The Sacrificial Bridge

The Sacrificial Bridge UV 548/10,000 Jonah 2 v 9 “ But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving, I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.” Sometimes, our real-life harsh or tough experiences wake us up to the verity of eternal truths. Jonah literally inside the jaws of death, the belly of a whale, still remembered the Lord God who He believed was able to lift him up from the pit of death, decay and corruption. He vowed to himself that he would offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord of His salvation. Facing imminence of death and holding on to faith is a very intense experience for the best of human beings. Jonah vowed to offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Lord of his salvation. Jonah sacrificed his self will to re-create the bridge between the Lord God and him though a little earlier he had tried to run away from doing God’s will. The intensity of of near-death experience and the joy of such a great deliverance moves people to offer a song of praise and thanksgiving. In the year 1996, I first vowed to myself that I would write a long poem in praise of God for the tremendous experience of deliverance in two near-death situations. I desired to compete with King David who wrote the longest Psalm 119 in making it longer. In the year 2007, under inspiration I was able to complete it. It was an elaboration of how the Lord defined Himself to Moses, “ I AM WHO I AM.” I desired to make it the longest elaboration of who God is and what He does in our lives. Sometime in 2009, I felt the desire to convert this long poem of sixty stanzas into a long song- the longest praise and worship song in the world. It was released as an audio CD and the entire song was uploaded on Youtube where thousands of people in many nations have accessed it, listened to it and read my short testimony. After Jonah made this prayer and offered his song of thanksgiving, the Lord commanded the whale to vomit Jonah on dry land. Through out scripture, one finds songs of thanksgiving and praise being sung by many people like Moses in the Old Testament and Mary in the New Testament. An offering of praise and thanksgiving sung from a grateful heart precedes, accompanies or succeeds great deliverance and victory over overwhelming odds and deadly circumstances. It is an occasion and an opportunity to bear witness and declare to others that “ salvation is of the Lord.” For Jonah, it meant a change of direction in his life. The Book of Revelation mentions that “ they sang the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. “ The song of Moses is documented in the book of Exodus but there is no record of the Song of the Lamb. It is a song sung only in Heaven praising the Lord Jesus for the salvation He made possible by laying down His body and life as a sacrificial bridge between the Earth and Heaven. Prateep v Philip