Rescued from the Jaws of Death: Encapsulate of Victory

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Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom…

The Christian approaching death has the advantage the atheist will not have. Whereas the latter believes his conscious self is doomed to dust along with his body, the Christian knows that an awesome judgment approaches, and he is anointed with the baptism of hope to believe that he will come face to face with his Creator. And so the dying Christian’s fear of God’s judgment is tempered in a way the unbeliever will not experience, though a deathbed conversion likely offers the unbeliever at least a moment of calm before the end. While the atheist can only breathe his last breath with grudging sorrow and resignation, Hildebrand notes, the believer is not resigned at all; indeed, his heart aches to meet with “God’s infinite mercy and with our Holy Redeemer, Jesus Christ, who has opened for us the gates of Heaven.” I had sunk down deep below the mountains beneath the sea. I knew that forever, I would be a prisoner there. But, you, LORD God, rescued me from that pit.

snatch victory from the jaws of defeat

To the cuttings of mountains I have come down, The earth, her bars are behind me to the age. And Thou bringest up from the pit my life, O Jehovah my God.

Be gracious to me, LORD; consider my affliction at the hands of those who hate me. Lift me up from the gates of death, Have mercy on me, LORD. See my affliction by those who hate me. You lift me up from the gates of death,

snatched

Be gracious unto me, O LORD, Behold mine affliction at the hands of them that hate me; Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death; Four PT-boats would be used in the breakout operation. They would all leave from different locations so as not to arouse the suspicion of any spies that might be lurking around. The four boats were supposed to rendezvous at 8 pm on the evening of March 11, 1942, off the turning buoy outside the minefields at the entrance to Manila Bay. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. The Japanese saw the PT-boats, and the temptation to sink a few of these impudent little waterbugs was just too great. Enemy planes dove down like birds of prey, but as soon as they released their bombs, the PT-boats had skidded away. For the next few minutes the PT-boats zigzagged across Manila Bay, engaging in a kind of deadly cat and mouse game with an exasperated enemy. For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

Awakening was a key concept in Hildebrand’s philosophy of life. The child in its innocence who first discovers the fact of death is awakened to a horrible reality, often exacerbated by the gradual suspicion that if natural death alone is the end of life, what point is there to anything? I cannot overemphasise how grateful and thankful I am to Jesus Christ the lover of my soul for dying on that Cross and rescuing me with his precious blood. I never knew that Jesus could favour me this way. Lord, who am I that you think of me? God saw fit to endow man alone with his sense of God, with his sense of good and evil, with a sense of his eternal destiny, and with a sense of himself as the most gifted of all God’s creatures. In short, man alone is a metaphysical being. Hildebrand cites a famous passage from Pascal’s Pensées : Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him…. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. It is death that brings our natural human greatness to an end, for it is by death that our grasp of the entire universe, including our human body, is brought to an end. But our supernatural being, our soul which is nobler than the universe, cannot be brought to an end. For (and this is the most metaphysical of questions) why would God create so vast and unthinking a universe, and put in it so noble a creature, if all were for nothing in the end? I thank all messengers of God and brethren in Christ in different parts of the world, particularly my families and friends in Ireland, Nigeria, UK and USA—all too numerous to mention—who spent days and months in prayer, fasting and placing a demand on God’s mercy for my recovery. May God bless you all.Be gracious to me, O LORD! See my affliction from those who hate me, O you who lift me up from the gates of death, Have mercy on me, Yahweh. See my affliction by those who hate me, and lift me up from the gates of death, Show mercy upon me, LORD JEHOVAH, and see my oppression by him who hates me, my Exalter from the gates of death. But they are still not safe, and nor are the people of Atlantis. For Zaroff has a plan that will make him the greatest scientist of all time. He will raise Atlantis above the waves - even if it means destroying the world...