Criswell College president calls students to ‘stand between the living and the dead’

DALLAS?Instead of blaming or judging those involved in relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina victims, Criswell College President Jerry Johnson instructed students and faculty to assume the attitude of Moses and Aaron?to stand between the living and the dead. In a Sept. 8 chapel address where volunteers were commissioned to serve in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Dallas, Johnson reminded that murmuring, complaining and rebellion brought death, according to Scripture.

“We are prone to this today. That is why I am always for the pastor, I am always for the policeman, I am always for the president. They are authorities that God has placed over us in our lives. We need to get under the authority that God has put over us, and not be murmuring and complaining and blaming them. We need to understand theologically that what brings death is sin and sin is rebellion against God and his authority and those authorities he has placed over us.”

As 40 Criswell College students and professors prepared to travel by specially chartered bus to assist with disaster relief efforts, Johnson called on students to urgently “stand between the living and the dead” with prayer and the atoning message of the gospel.

“When the plague comes and when the blame game begins, God’s people must stand between the living and the dead,” he told the 40 students and faculty joining the efforts of Southern Baptist of Texas Convention (SBTC) Disaster Relief units assigned to work alongside the Salvation Army and Red Cross relief efforts in Louisiana.

“We ought to seize this opportunity. This is an effective door that has opened if we believe in the providence and the sovereignty of God. He means to bring glory to himself and he means to bring the gospel to the people. He means to save people and he means to use you and me to do it. We need to be urgent. Now is the time.”

Johnson’s message underscored the active role the Dallas school has taken in response to Hurricane Katrina. On Sept. 6, the Criswell College volunteers received necessary “yellow hat” training from SBTC to allow them to enter and assist in relief areas. On Sept. 7, about 150 Criswell students and professors went to three Salvation Army disaster relief sites to minister to hurricane victims, including those inside Reunion Arena. Meanwhile, Criswell College students have given over $800 for disaster relief, and college radio station KCBI has raised over $37,000 that will be sent to the North American Mission Board disaster relief fund.

“There are two things happening in that region,” Johnson said of the stricken Gulf Coast. “People there are gospel hardened. Many people in Mississippi are Baptists, but they are backslidden or lost. Many are members of Baptist churches, but they are lost. In New Orleans there is a dearth of the gospel. Now those people have come out. They have been flushed out among us, and we have an opportunity to share with them. We don’t have to go to New Orleans; they are right here among us. They are out of their comfort zone.”

Johnson took as his text Numbers 16:41-50, where the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron, just after those involved in Korah’s rebellion were destroyed when the earth opened up and closed over them.

“There was an earthquake?a natural disaster. The earth opened up and swallowed a bunch of people. It was something that God did in judgment. Actively God judged the people. Then in this passage we read that the people began to complain and the blame game began. They blamed Moses. They said, ‘Moses, you killed the people?the people of the Lord!'”

Johnson noted that other biblical passages, such as the description in John 8 of the man born blind, the story of the fall of the tower of Siloam in Luke 13, and the struggles of Job, show that not all disaster is a judgment on sin. Likewise, Johnson refused to join with those would claim that Katrina is part of God’s judgment on America.

Insisting that he does not know the mind of God regarding the hurricane’s purpose, Johnson noted a range of biblical options:

?A direct act of judgment through natural disaster for sin such as is found in the passage he cited or the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah;

?Part of living on a sinful earth when there is a holy God.

Somewhere in the range from this general curse on the earth, to a direct act of judgment for a situation, these kinds of events fall,” Johnson concluded.

He observed that the first response of Moses and Aaron was not to figure out God’s purposes, but instead to pray.

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