I had other articles published before, but the article below was my first published article in a national publication. I ran across it again while I was throwing things away as I pack up my library once again in anticipation of a move closer to our grandchildren. It appeared in the August/September 1988 issue of WorldWide Challenge Magazine.
Everytime I think of this story from something that happened in 1975 (is it really 50 years ago?!), I am stunned again about the simple faith of the young man in the story and of God’s faithfulness to answer prayer. The article below is exactly as it way published in 1988.
“God, Give Me Wise Words!”
I became a Christian in the second semester of my freshman year of college. The next year I enrolled in a class titled “History of Jewish Thought.”
The class was taught by a Jewish rabbi who knew that his classroom contained both Gentiles and Jews. As an ice-breaker, the day he stood before the class for the first time, he asked each student about his background.
His next question was bit more intriguing.
He asked each of us to define what a “Jew” is. Is a person a Jew because his mother is Jewish, his father is Jewish, he goes to a synagogue or temple, eats kosher, speaks Hebrew, celebrates Hanukkah or some combination of these.
When the professor finally posed the question to me, I was sweating, anxious and filled with fear. I sensed God wanted me to talk about my faith, and I had never done that in a classroom before.
I did what any rational believer would do–I quickly prayed, God give me wise words.
My answer: “Brought up in a nominally Christian family, I was always taught that a Jew was one of God’s chosen people.”
The professor, turned and, with appropriate abbreviations, wrote what I said on the blackboard. Then he turned and addressed me again. “Could you elaborate on what that means?”
I turned and addressed God again. With my brief prayer finished, I nervously attempted to comply with his request: “Chosen by God to be the people through whom He would reveals His will to the entire world.”
The professor again turned to the blackboard and again wrote down what I had said. Then he turned and directed another question back to me. “By that definition, what is it better to be, a Jew or a Christian?”
“I would say it is better to have accepted the Jewish Messiah as your personal Savior and Lord.”
“Ahh…ahh…I don’t know how to deal with that right now,” he replied. He turned once more, placed three questions marks on the blackboard and directed the next question to another student.
That conversation is more than 13 years old [now 50 years!], but I remember it like it was yesterday and for a number of reasons:
I felt like God had answered my prayers.
I learned that I did not have to fear others when I stood for Jesus.
I was able to verbalize, after praying, an aspect of revelation that I had never quite conceptualized before: The Jews were “chosen by God to be the people through whom He would reveal His will to the entire world.”
God has always been a missionary-God. He has always been in the past and is today on a mission to redeem man and bring him into a right relationship with Himself. The message of history and the message I gave to my Jewish professor is that God has accomplished His plan.
Jesus really is the promised blessing. He really is the Messiah of Israel and the world. And it really IS better to have accepted the Jewish Messiah as your personal Savior and Lord. **
Marty Schoenleber, who has served with
Campus Crusade for Christ for nine years,
is a Teaching Fellow at the International School
of Theology in San Bernardino, Calif.
I’m still mesmerized by the plan of God to save the world.
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