Jihad and cannibalism

It’s interesting to note that Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf means “My Struggle,” the same meaning of the word “Jihad.”

In an article by John Perazzo, author of the book “The Myths That Divide Us: How Lies Have Poisoned American Race Relations,” he writes about the famine engineered by Josef Stalin that artificially induced death in peacetime on a scale unsurpassed in the recorded history of mankind (affecting 40 million people).

“ . . . In general, the areas that were the richest agriculturally suffered most from the famine - quite simply because it was not a natural disaster but rather a calamity carefully engineered by Stalin himself.”

Perazzo reports that while “thousands were succumbing to starvation each day, the Soviet government continued to export huge quantities of grain abroad ‘in the interests of industrialization’—taking the official position that all was well in the USSR.

“When foreign dignitaries visited the country, the GPU led them exclusively to areas where the appalling stench of death did not fill the air, and where all signs of the human misery that permeated the land had been hidden from view.”

*****

Now that we are seeing how potent the media is in deceiving a populace by cleverly propagating lies and bias and conveniently leaving out or disregarding facts, it’s not so hard to believe, as Perazzo writes, “Apart from those who were deceived, there were also many willing accomplices - particularly in the press - who were willing to ignore, or even to falsify their accounts of, the horrors they saw firsthand throughout Stalin's empire.

“Most notable was Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent in the 1930s, who concealed his knowledge of the great famine and Stalin's mass murders.

“In 1933, for instance, when the famine was at its height, Duranty wrote that ‘village markets [were] flowing with eggs, fruit, poultry, vegetables, milk and butter. . . . A child can see this is not famine but abundance.’

“Duranty's various dispatches during this period included also the following: ‘There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is there likely to be’ (New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931); ‘Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda’ (New York Times, August 23, 1933); ‘There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition’ (New York Times, March 31, 1933).

“Duranty's reports were not founded in ignorance; he knew very well that they were utterly false. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting.”

*****

As a succinct overall assessment of Stalin’s lasting influence, Perazzo summarizes, “The great famine had an enormous effect on Soviet society and the character of the Soviet people. It fostered a proliferation of tyrants and local despots who, eager to please their superiors and ultimately Stalin himself, were prepared to resort to any measures to strip the starving peasants of every last morsel of food. It also led to the desperate abandonment of countless children and the rise of cannibalism.

“Coupled with these developments were the establishment of death camps and the unpredictable atrocities of Stalin's secret police. Barbarism and corruption became the defining characteristics of Soviet life.”

*****

In Israel’s “national anthem,” written in song by Moses in Deuteronomy 32, the last verse takes the reader over to the Book of Revelation with its prophetic context being about the Second Coming of Christ, when He comes to ‘avenge the blood of his servants.’

Jordan explains, “The ending (of the national anthem) brings up a strangely fascinating issue in Rev. 17:9. John’s going to identify for you what the woman represents—who she is and what she’s doing.

“The seven heads are the seven mountains upon which the woman sitteth. Notice in verse 16 the issue about eating her flesh--those ten kings that reign with the Antichrist are demonic kings who are cannibals.”

“Verses 16-17 say, ‘And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
[17] For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.’

“What we’re talking about here is the Antichrist. He’s going to be in the land of Palestine. He’s going to be raised up ‘in the land.’ That’s where he comes from. This is an issue that takes place in the Middle East. It takes place ‘in the land’ God’s interested in reclaiming.

*****

“In Psalm 53, a psalm associated with the ‘last days’ and the tribulation and with the Antichrist, verse 4 says, ‘Have the workers of iniquity no knowledge? who eat up my people as they eat bread: they have not called upon God.’

“It’s like they’re eating the bread, but when they’re eating the bread, they’re eating ‘my people.’ It’s like the bread turns into his people!

*****

Deuteronomy 28 and 29, the chapters leading up to Israel’s national anthem, rehearse the Five Courses of Judgment Israel goes under.

Verse 53 reads, “And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the LORD thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee:thou shalt eat the flesh of thy own body.”

Jordan says, “What he’s talking about here is in that 5^th course of judgment things are going to be so bad in Israel that ‘thou shalt eat the fruit of thy own body.’

“Somebody says, ‘Well, Brother Rick, nobody’s ever going to do that!’ But if you go to II Kings 6, you’ll see records of people doing it! Starvation got that bad!

