dec 19 Thursday testimony

1608: Born on this date, the English poet John Milton was a bookworm—the best kind, the kind who uses his intellect and knowledge to serve God. Milton’s poetic career got side-tracked by England’s Civil War in which Milton sided with Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans against King Charles and the Royalists. Cromwell tried to establish England as a Christian commonwealth, and Milton held a post in Cromwell’s government. After Cromwell’s death England reverted to a monarchy, and Milton lost faith in all human governments. In his youth he had thought of writing an epic poem about the great King Arthur, but he became so disillusioned with human rulers—and humans in general—that he decided to write an epic about the universal problem: human sin. In the King James Version of the Bible in Genesis 3 the story of the fall of man is told in 695 words. Milton took that small amount of material and created the greatest epic poem in English, Paradise Lost, more than 10,000 lines of poetry. Milton did not confine himself to Genesis 3 but told of the fall of the rebel angels led by the angel Lucifer who takes the new name Satan and resolves to corrupt God’s creation, man. The cast of characters includes not only Adam, Eve, and Satan but also the angels Michael and Gabriel, as well as the devils Beelzebub, Belial, and Mammon. With scenes in heaven, hell, and on earth, Paradise Lost is truly a cosmic poem. Technically, Milton did not “write” Paradise Lost because by this time he was completely blind and had to dictate to secretaries. Blind to the external world, Milton had keen sight into spiritual matters. Though his poems are, by our twenty-first-century standards, difficult to read, they repay the effort. In our secular world, English-speaking people should be proud that the greatest English poem deals with God, man, sin, and salvation.