Category Archives: Angels, Miracles and the spirit world

Eclipse coming my way

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I’m expecting 4 minutes of total eclipse here at my house in less than 3 days. I don’t really know what will come of it. A half million people are said to be travailing to my area to check it out and there are plenty of scare mongers who are telling everyone to stock up on groceries, gasoline and water. Actually, very many Texas counties have declared a state of emergency already in preparation for the event.

It does make sense that there could be really a whole lot of people parked on the side of the road that goes past my house. Full total eclipses are rare and that’s what will be happening here. And folks in these parts can rather easily get pretty free and rowdy so it all just remains to be seen how this will play out.

Meanwhile, the weather forecasters are saying it will be “nip and tuck” as to whether there will be clear skies enough for anyone to be able to view the eclipse. It’s supposed to happen in early afternoon and it’s not certain at all that there will be clear skies to see it. One way or the other, day will be turning to night as the full eclipse passes over here so at least we will be seeing “darkness at noon”.

I’ve thought a lot about what if anything I should write about this event that will be here where I am. Forty years ago, right at this time, I was going through perhaps the greatest “eclipse” of my personal life as my own family fell apart. And, strangely, there was a pop song that was popular right around that time called “Total eclipse of the heart”. It really somehow struck me so deeply what the words of that song said as it summed up what I was going through, so unspeakable and mostly unbearable.

I was going to make a video from my house here, linking this upcoming eclipse to my “eclipse” at this time in 1984. I decided not to do that but instead write something since so very many people in these times are going through their own “eclipses”. The light of their lives suddenly leaves them, their dearest loved one, mate, child or whoever is suddenly just not there and they’re plunged into darkness, just like a total eclipse in the middle of the day.

When that happened to me, I cried every day for 5 months. I woke up in the mornings and was crying in ten seconds. Why am I sharing this? To somehow reach out to anyone, and there are so very many, who are in a personal, mighty “eclipse of the heart”. If that’s not you right now, then perhaps you know of someone who’s life has collapsed, whose dearest loved one has left them, or their family has turned against them and they are suddenly so alone and without light or love in this world that many just give up and die.

I’m so glad I came through that time; it took around 13 months before the vast shadow that was upon my life began to lift. Maybe that’s you just now. Or someone who’s near to you in your life right now. Folks, there is an epidemic of loneliness, despair and spiritual darkness that’s descended on many millions of people around the world in these times.

But eclipses don’t last forever. Mine didn’t. Perhaps a secret for me was that I knew God and His son Jesus. And They are able to deliver us from the lowest hell. It was that faith, that God was bigger than my circumstances, that gave me the grace to just hold on and keep praying through a time like I’d never gone through before.

If it’s you, or someone you love, the secret is to hold on to faith in God. This coming eclipse to my part of the world will pass. We all take that for granted now. And I can tell you personally that if you’re in a total eclipse, a sudden darkness unlike you’ve ever seen before, then hold on. You say you can’t hold on because you don’t know God or Jesus? Then it really is a great time to get acquainted with them.

God is in control of the world and He can bring you through and out of whatever you’re going through, just the way He will bring us through this darkness that’s soon coming to my neck of the woods in central Texas. Hold on to the Lord, He can do what no other can do.

And I might add, back when I was going through my “total eclipse of the heart”, there were a few very dear friends who remained friends with me when it really looked like to most that I would shrivel away and die. But they encouraged me and did what they could to help me through that time. Would to God that all of us would remain steadfast and true friends to those we know who are in a place of darkness at this time. “A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity.” Proverbs 17:17

Surviving Surgery, and other things

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Here I am on the other side! Twelve days ago I had major surgery on my lower spine; and it was utterly needed to delivery me from months of strong pain in my hamstring muscles, tendons and buttocks. It’s such a relief to be able to walk around and not have that pain that would so take over my leg muscles each morning.

The operation is call called a “laminotomy” and “lumbar fusion”. It took 90 minutes, I was totally unconscious and they had to get down to the real nitty gritty in my lower spinal column. But it worked. Or more actually, the Lord did it and used the expertise of these doctors to “roto rooter” my lower vertebra, relieving the constricting that had heavily pinched my spinal column there. As soon as I was conscious after the operation, I could feel that the leg pain was now gone that had been there since last summer.

And now, since the surgery I’ve been managing the new pain that’s come up after they cut through my back muscles so they could get to where the “severe spinal stenosis” has been. Hats off to my sister who really came through in the hour of trouble, taking care of me at the hospital and then at her house before I got back here at the beginning of the week.

I was aware of a lot of people praying for me at all times. So many things didn’t happen that could have gone wrong. And I’m so thankful that I’ve had peace in my heart and mind through all this. I’ve realized again that “me” is not primarily my physical body. My body really went through the wringer in the biggest way. It seemed like I’d been shot in the back or that a mortar shell had hit me.

But it’s like I wrote about “You you”, 7 years ago. The real ultimate “me” didn’t get a knife stuck through it and become all sliced up, like my physical body did. It helped so very much to have a Christian perspective on it all and that “me”, me physically as well as my heart and soul were experiencing this. But through it all, the actual real me inside was doing pretty good and something really positive was happening. The cramped, pinched spinal column was being fixed by real experts. That was very good, even if it was a traumatic experience to go though physically, with an operation like that.

Shortly after I was back in my hospital room after the operation, I was aware that I was “on the other side”. There was discomfort but I could already feel then that the leg, tendon and buttocks pain was gone. What a relief and joy!

They had me on strong pain medication and the main one was Oxycodone, a narcotic. It did work; along with adding some Tylenol, the pain level overall was bearable. But it wasn’t long before I was experiencing some stuff that was messing with my thoughts and emotions. As the pain drew down over a few days, I decided to just stop the Oxycodne and also to really dial it back on the other pain killer meds.

After 4 or 5 days at my sisters’, she took me back to my place and that’s where things are now. I wear a back brace about 12 hours a day to keep my back aligned as the new situation in my spine stabilizes. There’s still pain in my back but it’s to a much lesser degree than what I experienced for the months with the leg cramps, before the operation.

I think perhaps the thing that helped me the most through this time was a God-given sense of humor. It kind of surprised me at times that, in very pinnacle situations, I found something to laugh about and to not be overwrought by the events of the moment. Perhaps this was an answer to the many people who were praying for me. I was able to laugh or at least be cheerful and light-hearted through all this and I do feel it was something supernaturally, God-given from the Lord.

And I thought to just give you a little back ground to all this, as my last year has been one of the most unusual I’ve ever had. Last February Facebook suddenly “paused” my ability to use Facebook advertising. I still could communicate with everybody but my weekly ads on Facebook were stopped. For years, I’ve been doing Facebook advertising of the videos I’ve done in many languages. So this “pause” from Facebook stopped my ministry to millions of folks.

Facebook said there was some anomaly with my payment method and they were pausing my account. They told me a few things to do, which I did, and I waited for it all to work out. Days passed and I wrote again. They wrote back, asking me to be patient. Days turned into weeks and weeks into months.

I got increasingly desperate as well as rather hopeless. Facebook has billions of customers and you don’t just call up a representative. But here’s how God answered the prayers of many for my situation. I lived in Brazil in the late 90’s and out of the blue a friend I knew there wrote to say that her daughter, who I knew when she was 12, now lived about 5 kilometers from me and would like to meet me after all this time.

We did that and guess what? Turns out that she had worked for some time in the Meta company, which owns Facebook. I told her my plight and she said she might know someone on the inside. Things moved fast after that and in 10 days my account was restored. To me this was just an astounding miracle when I saw no way I was going to be able to contact anyone in Facebook to get my account back on.

Then, 5 days after Facebook was restored, there was a sudden lightning strike around 40 yards from my desk here. There was sort of a storm going on right then but there’d been no lightning nearby. My laptop was destroyed, my router, modem, the printer, the aircon system in the house and wiring under the house, all were knocked out. Replacing the laptop, which is what I do the video editing and website work on, was a big deal. Thankfully none of us were hurt and the house and cars were not hit. But getting back to where I could work on videos and do editing on a new computer took many weeks.

Two months after the lightning, I was holding on to a tree stump in my backyard that I’d held on to many times before. Suddenly it snapped and I was diving through the air towards the bottom of the garden. I guess I went close to 4 meters forward and 3 meters downward. The full force of the dive/fall was taken by my left hand which transferred up to my left shoulder. The result was that I had a major tear in my left shoulder, so much so that a rotor cuff surgery was not possible. I’m awaiting an operation to replace my left shoulder joint at some point when it can be worked out.

One month after my fall down the hill, in July, I left for my yearly visit to see my kids in Scandinavia. I was already feeling a little funny but not too bad. But when I got over there, I was diagnosed with Shingles. Thankfully it was a relatively mild case but it continued through my visit to Scandinavia.

In August, before returning to Texas, I was briefly visiting friends at a fellowship in Romania. That’s when the leg and tendon problem really took center stage. I’d been having pain in that area for months but it had been manageable. In Romania though, the pain got so bad that I was walking awkwardly and not really able to be a part of the activities. So when I got back to the States in late August, I knew that finding out what the matter was with my legs was top priority

Back in the States, I began in earnest to try to find the root cause of my leg pain which continue to worsen. But no one really knew what it was. The first doctor prescribed pain killers and “muscle relaxants” which were some of the worst things I’ve ever taken. I stopped that immediately. The next doctor said I had “Polymyalgia rheumatica” and sent me to a rheumatologist. At that appointment that doctor said that it didn’t really seem like rheumatism to him and I didn’t think so either.

Of course all this took time, months in fact. I was well into the fall and still kind of flaying around in trying to find out what was causing all this. But the Lord was certainly working behind the scenes. I had a regular appointment with my cardiologist and I was explaining to her how there hadn’t been anyone really knowing what was the problem with my leg pain. She then told me she thought it was my back. I sort of corrected her and told her my back was just fine, never had any pain there.

But she went on to explain that the nerves that affected my hamstrings, tendons and buttocks all run down through and out of my spinal column. So she ordered a MRI as soon as possible. And that was the breakthrough that was needed.

By then it was the first week of January, 3½ months after I got back from Romania. But at least the problem had been found: “severe spinal stenosis” in my lower spine. As one doctor explained, my spinal column should be 15 millimeters wide at that place but it was only 4 millimeters wide. Quite a pinch. In mid February I had the surgery on my back, what I already wrote about at the beginning of this article.