“Lamentations says that a mother will ‘eat her baby a span long.’ A span is 18 inches. Things are going to be so bad that parents, even mothers, will wind up eating their own children in order to survive!

“Specifically, Lamentations 2:20 reads, ‘Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?’

“When the siege came up, Nebuchadnezzar carried them away; he didn’t just come up. I mean, you read that and say, ‘Did things ever get THAT bad?!’ ”

(Another article tomorrow)

Art's inner beauty

What most people don’t know about me is that I was influenced from a young age by the artistic skills of my mother, a multi-faceted artist who obtained a degree in fine arts in the '50s from the University of Akron.

While she never pursued a career in art, instead marrying my dad a year after graduation and then immediately starting a family with him, her works of art, from big oil portraits to water-colors and wood carvings and even a cement-sculpted rhinoceros that sits on my bookshelf today, could be found all around the house.

*****

A key thing I was taught by a favorite art history teacher at Ohio State (where I earned a minor in art history along with a double-degree in journalism and political science in 1987) is that inner beauty is what’s really behind true creativity and it only exists when the artist feels real love for people and the God-created things of the earth—love that develops in the person sensitivity, consideration, patience, the ability to notice and watch details of life that escape others, etc.

An artist can exhibit perfect technique as a painter, musician, singer, poet, writer, etc., but without this inner beauty their talent has considerably less significance, even as much as it might obtain “success.”

The pay off in developing inner beauty is a highly coveted simplicity and abandonment of resistance and fear and the desire to impress others and have their approval.

*****

While others go for colors, design, structure, etc., my thing has always been for inspirational people. My long-loved framed work is a print from the Detroit Institute of Arts of an 1887 Vincent van Gogh “Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat,” in which he gives an intense, sad, anxious-looking stare.

I guess for sentimental reasons, I always list Irving Stone’s translation of van Gogh’s private letters to his brother, Theo, as my favorite non-Bible related book.

This paperback of mine from the ’70s, which I first read in my mid-20s after just moving to Chicago and finding myself incredibly lonely, is so worn out from use, the pages are loose and the cover hangs on only by triple scotch tape along the spine.

In one passage--and it’s one I just flipped to and give no particular emphasis to--Vincent writes:

“What shall we say as to the fact that there are times when one feels there is certain fatality that makes the good turn out wrong, and the bad turn out well?

“I think one may consider such thoughts as partly a consequence of overwrought nerves, and if one has them, one must not think it one’s duty to believe that things are really as gloomy as one supposes; if one did so, it would make one mad.

“On the contrary, it is better to strengthen one’s physique, and afterwards to set to work like a man, and consider that melancholy as a fatal thing. One must always continue to use these two means. In the long run one will then feel one’s energy increasing and will bear up against troubles.

“Mysteries remain, sorrow or melancholy remain, but that everlasting negative is balanced by the positive work which is thus after all achieved. If life were as simple and things as little complicated as Goody Goody’s story, or the hackneyed sermon of the average clergyman, it would not be so very difficult to make one’s way. But it’s not so, and things are infinitely more complicated, and right and wrong do not stand separately, any more than black and white do in nature.”

*****

One of my favorite photography works of art is a black-and-white portrait of my great aunt Audrey Stone (my grandmother’s sister on my mom’s side) when she was 90 years old and sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch of the Kanawha River cottage house she shared with her sister, Nel, in the small West Virginia mountain town of Sutton, pop. 1,100.

Audrey, a long-time beauty salon owner in Philadelphia who was married to a prominent doctor, was a voluminous poet in her retirement years and her work was frequently published in the local paper, The Braxton Democrat-Central. (The other thing to note about her, I think, is she was a good Christian woman who didn't smoke or drink, etc., and suffered from depression and once had a full-blown nervous breakdown in her 30s where she threw an antique, very expensive Cello out the second-floor window of her Philadelphia brownstone, shattering it in pieces.)

Accompanying this particular photo from 1991--in which Audrey’s wearing a summery polka-dot skirt and a wide white French beret with a star pin anchoring it to her thick and wavy Irish-Scottish white hair--is her poem “The Vagabond Lover,” said to be dedicated “in memory of P.M., a war veteran of Dublin, Ireland.”

The love poem reads, in part, “When my street is draped in snow, I know where to go to find the lover, The Vagabond Lover, a man of the road. A man of the highway life. Old Rocky Bywatt, just a man of the road.

