ARTHUR A PILGRIM
 By Arthur Blessitt
 
Page 50
I have learned that surely I'm the richest man in the world, with family, friends, experiences of every type, to live with the people of the world. Not as a tourist in hotels, but to live, eat, talk, and sleep with the people on every continent. To know and love the Lord. To know Jesus is my best friend and to know the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. How rich can you get!

I love people of every race and age. Often I am asked, "What is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen?"

I say, "People!"

In the beginning, God created. He made everything and it was good. He made man and woman, the ultimate of His creations. He breathed into man the breath of life so he became a living soul. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. Genesis 1:27.

We have been made in His image. To love someone is to love the ultimate of God's creation on earth. That's why love for God and for other people are so together in the Bible. The Ten Commandments relate to both God and man. Jesus said, quoting from the Old Testament, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. This is the first great commandment." The second is like unto it, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." On these two commandments hang all law and prophecy.

Remember the words Jesus spoke, "I was hungry and ye gave me meat, I was thirsty and ye gave me drink. I was a stranger and ye took me in. I was naked and ye clothed me. I was sick and ye visited me. I was in prison and ye came to me. As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brother, ye have done it unto me." Matthew 25:35-46.

I have learned to accept the reality and will of God without question.

I have learned the beauty of nature. I have sat and viewed the sunset and the beautiful handiwork of God at sunrise. I have seen the sculpturing of God in the sky in the clouds, small streams and beautiful animals. I've looked at the turbulent rolling thunder clouds on high mountain peaks. I have learned to be a friend of nature, not to fight it but to flow with it.

When I first started walking, the cross was blistering and bloodying my shoulder. I prayed and God healed it. When I realized the cross was made for my shoulder, the cross was my friend. My shoulder no longer blisters or gets sore.

For many years I had great difficulty with my feet. They would blister, hurt, get bloody, tired, and rather painful. Then I began to learn that my feet were made for the road, that the road was my friend, and after 15 years of walking around the world, there isn't one bunion on my feet, there isn't any abnormality, and there are no hard calluses or one mark, only soft, beautiful feet, because I realized that the road is my friend. I've walked through the heat of the sun in the Sahara Desert, in the Sinai Desert, in the Mojave Desert, and spent two years across Africa. 

Most of my walk has been near the Equator.

In Jordan I noticed that everything was in the shade except the donkeys, Joshua, Joel and me. Yet, by realizing that the Bible says, "The sun shall not smite thee by day nor the moon by night." By looking at the sun as my friend I found that I can walk in the most extreme heat. I don't fight it. I accept it and rest in God.

The same is true with animals. I have found that by accepting the animals for being what they are, they haven't bothered me. I generally consider them my friends and when I have been with the cross it has bean amazing, the response of the animals.

I consider nature my friend, not my enemy. I don't try to fight aging. I know that aging is a natural process of life. The Bible says, "There's a time to he born, a time to die, there is a time to laugh, a time to cry." If we try to fight against the inevitable, then we create conflict within us. Every year a person grows older and gets one step closer to death. I live with the reality of death and with the expectation of life. I seek to be a friend of God, with nature, with my fellow man. And at 44 years old, I can honestly say that I am happy, I feel peace and fulfillment, as well as an insatiable restlessness to see the world shaken, changed and transformed in the image and likeness of God. I like to dream. If man ever stops dreaming he is dead even before he dies.

Often there is no church for miles and miles. Sometimes days go by before I see a church. People gather along the roadside and I preach. Many are converted to Jesus whether there is a church to go to or not. Many times there is a preacher in the area who can return and start a church, but often I have no one to help, so I will gather the crowd together that has just been converted and will ask all the men who speak English and are converted to Jesus to raise their hands, or I use an interpreter for non-English speaking areas.

I pray over this and choose one. "You, sir, will be the pastor of this church. This is your church," and I point to the crowd.

"This is a Bible. It's your Bible now. Read it. Study it every day. I want you to gather all the people in the village together. Those who believe in Christ and those who don't, and teach them every day about this Book."

(I never tell them about Sunday. In Acts the Bible says, "Daily in the temple and house-to-house they ceased not to preach and teach in the name of Jesus." There is nothing else to do in these villages, so why not have church?)

Then I hold up the Bible to the newly chosen pastor and, before his newly converted congregation. This part of the Old Testament tells how man turned away from God to sin and how God gave His laws, but we broke them. He gave us prophets and judges, but we disobeyed them. Then it tells us how God made preparation to send us a Savior and told us about Him. This part is the New Testament. The first four books are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and along with the first chapter of Acts, tell you about Jesus. Read and study every day! Look at Jesus, love Him. Follow Him. Pray to Him. Live like Him, and live as He asks you to.
This is the book of Acts. It tells you what to do at your church, how to start your church, and how it functions. Just read it and do everything it says. If you have any problems, the last books in the Bible will straighten you out.


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38. A WALKER’S WORD

Gí́nskär – I have felt that most words are very limited and inadequate to express. For instance, love. You can say, “I love candy,” “I love that shirt,” “I love you,” “I love God.” The English word is the same for each and it is very difficult to express in English words what we truly feel. So, I am slowly developing a new vocabulary that can be used in all languages. I’ll share one word:

Gí́n- taken from Genesis in the Bible. There, love was pure. Adam and Eve
were together, naked, but pure. God visited them.

Ns- is for now. Love and purity of expression that was in the Garden of Eden, 
expressed now, without guilt or fear.

kär- like the stars and planets, ever expanding, limitless, room to explore and develop.

Gí́nskär- Love, pure, as in the beginning with Adam and Eve and God. Experienced now
without guilt or fear, ever expanding and limitless. One word is enough to say Gí́nskär.


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39. A WALKER'S COMMENTARY ON THE CROSS 

Jesus said, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me."

No one in history has ever taken a big cross, traveled on foot thousands of miles around the world, until now. The distance Jesus and Simon carried the cross is a total of only about a quarter of a mile; however the distance is not important. What is important is the purpose of the cross. Matthew, Mark, and Luke record that Simon carried the cross, never making mention of Jesus carrying the cross. Mark 15:21 says, "And they got one Simon, a Cyrenian man, who passed by, coming out of the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to bear His cross.

"The gospel of John 19:17 says, "And He (Jesus) bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of the skull." So we must surmise that Jesus began with the cross, though Simon was compelled to carry it. The physical condition of Jesus was serious after his beating and scourging. Simon could carry the cross. God let man help carry the cross to Calvary, but Simon could not die for our sins. Only Jesus, perfect and holy, could do that. The Bible does not say that Jesus fell down, only tradition tells us that, but it is very possible that since Simon helped Jesus, that he could have fallen. However, Simon did not volunteer, he was compelled.

Cyrenia is in Africa. We do not know Simon's color, but he was probably black.

The size of the cross in unknown, but had to be big enough for a man to be crucified on.

I've often wondered what thoughts were in the mind of Christ as He walked toward His crucifixion and what thoughts were in the mind of Simon as he shouldered the wooden cross and made his way beside Jesus through the narrow streets and out the gate to the Place of the Skull. How did Simon feel as he walked beside the bleeding Christ? 

Jesus carried the cross to die for our sins. I carry the cross to remind people of that. Jesus is our Savior and we are to be His witnesses. I carry the cross mostly on my right shoulder, sometimes changing to my left shoulder. The weight is so much it cuts the blood supply to the arm, so the shoulder must be changed from right to left. After 15 years of weight on that right shoulder, my bone has formed about a one inch of growth. Perhaps I'm the only person in history that has physically been shaped by the weight of a cross, but that is not important. What is important is that it changed my life!