You thought that was all, right? Nope, I didn’t tell you the other traumas of September through December. I had two loose teeth and hadn’t been to the dentist in long time. Although I didn’t have any pain, I thought it would be good to get the loose teeth checked out. And dear God in His great Providence led me to some exceptionally competent, compassionate South American dentists not far from me.

On my first visit the lady gave me a thorough exam and then rather somberly told me I had 11 teeth that were infected and that the infection was most likely spreading to every part of my body. She said I needed those extracted, plus two crowns replaced, a root canal and various other cavities taken care of. Also there will be bridges top and bottom to replace the pulled teeth.

Actually, by this time, I’d been under such an onslaught from one side or the other for months that this didn’t really faze me very much. So through October into December I had the 11 teeth pulled and almost all the other things she mentioned were taken care of. But it all was made so much easier by these two amazing Christian sisters and their touch of expertise, as well as they gentle ways. And of course the mighty grace and mercy of the Lord.

Well, I hope it’s been ok to tell you about all this. Many of you keep up with me on Facebook and I have been posting prayer requests about these things. I don’t think I’ve ever had a time like this that’s happened to me over this last year. And so it looks like I have come through and out of this intense period and now I’m in a rehab after the operation. They said this would take 4 to 6 weeks and it hasn’t been 2 yet.

Possibly some of my friends are going through similar things currently: shake ups in their health, severe and long term challenges across multiple fronts, personality changes as we enter new periods of our lives. I’m so thankful that I have been able to remain rooted to the Christian foundations I’ve had since I was 21 and to be able to stand in Him, through it all.

And I’m so thankful for the many of you who’ve stood with me in prayer during this time. I’m utterly sure if I had not had the Lord and His continuing strengthening in my soul, I certainly could not have survived all this. I could write much more but this is already long. I hope this is a blessing for you. Many are going through medical experiences in these times and perhaps this is a help to some to know how the Lord took care of me through it all.

God bless you, thanks so much!

Mark

II Tim 3:11  “…but out of them all the Lord delivered me.”

II Tim 4:18   “And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work and shall preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom.”

 

“It’s all by your grace Lord, cause somebody prayed.”

 

 

 

Talking to angels

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What’s it like talking to angels? On the street? The first thing you notice is that they can read your thoughts. So you begin to realize that something is really up. Something strange is going on and you grasp more and more that this person in front of you is very unusual. But you’re also aware that this person is not malignant, they are benign. And it just grows on you: as soon as you think something, they know what you thought.

So you’ve been talking to this person and when you say something, their immediate response is so complete, so all encompassing and so precise that it nearly takes your breath away. Then again immediately it’s happened to me that, before I voice a thought and respond to the “person” in front of me, that they respond.

Sometimes it is verbally, as humans do. But also it can be a thought, a response that appears in your mind, that this person answers you back, “at the speed of thought”, without going through the normal human channel of verbal communication.

This can be really surprising and …shocking, as I search for a word to match that experience. In fact, this is where things quickly go. Because you are sucked up into an upper level experience that is basically beyond any normal human experience.

There may be words exchanged. But you are utterly aware that there is a channel opened, a thought exchange unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. As you think a thought, the “being’ in front of you, who looks human, is communicating back to you in your mind. This is in real time, physically, person to person.

And the answers are not gibberish and confusion. But they’re incredibly “spot on”, to the point, uplifting, enlightening and of a caliber and richness that you didn’t think humans could convey. It’s just hard to describe. It’s like they are talking to you from some kind of place of light, a place of sanity, clarity and even overwhelming common sense that puts all else you’ve experienced into a lower realm of clouds and haze.

How long does it last? For me it didn’t last really long. I wrote about one experience I had in San Francisco when I was nearly 23 which was the longest I’ve ever been in that kind of atmosphere. Needless to say, my experiences like that, if I try to count them right now, come to around 5 to 7 times, from in my 20’s til now. But to be in that realm, where the supposed human in front of you can read your thoughts and respond before you’ve hardly thought you thoughts, is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

These were not demons. I’ve had encounters with demons too. You become aware that the person in front of you is not speaking of themselves but is being spoken through. Often this is with extremely vile, vulgar, aggressive, sickening language. But you are just aware that “something” is speaking through the person in front of you, who seems to know your weaknesses, fears and inner thoughts but who is your violent enemy, out to destroy you through confusion, astonishment and other such things.

When you meet an angel on the street, their communication has a “oneness”, a composite clarity, order, height, depth, richness and utter edification. When you meet a person who is demon possessed who talks to you, you are aware at some point that the person in front of you is not speaking of themselves, that another entity has been able to take over the human in front of you and to speak through them.

An evil spirit has been able to posses or take them over and use that body to speak to you. But an angel speaks of themselves, an agent of the God of the higher realm, who has been assigned or allowed to communicate with you.

guardian-angelsAdmittedly, this happens rarely in my life and probably most people seldom ever experience these things. Or if they do, many of us are dull to what is happening at the moment and don’t really catch what is going on. They/we experience these things but recognize how strange it is and that they/we can’t tell our friends or family because they won’t believe us. So they/we keep it to themselves, sometimes the rest of their/our lives.

