Passing over to the other side

Mary Ann Baker, a Chicagoan active in the alcoholic prohibition movement, wrote the all-time classic hymn, “Master, the Tempest is Raging,” in 1874 amidst faith-shattering grief over the sudden loss of her only brother to a respiratory illness that had already taken their parents and she herself suffered from.

In her personal testimony of the ordeal, she wrote:

“My pastor Dr. Palmer requested me to prepare several songs on the subject of the current Sunday school lessons. One of the themes was ‘Christ Stilling the Tempest.’ It so expressed an experience I had recently passed through, that this hymn was the result.

“A very dear and only brother, a young man of rare loveliness and promise of character, had been laid in the grave, a victim of the same disease that had already taken father and mother. His death occurred under peculiarly distressing circumstances. He was more than a thousand miles away from home, seeking in the balmy air of the sunny South the healing that our cooler climate could not give. Suddenly, he grew worse.

“The writer ‘Mary Baker’ was ill and could not go to him. For two weeks the long line of telegraph wires carried back and forth messages between the dying brother and his waiting sister, ere the word came which told us that our beloved brother was no longer a dweller on the earth.

“Although we mourned, not as those without hope, and although I had believed on Christ in early childhood, and had always desired to give the Master a consecrated and obedient life, I became wickedly rebellious at this dispensation of divine providence. I said in my heart that God did not care for me or mine. But the Master’s own voice stilled the tempest in my unsanctified heart, and brought to the calm of a deeper faith and a more perfect trust.”

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The last stanza of the hymn:

3. 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 blessed Redeemer!

Leave me alone no more,

And with joy I shall make the blest harbor

And rest on the blissful shore.

The refrain goes:

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!

*****

In Mark 4 Jesus Christ and His disciples get in a boat and go across stormy waters to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. Verse 41 says, "And they feared exceedingly, and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

“Christ demonstrates Himself to be the Jehovah God of the Old Testament by standing and ordering creation to cease the rages,” explains Jordan, quoting Psalm 89 (“Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them”), Psalm 107 (“He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still”) and Psalm 65 (“Which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people”).

“He says to His disciples, ‘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 'til we get to the other side, because that’s where the Father told me we’re going.’ ”

“God’s Word doesn’t calm the storms until you believe it! The power that’s in that Book stays in that Book until you believe it.

“And you can be just like the storm-tossed, frightened, confused, bewildered, upset, accusing . . .  Imagine saying to the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘Carest not that we perish?’ What an accusation! He says, ‘Peace, be still.’ He does what He says He’s going to do. The Word of God is where the power of God resides.”

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Jordan recalls talking to a man his age who was raised in the same Methodist religion he was raised in and "taught the same way I was taught that ‘what you do is you grow into it.’ He was old enough to have heard about Aldersgate.

“John Wesley came to Savannah, Georgia (in 1735) and was a missionary to the Indians for eight years as an Anglican priest—a lost man. The church called him back home, he got on a boat and is going back to England when a great storm came.

“In fact, when he came to America by boat there was a great storm. There were some Moravian missionaries going to go the missionaries in Pennsylvania on that storm (back to London).

“Wesley is scared to death he’s going to be blown away and destroyed and the Moravians are just having a good time, praying to the Lord and not worried at all, just happy. And he couldn’t understand how he a priest, with all the sanction of the church, could be so miserable and scared and they’re a bunch of dudes over here with no religion at all (perceivably) and yet they’re just rejoicing.

“He couldn’t understand that. He spent eight years on the mission field. He went home troubled by that. And he didn’t get an answer until one night he went down to the little Moravian mission in London on a little street called Aldersgate and went in and there was a Moravian preacher standing there and he was reading the preface to the Book of Romans written by Martin Luther.

“And if you’ve ever read it, there’s a tremendous passage in it about salvation being Luther’s experience of learning that it’s ‘by justification alone.’ It’s by faith alone in Christ that justification comes. And Wesley’s testimony is that ‘that night my heart was strangely warmed.’

“All through Methodist history that expression has wafted down. That was Wesley’s way of saying, ‘That night I trusted Jesus Christ personally as my Savior and all the fear and all the doubt and all the confusion was gone.’ You don’t grow into it, folks; it comes when you trust Jesus Christ.”