Saint Francis and the wolf

Posted on September 29, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I enjoy reading about the history of faith, especially the spread of Christian faith over the last 2000 years. A spiritual awakening, starting in an obscure area of the Roman Empire, led by a young Jewish provincial preacher and healer, has turned into one of the largest religions in the world and lasted till now. Who were the ones who took up the torch (often becoming torches themselves ultimately) to carry the faith further and further “into all the world” (Mark 16:15), as Jesus commanded His disciples to go?

A name that still resonates in some places till this day is that of Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). Some say he had a similar degree of impact on his nation and his times as did Martin Luther three hundred years later, the famous German reformer who’s considered the father of the Protestant Reformation.

Who were these guys? What did they do? What kind of people were they? Schemers? Political masterminds out to lead radical social change? Charlatans, fakes, phonies, deceivers?

I just read a story from a book called “The Little Flowers of Saint Francis”, a collection of short stories of events in the life of St. Francis. This one struck me as the amazing kind of thing you can read about in the lives of great “saints”, godly men and women of any age who totally gave themselves over to the love and will of God.

For many, this will just be unbelievable. Surely this couldn’t have happened. “Surely, Mark, you don’t mean to tell us you believe this?” The problem with doubting this is that I’ve found, in the study of people of faith, miracles like this seem to have been recorded over and over again through the centuries. Jesus told His disciples, “He that believes on me, the works that I do, shall he do also. And greater works than these shall he do, because I go to My Father.” (John 14:12) Greater works than Jesus did when He was on earth would be done by His followers in the centuries to come. Here’s one of them. I hope you can believe it.

(As taken from “The Little Flowers of Saint Francis”)

In the days when St. Francis lived in the city of Gubbio, a huge wolf, terrible and fierce, appeared in the neighborhood, and not only devoured animals but men also in such a way that all the citizens went in great fear of their lives because often the wolf came close to the city. When the people went out of the city, all the men armed themselves as if they were going to battle and even so, none who encountered the wolf when they were alone could defend themselves. Finally it got to where no man went outside the walls of the city for fear of the wolf.

St. Francis had great compassion on the people of that city and he made plans to go out to the wolf. But all the citizens unitedly advised him not to do this. But St. Francis, making the sign of the cross and putting all his trust in God, went out from the city with his companions.

Then, because St. Francis’s companions feared to go further, St. Francis went on alone towards the place where the wolf was. And, in the sight of many people who had followed behind to see what would happen, the wolf appeared and came menacingly towards Francis with his jaws open.

St. Francis, moving towards the wolf, made before him the sign of the cross and said to the wolf, “Come here, brother wolf. I command you in the name of Christ that you do not hurt me or any man.”

Marvelously, no sooner had Francis made the sign of the cross than the wolf closed his jaws and stopped in his tracks. Immediately as Francis had given the order to the wolf, he became gentle as a lamb and laid himself at the feet of Francis.

Francis then said to him, “Brother wolf, you’ve worked much evil in these parts, destroying God’s creatures. You’ve not only destroyed the beasts of the field but you’ve dared to kill men, made in the image of God. All people cry out against you and all this city is at enmity with you. But brother wolf, I would make peace between you and them so that you injure them no more and that the people of the city will pursue you no more.”

When Francis had spoken, the wolf moved his body, his tail and ears, bowing his head and made signs that he accepted what had been said and would agree. Then Francis said to the wolf, “Since it is acceptable to observe this peace, I promise to obtain for you as long as you live a continual sustenance from the men of the city so that you will not hunger. But after I obtain this commitment from the people of the city, I want you to promise me you will hurt neither man or beast. Do you promise me this?” The wolf bowed his head and gave a clear sign that he promised.

Francis said to the wolf, “I want you to make a pledge of faith that you will keep this promise.” And when Francis held forth his hand, the wolf lifted up his paw and gentle laid it in the hand of Francis, giving him as good a sign and pledge as he could.

