GOSPEL RESEARCH FOUNDATION
Dr. Brad H. Young
PO BOX 703101 TULSA, OK 74170
September Newspaper Article Link on Parables book

December 12, 1998

God is good! This holiday season reminds me of the many things we have to be truly grateful to God. The Psalmist teaches us, ALet the redeemed of Lord say so.@ He has redeemed us from so many destructive influences. Too many of us forget that the Hebrew Bible encourages us to be thankful. This is not Old contrasted with New Testaments but God working miracles past, present and future..

I am thankful first and foremost for God=s presence in my life. I am so grateful for the blessings of family and dear friends like you that stand with me in prayer. I am thankful for prayer, the opportunity to engage in it and the results of practicing it daily. I consider it a privilege to pray for you and your needs.

During Hannukah, we remember the miraculous. God worked miracles during the Feast of Lights. We recognize His goodness in sending His son. Immanuel means God with us. His presence is felt in Jesus= coming and we experience Him as we obey Jesus= teachings.

1998 has been a year of rich blessings. It was tremendously exciting to see The Parables book published this year. It is a culmination of 15 years of work that is near to my heart. AThe Hebrew Heritage of our Faith and Gospel Research@ conference helped many learn and grow in the knowledge of God. The 1999 Spring conference (March 26-28, 1999) is in the final planning stages. A modern Passover Seder will be led by Rabbi Sherman. Also, various scholars and teachers will conduct teaching sessions. I will be teaching on the parables of Jesus focusing on the Jewish roots in the Parable of the Talents. I=m planning this conference with you in mind. Please pray that the content of this conference will accomplish God=s purpose in your life and the lives of others. I strongly encourage each one of you to seriously consider attending this conference. Details of the conference will be available in early January.

Thank you for your prayers and faithful support in 1998. I know that much of what has been accomplished this year is a direct result of your faithfulness. Please feel free to write and share with me, the goodness of God in your own life and the needs that I can join in prayer with you. I want to know what you are thankful for and how I can pray for needs in your life. The word of your testimony will bring a great blessing to us both.

Allow me to share with you the story of Eddie Ogan AThe Rich Family in Our Church.@ Her heart warming experience teaches me the true value of life=s meaning. I hope it will bless you during this holiday season as it blessed me. As Jesus encouraged us in the Parable of the Rich Fool, we must seek to be Arich in God@ and His goodness. I pray that you will experience His love and mercy in every area of your life.

Shalom,

Brad Young

The Rich Family in Our Church
by Eddie Ogan

I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy, 12, and my older sister Darlene, 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was to do without many things. My dad had died 5 years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money.

By 1946 my older sisters were married, and my brothers had left home. A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially. When we got home we talked about what we could do.

We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out we would save on that month's electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us babysat for everyone we could.

That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in church , so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much! After all, every Sunday the Pastor reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.

The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before! That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter, we had $70 for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church!

On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't have an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet were soaked. But we sat in church proudly. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt so rich.

When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us girls put in a $20. As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes!

Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was and she didn't say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 and seventeen $1 bills. Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash.

We kids had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't have our mom and dad for parents and house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the fork or the spoon that night.

We had two knives which we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, but we never thought we were poor. That Easter Day I found out we were. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor. I didn't like being poor. I look at my dress and worn out shoes and felt so ashamed that I didn't want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor! I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew we were poor. I decided I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time.

We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. We didn't know. We'd never known we were poor. We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse.

At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but they need money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?" We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week. Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene who gave it to me. I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering.

When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have some rich people in this church."

Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100." WE were the rich family in the church! Hadn't the missionary said so? From that day on, I've never been poor again.

Shalom!
Brad

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