“He will keep you warm come a blizzard or storm. He will kiss away the tears and smooch away the years—that’s the lover, the man of the highway.

“You can love all your doctors, merchants or chiefs, but I will take the man of the road. His words might be compared to the prettiest bird. His voice echoes sweetest sounds ever heard. His kisses divine were sweeter than wine. His warm, soft and tender smile would thaw the frost of age and add new extinguishable fuel to a cold woman’s heart . . . ”

*****

As a writer, I always find it heartening the tremendous emphasis God, a writer Himself, places on the craft of writing and getting His message out in written form.

One of my favorite Bible verses, in fact, is John 21:25: “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.”

A great old hymn I’m often reminded of, entitled The Love of God, and written by Frederick Lehman, starts out, “The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell.”

The last of its three verses goes, “Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made, Were ev-’ry stalk on earth a quill, And ev-’ry man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Tho’ stretched from sky to sky.”

When you truly internalize the fact God is the author of the Bible, and intended for every single word to be just what it is and where it is, it’s unfathomable to think He would be behind a bunch of varying versions of His Book that have differing words, contexts and meanings. I mean, can you see William Strunk or E.B. White being that way with their Elements of Style?!

*****

A book I came to appreciate after hearing my preacher, Richard Jordan, once refer to it as one of “the great books written outside of the Bible,”

is Alexander Hyslop’s 1858 classic The Two Babylons.

It is truly unreal how jam-packed it is with amazing facts, revelations, insights, analogies, etc., regarding history’s pagan-satanic underpinnings and origins from Nimrod on. It’s such a complex read I feel I will never complete its 323 pages!

Here’s just a taste of Hyslop’s extraordinary ability evident from his first introductory paragraphs:

“There is this great difference between the works of men and the works of God, that the same minute and searching investigation, which displays the defects and imperfections of the one, brings out also the beauty of the others.

“If the most finely polished needle on which the art of man has been expended be subjected to a microscope, many inequalities, much roughness and clumsiness, will be seen.

“But if the microscope be brought to bear on the flowers of the field, no such result appears. Instead of their beauty diminishing, new beauties and still more delicate, that have escaped the naked eye, are forthwith discovered; beauties that make us appreciate, in a way which otherwise we could have had little conception of, the full force of the Lord’s saying, ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.’

“The same law appears also in comparing the Word of God and the most finished productions of men. There are spots and blemishes in the most admired productions of human genius. But the more the Scriptures are searched, the more minutely they are studied, the more their perfection appears; new beauties are brought into light every day; and the discoveries of science, the researches of the learned, and the labours of infidels, all alike to conspire to illustrate the wonderful harmony of all the parts, and the Divine beauty that clothes the whole.”

(new article tomorrow)

Can we talk?

When you think about our president, and the pundits on TV and radio, and the anchors on the evening newscast such as Brian Williams, it’s interesting to look at what the Bible says.

The word “conversation” in the King James Bible doesn’t mean just “talking.”

Jordan, in a study on I Timothy earlier this month, reasoned, “If you sit and chat with someone you say, ‘Well, we’re just having a conversation.’ But you know conversation even in that context is not just a chat. A conversation is when you sit and enter into a concourse and a communion between you and someone else.

“In the Bible, a conversation can be something that has no words involved in it at all. For example, I Peter 3: [1] Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives;
[2] While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.

“How can you without the word, without speaking, have a conversation? See that? So conversation is something that is more than just speaking words.

“Now, what we would usually talk, in the simple way, we would say it probably would be lifestyle. Some people like the word ‘behavior.’ Lifestyle is probably better because your behavior would be erratic, but your lifestyle, you have concourse, you have a going back and forth with people in the way that you live.

“So when we’re talking about your manner of life, we’re talking about the whole of your life and we’re talking about the honesty and the integrity with which you conduct yourself. That’s why I Timothy 3 has all these qualifications that have to do primarily with how you relate to one another.

“I was discussing some things in I Timothy with some brothers just the other day, and I’m struck constantly, when we talk through it, I said this, ‘It’s interesting that Paul doesn’t give you a long list of doctrinal this, this and this.' They were expected to already KNOW about that.

“Nobody gets to be a bishop or a deacon who isn’t doctrinally sound to start with, but every person who’s doctrinally sound doesn’t have that live out in the quality of their life and their conversation, so you have a quality of life issue, a lifestyle, an integrity, an honesty, where you see it living in your life.”

