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About the Book
"God's Book of Wisdom" by Jonathan Kuntaraf is a collection of inspirational messages and teachings that offer guidance and wisdom for living a more fulfilling and purposeful life according to spiritual principles. Through reflections on various topics such as love, forgiveness, and gratitude, the book encourages readers to embrace a deeper connection with divine wisdom in their daily lives.
William Booth
General William Booth’s early life
William Booth was born in Nottingham in 1829 of well-bred parents who had become poor. He was a lively lad nicknamed Wilful Wil. At the age of fifteen he was converted in the Methodist chapel and became the leader of a band of teenage evangelists who called him Captain and held street meetings with remarkable success.
In 1851 he began full-time Christian work among the Methodist Reformers in London and later in Lincolnshire. After a period in a theological college he became a minister of the Methodist New Connexion. His heart however was with the poor people unreached by his church, and in 1861 he left the Methodists to give himself freely to the work of evangelism. Joined by Catherine, his devoted wife, they saw their ministry break out into real revival, which in Cornwall spread far and wide.
One memorable day in July 1865, after exploring the streets in an East End district where he was to conduct a mission, the terrible poverty, vice and degradation of these needy people struck home to his heart. He arrived at his Hammersmith home just before midnight and greeted his waiting Catherine with these words: “Darling, I have found my destiny!” She understood him. Together they had ministered God’s grace to God’s poor in many places.
Now they were to spend their lives bringing deliverance to Satan”s captives in the evil jungle of London”s slums. One day William took Bramwell, his son, into an East End pub which was crammed full of dirty, intoxicated creatures. Seeing the appalled look on his son”s face, he said gently, “Bramwell, these are our people—the people I want you to live for.”
William and Catherine loved each other passionately all their lives. And no less passionately did they love their Lord together. Now, although penniless, together with their dedicated children, they moved out in great faith to bring Christ”s abundant life to London”s poverty-stricken, devil-oppressed millions.
At first their organisation was called the Christian Mission. In spite of brutal opposition and much cruel hardship, the Lord blessed this work, and it spread rapidly.
William Booth was the dynamic leader who called young men and women to join him in this full-time crusade. With enthusiastic abandon, hundreds gave up all to follow him.
“Make your will, pack your box, kiss your girl and be ready in a week”, he told one young volunteer.
Salvation Army born
One day as William was dictating a report on the work to George Railton, his secretary, he said, “We are a volunteer army,”
“No”, said Bramwell, “I am a regular or nothing.”
His father stopped in his stride, bent over Railton, took the pen from his hand, and crossing out the word “volunteer”, wrote “salvation”. The two young men stared at the phrase “a salvation army”, then both exclaimed “Hallelujah”. So the Salvation Army was born.
As these dedicated, Spirit-filled soldiers of the cross flung themselves into the battle against evil under their blood and fire banner, amazing miracles of deliverance occurred. Alcoholics, prostitutes and criminals were set free and changed into workaday saints.
Cecil Rhodes once visited the Salvation Army farm colony for men at Hadleigh, Essex, and asked after a notorious criminal who had been converted and rehabilitated there.
“Oh”, was the answer, “He has left the colony and has had a regular job outside now for twelve months.”
“Well” said Rhodes in astonishment, “if you have kept that man working for a year, I will believe in miracles.”
Slave traffic
The power that changed and delivered was the power of the Holy Spirit. Bramwell Booth in his book Echoes and Memories describes how this power operated, especially after whole nights of prayer. Persons hostile to the Army would come under deep conviction and fall prostrate to the ground, afterward to rise penitent, forgiven and changed. Healings often occurred and all the gifts of the Spirit were manifested as the Lord operated through His revived Body under William Booth’s leadership.
Terrible evils lay hidden under the curtain of Victorian social life in the nineteenth century. The Salvation Army unmasked and fought them. Its work among prostitutes soon revealed the appalling wickedness of the white slave traffic, in which girls of thirteen were sold by their parents to the pimps who used them in their profitable brothels, or who traded them on the Continent.
“Thousands of innocent girls, most of them under sixteen, were shipped as regularly as cattle to the state-regulated brothels of Brussels and Antwerp.” (Collier).
