Author E.STANLEY JONES
Publisher ABINGDON PRESS
ISBN 0-687-10988-4
Only available reasonably priced second hand on www.abebooks.com, (although a few ‘new’ copies are available at exorbitant prices on Amazon) this book is a gem. It is the record of the last eighteen months in the life of this American man of God. He was a Methodist minister who gave himself to worldwide travel as an evangelist in the twentieth century. He wrote at least twenty-five books, and some of them such as “The Song of Ascents” (his autobiography) and “The Unshakeable Kingdom and the Unchangeable Person” contain such a wealth of truth. Interestingly enough, the positive thinking guru, Robert Schuller actually had some of Stanley Jones’ books reprinted under the auspices of his Crystal Cathedral ministries, but Jones was far from a ‘positive thinker’ but a man thoroughly grounded in the wonder of the Lord Jesus Christ and what God has done in Him. The title of this particular book “The Divine Yes” is taken from the verse in 2 Corinthians 1:20 where Paul says that “all the promises of God are yes in Him” (that is in Christ Jesus). This verse became the watchword summing up the life and public ministry of E Stanley Jones. He was thoroughly Christ centered and was clearly granted a revelation of the wonder of Christ Jesus the Lord. He preached Christ in scores of countries, established ‘Christian Ashrams” where people could gather to discover the Lord and continued this ministry until he was eighty-seven years old. Suddenly he was struck by a stroke and immediately sensed that the Lord was saying to him that he must demonstrate in this physically debilitating condition the divine yes of Christ that he had preached for so long. He was unable to speak clearly, unable to write, unable to smile and unable to walk, at least at first, but, for eighteen months he dictated and as he gathered some strength, traveled to India and to Israel and was actually able to preach again until he was borne home to glory. His life became a proof and manifestation that all things are “yes” in Christ, even the sufferings of a stroke. He was brought into a terrible prison, but this book contains his reflections and the summing up of his whole life and the sympathetic reader can only be inspired by what he says. “Now I must apply what I have been preaching through the years: that no matter what happens to us, the final result depends on how we take it. Here I was to be called upon to illustrate and apply the Good News, the Divine Yes, in the face of the bad news life often offers.” Saying ‘yes’ to God in the midst of these things he learned to walk and talk, to the amazement of his doctors. He even preached again, with the tireless zeal characteristic of his entire ministry. He died peacefully in his beloved India in January 1973.
