Radical conclusion of Nineveh's king, million people

(new article tomorrow)

"There isn't much written about Jonah, but most of the time the (writers) overlook the fact that the two commissions in the book really are somewhat different.

Jonah 3 begins: [1] And the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the second time, saying,

[2] Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.
[3] So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days' journey.

"Nineveh is this huge city and when it says that it is exceeding great, look at chapter 4. The Lord is talking to Jonah about him being upset that God forgave Nineveh and He says to him in verse 11: [11] And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

"When He talks about persons that can't discern between their right hand and their left hand, He's talking about people who have not come to the age of accountability," explains Richard Jordan.

"If you go back to Deuteronomy 1, look at when He talked about the people in the wilderness, how they didn't know good from evil. He talked about it in Isaiah 7.

"There's a place of accountability a person comes to and there are 120,000 people in Nineveh who are minors. That gives you an idea that the population of Nineveh was pretty big. You'll see figures given that are somewhere between 600,000 and a million people.

"The International Bible Encyclopedia says that Nineveh was surrounded by a wall. Donald Trump would be proud of them. A wall that was 100 feet high. It was wide enough for three chariots to ride three abreast on it. So, the wall would have had to been much wider than this room.

"If he goes three days journey to cross the thing, what's a day's journey? Maybe 30 miles? Take a big city like Chicago. When it says it's an exceeding big city, you're talking about this great, humongous metropolis. We're not talking about a po-dunk holler. We're not talking about Plum Nilly or Slapout in central Alabama.

"Jonah's going to go there and preach and say, 'In 40 days Nineveh is going to be overthrown.' By the way, Nineveh is 600 miles from the coast. Jonah goes down to Joppa on the Mediterranean coast, gets in the boat, they go out.

"He tells those guys in chapter 1, 'Throw me overboard because I'm the problem.' Before they do, they row: [13] Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them.

"The indication is that they tried to get the ship back to where they left from, which would be Joppa.

"Well, after the storm calms itself . . . Jonah is overboard, the fish gets him and the fish vomits him out. It doesn't tell you where in Joppa he vomited him out but wherever it was, Nineveh, if you look on a map, was like 600 miles from the coast of where he was.

"Jonah had to travel from the coast all the way to Nineveh to do what you're reading in chapter 3. This isn't just one day he's burped out of the fish and the next day he's there.

"This took awhile and that's important to notice because when you see what happens in response to his preaching, obviously the people of Nineveh know about Jonah.

"There's stuff going on here that you have to read behind the lines about. By the way, it was 40 days and 40 in the Bible is the number of testing. They don't have forever to get right. Now they've got 39 days to get right.

"Jonah goes three days journey in and says, 'You've got 37 more days and the wall's coming down and everything's going to fall around you because of your wickedness. The judgment of God is coming because of your sin.'

"He preaches, 'Here is the consequence of your sin: Destruction; you're going to be overthrown.'

[4] And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
[5] So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.

"Now that's a startling statement. You read that and you say, 'Whoah!' What did they believe? They believed the word that God sent them through Jonah.

"Remember verse 2 says, [2] Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee.

"They heard this strange character; he's not a Ninevehite. He's a stranger. What that tells you right off about the Gentiles--what you learn in Jonah, as opposed to Nahum, is that God is telling Israel, 'Listen, the problem isn't that the Gentiles won't believe; the problem is you aren't doing your job of giving the Word to them.'

Chapter 3 goes on : [6] For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.

[7] And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:
[8] But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.

"That's just a spirit of deep humility and abasement. You remember Job puts on sackcloth and sits in the ashes. That's an outward expression of, 'We realize we're the problem.'

"Now you can do that as a ritual, but God looks at the heart. In these people's case, it's obviously an expression of the heart. That's why you have so many verses that describe it here.

"Notice in verse 7, it doesn't take long that word gets back to the king. When I read that, it's almost just unbelievable that this heathen pagan king and his nobles, and all the men of Nineveh, could come to that kind of conclusion.

" . . . That they could believe God and have that radical a change and come down to the end and have the king say, 'We'll cry to God and get rid of all the evil and, who can tell; maybe God will take notice.'

"He doesn't think he has any claim on God; he knows he's an outcast. He doesn't say, 'If we do this, then God will do that.' He says, 'This is what we need to do. Our sin is going to get us this judgment, so let's put it away; let's turn our back on it. Let's realize we've been wrong. There's a real God in Israel.' "

Ultimate ground for ALL of our being

To pick up where I left off in my testimony, I came in second among all the competing females (more than 200 from all different ages ) in the bicycling portion of the Dick Schafrath's renowned triathlon in my hometown of Loudonville, OH.

As a team, Karen and I didn't fare too great. Our canoe actually tipped over near the starting line. This was a huge embarrassment for me since I knew some of the volunteers working the event, including my history teacher, Mr. Carlisle. Also, my brother had worked for the real big canoe livery on Route 3 going outside the city limits and I should have known better.

When it came time for the running, I did fine (Karen had to stop several times because she was overheated running the big hills in 90 degree heat) since it was on the road that led to Wally Campgrounds (yes, it was there long before "Wally World" in the Chevy Chase classic) where I managed the Putt-Putt and helped man the waterslide for two summers (my freshman and sophomore years at college) and would always ride my bike to work.

No one more than me knows what an advantage I had as someone who knew very well the bicycling course Schafrath had picked. After I bought my 14-speed Raleigh bicycle during the summer of my junior year in high school I quickly learned to ride the hills on the highways surrounding our little village and this eventually led to me taking on more and more highways leading to more and more different places.

As a quick aside, I loved to ride my bike to Malabar Farm where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had their wedding. A very picturesque landscape surrounded the beautiful old farm with white-painted buildings and a quaint bed-and-breakfast estate.

I loved to cycle through the Mohican State Forest, stopping at the famous gorge and the fire tower usually (there was a big old-fashioned wooden image of Smokey the Bear I loved) and then stopping at the Mohican State Park Memorial Shrine (on Route 95) that had engraved names and plaques with portraits of hundreds of Ohioans who served in all wars.

There was a granite bench behind the little stone building that sat on a beautiful hill filled with trees and the back looked out at heavy woods with a steep drop-off.

This shrine, partly because it had an outdoor stone drinking fountain on the property, became a "secret spot" of mine that I treasure to this day (more than you could ever imagine actually).

There was a prominent stone inscription across the back of the building with the verse from Psalm 121: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help."

