It was a godly saint from a past generation, Robert Cleaver Chapman, who said in
a letter to a friend, “We should never be frightened to ask Christ for anything.
We might get more than we ask for.” When the Jewish high priest asked Jesus, “Are
You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”, he got more than he asked for. Christ answered,
“I am”, then added, “You will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the
Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” This is a reference to Daniel ch.7,
and the high priest would know it goes onto to speak of Messiah’s coming kingdom
- ‘And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all peoples,
nations, and languages should serve him … an everlasting dominion, which shall not
pass away …’ - The high priest in rejecting Christ, would never enjoy the coming
kingdom glories. He was blind to Christ and blind to the future!
Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911 – 2004) was the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. In his own autobiography, Reagan shared his early fascination with how nature points beyond itself to Almighty God. At age five, his family rented a house in Galesburg, Illinois, and the attic contained “a huge collection of birds’ eggs and butterflies enclosed in glass cases.” Reagan recalled how he “escaped for hours at a time into the attic, marvelling at the rich colours of the eggs and the intricate and fragile wings of the butterflies.” He said “the experience left me with a reverence for the handiwork of God that never left me.” Following his death, they found among his personal papers, a set of ‘one-liner’ cards which he would use at his public talks. On one of the cards he’d written, “Ask an atheist who’s just had a great meal if he believes there’s a cook!”
