[Faith-talk] A Row of Corn and the Hand of the Lord by Bill Tucker

[Paul Smith]

Obviously this is Bill Tucker Jr., whose father founded the magazine 
"Quiet Hour Echoes" and hosted the radio program "The Quiet Hour," 
heard on many stations.  I can remember hearing his calm but 
encouraging voice as a youngster growing up in a community some 15 
miles northeast of Baltimore, and who would frequently grace the very 
early recordings of what was then the Christian Record Talking 
Magazine.  His son recounts a time in the Philippines.  Read below to 
find out what happened.

When I was a teenager, I lived in the Philippines.  Once in the early 
1960's, I went with my parents to the beautiful campus of Mountain View 
College in the south Philippines.  My father, a pastor, was the speaker 
for the school's Week of Prayer.

While we were there, campus officials gave us a tour of the college's 
extensive farm.  We saw many fields of corn, soybeans, sugarcane, and 
pineapples.  At this same time we witnessed the evidence of God's 
protection and of His kept promises.

School officials showed us where a terrible plague of locusts had just 
raged through the surrounding region a few days before and had quickly 
destroyed all crops.  According to our hosts, the locusts headed 
straight toward the fields of full-ripened corn at Mountain View College.

Students and faculty prayed earnestly that God would rebuke the 
devourer, as He had promised.  After all, this was His college, these 
were His fields, this was His corn, and they were His people who had 
been faithful in returning to Him tithes and offerings, according to 
Malachi 3:10-11.

The locusts completely destroyed the crops of a farm immediately 
adjacent to the college and ravaged the first row of ripened corn on 
the college property.  And then, suddenly, incredibly, they died, right 
there at the first row of college corn.  They stacked themselves up 
nearly two feet deep along that first row of the corn and expired.

I stood with others of the college, gazing with awe at the heaps of 
millions of dead locusts still stacked up where they had died, as it 
were, "in their tracks." Miraculously and dramatically God had 
destroyed the locusts.  I saw the dead locusts, and I saw the living 
corn.  God had turned impending disaster into a marvelous time of 
rejoicing and thanksgiving for His deliverance.

It isn't hard to guess the impact that experience and the evidence I 
saw with my own eyes have had on my personal covenant relationship with 
God in tithes and offerings.

"I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your 
fields will not cast their fruit, says the Lord Almighty" (Malachi 3:11, NIV).

This was taken from the book "Over and Over Again!", North American 
Division of Seventh-day Adventists, 1998.

And there you have today's uplifting reading which I trust was a 
blessing for you.  Tomorrow in this space will be another post from the 
folks at the Museum of the Bible, which I hope equally will be a 
blessing for you, even if you can't personally attend its dedication in 
November of next year.  Until then may the God of Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last 
days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul