As promised in my last post, here is the account of David McClure’s remarkable deliverance from sure death.
Finding my situation in these scenes of
drunkenness and madness, unsafe, I concluded to ride with my interpreter to a
village 5 miles down the river [they were presently at Kekalemehpehoong]. We went to look up our horses. In my
absence, the warrior who threatened me, in the morning, had procured a club,
and rushing into the house, in which was only the son of Kilbuck, asked for the
white man, and flourishing the club said, he came to kill him. The young Indian, to divert him from the way
I had gone, directed him to pursue me in an opposite direction. Turning from the door, eager to find me, he
was stopped by another Indian, a stout young man, called young Beaver, who
wrested the club from him, which was soon also taken from him & secreted.
They were engaged in a bloody fight, at
the time that I returned with my horse. The fight was in the house next to
mine. By the noise and confusion within,
one would imagine that a number were engaged in bloody conflict. I was ignorant
of the cause until, in about 15 minutes, my interpreter arrived, and explained
it.
Before
he arrived, I stood attending to the noise of the affray, and young Kilbuck,
just mentioned, ran out of the house to me with a long bloody lock of hair, and
smiling and talking presented it to me. Not knowing what it meant, I declined
receiving it, he then stuck it on the outside of my house. This, I found by my
interpreter was a trophy of victory, for my friend young Beaver had just torn
it from the middle of the scalp of my enemy. I then thought it advisable to
stay no longer; but with Pepee rode expeditiously out of town. 1
This account is
such a good example of God’s providential care over His creation that I know I’ll
use it in the future. It clearly shows
how God’s sovereignty and man’s free will play out in the real world. The Indian who wished to do harm to McClure
was following the inclinations of his heart but was prohibited from carrying
out the deed by Young Beaver. We don’t know
for sure what Young Beaver’s intentions were but I doubt that they were
entirely righteous and without self-interest.
After all, it probably was not necessary for him to tear the hair from
the scalp of the other Indian; all he had to do was subdue him in order to
prevent him from harming McClure. Even
Young Kilbuck’s actions seemed to be motivated by a desire to reap some sort of
reward from the missionary. Each person
here acted according to the inclinations of his own wicked heart. Each person, if he failed to turn to Jesus
Christ in repentance and faith, will one day stand in judgment for his actions
on this day. And yet the amazing part in
all of this outworking of sinful passions is that God used the actions of those
sinful men to accomplish His greater purpose of glorifying Himself through the
deliverance of His servant! Such is the
great God we serve, “who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will“(Eph.
1:11) and yet also He makes “all things work together for good to them that
love God, to them that are called according to His purpose.”(Rom. 8:28)
Christ, not man, is King!
Dale
1) Franklin B.
Dexter, ed., Diary of David McClure (New York, NY: Knickerbocker Press, 1899),
p. 75-6.
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