The God of the Islander

The story of Robinson Crusoe has always fascinated me. The thought of being the only survivor from a shipwreck and surviving for twenty-eight years of your life was extraordinary. About four years ago, I decided to sit down and read the novel (with eating dried tropical fruit to get myself in the mood) and when I did I was surprised of how Christian-like the novel was. In fact, there are a couple times when Scripture is directly mentioned like Psalms 50:15 and there are also great truths brought to light by Crusoe's meditation of the Scriptures. To the say the least, this book was right up my ally and it was only a short while before I devoured it.

I wanted to share with you some quotes from the story to encourage you. Without a doubt, it is a fictional story, though possibly inspired by the true-life story of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who spent four years in the early 1700's on an uninhabited island which is now called Robinson Crusoe Island and is located in the Juan Fernandez Archipelago off the coast of Chile, but Jesus Christ himself taught fictional stories that asserted spiritual truths; and so from this foundation, these conclusions can be encouraging.
Crusoe called upon God for provision. In seeing his desperate situation, Crusoe wonders how he could ever survive. Then remembering God and His relationship with Israel, he realizes that God can provide for him and that he needed to rely on God's strength and not his own. I went, directed by Heaven no doubt; for in this chest I found a cure both for soul and body.  I opened the chest, and found what I looked for, the tobacco; and as the few books I had saved lay there too, I took out one of the Bibles which I mentioned before, and which to this time I had not found leisure or inclination to look into.  I say, I took it out, and brought both that and the tobacco with me to the table.  What use to make of the tobacco I knew not, in my distemper, or whether it was good for it or no: but I tried several experiments with it, as if I was resolved it should hit one way or other.  I first took a piece of leaf, and chewed it in my mouth, which, indeed, at first almost stupefied my brain, the tobacco being green and strong, and that I had not been much used to.  Then I took some and steeped it an hour or two in some rum, and resolved to take a dose of it when I lay down; and lastly, I burnt some upon a pan of coals, and held my nose close over the smoke of it as long as I could bear it, as well for the heat as almost for suffocation.  In the interval of this operation I took up the Bible and began to read; but my head was too much disturbed with the tobacco to bear reading, at least at that time; only, having opened the book casually, the first words that occurred to me were these, 'Call on Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.'  These words were very apt to my case, and made some impression upon my thoughts at the time of reading them, though not so much as they did afterwards; for, as for being delivered, the word had no sound, as I may say, to me; the thing was so remote, so impossible in my apprehension of things, that I began to say, as the children of Israel did when they were promised flesh to eat, 'Can God spread a table in the wilderness?' so I began to say, 'Can God Himself deliver me from this place?'  And as it was not for many years that any hopes appeared, this prevailed very often upon my thoughts; but, however, the words made a great impression upon me, and I mused upon them very often.  It grew now late, and the tobacco had, as I said, dozed my head so much that I inclined to sleep; so I left my lamp burning in the cave, lest I should want anything in the night, and went to bed.  But before I lay down, I did what I never had done in all my life—I kneeled down, and prayed to God to fulfil the promise to me, that if I called upon Him in the day of trouble, He would deliver me."

Crusoe called upon God for salvation. This is perhaps the most inpsiring. Crusoe sees that his desperate plight was not being marooned, but in actuality his sin and how much better it was to be delivered from his depraved soul than to be delivered from an island. In the story he writes in his journal,

"July 4.—In the morning I took the Bible; and beginning at the New Testament, I began seriously to read it, and imposed upon myself to read a while every morning and every night; not tying myself to the number of chapters, but long as my thoughts should engage me.  It was not long after I set seriously to this work till I found my heart more deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my past life.  The impression of my dream revived; and the words, “All these things have not brought thee to repentance,” ran seriously through my thoughts.  I was earnestly begging of God to give me repentance, when it happened providentially, the very day, that, reading the Scripture, I came to these words: “He is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and to give remission.”  I threw down the book; and with my heart as well as my hands lifted up to heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of joy, I cried out aloud, “Jesus, thou son of David!  Jesus, thou exalted Prince and Saviour! give me repentance!”  This was the first time I could say, in the true sense of the words, that I prayed in all my life; for now I prayed with a sense of my condition, and a true Scripture view of hope, founded on the encouragement of the Word of God; and from this time, I may say, I began to hope that God would hear me.

