By Francis J. Kong
(The Philippine Star)
Updated April 08, 2012
When
I was going through a dry spell, my friend Romy Solis gave me a set of
audio materials of Ravi Zacharias. The name was foreign to me, but I
decided to listen to the materials anyway. In just a few minutes, I
learned so much!
That was almost nine years ago. Today, I still listen to Ravi
Zacharias. I subscribe to his podcasts. I even went to Oxford
University three years ago and attended his summer course on apologetics.
In one of his talks, he quoted Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge’s haunting words still ring loud and clear in my mind today.
Muggeridge was a journalist, reporter and an agnostic who, in his
later years, embraced Christ as his savior. He possessed a brilliant
mind and an ability to put power into words in order to stimulate the
mind. Listen to this:
“I looked back upon my own fellow countrymen (Great Britain), once
upon a time dominating a quarter of the world, most of them convinced,
in the words of what is still a popular song, that the God who made them mighty shall make them mightier yet.
“I heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the
establishment of a Reich that would last a thousand years. I have seen
an Italian clown say he was going to stop and restart the calendar with
his own ascension to power. I have heard a murderous Georgian brigand
in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as
being wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more
enlightened than Ashoka.
“I have seen America wealthier and, in terms of military weaponry,
more powerful than the rest of the world put together, that had half
the American people so desired, they could have outdone a Cesar or an
Alexander in the range and scale of their conquest.
“All in one life time... All in one lifetime... All gone! Gone with the wind!
“England, now part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe,
threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy… Hitler and Mussolini
dead, remembered only in infamy… Stalin, a forbidden name in a regime
he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by
fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep their motorways
roaring and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous
campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixote, of the media
as they charged the windmills of Watergate.
“All in one life time... All in one life time... All gone! Gone with the wind!
“Behind the debris of these solemn supermen and self-styled imperial
diplomatists stand the gigantic figure of the One: because of whom, by
whom, in whom, and through whom alone, mankind may still have peace, in
the person of Jesus Christ.” I present this person to you today, the
One who can be your Lord and Savior.
Powers fall. Dynasties collapse. Empires cease to exist. And yet
there are people on this planet still engrossed in building empires,
totally uninterested in eternity – businessmen building their
conglomerate empires, religious leaders building their earthly
religious empires, cult leaders building their cultic empires “in the
Name of God.”
All in one life time… All in one lifetime… All gone! Gone with the wind, said Muggeridge.
Do not envy the bigs and the powers of this world. Stay humble, and let Christ be the Big One in your life, while we wait to go Home.
Love God, love men, and be the best you can ever be, not only in the work you do, but more so in the way you live. This is what we bring with us when we go Home.
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