christ. Was he better off? He lived convinced that his 81 years of suffering were no cosmic accident or satanic victory, but a severe mercy from the good hand of almighty God. Reasons Outside Our Sight Lines By Godâs grace, Nanci fixed her attention on his attributes. Only eight months into her cancer journey, she wrote, I honestly would not trade this cancer experience to go back to where I was. These last months have been used by God to propel me into a deeper understanding and experience of his sovereignty, wisdom, steadfast love, mercy, grace, faithfulness, immanency, trustworthiness, and omnipotence. Psalm 119:71 says, âIt was good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.â If affliction was good for the psalmist, then withholding that affliction would have meant withholding good. The universe is first and foremost about the purposes, plans, and glory of God. God sees eternal purposes and plans and knows ultimate good in ways we cannot. Our sovereign God weaves millions of details into our lives. He may have one big reason, or a thousand little ones, for bringing a certain person or success or failure or disease or accident into our lives. His reasons often fall outside our present lines of sight. If God uses cancer or a car accident to conform us to himself, then regardless of the human, demonic, or natural forces involved, he will be glorified. âGod is at work behind the scenes, and one day we will understand our sufferingâs hidden purposes.â âO great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord of hosts, great in counsel and mighty in deedâ (Jeremiah 32:18â19). God is  at work behind the scenes, and one day we will  understand our sufferingâs hidden purposes. Will You See What She Saw? Without a doubt, as I saw so clearly even when my tears overflowed, cancer served Godâs purposes in Nanciâs life. I said at her service, âThe most conspicuous thing about Nanci in her cancer years was her wonderfully big view of God, which she fed from Scripture and great books. The more she contemplated Godâs love and grace and sovereignty, the more her trust in him grew.â So I said to our gathered family, friends, and church members â many of them facing their own painful trials â what I sensed God saying to me: âThat huge, beautiful, and transforming view of God is yours for the taking. So why not spend the rest of your life pursuing it?â