Francis then said to the wolf, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come with me, don’t fear,” and they went off towards Gubbio to confirm the new peace between the wolf and the people. The wolf went by the side of Francis towards the city, like a pet lamb.

When the people of the city saw what had happened and Francis and the wolf coming towards the city, they marveled greatly and very quickly the word spread as to what was happening. Soon almost the whole city had flocked to the marketplace to see the wolf with St. Francis.

Francis then preached to the people of the city, as he often did from place to place. Afterwards he said to the people, “You see here brother wolf, who has promised and pledged to me to not harm or destroy you anymore if you will promise to provide him daily sustenance. I stand as a witness between you and him that he will observe this agreement.” And the people all agreed to the agreement and that they would provide food for the wolf.

Then Francis, in front of all the people of the city, said to the wolf, “Do you, brother wolf, promise to observe these conditions before all these people and hurt neither man nor beast?” And the wolf knelt down and bowed his head and with gentle movements of tail and body and ears, showed by all possible signs that he would observe the agreement of peace. Francis said to the wolf, “I want, brother wolf, that in the same way you did show your pledge of faith outside the city walls, that before all the people you will renew that pledge and never make me, your bondsman, to be found false.”

Then the wolf, lifting up his paw, did place it in the hand of St. Francis. And with that act there was such a marvel and rejoicing among all the people – not only because of the strangeness of the miracle but because of the peace made with the wolf – that they began to cry aloud to God and to praise and bless Him who had sent St. Francis to them.

And the wolf lived two years in Gubbio and would enter like a tame creature into the houses, doing hurt to no one and no one doing hurt to him. He was kindly fed by the people and went about the city without even a dog barking at him. After two years the wolf died of old age and the people mourned because, when they had seen the wolf going about the city they remembered the miracles and words of St. Francis.

“Myth! Fable! Legend! Allegory!” or so many would say. But for those with faith in God and especially those who’ve seen His hand work in their lives, this is yet another, admittedly strange and wonderful testimony of God’s ability to do greater things than even were done in the days of the Apostles. “For with God, nothing shall be impossible.” (Luke 1:37)

Angel stories: Lights on the Road

Posted on September 18, 2013 by Mark McMillion

It was like being able to go back and see where you died. I recently went back to a country road west of Austin, Texas where, for all intents and purposes, I really should have died in October of 1969. It’s a sad, sobering story of what was truly God’s infinite mercy and my depraved wrongdoing.

This is another story, similar to the ones I wrote earlier, “Lucifer and the White Moths“, “The Radio Miracle” and “Don’t Ever Ask Again“. Those events all happened a few short months earlier in July/August of 1969.

You’d think, after all I’d experienced, that I’d be a good boy for the next 80 years. But that’s not what happened. Like I wrote about in “God Is Chance”, at this time I had a fancy European sports car which was in every way a real idol for me. After my near death experience involving drugs in the summer, I stopped using strong stuff. But I soon got back to smoking marijuana again. And later that fall I decided to go out for a “joy ride” with my girlfriend.

She and I were smoking marijuana, driving along winding Hill Country roads west of Austin at night and listening to Jimi Hendricks on the cassette player. I guess I was thinking, “Everything’s back to normal”. In the last month I’d been reading my Bible, a new thing for me, and praying. But I didn’t know who Jesus was; I wasn’t saved and I still was hanging out with my old friends.

The car could go very fast and I liked that. We were driving in an area where there was often a rock wall on one side of the road and a drop off down a steep hill on the other. And recently I went back to this place so I could add photos of the actually location.

What happened next was this. We were driving down a long straightaway that I knew took a slight turn to the right at the end of it. That’s what you can see in picture “A”.

While driving down the straightaway in the dark, probably doing 80 mph (about 135 kph), suddenly on the side of the road in the darkness, just before the curve, I saw two lights. I recognized that they were supernatural as this was in the middle of nowhere. And I said loudly in my mind, “There are angels here!”

Almost immediately I went into the turn. What I didn’t calculate in my driving was that the road not only turned to the right but it had a dip also in the road there. My car was going so fast that, because of the dip, the back end of the car spun around completely backwards, 180 degrees.