Now I began to construe the words mentioned above, “Call on Me, and I will deliver thee,” in a different sense from what I had ever done before; for then I had no notion of anything being called deliverance, but my being delivered from the captivity I was in; for though I was indeed at large in the place, yet the island was certainly a prison to me, and that in the worse sense in the world.  But now I learned to take it in another sense: now I looked back upon my past life with such horror, and my sins appeared so dreadful, that my soul sought nothing of God but deliverance from the load of guilt that bore down all my comfort.  As for my solitary life, it was nothing.  I did not so much as pray to be delivered from it or think of it; it was all of no consideration in comparison to this.  And I add this part here, to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction."

Crusoe called upon God for justification and sanctification. In witnessing to Friday, the savage he had rescued from death, Crusoe remembers the sanctification of the saint and the future termination of Satan. He writes, "I found it was not so easy to imprint right notions in his mind about the devil as it was about the being of a God.  Nature assisted all my arguments to evidence to him even the necessity of a great First Cause, an overruling, governing Power, a secret directing Providence, and of the equity and justice of paying homage to Him that made us, and the like; but there appeared nothing of this kind in the notion of an evil spirit, of his origin, his being, his nature, and above all, of his inclination to do evil, and to draw us in to do so too; and the poor creature puzzled me once in such a manner, by a question merely natural and innocent, that I scarce knew what to say to him.  I had been talking a great deal to him of the power of God, His omnipotence, His aversion to sin, His being a consuming fire to the workers of iniquity; how, as He had made us all, He could destroy us and all the world in a moment; and he listened with great seriousness to me all the while.  After this I had been telling him how the devil was God’s enemy in the hearts of men, and used all his malice and skill to defeat the good designs of Providence, and to ruin the kingdom of Christ in the world, and the like.  “Well,” says Friday, “but you say God is so strong, so great; is He not much strong, much might as the devil?”  “Yes, yes,” says I, “Friday; God is stronger than the devil—God is above the devil, and therefore we pray to God to tread him down under our feet, and enable us to resist his temptations and quench his fiery darts.”  “But,” says he again, “if God much stronger, much might as the wicked devil, why God no kill the devil, so make him no more do wicked?”  I was strangely surprised at this question; and, after all, though I was now an old man, yet I was but a young doctor, and ill qualified for a casuist or a solver of difficulties; and at first I could not tell what to say; so I pretended not to hear him, and asked him what he said; but he was too earnest for an answer to forget his question, so that he repeated it in the very same broken words as above.  By this time I had recovered myself a little, and I said, “God will at last punish him severely; he is reserved for the judgment, and is to be cast into the bottomless pit, to dwell with everlasting fire.”  This did not satisfy Friday; but he returns upon me, repeating my words, “‘Reserve at last!’ me no understand—but why not kill the devil now; not kill great ago?”  “You may as well ask me,” said I, “why God does not kill you or me, when we do wicked things here that offend Him—we are preserved to repent and be pardoned.”  He mused some time on this.  “Well, well,” says he, mighty affectionately, “that well—so you, I, devil, all wicked, all preserve, repent, God pardon all.”  Here I was run down again by him to the last degree; and it was a testimony to me, how the mere notions of nature, though they will guide reasonable creatures to the knowledge of a God, and of a worship or homage due to the supreme being of God, as the consequence of our nature, yet nothing but divine revelation can form the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of redemption purchased for us; of a Mediator of the new covenant, and of an Intercessor at the footstool of God’s throne; I say, nothing but a revelation from Heaven can form these in the soul; and that, therefore, the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I mean the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, promised for the guide and sanctifier of His people, are the absolutely necessary instructors of the souls of men in the saving knowledge of God and the means of salvation."