There were times when I reached this spot and sat totally alone on that back bench and was lost in tears of grief and heartbreak. I remember pouring my heart out there to God and Jesus Christ when I was in the "depths of despair." I remember praying about my future and for emotional "strength" to go into it with courage.

This was a place I relied on going to, both in the summer after my senior year of high school (when I first discovered it) and then through the first two years of college when I was home for summer break.

*****

God is all-powerful; He is the Creator. But He can create and He can also delegate. He can give His power to others for them to operate.

If you know anything about delegated power, you know that’s a very threatening thing because, you know, you have micro-managers that want to control everything and macro-managers that just tell you, “Here’s the goal—go get it.”

When God created all things, Colossians 1:16 says, [16] For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

He created positions to whom He delegated authority to work and have the “powers that be” be ordained of God, explains Richard Jordan.

What delegating His authority means is He’s willing to share of Himself with others. When you think about God as a triune God, sometimes we just think, “He’s trinity, holy, holy, holy, big deal.”

You need to understand how important it is; we’re not just monotheistic, believing in one God. It’s not enough to say I believe in God; Satan’s the “god of this world.” You might be believing in the wrong one.

You need to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. You can’t even believe in “christ” because the devil is a christ in Ezekiel 28. You need to believe in the Lord’s Christ.

The trinity is the demonstration of the trustworthiness of the godhead. If there was only one person in the godhead and He said, “This is it and it’s it because I said so,” how would you know He’s right and you could trust Him?

Do you just take one person’s word for anything? It would be an arbitrary statement. If somebody said it and another person witnessed it and said, “Yep, that’s what He said and He’s pretty consistent,” you’d question him because you’d wonder, “Well, are you all?”

But if you had a third person, these three people in the godhead have lived together forever. They’ve seen everything the other one has done. And they can testify of the integrity of the other members of the godhead.

That’s a good thing when you think about it. When one member of the godhead said something you can trust it because you’ve got two eternal witnesses to tell you, “He’s never said something wrong. He’s always spoken out of His goodness. He’s always been a lover. Love works no ill toward his neighbor. You can trust Him.”

It’s not an independent statement; it’s an eternal witness. That’s why Jesus said, “If I testify of myself my witness isn’t true, but I’ve got others to testify of me.”

So in the triune God you’ve got the godhead, and you know what every member of the godhead does? They all live for each other. The Father lives to exalt the Son, the Son lives to exalt the Father and the Spirit lives to exalt the Son. Every one of them exalts the other; they all live spontaneously for one another.

So the life of God is not lived to see what I can get out of it. God’s life is to give to others! That’s the way God’s life operates.

So when you talk about His omnipotence, it’s not, “Get all I can and can all I get.” You see, He has power to share His life.

Here’s the godhead and you think, “Why in the world would they have made creation?” Because they want to take this life that they have and spread it out—they want to GIVE it! They’re interested in moving out with it and they have the power to do that. And they have power to delegate because God is love.

If we’re the church of the living God it’s because we have a personal relationship with Him and He’s good because He’s loving.

*****

The Bible is considered the greatest love story ever written because it is all about real people choosing to be in a real love relationship with the Creator of the universe--the one who says of Himself, "God is love."

For those who believe the Book includes fables, concocted characters and made-up allegories written by men, there's nothing really real about their love.

A best-selling Christian memoir from the past includes this passage: “With our own love stories, every detail comes alive. Our own love stories are so poignant, so detailed, so unforgettable—at least to us. When it’s someone else’s love story, however, we will be polite and listen, but usually it’s entirely forgettable. It’s like looking at someone else’s vacation pictures. When I have skin in the game, the outcome all of a sudden matters to me and I become engaged.”

*****

Believers are in a special type of love affair with the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who brings God into EVERY aspect, facet, experience, etc., of life.

I John 4:7 says, “Love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.” That means if you don’t know God, you don't know how to love people.

When you live in a consciousness of God’s love for you in Christ, it gives you an insight. You’ve got the information, and when you believe it, it becomes the energy, the life, the transforming power down in your soul that His life then works out through you.

It’s a love that abounds in knowledge and in judgment. It’s a mental-attitude love. It’s the capacity to look at a thing and value and esteem it the way God does.

At a Bible conference once I was asked during the Q&A session, “What do you find the most exciting subject in the Bible?”

For me personally it’s to stand back and look at who the Bible says Jesus Christ is and appreciate the fact that I’m in Him and that I’m complete in Him. He is the source of all my blessings, and the source of my true, real identity, and He's the one I have all my status in.

You see, the thing that's so wonderful about the grace of God is that it makes Jesus Christ everything! And the Bible says that it pleased the Father that in Him should "all fullness dwell.” If you asked God the Father what is to Him the most exciting subject in all the universe, He'd say, “My Son.”

Any way you slice it, dice it, look at it, think about it, take it apart, put it together, Jesus Christ is the apple of the Father's eye, as Psalm 17 tells us. He's the thing that causes the Father's heart to rejoice. He's the one.

It's mind-boggling when you look at who the Scripture says He is. It sort of numbs your mind. It's so big, you can just never get your arms around it.

*****

When Jesus Christ came back to earth following His death on the Cross, He said to His disciple known as “doubting Thomas,” “Just come and feel me so you know I’m real.”

The reason Christ is called the Word is because He’s the manifest person of the godhead; He's the one who brings God out of the theory—the ether and the unknown—and down into the place where He could actually enter into your experience.

He steps out of eternity where He is and steps into His creation and literally takes it upon Himself. And that’s something my mind doesn't grasp! He literally joins Himself in creation to Him, and in that unique person of all of the universe—the celebrity of all time—He becomes the man Christ Jesus.

When you look at that, you say, “Wow, I understand what Jeremiah's talking about back there when he writes, 'Forasmuch as there is none like unto thee Lord.’ He's saying, 'Man, there's nobody like Him! Nobody!’

You say, “Wow, God, thou art great—who wouldn't fear you?! Who wouldn't bow before you and say, 'You're the man!'?"

After Thomas did as Christ instructed, he cried, “My Lord and my God,”  to which Christ responded, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

When He says, “I'm the Lord, there's none like me,” He's saying, “There isn't any room in my heaven and earth for anybody who says he's me. No room out there. I've been all over creation; I've looked, I've seen; there isn't anybody like me out there.”