So the next thing I knew, we were going totally backwards at the same speed I went into the turn. I furiously clutched the car, looking behind me into the darkness, applying the brakes, trying to steer the convertible, going backwards at high speed on drugs. Utterly miraculously, we came to a stop on a small shoulder of the road around 100 yards passed the turn with the dip in the road. I turned off the engine and we sat there. I turned off Jimi Hendrix and by then all the effects of the marijuana were totally gone. The second picture “A” is the same turn and dip in the road, seen from further along and around the bend. And picture with “A” and “B” is taken approximately at the place where my car came to a stop, still backwards, around 100 yards past the turn and dip.

That moment was one of the greatest zeniths (or nadirs) of my life. If I ever, ever felt that I didn’t deserve to be alive right then, that was the place. After all God had done to save me from death and the devil just a few short months before, there I was back at it again.

Sin is not a popular or politically correct word nowadays. But I knew without a doubt that I had sinned and gone back to the ways that had nearly killed me before. I didn’t deserve to survive that experience. I deserved punishment, big time.

But God had shown me two angels just a few seconds before that incident who were there to somehow guide that spinning car, hurdling backwards through the darkness along that mountainous road so that the car came to a standstill instead of flipping over or going off a cliff.

The total, undeserved, mercy of God. My willful, sinful self. The revelation of angels to show it was an act of His unearned clemency. We were totally unhurt. The car didn’t even have a scratch on it. We drove back to Austin as I was silently in awe, deeply stunned, sobered and humbled by what had happened.

Why had this happened? First, I was not yet a Christian and didn’t have the power of salvation to give me the strength to flee temptation and follow Him in a new life. But God evidently had a plan for my life. It wasn’t His time or place for me to have a big car wreck as there were a number of things that kept happening during the fall of 1969, leading up to my meeting some young radical Christians during the winter who led me to receive Jesus.

But if I ever have any doubts about where Jeremiah said “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9), then I can think back to my depraved foolishness as I tempted fate and God after He’d delivered me from death just a few months earlier. “His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting“. (Psalms 103:17) “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.” (Psalms 34:7)

Morning Miracle

Posted on September 7, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Miracles sometimes happen when you really weren’t expecting them. This morning I woke up one and a half hours earlier than usual, wide awake and ready to start my day.

I had a light breakfast, took 20 minutes to read some devotional material and review some verses, my regular start to most days. It was still early and my folks were not up. (I’ve been living with my parents, both 91 for the last year as they asked me if I could move in and be a help to them.)

I was on my way out the door to go to the park for a walk and prayer time when I saw that the door to my dad’s room was just barely opened. I peeked in and saw my dad out of bed and standing up, but severely crouched over, as he always is nowadays. He seemed to be having difficultly so I knocked on the door. He quickly asked me to come in and help him. Just as I got to him, he could stand up no longer and fell backwards. I grabbed his arm to slow his fall so it was more or less a controlled let down to the floor. Then I noticed that directly behind him was a wooden piece of furniture that he almost certainly would have crashed his head on if he’d fallen alone, backwards to the floor.

I went to wake up my mom, she came down and together we decided how to help my dad to his feet and back to his bed. But as I was considering all that had just happened, I realized that I’d just been a part of another one of those “little miracles” that the Lord engineers and that so often we don’t even perceive or take note of.

Why did I wake up so early today? Why did I go past my dad’s room just at that time? Why was his door slightly open so I could see him there? What would have happened if he had fallen backwards and hit his head on that wooden furniture? Had God engineered the whole thing, causing all the pieces to be in those places at that time so that a serious injury didn’t happened to my dad when he was alone in his room in the early morning?

“Oh Mark, you’re always spiritualizing things! You were just lucky! Why make such a big deal about it? Why do you have to include ‘God’?! Why can’t you just leave God out of it and just realize that it was just a coincidence!”