(to be continued . . . )

 

 

 

'If you're not careful, you won't even notice'

The fact that the world has reached a point where everything is tied to numbers represents a precursor to Revelation 13.

Specifically, Revelation 13:18 says, “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”

“The fact that everything in life today has come to a place where it’s numbered just demonstrates that these kinds of passages, well, we’re just kind of moving toward that,” says Jordan. “If you go back 40 years, it wasn’t this way. The advent of computers has made numbering systems for identification ubiquitous. My point to you is there’s going to be a time when it’s going to be extremely important to be able to identify numbers.

*****

Of course, anybody who knows anything about the Bible knows it’s a book of numbers. The Old Testament even carries the Book of Numbers.

One Bible commentary states that one in every five verses in the Bible, on average, has something to do with a number in it.

“You can’t miss the fact that the Bible is numeric in its structure and arrangement, so numbers are important to God and they matter in Scripture,” confirms Jordan. “There are lots of verses about God using numbers and doing numbers. He talks about how He numbered the stars, numbered the hairs on your head, all those kinds of things.

“But when you begin to study numbers—with the first 13 numbers in our numbering system, actually 40, each one has a significance attached to it that you just can’t ignore. It’s beyond the ability to say it’s just coincidence.

“Now, it doesn’t mean that every time the number occurs it’s there, but what it will be is probably 75-80% of the time the number occurs you can see in the text a specific significance connected with that number that is consistent throughout Scripture.

*****

“The number associated with Israel is 12, for example, and 12 in Scripture references governmental perfection. When you think of governmental perfection, and having the perfect government, well, I’m sure you don’t think of our government, at least if you watch the news lately. The one thing you can be sure of is the inmates are running the asylum.

“The numbers 3, 7, 10 and 12 are identified as perfect numbers and 3 is a lucky number representing divine completeness. It’s the number of resurrection in the Bible.

“John 1, for example, starts out, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.’ Both the term Word and the name God occur three times. There’s divine completeness.

“By the way, the  No. 4 represents earth and if you let your eye run down to verse 14 (in John 1), you’ll see the fourth time the word Word occurs, it says, ‘The Word was made flesh.’ Here’s the Word come into creation!

“I know you think it’s just happenstance, and it’s all by accident, and you shouldn’t put much stock in it, but isn’t it just fascinating that it’s the fourth time the word occurs there?! When you study through your Bible, you find strange occurrences like that.

*****

“The number 13 is the number of rebellion in the Bible and if you look at Mark 7, for example, where Jesus is listing man’s sins, they add up to 13.

“The passage reads, ‘And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.
[21] For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
[22] Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:
[23] All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.’

“Another listing of 13 can be found in Romans 1, where Paul writes: ‘And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
[29] Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
[30] Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
[31] Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
[32] Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.’

“You can do that over and over and over and over in Scripture and these numbers . . . now, there’s not a doctrine tagged to (numbers); that’s just sort of that below-the-surface kind of structure that’s there and confirms something over here, where if you’re not careful you won’t even notice. And if you don’t notice this, you won’t notice that.”

 

(new article tomorrow. Stuck here in Ohio, waiting out the weather after waiting on Walgreens to special order ointment prescribed by my ENT doc for my ears. Back to Chicago on Friday.)

Fifty shades of today's evil

The three-part series of novels starting with “Fifty Shades of Grey” has sold more books than the Harry Potter series and “The Hunger Games,” informed my preacher, Richard Jordan, in his Sunday morning sermon two weeks ago.

“They’ve sold more than any other book in the English language except the Bible. Since 2011 they are the fastest selling book in recorded history. They are books about sexual perversion, bondage, sadomasochism, etc.

“Surveys say 40 percent of evangelical Christians acknowledge having read one or all three of those books.

“I was in Target this past week and discovered they are now selling kits for bondage and you say, ‘What?!’

“You say, ‘Why in the world does it get to be so commonly accepted?!’ It’s that verse in Isaiah: ‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!’

“When you put that kind of stuff in your mind--and I know what they’re doing is selling the fantasy--it never ends good in real life.

“You put that kind of stuff in your mind and what it does is it puts in an itch you can’t scratch in your heart, and all of a sudden your marriage, your spouse, is not exciting; they’re not titillating enough, and you start looking elsewhere and it isn’t there. But that 'the grass is greener on the other side of the hill' kind of thing is there.