Have you ever had an experience with an angel? Or demon? They both exist, now and in our present world. Sometimes the Lord wants to expand our horizons by letting us experience these things, to deepen us, to open our eyes to the mostly unseen real world we actually live in, and to make us stronger for him. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unaware.” (Hebrews 13:2)

Miracles in Europe

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Coming from an atheist background, the miracles in my life have been beacons of personal experience and sustenance. In this second audio recording, I’ve included 3 events that happened to me in the years I lived in Europe where the miraculous hand of God got me through dangerous, virtually impossible situations.

I’ve found that it’s a much quicker process to do audio recordings like this, compared to doing full 30 minute videos as I have been doing for years. So my plan is to continue to produce more of these.

I hope you find these accounts to be an inspiration and uplift to you in your life. I’d be glad to hear any feedback or reactions to these recordings from any of you. The link to the recording on YouTube can be found below.

All the best to you, your friend,

Mark

Angels in Austin

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I’m happy to announce that I’ve started making audio recordings of my blog articles. It’s a new thing for me to produce this kind of material but I thought it would be good since so many people nowadays listen to pod casts and recordings.

This first recording is about supernatural experiences I’ve had in Austin, one around 13 years ago and the other two when I was going to university here. These are articles that on my site, markmcmillion.com. My hope and plan is that this will be the first of more audio shows like this, where I narrate the articles that, Lord willing, will be interesting and be a blessing to you.

All the best to you,

Mark

Here’s the link on YouTube

“Summoning” and A.I.

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I scan the horizon daily for “the signs of the times”. Some things have been there for years. But, what’s new? What’s now in view that indicates progress toward the very final end time foreseen in the Bible?

“Artificial Intelligence” has been around for years, in some sense. But in recent times, with things like Chat GPT, there’s a new chapter and a new time of greatly enhanced computer advancement. For me, I view this from the perspective of a Christian who’s looking to see the fulfillment of Bible prophecy and the coming of the future foretold through the Biblical prophets.

I prefer to keep things as simple as possible. But I’m going to need to take the narrative up a notch in discussing A.I. and the Bible, to some of the more mysterious, complex aspects of the Biblical future, spoken of by Jesus and the prophets.

Most of those reading this have heard somewhere of “the Anti-Christ”, the prophesied world dictator who will arise, just before the return of Jesus. And certainly the concept of “the mark of the beast” has become more and more known, even by secularist around the world.

They may not believe it but many millions have come to know the ideas behind the verse that says of a future point in time, “No man might buy or sell unless he had the mark of the beast… in his hand or his forehead”. This is also where the famous reference to “the number of the beast [the anti-Christ] which is 666“. (Revelation 13:16-18)

But the number of those grasping these things greatly shrinks when we get to places in the Bible that may be where we find Artificial Intelligence becoming part of the fulfillment. We could start with one of the least understood things Jesus of Nazareth ever said. And He said it at a pinnacle moment in a pinnacle chapter, when He was telling His disciples about His return to earth and the time just before that event.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand it, I’m not sure anyone yet has a complete, total grasp of how this will be fulfilled. Jesus said, “When you shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, whoso reads, let him understand.” (Matthew 24:15)

Didn’t get it, did you? No worries; we’re going to try to delve into this, comparing Scripture with Scripture, as well as bringing in AI, and then see if there’s a clearer idea of it all from doing that.

Probably the biggest enigma in what Jesus said there is that phrase “the abomination of desolation”. Most likely you have no idea what that is. And I’m not going to be able to definitely clear it all up for you. But it’s worth looking into since Jesus brought it up. And also the prophet Daniel was told about this over 500 years before Jesus pointed to it, when talking about His second coming. [By the way, I went over these things in more detail in a video I did some years ago which linked Jesus’ words in Matthew 24 with the last verse in Daniel 9, verse 27. Here’s the link to that video:]

“Mark! Mark! I have it! The abomination of desolation is the Anti-Christ!”

Well, some do teach that but I personally don’t think the “AC” is the abomination. Jesus said “the abomination of desolation” was spoken of by the prophet Daniel. That phrase is used in several places in Daniel but the one that is most clear is Daniel 11:31. It says this. “And arms [armaments] shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength [soon to be rebuilt temple in Jerusalem]; and they shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that makes desolate.”

This and other places always give the picture of the abomination being a thing. Jesus said it will “stand” in the temple. It will be “placed” there. But the Antichrist is a person “the son of perdition”, similarly to how Jesus was a person, the very Son of God. As well, II Thessalonians 2:3 & 4 says the Antichrist will “sit in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God”. So I feel pretty strongly that the abomination is “a thing”, not a person.

The mystery deepens, no? One thing to remember, the word “abomination” in the Old Testament was often used to speak of what we today call an idol. They were physical objects, placed in temples where the gods of old, Dagon, Ashtoreth, Baal and others were worshipped. The Greeks and Romans had similar things, all the way up to New Testament times.

“Mark, is there anything in the book of Revelation about this?”

I think there is and this is where we get a view of where Artificial Intelligence may be an integral part of it all. I mentioned already those mysterious verses in Revelation 13 about “666” and “the mark of the beast”.

