Faith for a Dark Saturday

By Dr James T. Baker

"The darkest hour is just before dawn." The age-old adage has been borne out through the experiences of countless lives as a true statement. In Faith for a Dark Saturday, the noted theologian and historian James Baker shows how nine men from the Bible prove the point. Each man tells, in his own words, the misery of his darkest hour, a time that he did not know but we do was just before the dawning of a morning of hope.

There is Abraham as he prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Jacob as he prepared to meet his hostile brother and possible death.

Moses in desert exile before he sees the burning bush and receives the commission of his life.

King Hezekiah as he awaits assault from the invincible Assyrian army.

Joseph as he contemplates the scandal caused by his finance's pregnancy.

The apostle Peter on the Saturday between the crucifixion and resurrection.

Paul as he prepares to leave for Damascus to round up Christians.

The jailer of Philippi before the earthquake that will bring his salvation.

John in exile on Patmos before his vision.

Everyone, sometimes in his life, experiences a dark Saturday of despair like the Saturday between the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ. You will be inspired to lean on your own faith as you share the experiences of these men, caught in fear and despair, during the agony of their dark Saturdays, just before the dawn of a new day of hope. In Faith for a Dark Saturday, Dr. Baker imaginatively tells the stories of persons in the Bible who experienced severe testing of their faith and reached the darkest hour of despair.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grave Distractions Publications
• Release date: May 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452448091

Dr James T. Baker

James Baker developed his passion for history and religion while in high school, during his days as a Bulldog. He is a graduate of Baylor and Florida State Universities and has for many years taught at Western Kentucky University. Throughout his career he has been a prolific writer, authoring 22 books and over 60 articles. His articles have appeared in such places as Christian Century, Commonweal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The American Benedictine Review. His creative talents and his unique points of view and insights have also made him a highly sought after speaker. He has delivered addresses and papers in the United States, Italy, Korea, Taiwan, China, and other Asian countries. He often appears in a one person show-presentation of industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. In addition to his teaching duties, James directs the Canadian Parliamentary Internship Program.

Book preview

FaithSaturdayCover

A Faith for a Dark Saturday

James T. Baker

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.

It is the conviction of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

Faith for a Dark Saturday

Green Hills Press

Nashville, Tennessee

www.greenhillspress.com

© 2010 James T. Baker

Smashwords eBook Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cataloging-In-Publication Data

Baker, James T.

Faith for a Dark Saturday

2nd Edition

ISBN: 9781452448091

BISAC Subject: Religion / Inspirational

Published with the services of Grave Distractions Publications www.gravedistractions.com

Table of Contents

Other Books by James T. Baker

Prologue

1. His Lord’s Command

2. Long Night’s Journey into Day

3. The Lost Years

4. The Man Who Made History

5. A Divine Dilemma

6. The Darkest Saturday of All

7. The Frenzy of Doubt

8. No Way Out

9. Waiting for the Light

Epilogue

About the Author

Other Books by James T. Baker

Dogs to Men

Good for the Soul

Holidays with Sundae

Peter Peacock Passes

Prior Knowledge

White Dogs

Quest

Prologue

We live in an age of despair. The dark forebodings that were once the territory of lone prophets of doom seem to have wafted on the breezes of mass media to the masses; and a dark cloud hangs over the horizon.

There is pessimism about world conditions. With the ending of the Cold War, we thought we would know an Age of Peace and Security. Instead we entered directly into an Age of Terror in which various and sundry zealous disturbers of the peace have made sure that no one, anywhere on earth, can feel safe today. Little is being done to avert the population crisis that awaits us just around the next corner; and far too little is being done to preclude pandemics that lurk in dark places preparing for an assault on mankind. Attempts to defuse national and religious conflicts that could cross borders and lead to war are inadequate; and with ever more countries developing nuclear capabilities, the old threat of sectional and even global catastrophe looms large.

There is pessimism about the future of our country. We wonder whether we can ever resolve the internal conflicts that threaten not just our tranquility but our very survival. We wonder how we will ever be able to overcome the vicious racial, social, and political tensions that our history has dropped on us and which still, despite all our efforts to ease them, still divide us. We wonder whether we are capable of solving educational, economic, and occupational inequities. We wonder whether we will ever be able to achieve the dream of our forebears, to become truly one nation, indivisible, with equal liberty and justice for all.

There is pessimism about religion. Once our bulwark against the threats that surrounded us, the Christian faith and the church that perpetuates it seem today on the decline, both personally and socially. Spiritual leaders, falling in shame from the pedestals we erect for them and encourage them to assume, call the moral authority of our ecclesiastical institutions into question. The most successful of our contemporary religious organizations appear to be more recreational facilities than temples of worship, while traditional sanctuaries slowly empty. People still to yearn for a relationship with God, but too often they entrust their religious fate to preachers of division and hate.

Ours is indeed an age with an abundance of well deserved pessimism and its resulting despair. Yet there may be some comfort in the knowledge that it is not the first such age. We are not the first people to feel that the world, especially our part of it, especially the spiritual values that once made us strong, are under attack, threatened with extinction. We are not the first to feel that God has abandoned the world he created and left it to fend for itself. History has many examples of such ages, and the Bible teems with stories of people who faced personal spiritual and social crises that make them our kinsmen in travail and can teach us to have faith and hope even in the darkest of times.