"It numbs your conscience and corrupts your heart and causes you to live in a fantasy world that isn’t real.

“I’m saying to you, these things are things you have to be careful about. Don’t just accept everything that comes along into your mind.

*****

“When you’re going to read, first thing to do is read Paul’s epistles. What you take in effects what goes on inside of you and a culture that can read and glory in this kind of extreme sadistic masochism . . . if you take the last verse in Romans 1 you’ll see exactly what it is—it’s the depths of sin and when your culture is there, Paul says, ‘Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.’

“When you live in a culture filled with this stuff, you live in a world that that’s the standard of life, listen, that never ends good in real life. In the movie, they went to the bank. You don’t have to experience sin to know it’s sinful.

******

“When a culture rejects God’s Word and turns away from it, it winds up with things in its culture that are the antithesis of the way God created it; the opposite of the natural. There was a day in which our culture understood that.

“In 1854, the first published McGuffey Reader, the standard textbook of the one-room schoolhouse in the 1800s, had this as a text for children:

“ ‘If you can induce a community to doubt the genuineness and authenticity of the Scriptures; to question the reality and obligations of religion; to hesitate, undeciding, whether there be any such thing as virtue or vice; whether there be an eternal state of retribution beyond the grave; or whether there exists any such being as God, you have broken down the barriers of moral virtue, and hoisted the flood gates of immorality and crime. I need not say that when a people have once done this, they can no longer exist as a tranquil and happy people. Every bond that holds society together would be ruptured; fraud and treachery would take the place of confidence between man and man; the tribunals of justice would be scenes of bribery and injustice; avarice, perjury, ambition, and revenge would walk through the land, and render it more like the dwelling of savage beasts than the tranquil abode of civilized and Christianized men.’

“That didn’t say you needed to be a Christian. That just said you don’t need to be a part of Romans 1. Isaiah 5:20 says, ‘Woe to them call good evil and evil good.’ You know what that is? That’s foolishness. You can’t even identify reality.

*****

“In the story of Eve eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, either she didn’t remember God’s Word correctly or she hadn’t received it correctly, but either way she’s going on faulty memory.

“If you’ve got it written down, you don’t have to go on faulty memory. You can go read it. And if you’ve been using faulty memory and you read it, you know what happens? The reading corrects your faulty memory.

“It’s dangerous not to read your Bible. It’s dangerous not to read Paul’s epistles.

“I want you to see why that is. I’m going to use an illustration here that Jesus used. It’s true in our age, too, because this is not a dispensational issue so much as it’s a, ‘Here’s how you’re made to operate. Here’s how your constitution as a person is made to function.’

“Matthew 6:22 says, ‘The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.’

“The thing that gives light, understanding and illumination in your inner man is the eye; it comes in through the eyegate.

“Your eye is the instrument that takes advantage of light. You can have all kind of light in the room, but if you don’t have an eye to see it, it doesn’t do you any good. If you’ve got an eye that can see, but you don’t have any light, you can’t see. So the eye is an instrument; it’s the intake of information and if the information you take in, He says, is single . . .

“You remember the verse in James where it says ‘a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways’? I’m going on human viewpoint, divine viewpoint, human viewpoint, divine viewpoint. But if your eye is single--just divine viewpoint--what happens? The whole body’s full of light.

“The psalmist says ‘the entrance of thy Word giveth light.’ It gives understanding to the simple. You know where you’re going to get light in your inner man about things? Out of the Word of God.

“But the next verse in Matthew 6 says: ‘But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!’

“You see, if that light doesn’t come from the light of God’s Word, it’s darkness. How do you get darkness in your inner man?

“In Romans 1, it says their foolish heart was darkened, professing . . . there’s a thinking a process that produces darkness and death. No understanding. The result of that, Isaiah 5:20 says, ‘Woe to them that call evil good.’ He’s talking to a nation there. What you take in impacts what goes on inside of you. Don’t you ever doubt that.”

Solomon proves the question of love

Among famous love quotes posted on Google’s home page for Valentine’s Day was Oscar Wilde’s: “You don't love someone for their looks, or their clothes, or for their fancy car, but because they sing a song only you can hear.”

Of course, many of the greatest romantic love quotes of all time are found in the King James Bible, but you won’t likely find them on any internet search engine's promo material.

One of the best-ever romance authors is King Solomon, responsible for the Song of Solomon.

I Kings says that “all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear his wisdom, which God had put in his heart.”

