The Deliverer

“The Deliverer …………..is.. Moses….. !”

We were already at the edge of the seats and at our tethered wits, biting our nails and shivering  with expectation…There we are, around 100 school children and it was some time during mid sixties.  Already the small town was agog with rumours of the new age big cinemascope screen arranged for screening the movie and in colour !  There was talk about the roaring red sea dividing and other magnificent scenes in the movie…Even the initial introduction where director Cecil B  Demille ( The Ten Commandments ) comes and gives a brief talk against the backdrop of a big wall, only giving way as a screen at the end of his talk was simply awesome ! At last, one of the great Sunday school heroes had come alive on the mega screen. As we watched, the story unfolded as the Prince of Egypt was relegated to a hebrew slave, declared as  persona non grata  finally to return as the great deliverer as prophesised and leading into freedom the Israelites enslaved for 400 years.

As  children , we had seen many heroes on the screen donning the role of a deliverer, champion of the down trodden and the weak fighting a lone but brave battle,  thrashing an entire bunch of villains by one hand with ease. In  all these movies, the police always arrived at the end  to arrest the evil doers, and eventual wedding of the hero moments before downing of the screen in the theatre.

There were other great (imaginary) deliverers like Don Quixote de La Mancha accompanied by his squire Sancho Panza roaming across  Europe  as great champions of the cause adhering to the stringent traditions of the medieval chivalry of knighthood. People celebrated  400^th year of Don Quixote with great fame and fanfare across his (imaginary) route.

Three years after the release of the Ten Commandments, during 1959, another great movie “Ben Hur” was released. This  depicted Ben Hur , the hero, haunted by his childhood friend , Messala, the Roman Tribune who falsely implicates and imprisons Ben Hur who becomes a slave. His return as a privileged  Roman citizen and even  winning the great chariot race could not make him the deliverer. Remember the dying words of Messala to Ben Hur “The race is not over”. To his shock and dismay, Ben Hur finds his mother and sister in the valley of lepers. The movie is intertwined with the shadow of “The real Deliverer” who is Jesus Christ himself, finally delivering the family from ruins and misery of leprosy by his sacrifice on the cross.

 The word deliverer in the current context means “ to set free, as from misery, peril or evil ”.  Inspired by the great heroes during our childhood,  all of us would have some time or other, imagined ourselves as a  great deliverer, saving the lives of  people in danger with our (imaginary) six pack muscle and magical powers ! The conception of a deliverer is always that of a  man of mighty valour and courage with extraordinary power who is  a  champion of the down trodden  who pulls out people in great danger with ease and in time, but disappears unknown thereafter.

Have you ever faced a moment of great danger and lived on to remember it ? My father used to tell me  about the river in his native village when the river will be overflowing  with sudden flash floods. While you are playing in the middle of the almost dry river, suddenly you can see 30 feet column of roaring water approaching you with great speed ! only the most brave will have any energy to react and run to save his life and alert the village. Reminds me of the tsunami disasters about which we are more conscious in this part of the world after the recent Asian tsunamis. Only the survivors will tell you the moments of danger and the smell of death. May be most of us have experienced a different type of deliverance like that from a major road accident – a hairline escape as they say.

But even in the today’s developed world, most of us have some kind of misery or peril in our lives. It may be our home, our inter personal relationship with family or the general public or it may be  the office. The misery may be due to economic poverty or broken / strained relationship(s), diseases and calamities, business failure or even a general dissatisfaction about life can trigger substantial  stress and ruin one’s own life along with the family. We take great pain and efforts to wriggle out of all these issues seeking deliverance. The brave hearts fight it out in the open, most  others just manage to float on the surface without sinking. People seek deliverance from these through various other means also like resorting to smoking, liquor, some additictive entertainment which may act  only as a digression  and does not deliver you out of your misery and always further complicates your life . Some resort to seeking God, but Karl Marx said, the religion at best can only act as a suppressant drug (like morphine). Even if we manage to find our  deliverer, he lifts us out of the particular crisis and disappears. In the final analysis, it appears that we just  live , because we are born and have to live !

I know of one person, who is not just a deliverer, but the Redeemer. The Holy Bible says in Mathew 1 : 21 “thou shalt call his name Jesus :for He shall save his people from sins”. Jesus means The Redeemer. The redeemer not only dons the role of a deliverer, but pays a ransom to permanently bring you out of misery and he lives in our heart everafter. The act of redemption was by God himself coming as an ordinary man, and paying a ransom by accepting all our infirmities and by his sacrificial death on the cross.

 This is the reason why, a man called Job, a righteous man of God, who lived during the old testament days, who lost everything  and was at  the razor’s edge between life and  death was able to proclaim “ For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the later day upon the earth” ( Job 19 : 25).

Jesus delivers you from all your sins and make your life whole, meaningful and a life full of happiness.

He makes  you  the deliverer, as He resides in you.

Yes, it is true. you are the chosen deliverer !  

Extra Christum nulla salus ( outside Christ, no salvation)