Think of Abraham, who was called the friend of God, who walked with the God who chose him to be the father of nations, whose wife Sarah gave him a son for his old age, on his way to obey his God by sacrificing that very son.

Think of Jacob, the twin, the trickster, returning home after twenty years of exile, waiting at Jabbok’s Ford for what he believed would be a fatal confrontation with a brother who hated him and would have vengeance for a stolen birthright.

Think of Moses, a murderer at large, a fugitive from justice, a vagabond in the desert, nearing old age with only a pocket of broken dreams, a bleak future, and a declining belief that the God who had been silent for a century would ever speak again.

Think of Hezekiah, a king of Judah, faithful to his God but unpopular with his people, waiting for morning when the Assyrian army encamped around his city would breach his walls and take his crown and his life and the freedom of his nation.

Think of Joseph of Nazareth, an older man, probably a widower, engaged to a girl named Mary, having discovered her pregnant, knowing that he must put her away and abandon hopes for marriage or face the ridicule of his friends.

Think of Simon Peter, who had left his home, his family, his calling as a fisherman to participate in the impossible dream of the Rabbi Jesus, meeting with the remnants of the movement on the Saturday night after the crucifixion, coming to terms with its finality and the death of his hopes.

Think of Saul of Tarsus, once a promising rabbinical student, submerging his proliferating religious doubts in a frenzied attempt to crush heretics, especially those who followed a false messiah, looking into his soul just before embarking for Damascus.

Think of the Philippian jailer, a man who in my imagination had failed as a father, a husband, a representative of the state, watching over the two criminals Paul and Silas, awakened by an earthquake which opened the jail doors and set free his prisoners.

Think of the aged John, rejected both by the secular world and likely by his own church, exiled on the tiny Isle of Patmos, gazing out at an empty sea, waiting for death, certain like other old men he would have no more visions.

We know that each of these men stood on the threshold of an unforgettable experience that would save his life, give it meaning, and add to their and our understanding of God; but none of them knew it at the time, and as a result each one faced a dark day of despair, a day we might collectively call his Saturday, after the day Peter and the other disciples spent in despair before the Sunday morning of the resurrection.

Abraham did not know during his darkest day, when he thought obedience to his God meant sacrificing his son, that a messenger from God would stay his hand, stop him from using his knife, provide a ram caught in a bush for a sacrifice, and by this act teach the world that a loving God does not require human sacrifice. Abraham was in despair nearing one of the grandest moments of revelation in human history.

Jacob did not know as he lay down to sleep by the brook at Jabbock’s Ford, fearing that the morning would bring his death, that his brother had already forgiven him for his selfish, juvenile deception, for his theft of the precious birthright. He did not know that he was about to spend a night wrestling with a messenger from God and receive a new name, Israel, and a promise that his life had a purpose higher than he had ever dreamed possible. He did not know that this experience would help him survive other great personal tragedies in the days to come.

Moses did not know as he herded sheep in the lonely, barren Sinai desert, an exile from his native Egypt, on the run for homicide, that he would see a burning bush, hear the voice of God—the Great I Am—calling him to lead his nation out of bondage. He did not know that he was to become the prototype of the national liberator, admired for all time by people in bondage.

Hezekiah did not know during his dark night of despair, expecting the next day to lose both his throne and his life, that half of his enemy’s army would die in their camp and his enemy abandon plans to take Jerusalem. He did not know that his religious faith and political decisions, both highly criticized, were about to be vindicated and that he would be remembered in history not a scapegoat but a hero.

Joseph, the man betrothed to Mary, in the dark day when he found that she was expecting a child that was not his, did not know that God would come to him in a dream and tell him to marry the woman and accept as his own the child she would bear. He did not know that he would be granted the honor of serving as the earthly father of the Son of God, a calling no other man in history would be granted.

Simon Peter did not know during that Saturday of his life that on Sunday as the rising sun chased away the night’s darkness, Mary Magdalene would return from the cemetery with news of an empty tomb and of seeing the risen Lord and thus open his eyes to the puzzling dilemma of Jesus’ death. He did not know that the rest of his life he would share the story not just of death but also of resurrection.

Saul did not know as he rode to Damascus in search of Christians to arrest and bring to justice, at a time when he sought to shed his religious doubts and personal anguish with zealous harassment of heretics, that a light would blind him, a voice would taunt him for his persecution, and a vision would seize his life and make him not just a Christian but the boldest of Christian missionaries, the missionary to the Gentiles.

The Philippian jailer did not know during his night of watching prisoners and contemplating the breakup of his family and the end of his career that an earthquake would come to shake up his whole life, at first with terror, then with hope. He did not know that the two men who sang songs in the night and did not try to escape when their jail doors were opened would give him a message that would bring a new way of life to him and to his family.

John of the Apocalypse did not know that the isolation of his island prison would give him just the solitude he needed to receive a divine vision. He did not