In chapter 4, we learn that “God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart, even as the sand that is on the sea shore . . . And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. [33] And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.
[34] And there came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.”

*****

People like to defend Islam as one of the great “love” religions, but the fact is the book doesn’t do well in the realm of love, and never once gives “love” as an official attribute of Mohammed. Calling him "The Loving" is the only mention in the "99 names of Allah."

Similarly, the Islamic tradition has perverted the biblical notion of Solomon “speaking” to animals, making it literal and attaching to him a power over “jinns,” or the demons popularly written about in the Koran who were said to inhabit trees, stones, rivers and mountains and be influenced by Muhammad.

In Sura 27:18-19  of the Koran, Solomon is said to overhear a conversation of ants, even though the reality is ants use smell, not sound, to communicate.

One translation of the passage reads: “Till when they came to a valley of ants, one of the ants said: ‘Ants, get into your habitations or Solomon and his armies may trample you without [even] knowing it.’ He smiled, at what she said. And he said: ‘My Lord, support me to be grateful for the blessings that You have bestowed upon me and my parents, and grant me to do the pious deeds, which please You; and admit me, with Your abounding Grace, to the ranks of Your righteous people.’ ’’

*****

On the website “Understanding Islam,” a writer defends the Koran’s use of the word “said” in the above translation, arguing, “The Arabic word like its English counterpart 'said' does not necessarily imply verbal communication or communication through spoken words. On the contrary, both these words, in their respective languages may sometimes be used for communication of ideas, feelings and thoughts, through any mode of communication.”

“It may further be noted that the Qur'an has not used any such words like 'listen', 'hear' or 'overhear' for Solomon's comprehension and understanding of what the ant 'said'. The Qur'an, on the contrary, has only implied that Solomon (pbuh) understood and comprehended what the ant 'said'.

“The Qur'an does not 'say' that ants communicate through speech, on the contrary, it only 'says' that whatever the mode of communication in ants, Solomon (pbuh) comprehended and understood their communication, as a part of the special favors that he was granted by the Almighty.”

*****

In a huge encyclopedia I have on mythology, it says that according to Islamic tradition, “Solomon ruled over all the Jinns, as well as humans, animals and birds . . . He could speak all the languages, including those of the animals and birds, many of which submitted to his judgment. He is believed to have built the first temple in Jerusalem with the help of the angels and demons.”

Obviously, it’s a real slam on God to say Solomon built the Temple with the aid of demons! As for Solomon literally talking to trees and animals and such, this represents a complete misreading of Scripture.

“The Bible’s not talking about some hokey thing where he’s over there talking to the trees!” explains my preacher, Richard Jordan. “No, that isn’t what he’s doing. It’s talking about how he became an expert in horticulture. He became somebody who knew about the plant life. He worked in sciences. It says ‘he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.’ He became an expert in animal husbandry. He was a biologist.”

Jordan continues, “Solomon had a tremendous curiosity of the world about him. The verse says, ‘There came of all people to hear the wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, which had heard of his wisdom.’

“But it wasn’t just that he was wise; it wasn’t just that they were coming to say, ‘Wow, man, he’s smart!’ They came to hear what he had to say. They came to learn those 3,000 proverbs and take them home. Horticulture, animal husbandry, the sciences—they wanted that wisdom and information to bring home with them and put to use.”

*****

A classic passage detailing the vast wealth, not just the wisdom, of Solomon, is in I Kings 10 when the queen of Sheba, having heard of the fame of God’s chosen man, pays a visit to “prove him with hard questions.”

The passage reports, “She came to Jerusalem with a very great train, with camels that bare spices, and very much gold, and precious stones: and when she was come to Solomon, she communed with him of all that was in her heart.
[3] And Solomon told her all her questions: there was not any thing hid from the king, which he told her not.
[4] And when the queen of Sheba had seen all Solomon's wisdom, and the house that he had built,
[5] And the meat of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up unto the house of the LORD; there was no more spirit in her.
[6] And she said to the king, It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of thy acts and of thy wisdom.
[7] Howbeit I believed not the words, until I came, and mine eyes had seen it: and, behold, the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard.”

Jordan explains, “When it says ‘the half was not told me,’ I mean, the newspapers and CNN, and the reporters from ABC, NBC, CBS, they didn’t tell half of what was going on there it was just so great.”