Imprisoned
In order to expose this vile trade, W. T. Stead (editor of The Pall Mall Gazette) and Bramwell Booth plotted to buy such a child in order to shock the Victorians into facing the fact of this hidden moral cancer in their society. This thirteen-year-old girl, Eliza Armstrong, was bought from her mother for ÂŁ5 and placed in the care of Salvationists in France.
W. T. Stead told the story in a series of explosive articles in The Pall Mall Gazette which raised such a furore that Parliament passed a law raising the age of consent from thirteen to sixteen. However, Booth and Stead were prosecuted for abduction, and Stead was imprisoned for three months.
William Booth always believed the essential cause of social evil and suffering was sin, and that salvation from sin was its essential cure. But as his work progressed, he became increasingly convinced that social redemption and reform should be an integral part of Christian mission.
So at the age of sixty he startled England with the publication of the massive volume entitled In Darkest England, and the Way Out. It was packed with facts and statistics concerning Britain’s submerged corruption, and proved that a large proportion of her population was homeless, destitute and starving. It also outlined Booth’s answer to the problem — his own attempt to begin to build the welfare state.
All this was the result of two years” laborious research by many people, including the loyal W. T. Stead. On the day the volume was finished and ready for publication, Stead was conning its final pages in the home of the Booths. At last he said, “That work will echo round the world. I rejoice with an exceeding great joy.”
“And I”, whispered Catherine, dying of cancer in a corner of the room, “And I most of all thank God. Thank God!” As the work of the Salvation Army spread throughout Britain and into many countries overseas, it met with brutal hostility. In many places Skeleton Armies were organised to sabotage this work of God. Hundreds of officers were attacked and injured (some for life). Halls and offices were smashed and fired. Meetings were broken up by gangs organised by brothel keepers and hostile publicans.
One sympathiser in Worthing defended his life and property with a revolver. But Booth’s soldiers endured the persecution for many years, often winning over their opponents by their own offensive of Christian love.
The Army that William Booth created under God was an extension of his own dedicated personality. It expressed his own resolve in his words which Collier places on the first page of his book:
“While women weep as they do now, I’ll fight; while little children go hungry as they do now, I’ll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I’ll fight—I’ll fight to the very end!”
Toward the end of his life, he became blind. When he heard the doctor’s verdict that he would never see again, he said to his son: “Bramwell, I have done what I could for God and the people with my eyes. Now I shall see what I can do for God and the people without my eyes.”
But the old warrior had finally laid down his sword. His daughter, Eva, head of the Army’s work in America, came home to say her last farewell. Standing at the window she described to her father the glory of that evening’s sunset.
“I cannot see it,” said the General, “but I shall see the dawn.”
Will I Trust God
Had you been there that very moment, watching from a distance, you wouldn’t have observed anything dramatic. I’m talking about the moment Abraham (still called Abram at the time) stepped out of his tent and gazed into the heavens, looking at the stars. You may have heard him muttering something or other, perhaps at some point raising his hands or bowing to the ground. These gestures wouldn’t have seemed out of character to you because everyone knew Abram was a deeply pious man. And being tired, since it was the middle of the night and all, you probably would have left Abram to whatever he was doing and headed to bed. You would not have known that this was a defining moment in Abram’s life. You certainly wouldn’t have guessed this was a defining moment in world history that would impact billions of people. Because it would have seemed so undramatic. But that’s the way moments like these — moments that powerfully direct and shape the arc of history — often appear at first. And in this case, what made the world-changing minutes of stargazing so quietly monumental was that this old man, in the deep recesses of his heart, believed God. Pushed Nearly Beyond Belief To understand the profundity of this defining moment, however, we need to see how this old man’s belief had been pushed to the very brink. It all began in Genesis 12, where God delivered to Abram a promise that would have been incredible on its own, quite apart from the fact that Abram, at age 75, and Sarai, at age 66, as yet had no children: Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1–3) So, “by faith Abraham obeyed,” packing up his household and setting out, though “not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). And when he and his small tribe arrived at Shechem, God spoke to him again and said, “To your offspring I will give this land” (Genesis 12:7). Time passed. God’s blessing rested on Abram and his tribe, which included his nephew Lot’s household, and their combined possessions and herds grew larger — so large, in fact, that Abram and Lot had to separate into two tribes. Still, Abram had no offspring — the key to the fulfillment of the Lord’s greatest promise to him. Nonetheless, the Lord once again affirmed