When John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” the statement’s saying, “I am the ultimate ground of all being and existence. Without me, there's no existence. Without me there's nothing.”

Paul says in Colossians that “by him all things consist.” In Acts 17, Paul says of God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.” How do you know there's a God? Well, how do you know who you are?!

You see, whatever you call God—whatever you name Him and whoever He is, if He's just that “holy other” that you can't contact and don't know who it is, like the Unknown God of the Athenians, at least you have to recognize there has to be some grounds for existence; some reason to believe you exist. There are great philosophers in the world who don't believe you exist. They believe all of this is an illusion.

By the way, when Jesus said, “I am the truth,” that's what He meant. He wasn't talking about, “I’m just always right and you're always wrong.” He wasn't talking about truth like “two plus two equals four.”

He was talking about truth in the ultimate basic sense of the ultimate ground of ALL of our being and who we are—the essence of our being—and Christ said, “It all resides in me.” Now, there's not a sane person on the planet who would ever claim that!

earth flat? Not Bible

Psalm 33: [3] Sing unto him a new song; play skilfully with a loud noise.

[4] For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth.

I love that "play skilfully," says Richard Jordan. You know, a lot of folks play with loud noise, but He says "play skillfully." That means be on pitch. Here’s what you’re to sing and praise and be excited about: "For the word of the Lord is right."

David writes in Psalm 8, "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained . . ."

When you ordain something, you order it and set it up in a very specific way. That's why when people ask, "Why am I here?" the answer is, "God ordained some things that you're a part of."

When you do something with your fingers, you're doing it with a great deal of skill and carefulness—with purpose. The finger of God is a reference to the Holy Spirit.

In Deuteronomy, when God wrote the tables of stone and gave them to Moses, it says He wrote with His finger. In Luke 11, when the Lord Jesus Christ refers back to the finger of God, He calls Him the "Holy Spirit."

In talking about the greatness of the Messiah, Isaiah says, "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the LORD, or being his counseller hath taught him?"

It's like God figured to Himself, "You know that lake over there—I want it to have so many gallons of water." He goes over and dips out so much dirt—gets it out of the way so it will hold so much water—and then He fills it up.

Now, you know He didn't literally do it that way, but the point is He had a plan. He knew just how big He wanted the Pacific Ocean to be, just how big He wanted the Indian Ocean, the Adriatic. He had a plan minutely designed.

The word "span" in the passage refers to a way of measuring, akin to a measuring stick. God measured the distance between the earth and the sun and made it exactly the 93 million miles that it is.

You ever think about the fact that the universe is put together with that kind of care? Ordinances. That's why everything works the way it does.

Isaiah asks pretty much the same question of Israel when he writes:

[21] Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
[22] It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

If God sits on "the circle of the earth," what shape do you think the earth is? Nobody who was ever a Bible-believer thought the earth was flat. You know who thought the earth was flat? Scientists. The people who were stating the science of their day.

God created the universe as tent for Him to dwell in. He was creating a house in which He intended to live. He created it in a way that honored, pleased and satisfied Him. He set it up the way He wanted it set up.

*****

Concerning the earth, these presumed masterminds (Plato, Aristotle, etc.) came up with such bizarre, hare-brained ideas as to be found laughable by any civilized intelligent standard.

If the Bible were to assert that the earth was carried on the shoulders of the god Atlas, who stood on the backs of giant tortoises, which stood on the backs of elephants, this would be more than sufficient reason to discredit the Holy Scriptures as being of God. And still the Greek scholars are revered today by those who refuse to recognize the wisdom of God and His Holy Book.

In contrast, Job, the oldest book in the Bible, explains that God spread the skies over empty space and "hangeth the earth upon nothing." (Job 26:7)

Isaiah, a book dating as far back as 698 B.C., confirms that the Lord sits enthroned above the "circle of the earth." (Isaiah 40:22)

Up until the 15^th century, without the benefit of a telescope or a knowledge of the physics of astronomy, no one knew nor would many people believe the earth was not flat.

As Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee used to say, the word "circle" is synonymous with "globe"; a round geometric figure.

The Bible is not a book of science and yet not even in one point does it contradict any principle of modern science that has been established as fact rather than mere theory.

College Christian memories

For my sophomore year at Ohio State I lived in an all-female dorm on the north side of campus.

One evening after coming back from dinner at the cafeteria, a girl came knocking on doors all down our hallway looking for someone to play basketball in an outdoor court that was just outside our dorm building.

I played briefly on the girl's basketball team in junior high (and I was tall at 5' 10") so I did pretty good with her group of athletic-type females and a couple of days later this same girl, Karen, came to our dorm again, this time looking specifically for me to come out and play in a pickup game.

Karen was a year older than me and studying biology. I ended up inviting her to be my partner for a much-touted triathlon being put on in Loudonville by Dick Schafrath. It consisted of bicycling, canoeing and running.

Schafrath, who later became an Ohio State Senator, owned a canoe livery in Loudonville (still recognized as "The Canoe Capital of Ohio") and I was actually a classmate and friend of his son, Ty.

Schafrath was a real legend in Ohio football history. He was captain for the Ohio State Buckeyes under Woody Hayes and won a national championship in 1957. He later blocked for Jim Brown on the Cleveland Browns 1964 NFL Championship team.

In the course of training for this triathlon, Karen and I became inextricably connected. We would get up real early and run the track inside Ohio stadium. This was a huge treat because they actually left the famous horseshoe stadium open to students for such uses! We would also run the streets in and out of campus.

Then we'd schedule bicycling excursions together at local parks. As the triathlon got closer, we were adding to our training sessions, both for distance and speed.

The whole time we both knew we were Christians and this was a real anomaly for me. I actually think she was the first Christian I got to know after starting college and, believe me, there weren't many to follow--as in maybe three or four other females!

One day Karen asked me if I would go with her to a special meeting being held on campus by Campus Crusade for Christ.

I'd never heard of the group but readily accepted her offer. The thing is--and this was a huge takeaway for me--I was totally turned off by the event!!

I remember not liking that there was this band with drums and electric guitars. I thought the lyrics to the "hymns" were really amateurish--literally stuff like, "Oh Jesus, we love you, Oh Jesus, we adore you."

I remember standing for the longest, longest time along with everyone else in attendance. Even more memorable, though, was how I refused to participate at all while the large crowd, Karen included, lifted their arms in the air and waved them back and forth along with their hands. I thought, "Yuk!"

