May 2018 Signs of the Times Email Newsletter

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May 2018 Signs of the Times Email Newsletter The Signs of the Times newsletter is a collection of stories and quotes from past issues ofSigns and These Times. ***************************      Sergeant Vernon W. Entrekin was flying in a C-47 transport thousands of feet above the Midwestern countryside. He was one of six aboard. Suddenly the pilot lost control of the plane over Dwight, Nebraska, and orders were given to abandon it. Equipped with parachutes, the men were prepared for emergency bailout.      Tragically, Sergeant Entrekin had not securely fastened his parachute. He jumped from the plane in the midst of a swirling snowstorm, pulled the ripcord, and waited for his chute to open. It did, but Entrekin found himself dangling precariously from it by his left foot. If it slipped out, Entrekin would go zooming to the ground and certain death.      In this precarious situation, with life and death in the balance, a parade of thoughts rushed through the hapless sergeant’s mind. He found himself saying, “The Lord upholdeth all that fall,” from Psalm 145.      Above him, the parachute continued to brake his descent. It was a weird sensation—out there in space, snow falling around him, in danger of slipping out of his one hope of safety. Almost unconsciously he asked for help to climb back into the parachute harness. Summoning all his strength, he doubled his body and caught hold of the harness above his foot. Then with nerve-racking slowness he climbed back to a sitting position while dropping through the air.      Moments later Entrekin landed with a jolt and unbuckled his parachute harness. Simply, eloquently, he said, “Thank You, Lord.”—By Gordon Dalrymple, Signs of the Times, November 1962. Quote: “If Jesus had done the same for you that you have done for your fellow sinners, what would be your condition today?”—Unknown, Signs of the Times, January 2, 1917. *************************** Don't miss the ­­­­­­­­June 2018 issue of Signs of the Times: To order Signs, call: 1-800-765-6955 or CLICK to order online. ***************************      Written by George Vandeman: May I tell you a personal story? My father, when he passed a way, had been a minister for nearly forty years. Before entering the ministry he had been in business in the city of Denver. He was a fine Christian, a Methodist leader of lay groups.       One day out on the shipping platform, one of the workmen had some minor accident—perhaps hit his finger—and began to swear. My father felt some responsibility, and he walked over, put his arm around him, and said, “You know, we ought to be a little more careful. After all, that’s one of God’s commandments.”      The man answered, “Oh, yes. Thanks for checking me up. We Christians do get careless sometimes. I surely appreciate your saying what you did.”       My father started back through the passageway to his office, patting himself on the back that he had helped somebody keep one of the commandments. But all at once a voice spoke to him, “But, Vandeman, you’re breaking the fourth!” And it broke his heart.      You see, this truth about the Sabbath had come to my father’s attention. For some months he had been battling in his mind. He knew what the Word of God said. But there were church ties, his friends, his work. And now he had tried to help somebody else keep the commandments, when he himself was breaking them.      He hurried back to his office and dropped to his knees and confessed his sin before God. Shortly thereafter he sold his business and went off to renew his training along ministerial lines, to become a power in the pulpit for many years.—By George Vandeman,These Times, April 1971. Quote: “I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue. He is nearest the gods who knows how to be silent even though he is in the right.”—By Cato the Younger, These Times, December 1967. *************************** Place this notice in your church bulletin or newsletter: It’s easy to share your faith withSigns of the Times®. Sending a Signs subscription to a friend or neighbor is the perfect way to share Jesus. Order from your Adventist Book Center today. To order call: 1-800-765-6955 or online at: http://www.adventistbookcenter.com/signs-of-the-times-magazine-yearly-us-subscription.html *************************** The Touch of the Master’s Hand The editor paid her 75 cents and printed her classic poem! ‘Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer      Thought it scarcely worth his while To waste much time on the old violin,      But held it up with a smile. “What am I bid, good folks?” he cried.      “Who’ll start the bidding for me?” “A dollar, a dollar”; then, “Two! Only two?      Two dollars, and who’ll make it three? Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice;      Going for three—“ But no, From the room, far back, a gray-haired man      Came forward and picked up the bow. Then, wiping the dust from the old violin      And tightening the loose strings, He played a melody pure and sweet      As a caroling angel sings. The music ceased, and the auctioneer,      With a voice that was quiet and low, Said, “What am I bid for the old violin?      And he held it up with the bow. “A thousand dollars, and who’ll make it two?      Two thousand! And who’ll make it three? Three thousand, once, three thousand, twice,      And going, and gone,” said he. The people cheered, but some of them cried,      “We do not quite understand What changed its worth.” Swift came the reply;      “The touch of a master’s hand.” And many a man with life out of tune,      And battered and scarred with sin, Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd,      Much like the old violin. A “mess of pottage,” a glass of wine,      A game—and he travels on. He is “going” once, and “going” twice.      He’s “going” and almost “gone.” But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd      Never can quite understand The worth of a soul and the change that’s wrought      By the touch of the Master’s hand.      Words, in the right sequence, have great power, as Myra Welch could tell you, were she still alive.      In 1920 she sat down and, with a flash of inspiration that made the words flow, wrote “The Touch of the Master’s Hand,” a poem that has touched countless lives and that grew out of her own deep, lifelong faith.      