Devotional Guide
For the week of November 28, 2004
THE PLIGHT OF MAN AND THE POWER OF GOD
A testimony of newness
To Read: Jeremiah 44-46
To Know:
"From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even
though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him
thus no longer. Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation;
the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who
through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of
reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message
of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:16-19)
On December 6, 1941 Commander Mitsuo Fuchida was only hours away from
plunging the United States of America into destiny. A quarter century later
I stood only an arm's length from Commander Fuchida. He was at Prince Chapel
on the campus of Gordon Divinity School to testify to his faith in Jesus
Christ. In 1941 Mitsuo was 39 years old, intimately involved in the planning
and leadership of the Japanese war effort, and lead pilot of the sneak
attack on Pearl Harbor. Fuchida spearheaded the operation designed to
cripple U.S. war-making power in the Pacific in order to free Japan to exert
its power in the Far East. The man standing before me in Prince Chapel was
vanquished twice after that fateful day in December of '41.' The Japanese
sneak attack awakened a sleeping giant and ushered in the atomic age in the
skies over Hiroshima. Fuchida's Japan was vanquished.
The second time that Mitsuo Fuchida was conquered it was by Jesus Christ,
the divinely appointed ruler of heaven and earth. Christ's victory over
Mitsuo came on April 14, 1950. The former Navy Commander said regarding his
becoming a Christian that it was the "second day to remember in my life." He
said, "I became a new person." Fuchida was at Gordon to testify to his faith
and to urge us to be faithful in telling the "Old, Old Story." There was the
Mitsuo Fuchida who was willing to kill to secure the place of Japan as ruler
of the world; and now there was the Fuchida at Gordon Divinity School who
was willing to die in order that millions might find a welcome to the
kingdom of Christ.
12064$-12064
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