“How can I know what God wants me to do?” Ask this question, and often the answer you’ll get is, “You need to hear from God, see his hand in circumstances, then expect confirmation.”
Missionaries recount marvelous examples of this. Bakht Singh, a famous indigenous church planter in India, used to tell how he was in a hotel in a strange city one night and realized he had forgotten to pack toothpaste. He asked God if he should go buy some, and God said yes. On the street he felt impelled to approach a man, who it, turned out, needed the gospel, and was led to Christ. The circumstances confirmed God’s will.
This approach doesn’t always have a good outcome, however, and Bakht Singh was an example of this as well. When he used to visit the USA, G. V. Matthai, an acquaintance of George Geftakys from Biola days, organized his west coast itinerary. On one occasion George was to meet Bakht Singh at the airport and deliver him to a meeting of local Indian folks. The group waited and waited, and Bakht Singh never showed up. G. V. called George and was told, “Bakht Singh is resting, and will not be coming to the meeting.” In actuality, George had hijacked him and was taking him to a meeting of the Fullerton Assembly instead!
One of Bakht Singh’s chief principles of guidance was, “Do not make your own plan.” Definitely this situation was not his own plan, so, expecting God to reveal his will by circumstances, he went with the flow. Arriving at a roomful of young people eager for the Word, he must have felt satisfactory confirmation from the Lord.
Unfortunately, when George introduced Bakht Singh, “the great servant of the Lord in India who has come to see God’s wonderful work here in the Assemblies”, we took his presence in an Assembly meeting as a strong confirmation of George’s credibility.
If only Bakht Singh had had a more objective and less mystical approach to guidance, he might have insisted on checking out the situation with G. V. Matthai first, and discovered George’s duplicitous scheme. He would have discerned God’s guidance immediately, as the Bible is pretty clear about not following liars and deceivers. He might even have been alarmed enough to expose George, and then how differently things might have turned out….At the very least, he would not have come back to the Assembly several times to hold Holy Convocations, ensnaring us more and more deeply by his approval of the Geftakys ministry.
Wow. Bakht Singh was just before my time but he was often set forth as one of George’s peers. I never understood in my Assembly years why he didn’t visit after I joined in 1978. The story I always liked was how when Bakht was asked if he wanted seconds and he resounded, “My god is not my stomach!” Yet reports years later seem to indicate that he didn’t have the same standard when it came to ice cream. Funny how mystical spirituality is so random. You have to just learn the rules from whoever happens to be the spiritual giant.