I have a lot of friends who live in places where probably 99 people out of 100 would say just that. They live in atheist, “post Christian” societies and any mention of their being a God who can and does engineer little miracles like this is scoffed at and considered a “medieval” way of looking at things. It’s nice in some ways to live where I do now. Maybe 50% of the people in this city would possibly give God the credit and glory for making it so that my dad didn’t fall alone in his room this morning and have a serious injury.

God’s behind the scenes workings in our lives go virtually unnoticed most of the time. His behind the scenes workshops where He does most of His work are unknown, unseen and unrealized by the vast majority of people. So probably that’s why Jeremiah 10:23 says, “Oh Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.” Or like Solomon said in Proverbs 20:24, “Man’s goings are of the Lord, how then can a man understand his own way?”

If you are trying to live the light you have, trying to follow the Lord and are “acknowledging Him”, then according to Proverbs 3:6, “He will direct your paths.” It’s not really anything you do or anything special about you. Like someone said, “Right time, right place, God’s will.” We have very little to do with it besides just being “sheep” who follow “the Shepherd”. But it really does pay off. And sometime you get to see those little glimpses into the heavenly workings of His Spirit when He manifests Himself in His recognizable way to protect us and help us avoid serious accidents. “Eye has not seen, neither has ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. But God has revealed them unto us by His Spirit.” I Corinthians 2:9 & 10.

The Radio Miracle

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Mark McMillion

It took more than one experience to bring me out of my deep spiritual darkness, kind of like when a sculptor has to first knock off huge chunks of rock from a bolder before he can begin to make it look like a statue.

Maybe a week or so after I had my experience with Lucifer and the white moths, here in Austin, I was in my tiny apartment. And in torment. Indecision or what the Bible calls “double mindedness” can kill you. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways”, (James 1:8). That was really how I was.

I’d gotten a Bible from my parents and also taken some time to really apologize to them for the hurt I’d caused them over the last few years. We weren’t close but at least this was the beginning of a long term reconciliation. But I was very far from the person that God would have me to be.

In fact, as so often happened, I was going back to my old thought patterns of unbelief and skepticism. Things like, “That didn’t really happen! That was all in your mind! You just imagined all that, just stray thoughts bouncing around inside your brain!” That’s what I’d always thought before and now that I was “back to normal”; that was still my default mode of thought on all these things.

But then another series of thoughts were there. “It sure did seem real. It was more real than what I am experiencing right now. And it wasn’t really the first time because you’ve had a lot of experiences that are unexplainable unless there is some kind of spiritual world.”

So I was lying in my bed in the middle of the night, just tormented between these two worlds of thought. And I was desperate. I’d been reading the Bible every day, for hours. I was getting very little out of it because there was so much I didn’t understand. I was reading from Genesis to Exodus and on through it like that, heavy going.

Finally I’d just had enough. I got up out of bed, in my pitch black room, clasped my bible to my chest and said this prayer to God:

“God, if you are really there, you have to be bigger than my mind. You have to be stronger than me and my mind. And I am not going to do anything till you show me if you are there.”

Then in the total darkness I started trying to just shut down every single movement of my body, twitches, trembles, just any movement that would distract me from completely and utterly bringing my prayer to God, if He was actually there. And alone in darkness at what hour of the night I didn’t know, suddenly my clock radio on my refrigerator came on.

I certainly hadn’t set it to come on at what was around 3 in the morning. But just at that moment when I was the most desperate to have some kind of answer from God, the radio came on. And maybe you know this song that was playing right then because it was popular at that time,

“Lift up your fellow man, lend him a helping hand, put a little love in your heart.

You see it’s getting late, oh please don’t hesitate; put a little love in your heart.

And the world will be a better place, and the world will be a better place for you and me, just wait and see.”

Now maybe you’re an atheist and say right now, “Oh that was just an accident, just a coincidence.” At 3 AM my radio came on when I surly didn’t set it at that time. It came on right at the moment of my greatest desperation to have some kind of answer from God to overcome the domination my mind had on me. And on top of it all, an extremely significant song was on the radio right at that moment. You can call it a coincidence if you want to but I’d had things like this, although not this stunning, happen to me before.