But we have to go deeper. We have to squeeze the truth from more of these verses to get a fuller picture. Many have heard vaguely of the Antichrist to come. But far fewer know that the book of Revelation says he will have a “side kick”, evidently a number 2 man, who the Bible calls “the false prophet”. And it says of this false prophet, in Revelation 13 that, “he has power to give life to the image of the Beast, that the image of the Beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the Beast should be slain.” (Revelation 13:15)

What’s the image of the beast, you ask? It becomes fascinating when we find that the word “image” in the Bible is often referring to an idol, just as the word “abomination” did in the Old Testament. If you do a Word study on those two words, “abomination” and “image”, you’ll see how many times they are referring to what we today call idols.

And I’ve taught and do believe that “the image of the beast” in Revelation 13 and “the abomination of desolation” that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24 are the same thing. That might be a jump for some but I believe it is a sound conclusion that can stand review.

It is my opinion that “the abomination of desolation” and “the image of the beast” both refer to some kind of very advanced “machine”, for lack of a better word. Or I could say computer but one that’s so far advanced that it’s beyond what most regular folks in the world today can imagine. My thought on this is similar to a number of Bible students who’ve looked deeply into the specifics of the Bible’s teaching on the end time.

And this falls into the realm of reality since we all know just how fast and how far technology is advancing in those fields. Elon Musk is creating bio chips to link our brains into a mega-network that may bring on forms of bio-technical eternal life.

In all this, I zero in on the verse that says, “He had power to give life to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many of those that did not worship the beast should be slain”. So, a life-infused computer that can speak, also directing or monitoring all economic transactions on earth, as it says in Revelation 13:17. But actually, how farfetched does that really seem to be in the times we now live in?

I want to bring in here some things that have appeared recently in the New York Times newspaper. And keep in mind the part about “he had power to give life to the image of the beast”. Because that’s what’s comes to my mind when I’ve several times seen the word “summoning” in connection with what the absolute top scientists in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are working on with these things.

What are those tech creators summoning? The articles say they are summoning spirits, demons from beyond or whatever to inhabit and dwell in their most advanced computer concoctions in order to have them reach the limits and realms that the A.I. coders are trying to take things to. And this sounds exactly like what those verses in the book of Revelation said would ultimately happen.

I’ll end this with just a few of the quotes I’ve taken note of in the New York Times articles that have come out about this. Here’s one.

“In 2018, Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google — and not one of the tech executives known for overstatement — said, ‘A.I. is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire.’”

[from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/11/technology/silicon-valley-confronts-the-idea-that-the-singularity-is-here.html]

And even more, this quote gets to the essence of where AI advancement has come to. Read this paragraph with focus and bring in what the Bible says “the image of the Beast” will be capable of.

“We typically reach for science fiction stories when thinking about A.I. I’ve come to believe the apt metaphors lurk in fantasy novels and occult texts. As my colleague Ross Douthat wrote, this is an act of summoning. The coders casting these spells have no idea what will stumble through the portal. What is oddest, in my conversations with them, is that they speak of this freely. These are not naifs who believe their call can be heard only by angels. They believe they might summon demons. They are calling anyway.”

[from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/opinion/chatbots-artificial-intelligence-future-weirdness.html]

Friends, this is not coming from Alex Jones or some loony loner in a cabin in Idaho. This is published in what’s considered by the power elites to be the most reputable newspaper in America. They boldly publish that the most advanced scientific creators are now openly summoning demons into their computers.

I’ll end this with part of an article by Ross Douthat, again in the New York Times. It perhaps summarizes much better than I can what we are seeing here and what this is leading towards.

“In this sense what we’re doing resembles a complex incantation, a calling of spirits from Shakespeare’s “vasty deep.” Build a system that imitates human intelligence, make it talk like a person and answer questions like an encyclopedia and solve problems through leaps we can’t quite follow, and wait expectantly to see if something infuses itself into the mysterious space where the leaps are happening, summoned by the inviting home that we have made.

Such a summoning is most feared by A.I. alarmists, at present, because the spirit might be disobedient, destructive, a rampaging Skynet bent on our extermination.

But the old stories of the magicians and their bargains, of Faust and his Mephistopheles, suggest that we would be wise to fear apparent obedience as well.’

[from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/02/opinion/magic-science-ufo-ai.html]

 

 

Restored!

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I’ve had quite an adventure with Facebook recently. And there’s been a surprisingly happy ending. It started nearly 3 months ago when, out of the blue, Facebook notified me that they’d “paused” my ability to use Facebook advertising. I still had my account and could communicate with everybody. But my ability to post weekly ads on Facebook, to “boost” the videos and articles I’ve done, was stopped.

As some of you know, I’ve done a series of videos on the prophecies of Daniel in English and afterwards 3 of them have been done in 14 other languages. This is all part of a Christian ministry the Lord as led me into, to “feed His sheep”, as He told us to do. But primarily the method I’ve used to propagate these videos and blog articles to many countries has been Facebook.

At first it didn’t bother me as I’ve had things happen before with Facebook in the last 7 years I’ve been boosting videos with them. At those times, I complied with what they asked and things were resolved in a few days. This time it looked to be the same. They said there appeared to be some anomaly with my payment method and they were pausing my account for my protection. They told me a few things to do, which I did, and I waited for it all to work out. Days passed and I wrote again. They wrote back, basically asking me to be patient. Days turned into weeks.

