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Chet Bitterman Jr. was an ordinary family man who ran a scale business in Pennsylvania. The oldest of his eight children, Chet III, felt God’s call to Bible translation. Chet III joined Wycliffe Bible Translators and eventually went to Colombia. He was about to begin work among Colombia’s Carijona when guerrillas with the M-19 rebel group stormed Wycliffe’s Bogota guesthouse and took him hostage on January 19, 1981. Less than two months later, the M-19 killed him. World Pulse guest editor Deann Alford spoke with Chet Jr. to mark the 20th anniversary of his son’s martyrdom on March 7, 1981.

What was your reaction to the news your son had been taken hostage?
When I first found out that Chet was kidnapped, my response was to take a boatload of guns and go rescue Chet, to fix it. Go get him. Solve the problem. And the Lord worked me through that, and I learned that his will was not for me to fix it but rather for me to be thankful and to trust him, the Lord.

What happened when you trusted God?
As a result of trying to be thankful and confident in the Lord instead of being mad at him, a year after Chet’s death we got to go to Colombia in person. We accompanied the ambulance [that Pennsylvania churches donated to a Colombian city a year after the murder]. We found an unbelievably wide-open door where the media and high government officials sought us out. [They] asked us, ‘How is it that you come to the country where your son was killed with a gift for the people?’ There’s no more wide-open door than that to explain how the gospel works in a person’s life to change them.

My way was to go and get killed, or to waste my time at best. How futile and stupid that would have been compared to what God brought about when I trusted him. That changed my life profoundly in a way that will never be forgotten. God’s way, being thankful, was what seemed to me the most asinine approach we could conceive of. But following God’s way resulted in an open door for the gospel that would have been unthinkable if I’d have thought for a 1,000 years about how to get the gospel to Colombia. So God showed me personally how much smarter he was than I am.

So you shared Christ with Colombia’s president, the minister of justice, and others.
We got to tell them our natural feelings, and how we suppressed them and trusted our Heavenly Father and how that resulted in inner peace. It was Philippians 4:6-7: “Be anxious for nothing but in everything give thanks.” Our experience was a perfect example of the truth of those verses, of changing anxiety into peace and fruitfulness. That’s the message we gave to the media, to the government, to the president, to anyone who asked. We’d have been here with guns, shooting the place up, but trusting God led us here with this ambulance. This way we found peace. That way we’d have gotten shot.

As unlikely as it seems, we had a fantastic ministry dumped right on us. That blows my mind. But then again, that’s the measure of how much smarter God is than we are. If we do it his way, that’s the kind of potential there is. Do you know any way to get an audience with the president of Colombia? I didn’t either, but God can do it. Now you may not like the way he chooses to do it. It may not feel good to you. It may not even seem like a good idea. But he is smarter than we are.

Chet’s death was part of the plan from before the foundation of the earth. There’s an incredible contrast between my wisdom relative to God’s wisdom. I will never forget that contrast. Would I change Chet’s death and say that God’s plan, which included Chet’s death, was wrong, was a mistake? God’s plan, even if it meant Chet’s death, was not a mistake. It was not in vain. And Chet’s life was not wasted.

What other good came from Chet’s martyrdom?
The thing that’s nearest to me is this insight into coming to grips with God. God are you real, are you there, do you care? Those kinds of questions resulted in a revelation of how much God knows more than I know. Chet had seven brothers and sisters. Instead of turning away from God and being angry at God, they too found this experience an opportunity to look to God and get peace and comfort. And they did, some more than others, and some sooner than others. And it was an amazing opportunity to get the message of Bible translation out to the world. It had a positive effect on Wycliffe missionary recruitment. You’d think it’d chase everybody away, but it didn’t work that way.

“Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” That is the most ludicrous thing. You give them back what they deserve. But that was the motivation for that ambulance. They murdered a resident of Pennsylvania, so Pennsylvanians sent a gift to the people of Colombia. Not the same ones who pulled the trigger, but it was an attempt to apply a scriptural principle. Boy, did that ever work. Principles in his Word are so contrary to our nature but are so right and correct and successful relative to our best thinking. Maybe that’s the main message that came through all that and the ensuing 20 years.

So you’re still OK with this, 20 years later?
As you live long enough to see what he can do and what he has done when you put his ways to work, it’ll give you a lot more confidence than when you first look at what looks like a crazy idea in the pages of Scripture. It more than worked out. God does not make mistakes. And he does not waste the life of his children.

I’ve wondered what I’d have done in your circumstance.
(Bitterman laughs) Don’t waste your time wondering because you’d have said the same thing I would have answered: I’ll fix it myself if God’s on vacation, or if he doesn’t care, or whatever. Or maybe you’re not as bad as I am. I’m a pretty bad guy at heart. I think I have to fix everything myself. That’s how I would have responded. But God saved me from myself.

August 3, 2001