his promise (Genesis 13:14–16). More time passed. God continued to prosper whatever Abram did. And once again, the Lord appeared to him and said, Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great. (Genesis 15:1) But for Abram, now in his eighties, and Sarai in her seventies, there was still the same glaring problem. Amid all the abundant blessing of prosperity God had showered on him, there was one conspicuous, crucial place of poverty: Abram still had no offspring. Desperate Prayer of a Man of Faith It was at this point that Abram could not contain his anguished perplexity over the ongoing void at the core of God’s promises, and it poured out in a desperate prayer: “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” (Genesis 15:2–3) The apostle Paul later wrote, “No unbelief made [Abram] waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:20–21). But in this prayer, do we overhear Abram’s faith wavering? No. What we’re hearing is not unbelief, but sincere perplexity. And there’s a difference. Abram’s perplexity is similar to the young virgin Mary’s perplexity when Gabriel tells her that she will “conceive in [her] womb and bear a son.” She responds, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:30, 34). It’s a reasonable question; virgins don’t get pregnant. Abram’s question is also reasonable with regard to nature; barren women past childbearing years do not get pregnant. God was not offended or dishonored by Mary’s or Abraham’s sincere perplexity, which is why he responds to both with gracious kindness. And God’s answers are also reasonable, even if his reasonableness often extends far beyond the limits of human reason (“Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Genesis 18:14). So, in answer to Abram’s sincerely desperate prayer, God graciously invites him to step outside. Starry, Starry Night God says to Abram, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (Genesis 15:5) Here, suddenly, is a defining moment for Abram. God’s answer doesn’t include how Abram is going to obtain descendants. All God does is reaffirm, and even expand the scope of, what he has already promised. In other words, “I’m going to give you more offspring than you can count or even imagine. Do you believe me?” And old Abram, with an old wife and a childless tent, looking up into the night sky so full of stars that in some places they looked like clouds of light, with the word of the Lord ringing in his mind, realizes that whatever God is doing is about something much bigger than he has yet grasped, and so he resolves to trust “that God [is] able to do what he [has] promised” (Romans 4:21). [Abram] believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6) “The world would never be the same because of that moment on that starry, starry night.” No one, not even Abram, could have seen just how history-shaping, how destiny-determining, this moment was, when a man was justified — counted righteous — in the eyes of God simply because he believed God. Because a man believed God’s promises over his own perceptions. Because a man trusted God and did not lean on his own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). The world would never be the same after that moment on that starry, starry night. Joy Beyond Belief I’m not saying it was smooth faith-sailing from then on for the man God renamed Abraham, “the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5). It wasn’t. The Hagar and Ishmael event, as well as others, were still in the future. Isaac, the first of the promised offspring, wouldn’t be born for another fifteen years or so. And God had another defining moment in store for Abraham on the slopes of Mount Moriah. The path of faith is a rugged one, and almost always more demanding than we expect. But after that night, Abraham did not waver in his belief that God would, somehow, do what he had promised. And God did. He made both Abraham and Sarah, and all who knew them, laugh for joy — “joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8) — when Isaac was finally born. For that’s where the rugged path of faith, the hard way that leads to life (Matthew 7:14), ultimately leads: to “fullness of joy and . . . pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). “The path of faith is a rugged one, and almost always more demanding than we expect.” God leads most of his children, who are Abraham’s children because they share Abraham’s faith (Romans 4:16), to defining moments of faith, moments when our faith is pushed nearly to a point beyond belief, or so it seems to us. These moments may not appear dramatic to others. But to us, in the deep recesses of our hearts, everything is on the line. And at these moments, everything comes down to a simple but profound, and perhaps anguishing, question: Will I trust God? What usually isn’t apparent to us is how significant the moment is for an untold number of others. For it is often true that in “obtaining [as] the outcome of [our] faith, the salvation of [our] souls” (1 Peter 1:9), what also results in the years and centuries that follow is the salvation of others — so many, perhaps, that they would boggle our minds if we could see them. When you believe God, he counts it to you as righteousness, as full acceptance from God himself. And when you believe God, it leads to the Isaac-laughter of inexpressible joy as you at last see God do for you what he has promised. And when you believe God, you will share inexpressible joy with a host of others who, because you believed, will be laughing in joy with you. Article by Jon Bloom