And perhaps I should explain why this began to get personal to me. Everyone talks about identity nowadays. So many now say, “I identify as a …”. OK, I identify as a Christian missionary. That fundamentally is who and what I am. And I’ve been thrilled over recent years to see how the Lord has made it so that I’ve been able to make these videos and articles and then to be able to publish them to a worldwide audience. There’s been nothing commercial in this; I’ve never monetized the material. But it’s been deeply rewarding to know that there have been a lot of people who’ve viewed the videos and shared them with others.

For this cause, it sort of began to get to me that this means and method of making the videos available worldwide had suddenly stopped. It was soon into the second month of not hearing back from Facebook. And, yes, thoughts did begin to arise in my mind. Had Facebook cut me off? Was my material too radical, had my local activities somehow raised red flags?

At length I began to explore some companies that are specialists at resolving things like this. Basically it comes down to finding some way to communicate with a business so big that they do virtually everything through algorithms and it’s almost infinitely difficult to contact a live person. I talked to one specialist and he mentioned that I’d perhaps been “shadow banned”, a new word to me. It seems it’s a little like what I wrote about in “Ghosted”. Sometimes you just get cut off or cut out by a person, or a company, and you never really get a straight reason why.

But when I looked again at the message Facebook had sent me, it didn’t come across like that. They said it was some payment issue, some kind of glitch that could be easily resolved if perhaps some human being just looked at it all briefly. And just to mention it, during this time Facebook has been going through a major internal restructuring and has laid off thousands of staff. This may have been a factor in what happened to me.

I was into my second month of not hearing from Facebook. Meanwhile I was praying desperately and asking others to do the same. And the Lord really answered and came through, here’s what happened. Over twenty years ago I was on one of the many mission fields I’ve been on and part of what I did there was to teach Bible classes and do home school teaching to the children of fellow missionaries there.

One of my students was a young lady, 12 years old at the time. I’ve kept in contact with her mom over the years and a month or so ago she mentioned that actually her daughter now lives in the same city as me and that she’d like to meet up with me, if that could work out.

So we met up and it was great to see her again, now all grown up. We talked for hours and she mentioned in passing that she’d worked for one of the largest technology companies in the world. So I shared with her what had happened with me and Facebook, mentioning to her that it seemed like I’d perhaps been “shadow banned”.

It was something she knew something about. And then she told me she had a friend who works at a company and that perhaps she could talk to him about my problem. Bingo!! Well, it wasn’t bingo right away but it was a glimmer of hope that I’d not had till then. In a few days she contacted me to say that sometimes these things really almost never got resolved. But that there were ways for ones on the inside to sort of “push people up the queue”.

Long story short, within a week or so I began to get feedback from Facebook that I’d not received up till then. And within about 10 days, everything was resolved! Now that may not sound like much of a miracle to you but for me, it was a pretty big deal. I’m now back to doing my weekly Facebook ads to countries and language groups around the world and it’s just a huge relief to be restored to the place I was 3 months ago, to be able to continue to minister in the way the Lord has provided for years now.

I really did get hit with a lot of conspiracy theory thoughts while this was going on. And I’m not discounting that nefarious stuff goes on all the time. But in this case it’s just been so encouraging to see the Lord come through with one of His “tricks” , putting me in contact with someone who knew someone who was able to do what needed to be done, when all other avenues had failed.

I hope that’s an encouragement to you. Even in this increasingly clouded and techno-dominated world of now, the good God is still able to intervene and fix things when it’s according to His will. Glory to God!

Going to hell

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The pinnacle experience of my life was going to hell when I was 20. I’ve shied away from talking about it over the years because it was so unspeakable. But perhaps I shouldn’t. Near-death experiences are rare and ones where the experience is a horrific one seem to be even more rare. But that’s what happened to me.

Many scoff at the idea of hell. I smile when I see things like that. Through that experience in 1969, I was delivered from severely entrenched atheism. Back then, I was an “evangelist” of atheism; I found joy in defeating weak, vacillating Christians in debate. But entering the spiritual world, utterly naked and without any protective covering that salvation in Christ gives, I experienced the full onslaught of the afterlife outside salvation.

I don’t know if I’ve ever really described that experience. Perhaps I should. You may not be able to relate to it, it may seem like gibberish to you. But life after death for someone without salvation in Jesus is going to be a very, extremely, strange world, as it was for me.

Without salvation in the afterlife, I was like a person without diving equipment, 150 meters (yards) below sea level. There was no oxygen. It was a strange, foreign world. There were beings there that were in their realm while I was not in mine. I was in extreme panic and in great confusion. But worst of all, there was no way back. It was too late. The level of fear, confusion, despondency and utter hopelessness defies explanation in words we have in our present realm.

It’s an incredible thing to enter the spiritual world. One thing I saw so clearly is that it’s really “all by faith’. We say that glibly here in our realm. But in the spiritual world, faith is utterly the coinage of the realm. And I endlessly gasped for even a whiff of faith. Everything is inside out, compared to this present world we live in. Materially things there are completely secondary, if they register at all. Elements of the soul and heart are the substance of that realm and your spiritual condition is the only thing that matters.

Jesus talked about the man who came to the wedding feast without a wedding garment. (Matthew 22:12) That’s how I was. I didn’t have the garment of salvation, the transformation that makes life in eternity possible. So I was utterly unprepared to experience the spiritual world.