(to be continued . . .)

Tribute to Swaggart

Hearing about Jimmy Swaggart dying today registered with me in a unique way. For the past week or so, thinking about how best to write up my experience at Ohio State (which was an unbelievable, fundamentally crucial time for me), I actually thought about how was I going to explain that the man who kept me going at the time as a Christian was Swaggart, who I'd watch on my little black-and-white portable TV when I came home (off-campus rental house on Patterson that I shared with two roommates) from classes during my junior year at OSU.

Before you think badly of me, I became fully aware in a relatively short time that he was a "holy roller" Pentecostal preacher not to be trusted. I knew about his scandals when they first became news and I remember being very turned off.

For some reason, even to this day, I've never really been that embarrassed to let Grace Believers know that he was the only preacher I ever really listened to in my adult life prior to finding Shorewood!

I will just as easily tell people that in high school I was a big fan of the Rev. Robert Schuller and his "Hour of Power" national TV show on Sunday mornings.

Schuller was a big deal in my family, as far as watching him on TV and giving him money to support his ministry. We even had some of his "positive thinking" trinkets (as gifts for donations) placed around our kitchen and family room. We even had a kitchen plaque engraved with Schuller's signature slogan: "Tough Times Never Last But Tough People Do."

You see, I was raised by people who believed in preachers. In fact, my dad was saved in his late 30s by the very popular preacher, Dallas Billington, in my hometown of Akron, OH. Billington, the head man at the Akron Baptist Temple, was a patient of my dad (who had a private medical practice in Firestone Park at the time).

I didn't find this out until one day in my 30s, but when I actually finally asked my dad how he became saved, he told me Billington got him saved, even giving his own Bible to my dad during one office visit!

The funny thing is I received my very first Bible as a little child attending Billington's church. It was a pocket-sized red leather King James Bible (New Testament) embossed in gold with the words, "Akron Baptist Temple. The World's Largest Sunday School."

Billington was a big enough name that even my current pastor, Richard Jordan, readily acknowledged knowing all about him when I told him I grew up in his church (from ages 2-5) before we became missionaries in Costa Rica and then Ecuador.

At the time, Akron was home and headquarters for the national "celebrity preachers" Ernest Angley and Rex Humbard!

This is a quick aside, but my mom tells the story of how she shocked fellow missionaries in Costa Rica when she told them her church in Akron had 20 ushers for its main Sunday service.

Well, I guess I got off on a real tangent there, but this is the real meat of my "testimony" after all. After I left for college at 18, I didn't have anyone telling me I had to go to church or anything. I did voluntarily go to a Protestant church (I don't even remember the denomination) that was actually part of the campus at Ohio University, but I don't remember getting anything much from it, and because I only attended by myself, I would skip many Sunday mornings.

Once I got to Ohio State I didn't know of any church to try and don't remember even being very interested in trying to find one. I don't remember how I came across Swaggart, as he was nobody anyone in my family ever mentioned, but I think it must have been through tuning into a Christian TV station.

What I know for sure is I readily gravitated toward him and thought highly of his preaching skills. His Bible was always open and he would walk around with it in his hands as he crisscrossed the stage, sometimes crying, sometimes yelling, sometimes laughing.

I loved his piano playing and thought his singing voice was great. I loved everything about him, as I remember, and would give money to his program because that's what the show was always asking for to keep his ministry going and I was taught by my father to believe in tithing.

I never told anyone in my family about my watching Swaggart and it wasn't until after I met my first (and only!) boyfriend during my junior year that I started to consider Swaggart might be a phony.

Fred was the one to first tell me Swaggart was a "phony" and he would laugh at me for giving money to his program. Of course, Fred was an unbeliever and that's what ultimately led to our breakup.

How deep, thorough? 'Don't trust anybody'

Micah 7: [4] The best of them is as a brier: the most upright is sharper than a thorn hedge: the day of thy watchmen and thy visitation cometh; now shall be their perplexity.

He's saying, "All it's going to do is stick you and tear up your clothes." In other words, "The day of wrath is coming, the day of visitation, the day of vengeance, the day of God straightening things out is coming."

Verse 5: [5] Trust ye not in a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide: keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom.

That's how deep and how thorough the corruption is: "Don't trust anybody."

That's not a verse you want to put in your daily reading and say, "That's the verse I'm supposed to follow." That's a verse with a context but, in general, it's good advice, says Richard Jordan.

Psalm 118: [8] It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.

[9] It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in princes.

It's always better to trust what God says instead of what men say if what men say contradicts what God says. Confidence in anyone ahead of confidence in God is a fool's errand. 

Notice another context like Micah in Jeremiah 9: [1] Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

[2] Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
[3] And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD.
[4] Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders.
[5] And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity.

They literally take aim at people and deliberately lie about it. That's why he says about them in Micah 7:2: [2] The good man is perished out of the earth: and there is none upright among men: they all lie in wait for blood; they hunt every man his brother with a net.

The good men have perished that everybody does evil with both hands--eagerly, earnestly. The princes, and the judges, and the great men--they all are out with both hands trying to do evil. So don't trust people.

Verse 3 says "they bend their tongues like their bow for lies." Think about that. You teach your tongue to speak lies. They literally have an education process, a training process, where they develop better ways to deceive people. You say, "Whoah."

When I was a kid coming out of high school, it was, "You gotta get your education. Education is the answer." You read passages like that and you think, "Uh . . ."

Verses 6-7: [6] Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD.

[7] Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how shall I do for the daughter of my people?

The Lord says, "I'll melt them." You know what you melt somebody with? He's going to turn a blowtorch on them; put the fire on them.

So what's the believing remnant to do? The believer in Israel is not to trust human viewpoint, not to trust the lies of the religious system out there, not to trust the lies of the political system, the economic system. The answer's not in ANY of those things.

The answer is in verse 7: [7] Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.

Go to Jeremiah 17: [5] Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.

[6] For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.
[7] Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.
[8] For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.
[9] The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
[10] I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.

You want the curse, that's how you get it. You want the blessing, that's how you get it. Now, that's a general truth and it's a specific truth for these people in Israel at this time. Then he says,"'I will wait for the God of my salvation."

When I read that I think, "We just read back in Micah 1:3: [3] For, behold, the LORD cometh forth out of his place, and will come down, and tread upon the high places of the earth."

So, when he says, "I'm going to wait on the Lord, the God of my salvation," it's like he's saying, "He's coming, I know He is, so I'm just going to wait on Him. I'll wait on the good ride; I won't jump on the bus right now."

