The Battle Between the Sun and the Wind

(This article was written using much of the wording of a 1966 Ambassador article)

Reading John Chapter 4 will be helpful before perusing this article.

One of the many disappointments and discouragements that come to the sincere Christian Israelite is the difficulty in winning others around us to accept our message of the Kingdom of God and the Israel Truth. We are always being urged to spread the message and we are always failing. We just do not seem to be able to “get our man,” as the saying goes.

Now there must be a reason for our lack of success. Do we ever give sufficient careful thought as to why we are failing to convince others? Perhaps we adopt the wrong tactics altogether. We are so convinced of the message ourselves, in fact, so sure of ourselves, that we just go enthusiastically for people in a straight-out way! Yet, where is this getting us? How many people have we enlightened and attracted to our organizations? Few if any and so, we see our numbers dwindling. I suppose like many other things in life there is an ART to WINNING PEOPLE to our movement. And we have to keep trying, particularly in the precious few years before Christ returns. Remember, being Christians, as well as awakened Israelites, places on our shoulders a greater responsibility than those who have not been awakened. I don’t believe God took our blinders off for nothing, so each of us have to examine our personal ministries to ensure we are adopting the right approach to getting the message across.

When we were younger most of us remember reading the fable about the sun and the wind. They quarreled about which was the stronger and the wind said: “I’ll prove I am. See that old man down there with a coat? I bet I can make him take his coat off quicker than you can.”

So the sun went behind a cloud and the wind blew until it was almost a tornado, but the harder it blew the tighter the old man wrapped his coat around him. Finally the wind calmed down and gave up; then the sun came out from behind the cloud and smiled kindly on the old man. Presently he mopped his brow and pulled off his coat. The sun then told the wind that gentleness and friendliness were always stronger than fury and force.

Can we apply this in our lives and overcome the fear our brethren have in accepting a message, or even consider it for fear of offending those who captured the name of Israel. Still, it is a dual message and of more importance is spreading news of the Gospel of the Kingdom, although the Israel Truth is remarkably intertwined. Can we be most effective employing the gentleness of the “Sun” rather than the smugness of the “Wind.” Probably! And we have a wonderful pattern for this approach.

Study Christ’s method in John 4. Note how gentle He was with the woman at the well. He wasn’t smug, or pushy. And HE WON THE WOMAN and she started a REVIVAL.

I’ve often thought there should almost be a script outling the most effective way to get the message across to our brethren. Each of us have our own little canned approach but since the numbers are dwindling, they aren’t working.

Would you care to write me with your ideas of what should go in the script, perhaps a few phrases or content suggestion? Maybe collectively we could develop a more surefire way to convey our two-pronged message. I would certainly be glad to combine the best of the suggestions and who knows, maybe we will find the winning approach. If sufficient ideas for a script are forthcoming, it will be published in an upcoming TKC. Please let us hear from you.