January 23

TREKKING WITH ABRAHAM

“ Abram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land.”

Genesis 12 verse 6

Evangelist Abraham.

I read on somebody’s Facebook page the other day a quotation of Teilhard de Chardin. Although de Chardin’s opinions were mostly declared to be “unsound” by the Catholic church (he was a Jesuit Priest as well as a Palaeontologist, geologist and a bit of a philosopher) the quotation is a profound one, and in this instance I believe is completely biblically sound. He wrote: “We are not human beings having a temporary spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a temporary human experience.” I find this statement as possibly the greatest motivation to what Christians refer to as “evangelism”.

Evangelism actually could be explained in a thousand different ways, but sadly is only seen mostly in Christian circles as telling non-Christian people how to become Christians. Few Christians are called to preach sermons of course. Many are intimidated and even withdraw in the face of the challenge to stand up and explain one’s faith. I have concluded after years of mixing with evangelical Christians, and attending “evangelistic meetings,” as well as being a delegate at conference after conference on the subject of “evangelism”, not forgetting that I myself have conducted evangelistic missions myself at various points of my walk with Christ, that somehow we have missed the boat.

Gustav Dore’s famous engraving of Abraham on the move.

Nothing influences a world that is falling apart more than to witness, watch, and study somebody who (to their eyes) has it all together. It is a phenomenon. It is a shock to some. When somebody goes through a time of trauma and friends watch, the response of those in trauma speaks to the onlooker. Many things in life seek to destroy or break somebody’s spirit in a very negative manner.

The story of Abram starts with a journey. In fact, the story of Abram is nothing but a journey. Spiritually and geographically Abram was moving, progressing, travelling, seeking for something and pursuing that for which God had pursued him, and he was searching all his life. Abram was trying to apprehend and catch that for which he was apprehended and caught for by Yahweh Himself.

By the manner in which the biblical text about Abram is written, it is easy to conclude that he lived a solitary kind of life, and mostly kept himself to himself. However, we know now for certain that Abram lived in days of many and various cultures around the Middle East, and that he lived at a time when all ethnic national groups as well as familial clans seem to have constituted a huge and incredibly interactive international society. There were many wandering nomadic groups of which Abram was one. Wandering clans, or tribes of extended families were never far from settled urban areas. Travelling clans consisted of many different levels of family, servants, slaves, livestock, animals, and all other possessions. Some of these clans were very wealthy and powerful, and contained a large and varied population. Abram must have been one of the biggest, if not the biggest familial clan. From Ur of the Chaldees right into his entrance into Canaan, Abram and his campus would have bought and sold goods with local merchants and peoples, then picked up and moved on to the next location, even when Abram himself kept his tent at a single location without moving. Abram’s chief steward was from Damascus, his wife’s handmaid was an Egyptian and when we get to Genesis 14 he had 318 men ready to fight for him. These were trained soldiers. With wives, children, servants and slaves within his campus it is possible that Abram’s “clan” was upwards towards a thousand people. In this light he doesn’t seem to be the solitary character that most commentators portray him as.

My point is that Abram as the “head honcho” of his incredibly large proup, would have needed to be abreast of world events, the cost of things, who the local authorities and kings were, and generally, he would have had to interact with people on many levels – including the religious realm concerning gods, idols, animals for sacrifice etc.

Abram’s lifestyle would have been outrageously different from anybody else in Canaan when it came to discussions about religious and spiritual issues. All Abram had to talk about was God, i.e. one God, with a capital “G”. No other god was an option to him. As it is today, I believe so it was in Abram’s day, that when a person shows the slightest spiritual conviction or zeal, most people take a step back in order to assess what kind of person could believe such unorthodox and strange beliefs. Abram entered Canaan, and Moses is quick to tell us, “The Canaanite was in the land”. He came to the plain of Moreh. At the time of Abram, this “great tree of Moreh” would have been a well-known landmark. Linguists suggest the actual word suggests an oak, or terebinth grove, as opposed to the word “plain“, as translated in the King James. It is also interesting to note that, geographically speaking, Shechem is near the centre of the Holy Land. Abram and Sarai descended into the Jordan River Valley from the east, most likely from the Jabbok River. As Abram and Sarai entered by this route, the Wadi Ferah would have led their group northward, up the western banks of the Jordan Valley, to the mountains of western Palestine, and into Shechem. Shechem, or the great landmark alluded to near Shechem, would have been one of the first “cities” encountered by a party entering Canaan from that direction.

Abram’s demeanour, his rationale for being there in Canaan, his altar building projects, his idol-less camp, his prayers without facing or handling idols, would have caused ripples in the societies in which he mixed, traded and befriended people. It may be true to say that he did not have the burden of the great commission in his heart, or clear concepts about how faith in God could save them from purposelessness in this life and hell in the next, but without any shadow of a doubt, Abram, in sharing his faith and lifestyle, was an evangelist of sorts. The impact he had on Lot and his own father who were with Abram as they left Ur, his obvious influence on Aner, Eshcol and Mamre, his public reception by Melchizadek in the midst of the celebratory conquest of Chedorlaomer, and the manner in which the Canaanites treated him when he wanted to buy the cave in the field at Machpelah all lead us to understand that Abram was understood by all he mixed with, to be a man of character, a man of God, a man to be emulated, and that he had a God who watched over him. In plain language, he was an evangelist at heart.

Evangelism is not a thing to frighten Christians. The very best evangelism that wins people over to come to faith in Christ, is the friendship of somebody who lives the life, gives godly reasons in a gentle manner as to why they do things or do not do things, and the expression of the Spirit of Christ that is within them. To put people in fear of not knowing the right scriptures to qualify their faith, or the correct theology to answer people’s hard questions, is not as big an issue as some make it. Reader, just live out your convictions and explain things when asked as much as you know. The heart speaks often with much more clarity than the intellect.



WHAT’S THE POINT? Winning the lost is the heart of God Himself, and not merely a New Testament priority.