An Overruling Providence

 by Earl Kimbrough
via Biblical Insights, Vol. 15 No. 2, February 2015

Robert Milligan, in writing about the nature of God in the Scheme of Redemption, warns the reader not to be wise above what is written, for all we can know of Him comes through revelation (Matthew 11:27). There are some things even here that we cannot fully comprehend. This is true concerning the triune personality of God: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Divine Unity and the Divine Plurality of the Godhead are clearly revealed. We accept this by faith, as we do other marvels of God beyond our understanding.

The providence of God comes to mind while reading about The Haldane Brothers of Scotland. Robert Haldane and his brother James Alexander Haldane initiated a Restoration movement in the British Isles, leading many to forsake the institutions of men for the simple church of the New Testament. Their work had a significant impact on the Restoration in America, perhaps more profound than historians can fully disclose. We recently read about Elizabeth McCollough, a young woman who came to America from Scotland between 1825 and 1835. She settled with her family in Clay County, Alabama, where she became an influence for the apostolic way. She was a member of the Lord’s church when she left her native country, where she evidently came under the teaching of the Haldanes.

Robert and James Haldane were raised in a devout home, well-educated, and associated with well-known religious leaders of their day. But in early manhood, both experienced a decline in piety, Bible reading, worship services, and prayer. They entered worldly pursuits that put them in company with men who had no use for religion. Each later looked back on events in their lives, which they attributed to providence sparing them for their great work as reformers.

The Bible teaches that God works providentially in the lives of people. This is seen in people like Joseph and Moses. Most faithful Christians perceive events in their lives that are sufficiently significant to warrant viewing them as providential. So it was of the Haldane brothers.

While, at the time, thoughts of providence were rare for James Haldane, he later came to view his early experiences as providential. Several times his life hung by a thread, and but for the grace of God, he believed, he might have died before doing the great work he saw as the will of God. At seventeen, he became a midshipman for the East India Company. Before the ship sailed, a friend of his late father offered to take him into his bank as an associate. This would ensure him a splendid fortune, but it would also change the course of his life. “The tempting proposal was declined, but it was in later life regarded as one of the incidents of a life in which the guiding hand of an overruling Providence was conspicuous.”’ On a voyage to Bombay and China, a stiff wind necessitated taking in the sail. Haldane was ordered aloft with several men, but as he started to mount the rigging, the captain stopped him and ordered an able seaman to go first. As the seaman took in the sail, he was struck in the head by a swinging yard, fell overboard, and drowned in the turbulent sea. Haldane was immediately behind the hapless seaman and had he been first would doubtless have found a watery grave.

The voyage lasted two years and involved another brush with death. “A man had been murdered, and another severely wounded by some savages on North Island, near Bantam, and as I had been the last who had been with them before it happened, I considered my preservation an instance of God’s care for me.” He had cause to be thankful. Shortly before this, he went into the woods alone to converse with the same men who would soon commit the crime.

In another incident on that voyage, Haldane fell overboard from a boat. “As I could not swim, I thought I should have drowned, but was so hardened that, although I recollect what passed in my mind while in the water, I never considered the consequences of death. Providentially I had an oar in my hand when I fell from the boat, and.. .this proved the means of my preservation.” After these experiences, young Haldane returned to London with no improvement in his religious life, although he retained enough faith to ease his conscience. He was stricken on another voyage and was supposed by all to be dying. He determined to show those around him “no unmanly signs of fear,” although he felt it.

“James Haldane made, in all, four voyages to India and China [before he was twenty-five]. A circumstance occurred in connection with his third voyage, which for the time led him to think of an overruling Providence. He unexpectedly received an appointment as third officer of the Foulis Indiaman, but owing to some inevitable circumstances, he was detained in Scotland, and not having been fully informed of the urgency of the case, he found on his arrival in London, to his surprise and mortification, that his place had been filled and the Foulis had sailed. He little thought of the guardian arm that had been cast around the child of many prayers; for the Foulis was never again heard of, and was supposed to have foundered or been burnt at sea.” (Alexander Haldane, The Haldane Brothers of Scotland).

These and other such incidents, where he was but a heartbeat away from death, were all seen by him as the “overruling Providence” of God in raising him up to be the great reformer that he became in later years.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV).

Oh, that we could but see the hand of God in the affairs of men.