Some people are just smart. They really are. You can feel it from the way they talk and communicate. Maybe they’ve been to school a lot or maybe they are self taught. But you just hear all that erudition, all that knowledge, all that evident enlightenment every time they speak.
But sometimes there’s a problem with that. Some very smart folks have a real hard time listening to or learning from others. They just don’t think they need to. Since they know they are smarter almost always than everyone else around them, they just inherently feel that they have little or nothing to gain from listening to the counsel or ideas of others. So, inadvertently, they actually become sort of dumb in a very important area of life.
The apostle Paul said, “Knowledge puffs up.” (I Corinthians 8:1) There’s just so much more to life than having a lot of knowledge and a sharp, clear mind. In fact, a sharp, clear, intelligent mind can really act as a hindrance to you and keep you from a whole bunch of things that are better than being real smart. Like friendship, for example.
Have you ever had a friend and anytime you say something to that person, they retort with something that makes you feel that they already total know what you are saying, a lot better than you do? So you come away feeling put down and belittled because your friend is just so smart and on top of it? That’s one of the ways that smart can actually be dumb.
Is there any hope for a condition like this? Well, yes. Actually, all this is a little autobiographical here. Some people have said they think I’m smart but actually I came to learn that I’m really dumb. My smarts didn’t help me when the chips were down and the serious issues of life I was facing were not being figured out by my supposedly smart brain. So I learned by very hard experience that I wasn’t as smart as I might have thought and that there were worlds of things I was dumb as a rock about.
Again quoting the apostle Paul, he had some very profound things to say to the erudite but babbling babes in Christ, the Corinthian church. He said to them, “You see your calling brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.” (I Corinthians 1:26 & 27) Speaking in another place of his own background of intelligence and the higher social standing he came from, Paul said, “Those things that were gain for me were loss for Christ.”
In fact, great intelligence or other natural abilities at times can virtually be, in the Lord’s service, a handicap. When you are so smart, or rich, or beautiful, or handsome, or capable, you’re so much more prone to pride, self-righteousness and a cold independence that makes you difficult to be around or to work with others unless you personally are in charge and telling everyone what to do.
Well, thank God, “They that walk in pride He is able to abase.” (Daniel 4:37) 
For any of us who may have natural talents or abilities in any area, it strongly behooves us to not get lifted up in pride about it so that our abilities actually become handicaps when it comes to our relationship with the Lord and others.
Of course it’s not hopeless. There are plenty of gifted, intelligent, beautiful folks around who have learned that the smartest thing to do is to know that they are nothing without the Lord and that they have to continually throw themselves on the mercies of God if they’re going to be a success in any way or get along with their friends and family. When you are going that direction, then you begin to become really smart in the things of the Lord, not just in your worldly intelligence and intellect.
“If any man thinks that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know. But if any many loves God, the same is known of Him.” (I Corinthians 8:2&3) How often I have clung to those verses. The smartest thing you can do is to love God and others. “Without me you can do nothing,” Jesus said (John 15:5). Nothing good, that’s for sure.
So, smart or dumb, we all need to cling to the Lord and ask Him for guidance, wisdom from above, and the blessed fruits of the Spirit which so far surpass our snappy intelligence. That’s what we really need, “the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.” (James 3:17 & 18)
It reminds me of what the little girl prayed one time, “Dear God, please make all the bad people good. And all the good people nice.” You may be good. Or smart. But without the Lord being able to be above and more than your intelligence or goodness, you may sadly often turn out to not be a very nice person. Lord help us all.
So for me, one of the very greatest manifestations of God is the true warmth, genuine loving inclusion and sincere human love that He can put in the hearts of His people. Sadly, it’s not always there but then sometimes it is. You can just feel it. They don’t only “love you” in an officially required Christian sense; they actually like you and want to hang around with you and include you in what they do. All the spirituality in the world won’t replace genuine Christian warmth and inclusiveness. And so often that manifestation of love is what people need and respond to more than anything else.
What everybody needs is love. Some people are surrounded by a big family and have lots of loved ones and relatives nearby. Others for one reason or the other are more or less on their own. But everybody needs to be loved and of course everyone needs to love. And you can just feel it, one way or the other. Being a Christian and being part of the flock of God should make it much more possible and likely that you are loved and can feel the warmth, inclusion and camaraderie that almost everyone needs.
So for those who are active in trying to expose the New World Order and all the works of the enemy and darkness in these endtimes, it would also be good to remember that a loveless, friendless barrenness is also a manifestation of the endtimes. We need to do all we can to expose and counteract that, just as much if not more than all our 
Maybe it helps to talk about this. Maybe it helps to remember, in all our commitment to serve the Lord and to win others to Him that part of our greatest witness, as well as the greatest commandment, and our own greatest need often is to love and to be loved, to feel that a circle has been drawn that has included you. Or that you are drawing circles that include the ones on the outside looking in, the ones who don’t have others in their lives and may die today for lack of friends and fellowship. Let’s all be on guard against not opening our hearts and lives to those around us who may be perishing today for lack of love and friendship. “
But “He” (more equivocation there, did you notice?) is fully able and willing to intervene in the lives of individuals or societies, according to our prayers and needs or the lack of our prayers and our transgressions against Him.
