"The Greatest Miracle: The Place and the Power of the Resurrection", The Evangel

69TH YEAR

Evangel

APRIL,1956

A MAGAZINE OF FAITH AT WORK

THE GREATER MIRACLE
The Place and the Power of the Resurrection

by SAMUEL HUGH MOFFETT

• In the winter, a year ago, Elizabeth Tarrant Moffett died of cancer
in the Princeton Hospital, Princeton, New Jersey. She had expected to
return to the Far East to wor\ there again with her husband who was
born in Korea and who, today, is bac\ teaching in the Presbyterian
Theological Seminary at Seoul. Sam sent the first part of the following to
his friends after composing it in New Yor\ last June.

It was in October [1954], follow-
a wonderful, happy summer,
that we were first shocked by the
discovery of the recurrence of
cancer — such a sudden, massive
recurrence that, after one, quick
look, our friend and doctor in New
Haven came from the examining
room and told me there was no
hope. He took it hard. Everyone
who knew Bet loved her. He could
not even bear to go back and tell
her the news.

Of the rest of that day I remem-
ber very little, except that Bet was
unafraid.

Then came three weeks of X-ray

S treatments and the return to
Princeton and the sudden relapse
that sent her to the hospital in an

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ambulance. That was the second
week in November.

As I look back at the weeks in
the hospital, I remember best the
times we read the Bible together.
Every day, clear to the end, Bet
would repeat in her soft Southern
way Psalm 103:

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and
all that is within me, bless His holy
name. Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget not all His benefits;
who forgiveth all thine iniquities;
who healeth all thy diseases. . . .”

Those confident words we took
as God’s word to us. We began to
read together every record we
could find in the Gospels of how
Jesus healed the sick. I had for-
gotten how full of miracles of heal-

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THE EVANGEL

ing the Gospels are. As we read,
our hope returned and we began to
pray together definitely and earn-
estly, knowing that the Lord who
loved her could heal her.

Whispered and Left

But He didn’t heal her. The sec-
ond week in January the surgeon
operated to relieve some of the pain,
and four days later, on January 17,
at three in the morning, she left
me. Her last word was a whispered
“Amen,” joining mine as I prayed
with her, just before she slipped
into the coma from which she did
not return.

That night, when it was all over
and I stumbled back to [our
friends] the Metzgers’, I had an-
other unexpected word from her.
The day before the operation she
had said to Isabel Metzger, “Tell
Sam, if the operation does not go
as we are hoping, to remember that
what God does is perfect.” Then
she had paused, and added, “And
tell him that the last twelve years
have been the happiest years of my
life.”

I will never cease to marvel that
there in the midst of her own suffer-
ing Bet somehow managed to think
ahead unselfishly to what I would
need most just then — the memory
of the sheer joy that being together
had always meant to us, and the
reminder that, when we cannot
understand, we can still trust.

“What God does is perfect."

It would have been easy to lose
faith then, but for that reminder.
We had been so confident that she
would be healed. We had prayed
in faith. But the prayer of faith that
heals is a gift of God; we do not
manufacture it by our earnestness.

There would be something pitiful
about our confidence there in the
hospital but for the fact that it, too,
was a gift of God. It brought us
through the long, dark, suffering
days, not with a spirit of despair,
but with a feeling of expectancy
and confidence. Clear up to the end
we knew that the Lord could heal
her, and that knowledge buoyed us
up with hope; and we trusted Him.
When He did not heal her, and the
darkness came in close and cold, the
trust remained.

For His way is perfect, and we
know there is a greater miracle even
than the miracle of healing. There
is the Resurrection.

• At the Memorial Service at
Princeton Seminary, a few wee\s
later, James Moffett, the writer’s
brother and the minister of the First
Presbyterian Church at Oyster Bay,
New Yorf{, prayed in part:

. . . Now we see, though yet we
do not fully understand, that, in
the spirit only, partners once are
partners always; in the spirit only,
are we truly one. . . . We thank
God . . .

THE GREATER MIRACLE

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— for her life lived among us;

— for her spirit still with us;

— for our tasks still before us.