Did I understand all that then at that time, as I somewhat do now? No; really, really I didn’t. I was in a prolonged terror, experiencing things that I totally didn’t understand and didn’t even have words to describe what was happening to me. I had virtually no understanding of what I was experiencing or the words to describe it , which I came to find after becoming a believing Christian and reading the explanation of life that the Bible gives.

Time, as we experience it here, ceased to exist there. I was in eternity. But also in utter confusion, utter hopelessness, utter lack of truth. I do believe that this is within the element and range of what the unsaved experience in the hereafter, in hell.

The apostle Paul talked about, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord…” (II Corinthians 5:11). No, Paul was not in hell in Acts 9 but he was suddenly face to face with the Lord, who told Paul, “I am Jesus who you persecute.” Paul was utterly on the wrong side of the Lord and that was his introduction.

You don’t find many preachers talking about Paul talking about “knowing the terror of the Lord.” Talking about hell in these times is very passé. It’s just not done. It’s not cool.

Be that as it may, I feel I should speak up more about how that is what I experienced. For me, it was totally what I needed to stun, shock and sear me out of my unbelief. Nobody could talk to me. I was always the smartest guy in the room, at least in my own eyes. So the Lord let this happen, in His mercy, so that I could get a real glimpse of how very far away from the truth I was.

And truth was actually what I’d been looking for all along. So God gave me this experience, outside any contact with others, not a pastor, not my grandparents, not a church, but just me alone. And it worked.

I was so stunned, shocked and almost in unbelief that I was able to return to this realm where we all now live, after experiencing so horrific a place, that it was like some kind of Sci-Fi movie where someone comes back to this earth and world, after a prolonged absence. That might sound like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.

If this is just outside your realm of understanding, I can give you the text to two songs that rather well articulate the atmosphere of Hell. The Eagles wrote in the last words of “Hotel California”, “You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!” That’s how hell works: you can never leave.

Similarly, Bob Dylan sang in one of his songs, “There must be some kind of way outta here, said the joker to the thief, there’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.” As the song says, you look for a way out but it eludes you. Meanwhile, confusion engulfs and consumes you. Snippets and dark glimpses of hell, brought into contemporary music.

I’ve been happily encouraged through the years when I’ve read of others who’ve had near-death experiences, that they too have had very similar feelings to mine. They don’t even want to talk about it. They don’t think anyone will believe them. They struggle strongly even to find the words to describe what happened to them. It’s a very personal thing that often their friends and family can’t believe and it makes them estranged from their loved ones, since it all seems so farfetched.

I’m glad I’ve been able to put this on paper, so to speak. Experiencing hell was what it took to lay a foundational event in my life that prepared me to receive the message of salvation from young “Jesus People” a few months later. And it was this experience, that the spiritual world is fundamentally the real world, that made the decision to follow Jesus and to take up my cross in service to Him to be the only “common sense” thing that I knew was the high will of God.

This was all when I was in my early 20’s, long ago. But looking back, I see again how pivotal that experience I had in the spiritual world was, even if it was in the dark side of it. I was there, thrust there by God, because of my hardness of heart and repeated resistance to the Holy Spirit which was trying to reach out to me.

I hope this is somehow a blessing to someone. The spiritual world is real. Unbelief and atheism are your worst enemies, at least they were mine. There is no depth that God in His mercy cannot reach to find us in our worst condition and to lead us back out of that blackness, even virtual insanity, back to the glorious light that is in Him.

 

 

Bad death, good death

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I was thinking about death. I guess I experienced “bad death” just before I turned 21. I had a near death experience that wasn’t one of those “the-angel-introduces-you-to-Jesus” experiences. Nope, I got the other guy. And rightly so.

I was an utter atheist and I enjoyed trying to break the faith of any quasi-Christians that came across my path. But when I was very nearly pulled out of my body by the spirit of darkness, there was a terror and a bundle of emotions which don’t really have words to reflect them in English.

I was experiencing a bad death. I didn’t believe in God and I was very nearly at the edge of the precipice into eternity and everlasting life but in an unregenerate state.

This was the experience of the unsaved because that was how I was at that time, passing out of my body and into eternity but without salvation in Jesus. If you have read much about folks who have life-after-death experiences or near death experiences, one continually striking characteristic is that almost everyone finds it hard to describe what they experienced.

And I believe it’s because they’re trying to describe experiences and realms that our language just doesn’t have words for, or at least very little. So folks think that those who experience these things are just making it up. Or they are in some kind of strange place in their minds and that they will soon “return to their senses”.

But so often those who have gone through these things say that actually and really, those experiences were more real, more true and more containing the essences of life than what we mostly all experience on a day-to-day level. And I can certainly agree with that. So I went through, or at least nearly so, a “bad death”. The death of the unsaved.

And as folks age, as we all do, we often think more of death. For me, I have to comfort myself in the thought that my death at the end of my life will not be what I experienced just before I turned 21. I experienced a “bad death”. And I deserved that at that time because I’d “mocked the messengers of God and despised His word and misused his prophets” (II Chronicles 36:16) so that the Lord allowed me to receive what I deserved, right up to the very point of death and eternal damnation.

But that was what it took to deliver me from atheism. That was the most major turning point in my life and the dawn and beginning of a life of faith, belief and deliverance in God. Some months later I received Jesus as my Savior and after that have served Him in many countries for over 50 years.

