A Jury of Your Grandchildren – Part 4
By Dr. Richard Jones

Continued from Part 3, Posted October 28, 2004

A REMEDY AT HAND

As you apprehensively await their response to your depressing analysis, the granddads suddenly (thankfully?) begin to fade away. But rather than disappearing altogether, they morph, instead, into you. As this transformation is completed, you have suddenly become a living representative of your grandparents and a respected lay member of a typical evangelical church in your town. On their behalf you find that, more than ever, you really desire to do something dramatic about societal trends in your town. You are a person who has addressed the Big Questions and who cares deeply about his grandchildren including even the ones you don’t yet have. With renewed conviction about obedience to the cultural mandate plus recommitting yourself to the well being of future grandkids everywhere, you decide to do something, especially since Christ’s return (whenever it is and whatever it signifies) may well not happen for many years, decades, generations or even longer. In fact, you even recall a recent statement by the respected dispensational pastor, Chuck Swindoll (president of Dallas Theological Seminary) who has endorsed the theory that, “…[we should live] each day as though it were our last, but pla[n] as though our world might last a hundred years.” 2   You assume he truly means it and has not merely tossed it up as the kind of dutiful cliché oftenused by nominal Christians when placating a guilty conscience.

Although some of your fellow congregants are already saying that Christianity in the West is damaged beyond repair, nonetheless you, being so recently re-inspired by your grandads’ miraculous visit, commit yourself to a vow by Edmund Everett Hale as  paraphrased below:

I am only one, but I am still one. I can’t do everything in my town, but I can do something, and by God’s grace I will do what I can in and for my town. Whether I’ll find help within my own church -- or any local church for that matter -- remains to be seen, but either with or without their assistance I must do something and soon.

You move to your desk and sit down. Like Nehemiah, you ponder and pray even though remaining cautiously aware that “a prophet hath no honour in his own country” (John 4:44). Nonetheless, you rise up at length with a new measure of resolve and a decision. What is your decision? What is your plan for tomorrow and for ten and twenty years from now in your town? Where do you start? A jury of future grandchildren is about to begin deliberations and will soon be rendering its verdict based on your decision. Will you be found guilty of inaction or acquitted, respected and, above all, thanked because of your inspired blueprint for victory? 

If you would like to contact Dr. Jones about this article or how you can get involved in advancing the Kingdom of Christ, feel free to email him at dickjones@wwnet.net.

2. Swindoll, Walvoord, Pentecost, The Road To Armageddon (Nashville, Word Publishing, 1999), 20.          

Dr. Richard Jones has been a faithful supporter of American Vision for many years. A retired dentist, Dr. Jones resides in Michigan and has a contagious zeal to restore America's Biblical foundation.