Micah 7: [8] Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me.

[9] I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.

"'Don't get a big head, you see me go down," talking about Israel, "because I'm going to rise." You know why? Because the Lord's going to be a light unto me, and when they sit in that darkness waiting, look at who they're waiting with. 

Verse 7: [7] Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.

There's the Father, the Son and the Spirit. They've got the triune God on their side and they're just going to wait and trust Him to do what He told them He would do, and they tell their enemies, "Don't get the big head because He's going to set it right."

New, ultimate religion coming for human history

The Lord Jesus Christ didn’t wear robes or religious paraphernalia; He wore the common clothing of His day when He walked the earth. He didn’t stand out in the crowd based on the way His outfit looked or how His hair was cut.

Jesus had short-cropped black hair like any Jew in His day would have had, like anybody in the world of His day had, explains Richard Jordan. If He was sitting in this crowd tonight there wouldn’t be any way to point Him out.

You know one of the ways you know that? From the Garden of Gethsemane, the night before He was crucified when Judas was going to betray Him. How did Judas betray Him? They said, “I’ll take you out and I’ll point Him out to you.” It wasn’t, “He’s the guy wearing the funny clown outfit.”

Christ was so common, so blended into the crowd that Judas had to go over and plant a smacker on His cheek, kiss Him, before they were sure they had the right guy. He was just like everybody else.

*****

II Kings 10: [20] And Jehu said, Proclaim a solemn assembly for Baal. And they proclaimed it.
[21] And Jehu sent through all Israel: and all the worshippers of Baal came, so that there was not a man left that came not. And they came into the house of Baal; and the house of Baal was full from one end to another.
[22] And he said unto him that was over the vestry, Bring forth vestments for all the worshippers of Baal. And he brought them forth vestments.

You see how it says “and the house of Baal was full from one end to another”? They got a big church building going, and they’ve got them all inside the house of Baal where the place was full—there wasn’t an open spot to to sit anywhere. “Our attendance is up, the crowds are big, offerings are going through the roof, we got everybody going, this is exciting, look what God’s doing!” Does that sound familiar to you?

The verse says, “Bring forth vestments for all the worshippers of Baal.” Vestments are the special clothing; they were long robes. Hence, you have in today’s church vernacular the “vestibule.”

I Kings 19:18: [18] Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth which hath not kissed him.

The word “Baal” means bull and when you go into the house, bowing down is real important, as well as kissing. You with me?

Hosea 13: [1] When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died.
[2] And now they sin more and more, and have made them molten images of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding, all of it the work of the craftsmen: they say of them, Let the men that sacrifice kiss the calves.

Kiss the ring, kiss the hand. This is where all that stuff in religion comes from!

*****

Lucifer’s job was to go out and lead creation in worship of Almighty God but he was lifted up by pride and decided he wanted to be like the Most High; take God’s place.

He developed him a system whereby he would have a mediator who would be worshipped and worshipping that mediator would be to worship Satan. Satan has one who will go and orchestrate the worship of his mediator, the Antichrist, and that’s the false prophet.

What you’ve got here is the functioning of the unholy trinity to counterfeit the activity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.

Just like the Antichrist is a counterfeit of Jesus Christ, the false prophet’s function will be to counterfeit the function and activity of the Holy Spirit, and he’s going to go out and seek to cause people to worship the beast whose deadly wound was healed.

Revelation 13: [14] And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.

The basis of the worship of the Antichrist is going to be his miraculous resurrection. You see  there’s an absolute fascinating counterfeiting of what went on in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the early Acts period in our Lord’s ministry and His empowering of His disciples.

There’s this deadly wound and it’s healed and he lives from it and the false prophet takes this event of the death, and then the resurrection of the Antichrist—he takes this event in earth’s coming human history and then reduces it to a religious system and what he does is he develops a NEW religion.

Of course, there’s been a religious system in place prior to this point. In Revelation 17 there’s this woman, this religious system, clothed in scarlet and purple, that starts out back with Nimrod (Genesis 10-11) and goes all the way through human history and she rides on the back of the beast for a period of time. But what people forget is that then the beast turns around and destroys the woman and what he does is he takes all the sham, and all the various forms . . .

In the Bible, the religious system is called Baal worship and what the Antichrist does, when the middle of that week comes, he develops and sets forth, through his death and resurrection, a new, ultimate form of Baal worship and negates all that went before, destroying it, registering it null and void, setting up his OWN religion.

II Thessalonians 2: [3] Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
[4] Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.

He’s going to do away with all of the other religions of the world “so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.”

He’s going to do away with all of the other religions of the world and establish a NEW one based solely and completely upon him.

Now, that religion is a new one and yet it’s not really new. Unfortunately, because of a lack of real right division of Scripture, most Christians, even dispensationalists, when you talk about the religion of the Antichrist, they immediately identify a church. What church is that? Rome.

Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli, Bullinger, all those great reformers, they saw the church and then they saw Rome and Rome was the Antichrist and the pope, and anything associated with him, was the Antichrist.

I mean, Luther said of the pope sitting in his day, “He’s the one; he’s the Antichrist!” and of course we know better than that. They didn’t understand too much about what prophecy was about or the distinction between the Body of Christ and Israel and so forth, so there’s a lot of things that get “brought over.”

The point is when the Antichrist comes, the pope will have been involved in there, pitching with the guy, as well as the Buddhists and Muslims and all the rest, and the Antichrist’s just going to wipe the whole bunch off and set up a new one; set up his own and there will be his own church and all the world is going to hail HIM.

And this new, ultimate form—there’s a mindset in religion. The mindset goes along like, “You know, you’ve got what you’ve got and it’s an ancient idea, but we have a more recent revelation from God.” You go out and study world religions and that’s the idea.

If you go study the way they think, you see they don’t have an absolute authority—they don’t look at life the way you and I do with the Bible being the authority. They look at life where their attitude, their thinking, their education, their scholarship, their tradition, the vastness of the subject, is the authority.

Chicago’s a great center of theological discussion. One of the great centers in the world is at the University of Chicago, only challenged by Union in New York and then you have to go to Germany to find where the resident theologians of the day live.

But if you sit down and talk to these people about personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ like you and I understand it, you begin to think, “Well, what exactly is it that you guys believe?!”

