Pricey Good friend,
“Then I heard in my Dream, that each one the Bells within the Metropolis rang once more for pleasure; and that it was stated unto them, Enter ye into the enjoyment of the Lord.”
On a blustery day in March 1979, I drove to Glasgow Prestwick Airport to choose up two American {couples} that I used to be about to satisfy for the primary time: Burton and Dolores Michaelson and John and Patricia MacArthur. Burton was the builder of Grace Neighborhood Church and John the senior pastor. It’s greater than honest to say that on account of that go to, my life would by no means be the identical once more.
John spoke at our Hamilton Baptist Church Sunday companies and midweek at an outreach occasion earlier than heading to Aberdeen to hitch Luis Palau in getting ready for the latter’s evangelistic marketing campaign. We loved per week collectively, seeing Scotland, visiting woolen mills, and climbing fort ramparts—and the seeds of a friendship have been sown.
John, 13 years my senior, was instantly likeable, and I admired his unadorned dedication to Christ and the Scriptures. His eye for element was noticeable. On one in every of our journeys whereas I used to be driving, he stated out of the blue, “Pull in on the subsequent gasoline station.” Once I did, he jumped out of the automobile, discovered a fabric, and commenced cleansing the windshield. Again within the automobile, as we pulled away, he remarked on how it could be not possible for him to drive with all these bugs staring him within the face. It proved to be an apt metaphor for his want to see clearly and expound rigorously the textual content as he served up the Phrase to his church household for therefore a few years.
In a attribute expression of generosity, John invited Susan and me to go to Los Angeles in July of the identical 12 months. I can nonetheless recall the scary sense of privilege that got here with preaching at each morning and night companies at Grace as a twenty-seven-year-old. His want to encourage younger males in ministry was an indicator of his pastoral care. It was John who gave my identify to the church in Cleveland and who introduced my identify ahead to be heard on radio, serving to to launch what turned Fact For Life.
And so, for forty-six years I’ve listened to his sermons, learn his commentaries, adopted his sample of exposition, and loved his friendship. Any wounds alongside the best way have been devoted evidences of that friendship.
By the point this letter reaches you, Susan and I’ll have been current with Patricia and his household in seeing his earthly stays laid within the floor within the certain and sure hope of everlasting life by means of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was a person in Christ who lived his life for Christ and who’s now with Christ.
However what, you may ask, of Burton? It’s value pondering the truth that he and John have been each gathered into the presence of Jesus inside days of one another! When Burton was a boy, his father died, and males from his mother and father’ church constructed a home for his mom. Burton resolved that in the future he would construct a constructing that might home God’s household—and he did! He and Dolores have been marked by gracious hospitality and distinctive generosity, and the foursome that arrived in Scotland in ’79 at the moment are separated solely by “a slim ferry experience throughout the river.” They lived and died within the stable conviction “that if the tent that’s our earthly house is destroyed, we have now a constructing from God, a home not made with arms, everlasting within the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1).
With my love within the Lord Jesus,
Alistair