I fell to the floor on my knees, overcome by that experience and the amazing answer to prayer. As I’ve shared in another post, it was for me almost like what happened to Jody Foster in the movie “Contact” when she first heard signals from outer space. Just indescribable amazement.

But there was more. As I was there in the darkness on my knees, I heard clearly two voices, with words I don’t think I’ll ever forget and which fundamentally spoke to my greatest weakness and changed my life. That story is going to be my next blog post, “Don’t ever ask again.“

“God is chance!”

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I was a freshman in university in Austin, Texas years ago, in the middle of a conversation with my friends when I blurted out, “God is chance!” At the time it really seemed like an epiphany.

If you’re an atheist, as I was, “Chance” seems to be the ultimate ingredient that’s caused everything. Atheists believe that everything “just happened” from a series of accidents. Those beautiful eyes of your loved one? Just a series of numberless mutations over trillions of years that ended up being a human eye. Or that flower, that strange bird, and on and on? Just chance, accidents, coincidences and happenstance.

My life back then was already on a huge rollercoaster with unseen forces I was totally unaware of. But I really believe that off Somewhere, Someone saw me say “God is chance” that day and kind of marked it down right then. Because for the next couple of years, things kept “happening” to me. And I gradually realized more and more that those things just defied the law of averages that I thought was the ultimate arbitrator of all that occurs on earth.

But like I said about reason in “Reason? Or the Miraculous”, it’s not like I don’t believe in chance. The Bible certainly talks about reason and it talks about chance too. In I Samuel 6:9 it says, “…it was a chance that happened to us.” And Ecclesiastes 9:11 says “…time and chance happen to them all.” On the other hand, some things are not chance. But so often our eyes are blinded to the spiritual cause and often angelic intervention that brought something on. I’ll give you an example.

For years I’d been an idol worshipper. No, not Moloch, Baal or Ashtoreth. I worshipped a certain kind of sports car. I’d had a picture of it on my bedroom wall since I was 14. I dreamed of it, I longed for it, I spoke of it and I was determined in my heart that I would have it, no matter what. And so, in university, I finally got it.

But it was like how the Israelites lusted after meat in the wilderness and finally God sent so many quail that they gorged themselves on the quail and many died. Speaking about this in Psalms 106.15, it says of God, “And He gave them their requests, but sent leanness to their souls”. That’s how that sports car was, something I “just had to have”. So I got it but God really “sent leanness” to my soul. In fact, He got a lot of mileage out of that mistake.

A few days after I got the sports car, I was driving near the campus, just bursting with pride. The top was down, I felt so totally cool and I was virtually expecting that hot women would be jumping into the passenger seat when I stopped at a red light. What I didn’t notice was a car that had stopped in the street ahead of me. While I was distracted, I plowed into the back of that stalled car. Because my car was so low to the ground, it went under that car, seriously disfiguring its high class looks and somewhat damaging the engine.

My response? Shock of course. And anger. But somehow in my heart, I knew it was more than an accident. I remember so distinctly either that I literally shook my fist into the air or, if I didn’t do it physically, I certainly did it in my heart and mind. Who was I shaking my fist at? “The Fates”, as I called them back then. I just knew that it was something with a message to it.

“So you want this fancy car? OK, you got it; but now this is going to happen.”

“Why?” I screamed in my heart. I just instinctively knew that it was more than happenstance. It was part of something that was greater than me. What, I totally didn’t know. Had “the Fates”, some mystical Greek gods, done this to me? But God had smashed my idol. “I will have no other Gods before Me,” He says. (Exodus 20:3)

Other things keep happening to me from time to time during those years. Some were “incredible good luck” and other things were “really bad luck”. But I kept all these things and pondered them, trying to make sense out of it. Now I know that much of the time, it wasn’t chance. It was the hand of God, allowing some things and keeping me back from others.

