Page 80 - The Poetic Books - Student Text

palisades fixes in the sand, within the flood mark of the sea, and there to stand till the
flood overflowed and drowned them.’
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Foreigners of non-Islamic faiths can worship legally in private in Saudi Arabia, but the 42-
year-old Filipino pastor, Oswaldo “Wally” Magdangal, was arrested after his growing
house church had become too noticeable. On December 23, Magdangal wrote out his
last will and testament for his wife and young daughter.
Religious police had tortured every part of his body in trying to force him to renounce
his faith in Christ. Embracing Islam would have won his immediate release. Initially the
religious police or muttawa’in – a vigilante force with a hierarchy and membership
extending into government and other sectors, beat him throughout 210 minutes of
mocking interrogation. They handed him a pencil and paper and demanded names of
other Christians he knew, He refused.
“Eventually I was so weak, they placed the pad of paper in my lap, and they forced the
pencil into my hand…I was weeping, and I said, ‘Lord, you’ve got to help me here,’ and I
began to write the names of Billy Graham, Charles Spurgeon, and others. After a few
days, they were so mad, because they’d been all over Saudi Arabia looking for those
people”
Magdangal describes a sensation of fire or lightning striking him in the chest. “It felt
like there was something within me that was getting ready to explode, and as I opened
my mouth, the words came out: ‘I shall not die but live and declare the works of my
Lord, for no weapon formed against me shall prosper, for greater is he who is in me that
he who is in the world’” Magdangal says. “That’s all I said. And then I bent over, and I
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wept, and I wept, and I wept.”

The tone from beginning to end of the book of Psalms changes greatly. “The overall thought
progression…is one of increasing confidence in YHWH.” Despite God’s judgment for sin, resulting in
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deep pain in life, the believer seizes on the promises of God for the future. While this life frequently is
not fair and pleasant, one day Yahweh will intervene. His Messiah will come to rule over all nature and
all peoples. We are invited to “sing for joy to the LORD (95:1), “sing a new song (96:1; 98:1),” and,
worship with gladness (100:2).” “The soaring, joyful, trusting, and majestic tone of this section is
sustained for the most part, throughout the rest of the Psalter…The Psalter indeed affirms, as we should
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today, that ‘Yahweh reigns!’” He will return. We can only imagine…and hope.

The day, August, 16, 1945 [in a prisoner of war camp in China], was clear, blue, and
warm. We all began our chores of cooking, stoking, and cleaning slops as usual. About
the middle of the morning, however, word flashed around camp that an allied plane had
been sighted. As it came steadily nearer, the elation of the assembled camp – 1,500
strong – mounted.

128 Arthur Fawcett, The Clambusland Revival, (Carlisle: Banner of Truth, 1996), 35.
129 Jeff M. Sellers, “How to Confront a Theocracy,” Christianity Today, July 8, 2002, 36.
130 David M. Howard, The structure of Psalms 93-100 (Winona Lake: Eisenbraums, 1997), 166.
131 Ibid., 183.
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