II Timothy fits today

While I Timothy is devoted to matters of church establishment, rulership and standards for operation, II Timothy reveals the church in absolute, total ruin. Paul starts the book by lamenting, “All they which are in Asia be turned away from me.”

“In every chapter, Paul points to the declension—the departure from truth and from sound doctrine,” explains Jordan. “As you go through II Timothy, the steps in the apostasy are laid out as well as the countermanding responsibility in light of it and how to be faithful.

“The die is cast and the course is clear that the church the Body of Christ is going to spend most of its earthly sojourn in apostasy that permeates the whole of it. And that’s why when you study church history . . .

“You begin in the 1^st Century studying in the Scripture, but as soon as the pages of God’s Word are concluded and the Bible’s completed, the study turns to church history--the history of institutions, organizations and political, social kinds of movements.

“You can study your Scriptures ’til your eyes bug out and you don’t see anything in it about denominations and the history of buildings and institutions. What you study about is some truth; some doctrine living in some people, and that truth going out and permeating the communities they live in.

“The form is not the issue. That’s not to say there wasn’t a form to it because there was. In I Timothy is sort of a handbook for the operating of the local assembly. But when you come to II Timothy, it’s obvious the people are going to ‘have a form of godliness but they’re going to deny the power thereof.’

“The spiritual source of the life of Christ in them—working through the truth of His Word—no longer becomes the issue. In fact, it becomes very confused.

“When Paul says in II Timothy, ‘For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia,’ he’s not just talking about them personally, he’s talking about the doctrine that he preached.

“He’s saying Demas has departed from the truth that’s been committed to him, and in light of all that, II Timothy was written. I heard a fellow describe the book one time as ‘Timely Tips to Timothy for Tempestuous Times,’ and I always thought that was a great title for II Timothy because that’s just what it is. II Timothy is an epistle that addresses situations then that are very similar to the way things are today.

“When II Tim. 3:13 says, ‘But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived,’ you know why things are worse today than they’ve ever been before. Because there’s more people on the planet then there have been before! You put more sinners in a bag, you get more of the same.”

(new article tomorrow)

Where the Spirit can be Himself . . .

“A huge turning point in a person’s Christian walk is when they realize that it isn’t really what’s done for Christ that’s the issue; it’s really that, ‘I’m in Christ and He’s in me and it isn’t what I’m doing for Him; it’s His life in me that’s the real issue,’ ” says Jordan.

“At some point in my ministry I figured out that no matter what I did, and no matter how hard I worked at it, tomorrow I could look back and say, ‘Boy, I could’ve done better yesterday.’

“I told the Lord one day, ‘You know, Lord, if the success of the Body of Christ is dependent upon me serving you, we’re in trouble. You’re in trouble, Lord!’ and it was along in there that I began to realize it’s really not what you do for the Lord, and your striving and being on the treadmill, thinking, ‘I gotta get there and I gotta accomplish that.’

 

*****

“The Christian life is really Him in you, living out through you. Now that’s wonderful to understand in theory, but you’re like I am and we’re both like Paul was in Romans 7.

“He said, ‘To will is with me. I got all the will you want; my problem isn’t willpower, my problem is want power. Because the good I would do, I don’t, and the evil that I don’t want to do, I do. How to perform I can’t find.’

“Now, you look at me like you don’t know what I’m talking about but I know you do. You’re no better than I am. And the answer to that, in Paul’s case, isn’t in what you’re doing.

“He’s saying that, ‘What I’m going to do isn’t going to be the issue. The answer is in, ‘Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. There’s the how to perform . . .’

“People say, ‘Sometimes you guys are so doctrinal; it’s nothing ever practical.’ But there’s nothing where God’s more involved in your life than when you take the truths of His Word and apply them to the details—the nitty-gritty of your life. You apply them to the way you use your mouth and your conversation with one another.

“I’ve told people for years, in Romans 12, Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3—if you took the instructions in Romans 12 alone, and you wrote those things on a piece of paper and spent just one day with each one of them, trying to figure out, ‘How can I today have that live in me?’ . . . you know what?

“Mister, your wife would swear she had a new husband within a week and a half. And ladies, your fellow would think he had a new wife in about four days. I know what those first four things in Romans 12 are; that’s why I say that.

“You see, it’s that application. We’re complete in Christ; there’s nothing that’s ever going to be added you. It’s now just an issue of a faith appropriation of that identity into the details of your life. And that’s the practical reality of Christ living in you; it’s not just words—it’s taking that truth and seeing that live in you.

