God’s Perfect Timing

By Eliane Hosokawa Imayuki

Marcia Yuassa, one of the thousands of Brazilian immigrants working long hours at factories in central Japan, was forced to stay at home after falling ill.

Image © Pacific Press

Suffering severe pain, she didn’t know how she could take care of her family or even survive. She cried out to God not to let her die.

Unable to do much in her ill condition, she spent a lot of time on the Internet.

One day, she stumbled across an online series of Bible-based health courses by a Seventh-day Adventist physician in Brazil. She watched every YouTube video that she could find and, as she learned about various aspects of a healthy lifestyle, she also heard about the seventh-day Sabbath.

Then, while looking on social media for friends from her youth in Brazil, she found a former classmate who recently had created a profile. Marcia happily reconnected with her old friend and enthusiastically told her in a call about her new findings about health and the Sabbath.

The friend listened attentively and, when Marcia finished, said she worshipped Jesus on the Sabbath. She had become a Seventh-day Adventist after losing contact with Marcia. The two women began to study the Bible together.

After some time, the friend sent contact information for an Adventist church and its pastor in her region. But when Marcia looked up the church’s address, she realized that it was in another city, too far away to visit because she did not drive. Still she called the church and spoke with me, the pastor’s wife.

To her surprise, I informed her that a small Bible study group had been formed in Iwata, the city where she lived, and would meet for the first time that same week.

Three days later, the group met less than a mile (a kilometer) from Marcia’s house, so close that she could walk there. God has healed her illness, and Marcia, 54, has not missed a meeting since.

Marcia learned about the seventh-day Sabbath through the Internet. Part of this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering will go to a project to help many Japanese people, especially young people, learn about Jesus through the Internet. Thank you for planning a generous offering.

Produced by the General Conference Office of Adventist Mission. Find more mission stories at adventistmission[dot]org

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Further Thought:

“This [Micah 6:1-8] is one of the great passages of the OT. It, like Amos 5:24 and Hosea 6:6, epitomizes the message of the eighth-century prophets.

Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com

The passage opens with a beautiful example of a covenant lawsuit in which the prophet summons the people to hear the charge Yahweh has against them. The mountains and hills are the jury because they have been around a long time and have witnessed God’s dealing with Israel. Rather than directly charging Israel with breaking the covenant, God asks Israel if they have any charges against him. ‘What have I done? How have I wearied you?’ In the face of injustice some of the poor people may have become ‘weary in well doing.’ In the face of opportunities to get rich quick some of the land-owners might have grown weary of keeping the covenant laws.” — Ralph L. Smith, Word Biblical Commentary, Micah-Malachi, (Grand Rapids, MI: Word Books, 1984), vol. 32, p. 50.

“In the reformation that followed, the king [Josiah] turned his attention to the destruction of every vestige of idolatry that remained. So long had the inhabitants of the land followed the customs of the surrounding nations in bowing down to images of wood and stone, that it seemed almost beyond the power of man to remove every trace of these evils. But Josiah persevered in his effort to cleanse the land.” — Ellen G. White, Prophets and Kings, p. 401.

Discussion Questions:

<–Thursday

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/friday-further-thought-deuteronomy-in-later-writings/

One of the most famous prayers in all the Old Testament is in Daniel 9. Having learned from reading the prophet Jeremiah that the time of Israel’s “desolations” (Daniel 9:2), seventy years, was soon to be up, Daniel earnestly began praying.

And what a prayer it was — a poignant and tearful supplication in which he confesses his sins and the sins of his people, while at the same time acknowledging God’s justice amid the calamity that had befallen them.

Read Daniel 9:1-19. What themes can you find that are related directly back to the book of Deuteronomy?

Daniel’s prayer is a summary of exactly what the nation had been warned about in Deuteronomy regarding the fruits of not keeping their end of the covenant. Twice Daniel referred back to “the law of Moses” (Daniel 9:11, Daniel 9:13), which certainly included Deuteronomy and, in this case, might have been specifically referring to it.

Image © Review and Herald Publishing collection at GoodSalt.com

As Deuteronomy had said, they were driven from the land (see Deuteronomy 4:27-31 and Deuteronomy 28:1-68) because they didn’t obey, exactly what Moses (Deuteronomy 31:29) had been told would happen.

How tragic, too, that instead of the nations around them saying, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deuteronomy 4:6), Israel became a “reproach” (Daniel 9:16) to those same nations.

In all of Daniel’s tears and supplications, he never asks the common question that so many ask when disaster strikes: “Why?” He never asks because, thanks to the book of Deuteronomy, he knows exactly why all these things happened. In other words, Deuteronomy gave Daniel (and other exiles) a context in which to understand that the evil that came upon them wasn’t just blind fate, blind chance, but the fruits of their disobedience, exactly what they had been warned about.

But, and perhaps more important, Daniel’s prayer expressed the reality that despite these events, there was hope. God had not abandoned them, no matter how much it might have seemed that way. Deuteronomy provided not only a context for understanding their situation, but it also pointed to the promise of restoration, as well.

<–Wednesday Friday–>

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You can view an in-depth discussion of Deuteronomy in the Later Writings in the Hope Sabbath School class led by Pastor Derek Morris. Click on the image to view:

With thanks to Hope Channel – Television that will change your life.

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This video is produced by the South Pacific Division Discipleship team.

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