Christ: 'Pass over unto the other side'

You ever hear anybody talk about Paul’s “missionary journeys”?

“Paul never took a missionary journey a day in his life,” says Jordan. “Paul was no missionary; he was an apostle. You see the first verse in the book? ‘Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ.’

“A missionary is a 19^th Century invention. Nobody called themselves that before the 1800s and the term was invented, by the way, along with the term ‘Great Commission.’ Do you know that term was created by a ‘missionary’ in India?

“I tell you what you do. Google the term and just get the information. It’s fascinating; it will scare you to death. This guy did it in order to raise money from home and that’s why it’s associated with missionary conferences—‘If you don’t believe in that you don’t believe in missions.’ That was the spiel.

“The first article I ever saw written about that was from a Lutheran who was mad at people for using it.

“A lot of the terminology we use that comes around and goes around, people get all bent out of shape about because they’ve never seen beyond the fence of the denominational group they live in and they don’t see over the fence to the things that are there.

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“In Mark 4:35 Jesus is with His disciples and they get in a boat and go across to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.

“Go back and read Psalm 89, Psalm 107, Psalm 67, and you’ll see that only Jehovah, the Creator, can calm the raging sea. Jesus demonstrates himself to be the Jehovah God of the Old Testament by standing and ordering creation to cease the rages and that lake turned into the face of a mirror; calm.

“Then He says to them, ‘Why are you so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?’ There’s their problem. ‘Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God.’

“Look what they forgot in verse 35: ‘And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side.’ When they got in the boat, where’d He tell them they were going? To the other side. They get out in the middle of a storm-tossed sea and they’re jumping up and down, yelling, ‘What are you doing asleep?! Don’t you care?! We’re fixing to drown!’

“And Jesus gets up and says, ‘Peace, be still,’ and everything calms down. Then He says, ‘Don’t you dudes remember what I just told you? Have you forgotten that I told you we’re going to the other side? If you drowned out here in the storm my word wouldn’t be true, so if you really understood what I told you, and you believed it, you know what you’d be doing? You’d be down here sleeping with me, because I’m just resting till we get to the other side, because that’s where the Father told me we’re going.’

“When I was a kid we used to sing a song:

‘Master the tempest is raging. Master, the tempest is raging!
The billows are tossing high!
The sky is o'ershadow with blackness,
No shelter or help is nigh;
Carest Thou not that we perish?
How canst Thou lie asleep,
When each moment so madly is threatening
A grave in the angry deep?

Refrain
The winds and the waves shall obey Thy will,
Peace, be still!
Whether the wrath of the storm tossed sea,
Or demons or men, or whatever it be
No waters can swallow the ship where lies
The Master of ocean, and earth, and skies;
They all shall sweetly obey Thy will,
Peace, be still! Peace, be still!
They all shall sweetly obey Thy will,
Peace, peace, be still!

Master, with anguish of spirit
I bow in my grief today;
The depths of my sad heart are troubled
Oh, waken and save, I pray!
Torrents of sin and of anguish
Sweep o’er my sinking soul;
And I perish! I perish! dear Master
Oh, hasten, and take control.

Refrain

Master, the terror is over,
The elements sweetly rest;
Earth’s sun in the calm lake is mirrored,
And heaven’s within my breast;
Linger, O blessèd Redeemer!
Leave me alone no more;
And with joy I shall make the blest harbor,
And rest on the blissful shore.