Rescued from The Jaws of Death

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Thinking they might be spies, Bulkeley slipped into the ambassador’s cabin and secured the diplomat’s briefcase. Eventually he took the briefcase, which he imagined was full of secret intelligence, and slipped over the side with his ill-gotten “treasure.” When he proudly reported to naval headquarters, official reaction was less than complimentary. An ashen-faced official took the briefcase, and later Bulkeley was told to keep his mouth shut about the incident. The Boats That Captured Bulkeley’s Imagination Have mercy on me, Yahweh. See my affliction by those who hate me, and lift me up from the gates of death, The horrors of death are normal, mainly because we do not know exactly what lies beyond; what we do know is that we must die. For the person without faith, there is a kind of certainty that all does not end well, that we become in our entirety fodder for worms. This notion does not give joy, but rather a conviction of despair. Living with such despair is the enemy of our lust for life, and is the seed of all thinking about suicide. Suicide is in fact a kind of murder, and is a sin because all murder takes from God the right to call us to Him. It is, moreover, the one sin we cannot repent of since we are dead before we can repent. Yet there is longing for suicide among those who despair because they see death as a form of liberation from their physical or mental suffering. Hildebrand cites the experience of the young lovers Jacques and Raissa Maritain when they were students under the influence of the positivism that was rampant at the Sorbonne. They had decided to commit suicide together because of the conviction they had acquired that absolute truth does not exist. They were only saved from despair first by a meeting with Henri Bergson, and later by coming under the influence of a Dominican friar who introduced them to Thomas Aquinas. No one can fail to notice that Christians from their early years on have their focus on eternity. Anyone not a Christian (and therefore more easily duped by the devil whom they deny exists) will be swayed by various demonic strategies to ignore eternity and dwell only on the here and now. Christian children at baptism are imbued with a metaphysical view of life. They understand from the teachings of Christ that death is meaningful, not because it is the end of life, but because it is the moment of judgment that opens one of two doors into eternity. Behind one door stands hell’s grinning Satan waiting to punish; behind the other stands Jesus Christ waiting to bestow eternal friendship on those who desire it and have proven their love. This makes of life a tremendous adventure with great triumph or loss at stake. The unbeliever sees death not as an adventure, but on the contrary, as an easily defined gateway to nothingness. PT-32 was under the command of Lieutenant (j.g.) Vincent Schumacher, and just before dawn he spotted a “strange, unidentified craft” to his rear. He cleared for action and seriously considered launching his torpedoes and opening up with his .50-caliber machine guns. At the last minute Schumacher decided to make a run for it instead, and 20 spare drums of gasoline were tossed over the side to make the boat lighter.

God saw fit to endow man alone with his sense of God, with his sense of good and evil, with a sense of his eternal destiny, and with a sense of himself as the most gifted of all God’s creatures. In short, man alone is a metaphysical being. Hildebrand cites a famous passage from Pascal’s Pensées : Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him…. But if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. It is death that brings our natural human greatness to an end, for it is by death that our grasp of the entire universe, including our human body, is brought to an end. But our supernatural being, our soul which is nobler than the universe, cannot be brought to an end. For (and this is the most metaphysical of questions) why would God create so vast and unthinking a universe, and put in it so noble a creature, if all were for nothing in the end? Be gracious to me, LORD; consider my affliction at the hands of those who hate me. Lift me up from the gates of death,I went down to the base of the mountains. The earth with its bars closed behind me forever, But You have brought up my life from the pit, O Yahweh my God. to the clefts of the mountains; I went down into the earth, whose bars are the everlasting barriers: yet, O Lord my God, let my ruined life be restored. While death is a solitary experience, it is followed by the communion of saints. We will be united to all those we have loved who have themselves been saved. Best of all, we will be united with Jesus Christ forever, an ecstasy that will be denied to those who have denied him and sought in every way to resist his love (Matthew 10:32). As Thomas Aquinas assures us in his hymn Adoro Te Devote:

Be gracious to me, O LORD; Behold my affliction from those who hate me, Thou who dost lift me up from the gates of death; When the TARDIS lands on a deserted volcanic island, the Doctor and his companions find themselves kidnapped by primitive sea-people. Have mercy on me, LORD. See my affliction by those who hate me. You lift me up from the gates of death,Once, aboard a civilian steamer en route from Norfolk to Washington, D.C., Bulkeley noticed four Japanese passengers who looked suspicious. This was in the mid-30s, and though there were rising tensions the United States and Japan were still at peace. He was informed that one of the quartet was the Japanese ambassador, but Bulkeley was not so sure. For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.

I thank all those who are still praying for me as they read this book; the mercy of God will never depart from you and your entire household in the mighty name of Jesus. Author’s profile To the cuttings of mountains I have come down, The earth, her bars are behind me to the age. And Thou bringest up from the pit my life, O Jehovah my God.I appreciate my saviour Jesus Christ for shedding his blood on the cross to redeem my life and soul from the devil by making an open show of the devil, by triumphing over him and by openly disgracing the enemy out of my life totally. Colossians 2:14-15 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

By early March, Bulkeley’s boats were in pretty bad shape. They had participated in a number of raids against the Japanese with varying degrees of success. But there were few if any spare parts, and much had been lost during the destruction of the squadron’s Cavite base on December 10. The submarine tender Canopus improvised as best it could, making spare parts and repairing those that were wearing out.

Pulpit Commentary Verse 13. - Have mercy upon me, O Lord! The consideration of God's mercies in the past, and especially in the recent deliverance, leads the psalmist to implore a continuance of his mercies in the future. He is not yet free from troubles. There are still enemies who afflict and threaten him - "heathen" who seek to "prevail" against him (vers. 19, 20), and perhaps already domestic enemies, especially the "sons of Zeruiah," causing him anxiety. Consider my trouble which I suffer of them that hate me; literally, my trouble (or, my affliction) from my haters. Vers. 17, 19, 20 show that the heathen are especially intended (see 2 Samuel 10:15-19). Thou that liftest me up from the gates of death; i.e. "Thou that continually (or, habitually) art my Support in the extremity of peril," "lifting me up" even from the very "gates of death." (For other mentions of "the gates of death," see Job 38:17; Psalm 107:18.) Classical writers speak of "the gates of darkness" ( σκότουπύλας) in almost the same sense (Eurip., 'Hec.,' 1. 1).