Now in my 70’s, longevity in my genes, I look forward to the point somewhere ahead when I do experience what we all experience. “So death passed upon all men…” (Romans 5:12) But that death ahead of me will not be like what I went through over 50 years ago. That coming death will be what can be called a “good death”. Paul the Apostle said, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain”. (Philippians 1:21)

Death for a Christian, although this goes against so much of our “carnal mind” as the Bible calls it, is actually a release, a graduation, a transition and an alteration into the condition God has planned and ordained for His children and saints since the beginning of time. Jesus said, “Whosoever believes in Me shall never die.” (John 11:26)

So my experience from when I was 20 is not really a good analogy for me to use when thinking ahead to what that experience will be at the end of my life. Maybe in some ways it is because I did experience that sudden, shocking and complete change that occurs. But back then, it was from this world into a so much worse world of horror and meaningless confusion that words fail to describe. I experienced the terrors of hell in its eternal state.

But the “good death” to come for me will have a few similarities but mostly be utterly different. I won’t be falling into bottomless nothingness forever. I will be leaving this physical plane, this earthly existence and going on to inherit the destiny that’s been planned and prepared for me by the Lord since the foundation of the world.

That’s what the people of faith, the people of Jesus, have to look forward to at the end of their lives. Their carnal minds may still grown and creak with the whole concept of “eternal life”. But that’s ok. Like God said to Job, “Shall it be according to your mind?” (Job 34:33) No, it will not be according to our carnal, worldly minds and understanding.

“Now unto him that shall do exceeding abundantly, above all we can ask or think…, unto Him be glory in the church throughout all ages, world without end.” (Ephesians 3:20 & 21)   I’m looking forward to a good death. How about you?

Truth us, oh Lord!

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Can “truth” be a verb? Can God “truth us”? I never thought of that before. But, my gosh, how we need God to truth us. What darkness we live in, what confusion, what banality. But God can truth us. He can just almost blast us with the truth, blowing away the clouds and the gloomy uncertainty.

Oh, how we need that. Left to ourselves, we would be quickly overcome with the onslaught of bewilderment that assails us every day. No wonder many people just leave all to go live alone in the woods. Maybe they hope to find their sanity again there. Or they reluctantly take their little children out of public school because they realize how much darkness now dominates those formerly happy halls of learning.

So we need a powerful infusion of truth, the same way people die without an infusion of oxygen. It’s that serious in these times. Maybe that’s something I like, strange as it may seem, about this present indescribable war in Ukraine. I lived in eastern Ukraine for 18 months just over 10 years ago so I know those cities , those roads, those fields, those people and those children and orphanages. But, strange as it may seem, the war in Ukraine has brought a glimmer of sanity back into the Western world and the world overall.

When your personal friends who you know and love are face to face with one of the strongest armies in the world, when they could die any day along with the hundreds of people who they are regularly ministering to in a city you once lived in, then the whole question of “fake news” and what the “elites” are doing really fades out of the picture.

I don’t know what’s happening in Ukraine from the mass media. I know from what my personal friends are telling me from there. And this is good because for far too long so many of us have been imposed upon to live in some kind of fantasia “la-la land” where there virtually is no truth but everything we hear and read is doubted and questioned. I don’t question the war in Ukraine. I wake up every morning to find if my personal friends still in Kharkov, Dnipro and Kiev have survived the night and are alive this morning.

The Bible says “God is not the author of confusion” (I Corinthians 14:33). But then who is the author of confusion? Truly, it’s the devil himself. He thrives on sowing confusion at every opportunity and that confusion is so much a hallmark of our present times.

We need the Lord to truth us, to just be that powerful that His love, His truth and His reality will be that much greater than the confusion and insanity of this present evil world. I’m so thankful for the promises of God in His Word that He will tell us the truth, that we will be able to continue with a “sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7) and that the onslaughts of the enemies of God, as well as the meandering confusion of the lost sheep, goats, snakes, foxes and wolves of this world will not be victorious over the truth of God that He continues to pump into His children.

Lord help us all to hold onto the truth of God the way an underwater diver holds on to their oxygen mask. Truly we are like that, under water in this world of misinformation, confusion and lack of absolutes. So we need our good Godly helpers in the Spiritual world on the surface above us, like as if they were in a boat above us in the water, to keep that spiritual oxygen pumping to us, so we can stay alive down here in these present depths.

As strange as it may seem, this is perhaps how those in the spiritual world and God’s great hereafter view us who presently live in these realms below. That we are totally dependant on the armor of God, sustained by the lifeline from above of truth-giving Spirit and life itself that only comes from God. Thus we survive and can function here in this alien world but only as we work together with our life-giving sustainers, the angels of God and the Sustainer Himself, God’s Holy Spirit.

Stay alive brethren. Don’t get “the rapture of the deep” where you just get enchanted with the strange underworld we presently live in and decide to go sauntering off into it. Keep the vision that we are not of this present underworld. Keep breathing the oxygen that is from above, pumped down to us by God’s blessed Holy Spirit through the mask and piping of His salvation so that we can continue to exist in this strange reality that we now dwell in, “as strangers and pilgrims” (Hebrews 11:15).

And may the Lord continue to “truth us”, to powerfully pump His truth to us so we can make sense of things and keep our heads while all about us others are losing theirs. So it is for now. Amen, Lord truth us!