Gospel News — Jun-Aug 2012

none. One was the brother of the ruler of the Sephardic Jewish synagogue in Kingston, and was the first from his family in at least seventeen generations to be baptised as a Christian. Another, the owner of a bakery, was a convert from Buddhism, the first in his Chinese- Jamaican family ever. There were students, farmers, fisherfolk, dressmakers, salesmen, a former church pastor, nurses, a half-blinded cane cutter, a bus conductress, a plantation overseer, a few who were unemployed, and one beggar. We became one in Christ.

What we went on to be after our baptism was much more important than where we came from. Of the forty-three of us, twenty-two were brothers and twenty-one were sisters. Four later served as `recording brethren' of various ecclesias; one is still serving as such in New York! One from Old Hope became treasurer of the Bible Mission Jamaica in the year following his baptism and for eighteen years thereafter, to be succeeded by one from Kingston for the next twenty-three years. Nine of the twenty- two matured into competent exhorting and `lecturing' brethren. Fifteen of us were used by the Lord directly and personally to bring others to the Faith: twenty-five in the case of one brother who was deaf, twenty-plus by one sister, and ten by another sister. They just let the Lord work through them! One young sister converted two on her deathbed at the age of twenty-three and both parents at her funeral. They became pillars of the Kingson ecclesia: her father, the ecclesial treasurer, died after being robbed at the meeting hall of the ecclesial collection, while her mother fell asleep in Christ after decades of service as table sister. Many, perhaps a few hundred, of your Gospel News readers will be able to put names to all those whom I have mentioned.

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All forty-three of us can show what the true Christian faith can do for people. We were transformed by the power of the gospel. Light came into our lives, banishing the darkness and the ignorance. It gave us astonishing courage and a radiant confidence that the Almighty God, the God of Israel, Maker of the heaven and the earth, is greater than anything or anybody else in the world, however powerful they may seem to be. Many of us have lived under the temporal rule of capitalist `democrats,' ruthless outlaw warlords, and communist zealots. But we have been delivered from the bondage of spine-chilling fear – fear of death and of the dead, fear of darkness and all its supposed powers, fear of gunmen and terrorists. We were and are truly free. It doesn't matter what man can do unto us (Psalm 27:1-8). Our hearts are "fixed" or "steadfast" (Psalm 57:7). That is why I am so joyful at nearly ninety-nine.

So what is the secret of the miracle year of 1957?

To a devoted follower of Christ, there is only one answer: "The Lord has done this, and it is marvellous in our eyes" (Psalm 118:23; Mark 12:11). Nevertheless, behind and below that blessing, there is much to learn. When the Apostle Paul planned his Bible campaign in Corinth, his strategy was clear and deliberate: "I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" -(1 Corinthians 2:1-2)

It was the same in Kingston in 1957. We were making disciples of the Lord Jesus, not devotees of a sect. We had virtually no Christadelphian literature – we could not afford any – and we all went out with Bible alone in hand. We claimed that our `Christadelphian' brotherhood was based on the Bible, and the seed of the Word