Biblical Quizzes for Really Smart People IX

Life flows so quickly for most of us. We have jobs to do, meetings to attend, kids to raise, money to earn, bills to pay, parties to attend. Rush, rush, rush. Sometimes we end up pursuing our lusts or ambitions heedless of the consequences to ourselves or others. But then, it hits us all at once. We realize some of the bad things we have done. We need forgiveness, we need time to recuperate, we need to re-orient ourselves to the important issues of life. We have an experience of "coming to ourselves." Thus, I love this biblical quotation, because it appears in the midst of a story of a person who realized that the life he was living was not the life he really wanted to live. He "came to himself," and decided to pursue another course. Who was it? Where is the text? And, have you ever "come to yourself?"

2. "Do I not hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am I not grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred," KJV.

When I was an undergraduate at Brown University in the early 1970s, I decided to start a "memorization club." It was one of those clubs that barely had one member at times, though my friend Jim and I sometimes met to quote biblical verses to each other. He was a brilliant guy, a scientist, in crew, quiet and unassuming, a bear of a young man. Jim's large physique belied his calm and pensive manner. No one, it seemed, could get him upset. Until he began to memorize Scripture. He found this one and decided to commit it to memory. So, as I was quizzing him, I still remember him almost spitting out the words with contempt, in a very "un-Jim-like" fashion. I loved it. But where would he have found such a verse? And who speaks it? In response to Jim, I felt I had to "match" him. And so I found the following verse...

3. "I am talking like a madman."

The reason this was my verse in response to Jim was because the college chaplain, Charlie Baldwin, had used it in a sermon he preached. I never realized how conflicted a soul Charlie was while I was an undergraduate--I guess I assumed that ministers in general had it "all together." Right. In any case, Charlie was conflicted because he loved students in general but he hated Evangelicals/Fundamentalists with a passion. But he couldn't hate us really, because we were students. And so he took it out on the Bible. He found this verse and preached on it. Why? I think he was trying to convince us that it was foolish to speak of the Bible as the "inerrant" word of God when an author of it called himself a madman. So, this was Charlie's method of trying to 'persuade' us. It didn't work, of course, and he became madder and madder, especially becau the Evangelicals were growing in number and his little group of tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking, birkenstock-wearing, wire-rimmed-glasses toting, wine-sipping Barthians and Kierkegaardians wasn't growing at all. So, that is my memory of this passage. But it is a great text. Where does it appear, and why would the author have said it?

4. "Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe."

This verse also has a "college daze" memory. Actually, I bet that very few, if any, will identify this verse correctly in a few seconds. In any case, I recall it because one of the people I was taught to love, honor and respect in college was Billy Graham. I attended his Crusade in the Bay Area in 1970, just before beginning college, met him (my pastor helped get Billy "started" in the 1940s--though I suppose that every pastor older than Billy in that day made that claim, come to think of it--and made the introductions) and decided I wanted to model my speaking style on Billy. Well, I had my opportunity to do so as an undergraduate at Brown. Beginning in my sophomore year, the Brown Christian Fellowship--the Evangelical group on campus, in contradistinction to the University Christian Movement, which I caricatured above-- used to send out music and speaking teams to various churches and organizations in Rhode Island for their Sunday Evening services. We were supposed to present something of our faith to them. I will never forget such a meeting at one of the Odd Fellows Halls in RI. These folks certainly lived up to their names. After I gave the "message," one of them insisted on calling me "Dr. Long" (I was 19), and told me that I was the "next Billy Graham." I think it is funny today, though I don't remember how I reacted at the time.

In any case, I am telling about Billy Graham because this was an important verse for Billy before his enormously successful Boston Crusade in 1950. He was a mere stripling (only 31 or 32); he had just had a very successful Crusade in Los Angeles, but no one felt that crusty and liberal New England would respond to a Fundamentalist preacher just a few years after the conclusion of WWII. Around the table before the Crusade, Billy tells (I recall this from one of his biographies) that he felt that the "Lord had given" him this verse, bolded above. Billy felt that he could "claim" this verse as a promise of God assuring a very successful Crusade. Any who read the accounts of that Crusade realize that it was startlingly successful. But, I would hasten to add, any connection between this verse and a successful Crusade is, in my mind, purely adventitious. Nevertheless, the verse is in the Bible. Where is it?

I got carried away here and only discussed four quotations before running out of space. Thanks for indulging me. I will try to be better (six quotations) in the next quiz.

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