Dear Friend,
“Then I heard in my Dream, that all the Bells in the City rang again for joy; and that it was said unto them, Enter ye into the joy of the Lord.”
On a blustery day in March 1979, I drove to Glasgow Prestwick Airport to pick up two American couples that I was about to meet for the first time: Burton and Dolores Michaelson and John and Patricia MacArthur. Burton was the builder of Grace Community Church and John the senior pastor. It is more than fair to say that as a result of that visit, my life would never be the same again.
John spoke at our Hamilton Baptist Church Sunday services and midweek at an outreach event before heading to Aberdeen to join Luis Palau in preparing for the latter’s evangelistic campaign. We enjoyed a week together, seeing Scotland, visiting woolen mills, and climbing castle ramparts—and the seeds of a friendship were sown.
John, thirteen years my senior, was immediately likeable, and I admired his unadorned commitment to Christ and the Scriptures. His eye for detail was noticeable. On one of our trips while I was driving, he said out of the blue, “Pull in at the next gas station.” When I did, he jumped out of the car, found a cloth, and began cleaning the windshield. Back in the car, as we pulled away, he remarked on how it would be impossible for him to drive with all those bugs staring him in the face. It proved to be an apt metaphor for his desire to see clearly and expound carefully the text as he served up the Word to his church family for so many years.
In a characteristic expression of generosity, John invited Susan and me to visit Los Angeles in July of the same year. I can still recall the scary sense of privilege that came with preaching at both morning and evening services at Grace as a twenty-seven-year-old. His desire to encourage young men in ministry was a hallmark of his pastoral care. It was John who gave my name to the church in Cleveland and who brought my name forward to be heard on radio, helping to launch what became Truth For Life.
And so, for forty-six years I have listened to his sermons, read his commentaries, followed his pattern of exposition, and enjoyed his friendship. Any wounds along the way have been faithful evidences of that friendship.
By the time this letter reaches you, Susan and I will have been present with Patricia and his family in seeing his earthly remains laid in the ground in the sure and certain hope of eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. He was a man in Christ who lived his life for Christ and who is now with Christ.
But what, you might ask, of Burton? It is worth pondering the fact that he and John were both gathered into the presence of Jesus within days of each other! When Burton was a boy, his father died, and men from his parents’ church built a house for his mother. Burton resolved that one day he would build a building that would house God’s family—and he did! He and Dolores were marked by gracious hospitality and exceptional generosity, and the foursome that arrived in Scotland in ’79 are now separated only by “a narrow ferry ride across the river.” They lived and died in the solid conviction “that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1).
With my love in the Lord Jesus,
Alistair