“The Lord is known by the judgment which He executes
Some folks even think they can quote Jesus on this. “Jesus said, ‘Judge not’”, they say. But He also said “
So, what’s the conclusion? Pray for God’s judgments? 
Think about it, what humans will do for people or organizations other than God and His Son, Jesus. We glorify the Special Forces of the military, how they endure incredible hardships and sacrifices to fight foreign wars. We hear of people in Asia dying from overwork, literally dying on the job because they work such long hours, just trying to make money. And rock stars and movie stars often sacrifice everything in the way of morals and their conscience, to “rise to the top” and be famous.
Thankfully I know that Christianity in our times is better about this in many ways compared to how it was where I was, growing up. The Christians who are still left in our times have found they have to do better at being able to defend and explain their faith or they’ll just be defeated and destroyed by the kind of person I used to be. I’m so thankful that, back then, I met some serious, committed, even radical young “Jesus People” Christians at a pivotal point in my life. And their lives, sample and knowledge of God’s Word won me to Him when no shallow Christianity had been able to do that till then.
But where are the people who are not hung up on their comforts or the pea under the mattress but are like the people of the Bible or past centuries who took up their cross to really “
Moving forward or sliding back into the morass of humanity and the mire of the multitude?
I wouldn’t begin to listen to anyone about this. However, as it turned out, I found that there is “Something”. And I found that it was the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham. Months later I found that Jesus was sent to earth by God to redeem us and save us, just as the Bible explains.
But Hydrogen? It interacts with just about everything. Take water, if you will. What is water but a lonely Oxygen atom with 6 electrons in its outer shell and thus having room for two mates to drop by and join up? So along come two Hydrogen atoms to connect up with the oxygen and … voilà! You’ve got water! Hydrogen does that kind of thing a lot.
And it’s been like that for a long time. God has had a plan all along and He’s been involved and active on this earth since way back when. It wasn’t only shown when finally He sent His own Son to be a manifestation of Himself to us here on earth. He’d already been speaking, acting, doing and intervening on the earth for thousands of years before that through the prophets and men of God whose lives He had touched.
And I’ll admit, I don’t totally know how this works. In one place the Bible says, “
But then some people are actually “born again” through the Word. The apostle Peter said, “
But knowing this person has had me pondering how this all works. Somewhere there has to be a spark and part of that I think it realizing one’s own lack, our weakness, our… I’ll use the word “sins”, our darkness as compared to the light of God and His Word. Jesus said, “
When you make popcorn, you put the oil in the pot and heat it up. Then when the time is right you pour in the popcorn and start shaking it over the fire. At first one or two corns pop. Then soon a lot of them do. At the last there’s still a few that pop kind of late. And yes, a few just don’t pop. Maybe it’s like that with life and with trying to bring people to the Lord. You just have to keep shaking them and keep them over the fire. Or perhaps that’s what the Lord does with us.
And many of us do eventually pop. Like a popcorn, we suddenly pop and turn inside out, from a hardened little corn to a big white popcorn, to realize the potential that was there all the time. It has to be the Lord. Thank God for His patience to keep shaking us and even keeping the fire under our lives to help us to end up being what He knows we are meant to be.
This is one of the best verses that touches on this subject of the eternal bodies we’ll receive at the return of Jesus, at the end of this age and the beginning of the Millennium. Just to throw in one more verse on this, Paul wrote to the Philippians about Jesus who would “
So Jesus was able “
This is fascinating for me. This is our ultimate destiny and destination, to still retain many of the attributes of the life we have now, but in a new, eternal, upgraded condition. We’ll be utterly changed but it won’t be all so different that we can’t understand it or work within it. The Corinthians had asked Paul about the resurrection and about “
Over the years, from time to time it’s happened that the Lord has brought light to my soul in one way or the other. As wonderful as this world is, often we are just ensnared within the carnal and physical experiences we have, a kind of abiding darkness. But then at times we catch or are shown some brief glimpse of the eternity of the spiritual world that exists like a parallel universe to our own. I’ve heard someone say it’s like lightening lighting up a landscape on a dark night.
But in going over these chapters, I was struck again but what must have been Daniel’s incredible capacity to receive, way way more than my little thimble’s worth. I won’t go into it all here but, when Daniel was well into his 80’s, he received what evidently was the last major revelation of his life. It didn’t happen though until one or more angels had to almost literally prop up Daniel like a scarecrow in order for him to be able to take the revelation they had for him.
How’s your thimble? Been getting any sips from the ocean of His truth and love? “
Jesus didn’t come spiritually, died on the cross spiritually and was raised from the dead spiritually. It happened in the real-time, physical world. Israel didn’t suffer 70 years of captivity and then return to their country spiritually; it happened physically. So you get the idea and where I’m coming from.
I try to keep my blog posts short and to the point since in our world today, people are often in a hurry and don’t or won’t have time to read some long-winded, detailed diatribe. But I can just tell you, in the history of prophetic interpretation and even in the history of Biblical interpretation in general, this method of over spiritualization has been a bane for those looking to understand God’s Word. In recent centuries, there’s been a strong turn towards what is considered to be the best way to take God’s Word: at face value. And if it seems from a simple reading to be saying something simple, then that’s usually the best way to take it, unless it’s clearly pointing otherwise.
For example, Paul in II Thessalonians chapter 2 was trying to give a specific warning of something that he knew would come to pass before the second coming of Jesus. That is, that the Antichrist will “