What you find out is they have a philosophical commitment to a philosophy of life and it’s different from the way you and I understand it.  The reason it’s different is the source book and the basis of authority.

We’re called “Bible thumpers,” which I don’t mind that term, and then they get way over to, “You actually believe you know where it is and what it is and you have the audacity to say you have it in your own language?!” and they just go, “Wow, you’re cuckoo!”

For most of the world it’s not a living thing inside of them; it’s a piece of paper that they read and recite and think when they did it, they did good and they can go home feeling good about themselves.

All that stuff’s going to be wiped off the scene and the false prophet is going to establish for the Antichrist, in his name, a system—he’s going to take his resurrection and use it to codify and reduce it down to a religious system and the system is going to be called Baal worship.

The majority of Protestant prophecy preachers in our day forget about Israel and identify everything as popery. The fact is that when the Antichrist establishes his church under the leadership of the false prophet, it isn’t going to be Catholicism, or Protestantism, or Islam—he’s going to wipe those off and take things from them and amalgamate them all into this new religion.

Lessons on finishing

“Always remember, our ambassadorship is INSIDE of us living out THROUGH us. It can NEVER be carried on by our outward man."--Richard Jordan

*****

I don't know why writing about my time before transferring to Ohio State seemed to go so easily and now I'm struggling with how best to continue on with my "testimony," which I see as the last component to finally finishing my book.

It's the most ironic thing, but the same journalism professors who gave me my wings for what has been a life career are the ones who helped instill in me this whole competition thing where, to this day, I'm always afraid my ability to put material together is not good enough and that I need to work hard at being informative and enlightening so as to capture my audience's attention and not have them reject/dismiss what I've written.

My worst fear is I will do my subject matter, whatever it be, a disservice by "writing it up" poorly; being too wordy and boring--going too deep in the weeds or not making it understandable enough, on and on and on.

The way I was taught journalism is you had to always have the best story, beating out the other newspapers. Your lead, or first paragraph, had to be masterful. The meat of the story (with the who, what, when, why and how) had to strategically flow from that first paragraph to give the reader an entertaining, gripping ride through your article. You were to seamlessly answer any question the reader might have without subjecting them to any clunkiness, repetitiveness, longwindedness, etc., etc.

All of this, I realize, has been what's stopped me dead in my tracks (cliches were absolutely verboten in journalism) as far as putting my book into a final form. I simply feel underqualified.

But now that I've put it out there in such a big way that I think my time on earth is short (and I don't even know if there's time still for me to have a finished product in print!!) I can't worry about the results--I just have to act before it's too late.

To be succinct about Ohio State, I feel I couldn't have received better training in the trade of journalism. My education there set me on a life path of being interested in the truth; finding it and investigating it. I will continue with this tomorrow for sure. I'm done with postponing and postponing to give myself more time to think how I should best proceed--"Enough is enough, Lisa!"

*****

Jordan says that when talking about living in the identity God gives you in Christ, “You’re talking about having a truthful, honest scriptural memory of your past as well as your future.

“Because as a Believer your past goes back to where? It no longer goes back to Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden; it now goes back to Christ and Calvary. You see that is a memory about your past. That is a way you understand your past history and the radical change that’s been in it. And that does affect the way you think about yourself in the now, doesn’t it, and what’s going to happen to you in the future?

"The biblical definition of the word 'submit' is 'to give your heart over to another person’s will.' Sub is under. You put yourself under them. You give your heart over. That’s the challenge; that’s the dare of love. It’s the dare of faith. And if you dare to do it by faith, because God said to do it, you’ve made the decision based upon the truth of what God’s Word is.

“My emotions can follow the truth, the decision, and if they don’t, I’m still doing what’s right. If I’ve allowed my emotions to look at something and say, ‘NO, I won’t follow!’ . . . if they look at your balance and it’s overdrawn, your emotions aren’t going to follow.

“And if you know what God’s Word says to do and you do it by faith and your emotions don’t follow, it’s because that bank account with your name on it is empty! If it has a balance, your emotions will look at it and say, ‘Oh, hey, there’s a guy/gal that values me; I can feel good about them!’

“But if your will says, ‘Here’s your Savior, you’re to serve Him, submit to Him,’ and your emotions look at a bank account that’s overdrawn, they say, ‘Oh no, that won’t mean me good.’ And they respond that way.

"This is terribly important for you to understand. You can’t allow the tyranny of your emotions to run your life and make decisions or you’re going to wind up in the can. You’ll wind up in error; you’ll wind up in a kind of destruction.

"It doesn’t work to let your emotions run you. That’s why some little strategies don’t work. That’s why the selfish demands, the disrespectful judgments, the angry outbursts, the independent behavior--none of it works. They’re not strategies for success; they just get you more of the same!"

Satan took the commanders first

Genesis 3: [4] And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

[5] For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

These gods are living creatures and they know good and evil. Eve is acquainted with them because obviously if she didn't know who they were it would have been no temptation at all, explains Richard Jordan. 

She sees these angelic creatures functioning on the earth. Adam and Eve's responsibility is to win the earth back from them so she knows who they are; she knows they have knowledge.

Idols and images that are made by the heathen are made to represent these creatures in the spirit world. Psalm 96: [5] For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.

The gods are God-made living creatures, but they inspire their followers to make representations to them. You see in I Corinthians 10:20 that in their worship service they have cups of devils and a table. They have counterfeited God's program with the nation Israel to the place where they just reproduce it, but they corrupt it.

In Job 48, the sons of god are there when God laid the foundation of the earth. When He goes through that six-day creation in Genesis 1, these angels are already there. They're shouting, being educated by what He's doing there.

Jesus told them in Matthew 25 that hell was prepared for the devil and his angels. I mean, these creatures have been around for a LONG time.

Ephesians 6: [11] Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

[12] For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

That "high places" there is not saying someone's the mayor or the president. They are high; they're UP there in the heavenly places. But they're 'spiritual wickedness.'

There's a real battle; a real conflict that is not visible to the flesh-and-blood realm. Only the eye of faith can see it. That battle's been there all along.

In the heavens, Satan took the commanders first and decimated the government of heaven that way. They chose him to be their god. Humanity did the same thing.

II Corinthians 4: [4] In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

That's why Satan could take Jesus up on the high mountain and show Him all the kingdoms of this world in a moment of time and say, "These are all mine, and whoever I give them to." Why? Because he stole them; he usurped them. He's taken them away.

Joel 2:11: [11] And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?

