TOPIC:"The Might of the Faithful Few"
by Rev. Dr. Reg Dunlap
TEXT:Judges 7:1-7
"The Lord said to Gideon, 'With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the other men go, each to his own place' " (7:7, NIV).
In the April 2002 edition of Alternative Medicine Magazine there was a moving article entitled "One Man, Alone" about Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez. This medical pioneer stood alone against the powers of the medical establishment.
In 1994 Dr. Gonzalez was investigated and reprimanded by the New York State Medical Board for departing from the accepted practice of treating his cancer patients with chemotherapy. Although efforts to remove his license failed, he was forced to undergo retraining. His critics called him a "notorious quack" and criticized his therapies as "voodoo magic" and "worse than ridiculous."
But Dr. Gonzalez stood his ground. Now a decade later, he is in a position unlike any other practitioner in the history of alternative cancer medicine. He has emerged as a credible leader in the field, and is presently in the midst of conducting a groundbreaking clinical trial supported by a $1.4 million dollar grant, the largest grant the government has ever given to test an alternative cancer treatment to chemotherapy.
And get this: This study is being overseen by the prestigious Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and will ultimately involve between 80 and 90 patients with metastasized pancreatic cancer. There you have the power of one man who helped turn the tide and change the minds of many regarding alternate medicine. But whether it be one man like Dr. Gonzalez or the three hundred men who made up Gideon's army, the might of the faithful few must not be overlooked or underestimated. In both cases they won the battle.
Let us now take a closer look at Gideon and his little band of three hundred men.
I.
Consider, first of all, the DYNAMIC FORCE that is EXHIBITED by the faithful few. The victory of Gideon and his little army of three hundred men over the Midianites is recorded for us in verse 22: "When the three hundred trumpets sounded, the Lord caused the men throughout the camp to turn on each other with their swords."
Let's picture the scene. For over seven years the Midianites continued to cause trouble by attacking Israel and overrunning the land. It was then that God appeared to one man by the name of Gideon and called upon him to defeat them. In order to prevent the . . .