The Rest of The Story

This year, on February 28th, America lost its most popular radio personality, Paul Harvey who died at the age of 90, having endeared himself to generations of Americans because of his voice of security and sincerity. As long as Paul Harvey was on the radio, we knew we had at least one radio commentator who was honest, and would tell us the truth in spite of “hell or high water.” One of his more fascinating extensions of his commentary was entitled “The Rest Of The Story,” wherein, we learn many fascinating facts we would have never known otherwise. He spoke of personalities and premieres, prophets and pagans, we heard the truth about those in prison and many who should be in prison.

The first prison, now a tourist attraction, was built in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1821. Prisoners there at that time lived in individual solitary cells, They were not allowed to speak to each other or write letters home. Included in the penitentiary was a confined exercise area.

Like this writer, familiarity with prisons for most people is limited to books and film. I have told many people about being blind, don’t try to imagine what it is like. I talked with at least two employees who had been prison inmates. Each told me that no sane person could imagine what prison life is like. My answer has always been, “it must not be too bad because the re-incarceration rate is so high.

Can one even imagine the horrors of prison life for one of the most discussed characters of Bible history. Put bones and flesh on most Bible characters and they become much more interesting. Jacob, worked seven years for Laban, thinking he would get his daughter Rachel’s hand in marriage, but Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Rachel’s older sister Leah and then Jacob had to work seven more years for Rachel. Rachel, whom Jacob really loved, had a son Joseph, whom Jacob loved more than any of Joseph’s half-brothers, the sons of Leah. To put it simple, Joseph was a spoiled brat, the favorite son of his father Jacob. The favoritism shown by his coat of many colors.

Jacob sent Joseph many miles to check on his brothers who were shepherding near present day Hebron. Joseph was foolish enough to tell his brothers about a dream he had where they were bowing down to honor him. Joseph’s brothers threw him into a pit, and would have killed him but a caravan of Ishmaelite’s (Genesis 37) were approaching and they decided, better still, sell him into slavery. The very iron chains with which the Ishmaelite’s transferred him to Egypt in, must have been a transfusion of immunity of character which would see him through prison cells as well as the very throne room of Egypt’s pharaoh. Can one even imagine the statistical probability and possibilities of Joseph’s history?

The entire history of the Jewish people, their future nation, indeed, the entire history of the world would have been drastically changed if these sons of Leah, later the tribes of Israel, had not sold this one spoiled seventeen year old to some nomadic traders. Think of the statistical improbability of one man, Potiphar, buying this young man in a slave market. Think of the hand of God involved in revealing interpretation of dreams to him in, of all places, the impoverishment of an Egyptian dungeon. (Much like the hand of God inspiring Paul to write the most marvelous epistles known in the history of man in prison cells) Think of Joseph putting his own cup in the bags of grain on his brothers return to Canaan and the marvelous fulfillment of God’s promise to the first Jew Abraham, of his descendants spending 400 years in slavery.

As was the case, when the earthly father of Jesus, Joseph, had a dream to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape a madman’s killing of innocent children. So this Joseph was used by an omnipotent God to save the lives of millions from another madman.

Pay attention to your dreams, listen to your children’s dreams, from the dreams of dungeons history has been made. From the dreams of young people with scientific genes, science has been advanced. From the dreams of the watchers of the heavens, people have gone into outer space. From the cosmos of the mind, the letters and ideas of learning, great literature has been written. All started with dreams. You are scriptural and spiritually illiterate if you do not believe in the natural law of listening to instructions from an omnipotent, omniscience creator who has designed history. Remember, however, yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift. When we stand, watching a parade, we know what has gone on in front of us and what is in front of us at the present, but we do not know what is yet to come. How easily frail human beings, have forgotten that creator-God knows the beginning as well as the end of the parade.

Dr. Karl Menninger, world's outstanding psychiatrist, Menninger Clinic, Topeka, Kansas, wrote the book What Ever Became of Sin. Anyone that does not believe that there are repercussions for sin is just fooling himself. God was not joking when He instructed us to live holy lives. Do we really think that we can, with impunity, slaughter millions of His most precious creations in the abortion holocaust of this country, Mexico, China, or anywhere else, and get by with it. As the great preacher said, “there is a payday, someday.”

The Christian way of life is the only way of living. Otherwise, more than we find in our daily papers, those who commit suicide, would end it all. The reality for the child of God, the consequences of eternal damnation. G. K. Chesterton, perhaps Christianity's most famous secular writer said, “The Christian living has not been found wanting, it has just been found difficult.” It is not easy to live separated from the world. The wheat and tares are growing here in the same field together. But we know that the time is at hand when the wheat will be separated from the tares, the sheep from the goats.

My great grandfather, for whom I give two large financial awards to two ministers as a memorial each year, and have done so for many years, traveled Eastern North Carolina by horse and buggy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries preaching the gospel and helping establish churches. I met one preacher, who told me that when he came to his community it was his job to take care of my great-grandfather's very fine horse. This man, a large land owner, could have sat at home in comfort, surrounded by his twelve children. He reportedly, had a dream in which he heard the millions of unsaved, condemned sinners screaming in hell. The words over the exit to hell in Dante’s Inferno reads, ”Last chance.” We know little about the thief on the cross dying next to our blessed Lord, but he had a last chance. And so it was with my great grandfather, as he wrote, he was attempting to give those he came in contact with, a last chance. This was his dream. What will the rest of the story be with our own lives?