• From the ship which carried Sam
bac\ to Korea he added a post-
script to his own letter, closing with,
“1 will need your prayers.” And
now more recently he sends mes-
sages and news — wonderful news
of service among young Koreans in
church and school and among
American Gls in camp:

These are wonderful days in
Korea — overwhelming problems
but “sufficient grace,” and the all-
conquering faith and enthusiasm of
the Korean Christians. . . .

I preached this morning up in
the hills north of Seoul at ist Corps
(USA) Headquarters Chapel.
Afterwards I happened to be talk-
ing to Pfc. Rubin from Forest Hills,
L.I., who is Assistant to the Jewish
Chaplain. “What church do you be-
long to?” he asked.

“Presbyterian,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “you’ll be inter-
ested in this. A while ago the men
in my barracks adopted a little Ko-
rean orphan, named Chi Sei. We
fed him; we clothed him; we even
sent him off to school. Then the
fellows got to thinking that that
wasn’t enough. He ought to have
a religion. But what religion?
We’ve got four Methodists, two
Baptists, one Lutheran, one Con-
gregationalist, three Roman Cath-

olics, and two Jews in the barracks.
We decided to hold a meeting of
the whole group and settle the
thing democratically. After talking
it all over for two hours, we took a
vote. The result? We voted to raise
the little fellow as a Presbyterian!”

“A Presbyterian,” I cried, sur-
prised. “But there wasn’t a Presby-
terian among you.”

Figured Carefully

“I know,” he said, “but some
day we’ll have to leave Chi Sei be-
hind. We don’t want him to be
abandoned. As near as we can fig-
ure out, most of the people in Ko-
rea seem to be Presbyterian, so he
ought to have lots of friends!”

I know that’s not the best reason
for becoming a Presbyterian. But
Pfc. Rubin is right. That new
young Presbyterian, Chi Sei, is
going to have lots of friends.

I’m thankful that he found big-
hearted Gls with sense enough to
realize he needed more than food,
clothes, and an education. I’m
thankful also that there in the little
tent that houses the Uijongbu Pres-
byterian Church he will find friends
who will tell him the real reasons
for becoming a Christian and, if he
wishes, a Presbyterian. The Gls
told me, almost with awe, that that
tent is crowded out every morning
at 4:30 a.m. in the freezing black-
ness with Korean Christians at
their pre-dawn prayers.

Impossible?

BUT IT HAPPENED!

GocTs Healing during a Church Service

by RICHARD RETTIG

• Pastor of St. Peter’s Evangelical and Reformed Church, Pittsburgh

A MEMBER OF OUR CONGREGATION

had developed blood poison-
ing in her hand. She ached in every
part and had a temperature, follow-
ing chills. Her fingers were so stiff
and swollen that she could not bend
them. A red streak ran up her arm,
past her elbow, and her whole arm
throbbed with pain. The family
would not let her come to the
Healing Service on Saturday but
put her to bed.

The next day was Rally Day and
Mrs. Brim would permit no one to
keep her from church, where she
felt her place to be. In the Sunday
School class before the church serv-
ice, her class members were horri-
fied to see her swollen hand and
arm. They told her, “You ought to
see a doctor at once. Don’t you
know you have blood poisoning?”

Started to Tingle

As soon as Mrs. Brim got into
the sanctuary, she felt a tingling
sensation in her hand and arm.
During the pastoral prayer, which
had no special reference to healing

in it, she felt something which she
described as “a drawing sensation,”
drawing from her elbow down
through the arm and out of the
fingers of her hand. She removed
her glove. . . .

After the service was over, Mrs.
Brim could bend her fingers. As
she shook hands with me with that
hand which had been so painful
and swollen, she said : “I had a heal-
ing in church. Ask your wife; she
knows all about it.”

Shaking hands with others, she
testified to her healing and men-
tioned that she could not possibly
have shaken hands before the serv-
ice. The swelling had disappeared.

She called Mrs. Rettig the follow-
ing Tuesday to report that she had
done the family washing and there
had been no ill effects whatsoever.

Impossible? Of course, so many
would say, but it happened ! I am
not interested in any explanation
other than that “the power of the
Lord was present to heal” (Luke
5:17). It should be so in every serv-
ice of worship.

Is prayer your steering-wheel, or your spare tire? — Corrie ten Boom.

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