What you're reading about here in these first 11 verses is a detailed description of a supernatural army that will accompany the Lord Jesus Christ when He comes out of heaven. In Revelation 19 He comes out of heaven and the armies of heaven follow Him at the Second Advent.

Joel 2:7: [7] They shall run like mighty men; they shall climb the wall like men of war; and they shall march every one on his ways, and they shall not break their ranks:

In other words, they're going to be moving straight forward and they're not going to break their ranks; it's just going to be one column of these soldiers coming and following the Lord.

[8] Neither shall one thrust another; they shall walk every one in his path: and when they fall upon the sword, they shall not be wounded.

When you read that you know immediately this is a supernatural army that has the capacity beyond what humans have. 

[9] They shall run to and fro in the city; they shall run upon the wall, they shall climb up upon the houses; they shall enter in at the windows like a thief.

There's going to be house-to-house urban warfare; they're literally going to come back and swarm like ants over the territory as they go through it and they're going to take out everything that offends and destroy it.

[10] The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:

We already studied that in Joel 2 about the atmospheric turbulence and so forth that surrounds this army as they come through that region.

******

Throughout the Old Testament, Israel was constantly tempted to bring physical idols into their temple, the physical house of God for expressing His truth.

All the physical starts with the spiritual; "out of the heart are the issues of life." The piano is a physical instrument with a physical piece of sheet music in front of it that the pianist plays off of, but you know really the music is a spiritual thing. It's not a physical entity. It has a spiritual origin. You can take a sledgehammer to the piano and burn up the sheet music, but you didn't destroy the music; just the physical representation.

The physical is the expression of the life and idols were an expression of a doctrine of error, of the gods.

In II Chronicles 33, Manasseh had a great daddy, Hezekiah, but he wasn't much of a son. He was 12 years old when he began to reign and he reigned 55 years in Jerusalem.

The passage says 'he did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, like unto the abominations of the heathen, whom the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel.

[3] For he built again the high places which Hezekiah his father had broken down, and he reared up altars for Baalim, and made groves, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them.

He goes out and reestablishes all of the false religion that his daddy had run out of Israel by taking the Word of God. Manasseh lets the darkness come back in.

Notice verse 4: [4] Also he built altars in the house of the LORD, whereof the LORD had said, In Jerusalem shall my name be for ever.

He literally brings in this Baal worship, with all these idols and idolatry, and puts an altar in the temple of the Lord for worship of all that false religion.

Verse 5: [5] And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the LORD.

All the angelic intervention, all the angelic host, all the stuff that goes all the way back to Genesis 11 when they built the Tower of Babel, where on the top they were going to reach to heaven.

Manasseh, by the way, was to the southern kingdom of Judah what Ahab was to the northern kingdom of Israel. Ahab made Baal worship the official religion of the northern kingdom. Manasseh did for 55 years the same in the southern kingdom.

His focus was so corrupt he brought it all the way into both the temple's outer and inner courts, and there he's sacrificing children to the gods, putting them through the fire. He's got all these abominations. He completely pollutes the whole thing with idolatry.

Taking on supernatural provisions

(new article tomorrow)

This issue we struggle with in life is a personal one, and it’s also a very confrontational one because it brings into accountability the fact that for most of life we aren’t very content.

For most of life, we’re much more discontent than we are content. We’re much more into the idea of gaining and getting and striving and pushing in life, rather than being just in a condition of peace, says Richard Jordan in a study of Philippians 1:

[21] For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
[22] But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labour: yet what I shall choose I wot not.
[23] For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:
[24] Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.
[25] And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith;
[26] That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.
[27] Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;
[28] And in nothing terrified by your adversaries: which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God.
[29] For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake;
[30] Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.

Contentment is that emotional stability. Philippians is a tremendously emotional passage. There’s rejoicing, there’s peace, there’s confidence and there’s contentment. To define it scripturally, it’s not being up one minute and down another in your heart, but it’s to be able to have that stability that comes from that relaxed mental attitude—faith—of dependence on the supernatural provisions God has given you already in Christ.

It's not trying to gain your peace of mind and heart from the circumstances out there (good or bad, positive or negative) but rather it’s living from a life, and a confidence, inside. That’s where peace has to be.

The peace of God that passeth all understanding that the passage talks about is something internal. It isn’t conditioned upon what’s happening in life. It isn’t conditioned upon the circumstances you find yourself in.

It’s the capacity inside to have this relaxed mental attitude; just being able to relax in who God has made you in Christ and understand that the supernatural provisions that are yours in Him have made you capable, and able to live in whatever circumstances, in a way that is for His glory and your own good.

When life comes it will carry you up or it will carry you down in your reactions to them. It’s about letting the supernatural provisions be the things that work in you and control your life.

Paul makes it clear there are four things needed to be content. First, you need to be grateful; you need to be rejoicing. Contentment is not tied to your circumstances. That's that verse in I Thessalonians 5: [18] In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

Not FOR everything, because there are all kinds of things that come in life that you can’t be grateful for in the sense that they’re wonderful, exciting things. When Paul’s in poverty, suffering need, hungry—you don’t look at an empty plate and say, “Well, bless God,” the same way you do if you’ve got a big 24-ounce porterhouse in front of you and you say, “Whew, bless God I’ve got food.”

This is not tomfoolery we’re talking about. It’s not just blind, stoic, stiff upper lip kind of stuff that says, “Whatever happens it really doesn’t matter,” so you become so emotionally detached from life that you can’t be touched with life.

That’s not the issue; it’s to be right there in it and to understand there’s some resources that allow you live in it in a different way and it starts with gratitude.

If you can’t find something in the circumstances to be grateful for, you can at least thank God that in the circumstances, you’re blessing Him. If you can’t do anything else, you can at least go back and say, “Oh, how I love Jesus.” You can sing that song:

1.  
• Oh, how I love Jesus,
  Because He first loved me!
2. It tells me of a Savior’s love,
   Who died to set me free;
   It tells me of His precious blood,
   The sinner’s perfect plea.
3. It tells me of a Father’s smile
   Beaming upon His child;
   It cheers me through this little while,
   Through desert, waste, and wild.
4. It tells me what my Father hath
   In store for every day,
   And though I tread a darksome path,
   Yields sunshine all the way.
5. It tells of One whose loving heart
   Can feel my deepest woe;
   Who in each sorrow bears a part
   That none can bear below.
6. It bids my trembling heart rejoice;
   It dries each rising tear;
   It tells me, in a “still small voice,”
   To trust and never fear.