“Grace isn’t just a theology to believe, it’s a life that LIVES. That’s what excites us, that’s what keeps us going; that’s what impels us along!

*****

“Paul writes in Ephesians 2, 'For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father.
[19] Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
[20] And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone;
[21] In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord:
[22] In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.'

“The cornerstone is the rock in the building that everything else is measured from. You know who is the measure of everything you have today? That’s so wonderful. Everything is measured from Him, His grace.

“He cried on the Cross, ‘It’s finished!’ That’s the banner you walk under. Paul said, ‘You’re complete in Him.’ That’s the truth that governs your life and your identity. Everything in your life is to be measured in who He is, not who you are. Not what you do, not how you perform, but who He is, what He’s doing, how He performs.

“If you let that become the measure of your life so that everything in your life, all the decisions, all of the details of your life is measured from Him . . . God’s Spirit lives in you and when it says you’re the ‘habitation of God,’ He’s going to dwell in you.

“When you dwell somewhere, it’s different than visiting; it’s home. You settle down and act like you’re at home. Have you ever noticed you just act different at home than when you’re out being a guest?

“The Bible talks about how the Spirit of God’s in you. Why did He come in you? He didn’t come to visit; He came to dwell. His purpose in you is to settle down and be Himself. That’s what He’s there for.

“He didn’t come just to lock you up and make you eternally secure. That’s done though the righteousness of Christ. He came so He could make you the habitation; the place where God kicks off His shoes and is Himself.

“That’s a wonderful privilege, do you know that? The Spirit of God dwells in you if you’re saved tonight but a lot of (Believers) never let Him just relax and be Himself. He's standing there yelling, ‘That’s what I’m here to do!’ and yet you ignore Him.

“Paul says, ‘For this cause.’ That means so you can understand all of that, so you can get a grip on what God really is doing--not just what He ISN’T doing, but what He IS doing as He forms the Church the Body of Christ and makes this habitation of God through His Spirit so that Jesus Christ has this habitation to live in and to manifest Himself.

“A temple is a place where God is worshipped and manifested. Paul talks about ‘the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.’ He says ‘For to me to live is Jesus Christ.’

“When I think about life, it’s Christ. I want people when they see me to see that I cherish Him, His thinking, more than anybody else’s; that I treasure what He says, what He’s doing, more than what anybody else is doing. And when people see me and the choices I make in life, they’ll see that.

“That’s not a theoretical, theological concept that Paul just wrote on a wall. That was, ‘For to me to live!’

“You know what life is? Look it up in the dictionary. It means, ‘The ability to relate to your circumstances; your surroundings.’ Now, if you want to see life, look around, this is life.

*****

“Paul says, ‘For to me to live is Christ.’ His life, so that when I look around, I’m going to think about it the way He thinks about it. God’s will for you and for me . . . you see, when we think about it, it’s, ‘What does God want me to do at 2 o’clock this afternoon? Where does He want me to be? Should I be a missionary over here, a pastor over there? Does He want me to be a Sunday School teacher over here or does He want me to just keep my mouth shut and sit on a pew bench?’

“The will of God is not focused on you; it’s focused on Him! The will of God is, ‘What is God doing?’ You see, you were asking, ‘What should I be doing?’ What you find in Paul’s epistles is the will of God. This is what God’s doing today. He’s doing this and He’s not doing that. That’s why right division is so important.

“And when I figure out what He’s doing, then I look around my life and say, ‘Okay, that’s what I should be doing in my life.’ That’s why Paul says in Ephesians 3, ‘For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles,
[2] If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to youward:
[3] How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words,
[4] Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)
[5] Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;’

“That’s the cause! To make that truth, put it on display. ‘If you have heard.’ The problem is that first word ‘if.’ Have you heard? That means Paul thought some of them hadn’t. In fact, he knew some of them hadn’t. You see the real problem is simply a failure to recognize the important and the place of the ministry and the message committed to the Apostle Paul.”

“Satan has a religious system to catch you. In the Dispensation of Grace it’s called legalism. External religious legalism where what’s out there is where you think God’s working and where you’re going to find His revelation—‘What’s out there is the way I know God’s value and esteem for me, so what I need to do is produce stuff out there rather than being strengthened by His Spirit in my inner man and having the identity God gives me inside of me living out through me.’ ”