A widow and ill, she had found strength many times from prayer and her Bible. “I have had some definite and wonderful answers to prayer,” she said. “But only after I have done all I could.”      She sent her poem, with its three rather long verses, to a small religious publication,The Gospel Messenger. The editor paid her 75 cents and printed it. From there its course would be a remarkable one. It seemed to meet a need for many who were downhearted and hopeless. As it became known, clergymen read it from their pulpits; editors reprinted it and commented upon it.      “The first long stanza sets the scene and tells the simple story on which the deep spiritual meaning of the remaining two stanzas is built,” wrote one. “In the second stanza we begin to get a clear idea of the cause of the poem’s wide appeal—the keynote—which the third stanza enlarges upon and transfers more positively to the human level, though the poet’s meaning would have been clear even without the great third stanza.”      Even the nonreligious read it and felt its warmth and comfort, men on skid row were uplifted by its message and hope. But a strange thing happened as its popularity grew—it became credited to Anonymous.      Myra, if she knew didn’t complain, busy as she was with hundreds of other poems and verses, most of which she wrote for her own pleasure.      “It never occurred to me to really write for money or what is known as success,” she recalled. “I doubt that the real poets would recognize my stuff as poetry. It’s probably just verse.      In her small California cottage, she wrote at her desk, read her Bible, and kept scrapbooks to pass the hours. Elsewhere, her poem was passed from hand to hand, published in newspapers and even anthologies of “best-loved poems,” but always as anonymously written.      In 1936 “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” appeared in The New York Times Book Review as “an inspirational gem,” with the notation that the author’s name had been lost and any information would be appreciated.      “I recalled having seen the poem ten years before in a religious paper,” wrote a Pennsylvania minister who supplied the author’s name to the Times. “I contacted the publishing company to obtain Mrs. Welch’s name.”      About the same time, far across the sea at a YMCA territorial convention in Hawaii, someone read the poem aloud one evening to the group. Its poignancy touched the hushed crowd and especially one young man, Dwight Welch, YMCA secretary for South America, who chanced to be visiting. At the word anonymous, he sprang to his feet. Why, no indeed, this great and inspiring poem was one he knew well—from the pen of his own mother!      “I knew the sweetness and courage with which she daily went about her business from her wheelchair, often quite ill, and with a crippling arthritic condition. I knew her happy nature and her uplifted thoughts when she wrote those very words!”      Due to her son’s efforts from Hawaii and the minister in Pennsylvania, credit for the moving poem now belonged to its rightful author, Myra Welch. Once it became known who had actually penned the now-famous lines, visitors from everywhere began to arrive at the small cottage to express their appreciation for its message, for by now it was familiar to millions, even though its author had remained in obscurity.      Many wrote thankful letters, some of which told of transformed lives due to its uplifting influence, and these touched the poet deeply.      “Who knows how many desperately disheartened people have identified themselves with ‘the old violin’ and have sought the Master who changed the value of their existence a thousand fold?” wrote one. “Even the most cynical skeptic admits that some lives that have once been ‘battered and scarred’ are suddenly and inexplicably made to seem like ‘a melody pure and sweet.’”      Pocket Books Inc. chose “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” for The Book of Popular Poems, edited by Ted Malone. In England it won success as a musical monologue, proving its wide appeal. All of which gratified Myra Welch who truly believed that it is just when one is “almost gone” that “the Master comes.”      “To me,” she wrote, “’faith without works is dead,’ and faith should be manifested in service to one’s fellowman. To me, prayer is almost synonymous with Christianity. By that I do not mean formal prayer alone, but a prayer-like attitude and a close walk with the Lord.”      During World War II, aboard a military ship, a missionary read “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” to a group of worn, homesick GIs. At its conclusion servicemen clamored for copies—so many, in fact, that “I was kept busy for hours writing them out in longhand,” the missionary wrote Mrs. Welch. “I wanted you to know of this incident and the real appreciation of those weary boys who were so moved by your poem!”      Myra Welch died in August 1959, happy in knowing that her inspired words had meant so much to so many. In her modest way, she never thought of herself as a real poet.    “My early life was the usual one of the Midwestern farm girl,” she once said. “I never aspired to be a great poet when I was young, nor even when I was married and the three children came.”      But in 1913, when she was stricken with arthritis and could no longer even hobble about, she found herself having to live in a wheelchair.      “That explains why I wrote poetry. I didn’t choose it as a career; it chose me.”      Today some might call her famous poem old-fashioned, but it is still read and loved andfelt. Occasionally, it still appears as “Anonymous,” but its author wouldn’t care, since it conveys what she meant.      “The simple fact is that the poem has universal appeal because of its message of hope,” one editor wrote of it. “As long as there are presses to turn it out, as long as there are people who hand it to passersby on the streets of large cities, as long as there are networks to carry it into every home in the English-speaking world, it will continue to sound out its message.—By Duane Valentry, Signs of the Times, July 1986. *************************** Compiled by Dale Galusha. Please pass this newsletter on to others.