Or you can say, "When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.
My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

You sing that song to yourself. That song, by the way was written by a man who had lost his family. You know the story. He’d lost his family in a sea voyage and he later made a voyage across the same area and the captain of the ship had made an arrangement with him that when they got to the place where his family’s ship had sunk in a storm they’d have a little memorial.

He wrote that song, having lost his wife and two daughters, to memorialize that event. “Sorrows like sea billows roll”—they literally rolled in his life. And yet he had a peace and contentment that wasn’t tied to that—it was something supernatural inside, and it started with being grateful to God for the provisions that He’s made.

Ugly times

Nursing my sore foot all day today (I have returned to work but am walking around in a boot, which is throwing off my “good foot,” as well as giving me knee pain), I thought about getting home into decent air-conditioning (they have a system compromised by a bad remodel job at my job) and having a nice meal.

Well, this WHOLE evening has been about me having the worst heartburn I’ve ever had in my life! I’m still in the throes of it and I don’t know how I can even think about lying down to go to bed.

I mean, this is THE worst EVER and all I can blame is the fact that I had Starbucks brewed coffee today and made for dinner a homemade marinade for our salmon that included garlic, teriyaki sauce and dark sesame oil. Oh, and we had leftover portions of a scalloped-potato casserole my brother made on Sunday that was loaded with fresh garlic, onion, butter and cheese.

In my absolute unreal agony, I clicked on a YouTube video by a guy who is very highly regarded in the “truth community.” I just thought I would share what he said because I’m in such incapacitation that I can’t focus on anything but these horrible waves of pain and discomfort with belching and chest heaviness.

*****

“We’re being set up BIG time in every single solitary way we possibly can. With all the time, energy and effort I’ve put into making more than 4,000 videos, not much has changed--this entire thing is still heading straight down the path that it’s heading. They’re going to get their 2030 Agenda.

“Recently, a buddy of mine sent me information from a friend of his that works at Raytheon (U.S. defense contractor), and coincidentally enough somebody I know who works at General Electric got the same thing—they’re both having an ‘All Hands’ meeting. The last time they had an ‘All Hands’ meeting (GE and Raytheon at the same time) we had lockdowns the following week. So take that for what it’s worth.

"It should be fairly obvious this is what they’re doing; they’re trying to start unbelievable chaos in the country. They have started it; it’s happening right now.

"We’ve got elected officials telling people to go out there and protest while we can show proof all day long that these people are being paid. Twelve thousand dollars to be a protester! That’s even if you don’t protest and you’re just ‘on call’! This is crazy, man. This is totally crazy.

 “. . . We’re going to lose the power (electricity). They have to do that. I don’t believe we’ll lose cell phones because there’s Starlink. You see what I mean?

“We’re already having food shortages. Whole Foods got hacked and I’m thinking to myself, ‘C’mon, man.’ Be ready for this. I can’t stress this enough. This is really going down. I don’t know what else to tell you. It’s just a matter of how far they have to push us to get this done.

“I’m not talking about things like India Air. I mean, we got our own fish to fry right now, but I do find it ‘odd’ that one person walked away. India Air exploded into a fire ball like an airplane’s known to do and one dude walked away. Yeah, I’m not buying any of it.

“They said it was ‘33 seconds of horror.’ That’s ridiculous. 33. And this guy was in seat 11.

“So, with everything that’s going on in the country right now, this is what one of our Jesuit governors’ had to say. He’s promoting violence, death.

“Their motto is ‘Ordo ab Chao.’ ‘Order from Chaos.’ I’ve been telling you this for 15 years. Florida Governor DeSantis says, ‘If they’re around your vehicle and threaten you, you have a right to flee for your safety. So you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you.’

“We literally have a governor in the United States of America telling citizens it’s okay to run people over. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? You know how many people are going to abuse that and it’s going to backfire and blow up in their own faces?

“And if Snopes is fact-checking it and it’s legit, you KNOW it’s part of the plan. You know it’s part of the agenda. There’s no two ways about it.

“Here’s the deal. The CIA is behind all these riots. It’s no secret. The government is run by very wealthy people and bloodlines that go back I don’t even know how long. They want a New World Order. They showed it to us at last summer’s Paris Olympics.

“They’ve showed it to us in countless videos and movies. Every place. They can’t stop showing it to us and people still don’t get it. They still don’t get it.

“They’re taking the country down and America is going to be one of their special little places, because they gave us everything we needed to defend our Constitution and we didn’t. They’ve distracted us with drugs and video games and talking heads on television and then social media.

“Social media was made to literally figure out every solitary thing you were thinking, how you would think about a particular topic and it was made to steal your time. That’s exactly what it does. Period.

“This is going to get ugly. Then, of course, we have Israel. This dude, Douglas McGregor, a retired U.S. Army colonel, sums it up nicely:

“ ‘First of all, President Trump, whether he admits to it or not, has made us a co-belligerent. He’s essentially admitted by his actions and some of his words, we were in on this from the very beginning. This is really disturbing because from this point forward I don’t think anything we say, anything this government says is going to be taken seriously by anyone in Moscow, in Beijing or Tehran, or Ankara, or anywhere else.

‘That’s the worst part because clearly he helped to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security and set them up for this disastrous attack. The other thing is short run, everybody’s running around in Israel and declaring victory. Israel’s supporters (I should say their paid agents in the U.S.) are telling everybody how happy they are, but in truth, this looks an awful lot like an Iranian Pearl Harbor to me.’

“Douglas McGregor is considered an expert on things like this, but here’s the thing he’s leaving out. He’s still part of the game (part of the club).

“Just like all of these guys are part of the game. They’re giving the public perception that Israel is now going to be smoked by Iran and all of its friends—Russia, China, etc. But they’re all in this together. This is just how you set up an absolute moral war and that’s what they’re doing.

“We’re going to have civil war, we’re going to have famine, we’re going to have pestilence, we’re going to have war from every single angle and Israel attacking Iran; all that does is open America up for attacks, or the excuse for attacks.

“We’ve got pending lockdowns, civil war and World War III all set up and ready to go. They’re making their moves. This is really, really happening. Everything we’ve ever talked about is coming to fruition right now. I don’t even know how to explain it anymore succinctly. Seriously.

“And to wrap all this up, Bilderberg is having their meetings right now.”