There were so many incredibly foolish things I nearly did or actually did do. But the hand of God either prevented me from doing them or kept me back from suffering very badly for my foolishness. Another example of this was when the police raided my apartment, looking for drugs. I wrote about this in “Up Against the Wall!”

“A man’s heart devises his way but the Lord directs his steps.” (Proverbs 16:9) In time and ultimately, like I wrote in “Lucifer and the White Moths”, the Lord delivered me from my unbelief and darkened life, translating me into the world of His Spirit. I found that my idea of “God is chance” was a very dim statement. But it was almost like the Lord decided to take me up on that one and kept letting “accidents” happen for a couple of years, just to show me that “there’s more than meets the eye”, a whole world of spirits and spiritual activity that we mortals really need to realize, acknowledge and get on the right side of, the side of the God of Abraham and His Son, Jesus.

Angel Story 1: Lucifer and the White Moths

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Mark McMillion

The first experience I had with an angel is one I probably won’t relate right here and now. It was the most traumatic and basically indescribable. Sadly but righteously, it was with Lucifer. He came to claim me, as was his right at that point in my life. I won’t relate it all here as it is not easy to describe or explain but I’ll try to do that sometime in a post or a video.

But that experience when I was 20 was I suppose the pinnacle experience of my life. The Bible talks about “some saved by fire” (Jude 23), that is certainly true with me. Or like Jesus said of Thomas, “Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed.” (John 20:29) A lot of things are not as much “by faith” for me because the Lord somehow let me see things so I sometimes feel like Thomas in the Bible. Some people in life-after-death experiences have an angel of God come and take them to heaven. It is such an incredibly wonderful experience that often they really don’t even want to come back to this world. In my case it was the opposite. But more about that at another time.

Fundamentally, categorically, absolutely that changed my life. At that moment when I struggled with every iota of soul and spirit I had within me just to not be taken from my body, I said in my mind, “If this is real, then there’s supposed to be the opposite of this. There is supposed to be a God of Love, a God of Truth and Light.” So I “prayed” at that moment to the God of the Bible to help me not die right then. I put “prayed” in quotation marks there because we so often think of prayer as a subdued religious ceremony, with our eyes closed and our hands folded. My prayer back then was from the deepest place of my existence, with every ounce of meaning I had in me.

I didn’t die and go with the devil to hell then. I couldn’t sleep for 3 days because I didn’t have the faith to sleep. I didn’t know what would happen to me if I went to sleep. But gradually, very gradually some sense of normalcy came back to my life. But it had changed, utterly. Paul, speaking of how God delivers people from Satan said “Who has delivered us from the power of darkness, and has translated us into the Kingdom of His dear Son.” (Colossians 1:13)

For me, I wasn’t even there yet. I heard someone say one time about great sculptors, when they’re going to make a statue, the first just start off with a big chunk of rock. Whack! They knock off one big piece. Whack! There goes another chunk. For me, it took quite a few whacks before I was even ready to become a Christian. First and biggest was just getting me to understand that there is a real, true, spiritual world. Seeing Satan and being drawn out of your body by him for your eternal damnation will do a lot to destroy your unbelief.

But there were other angels. And I think I’m going to try to make some kind of rating system for all this. Angels are not always, not even usually, 10 feet tall with white robes and big wings. I’ve never seen one of those. And some things are supernatural but you don’t see the angels involved although you know they must be there.

Here’s one like that. This event with Lucifer took place in a tiny efficiency apartment near the University of Texas campus. It was so traumatic and all consuming that I remained in something of a condition or state for a few days where the spiritual world was closer to being my real world than this physically one we all usually consider “the real world”.

But a somewhat lesser or minor thing that happened at that time was that one evening, probably 2 days after these huge events, I was in my bathroom. And it filled up with maybe 100 tiny white moths or butterflies. They were very benign and non threatening and I remember at that time that they seemed like angels or that perhaps God had allowed this to happen in the physical to represent what had happened in the spiritual. It says of Jesus, “Then the devil departed from Him and angels came and ministered to Him.” (Matthew 4:11) I didn’t know that verse as I didn’t know any verse in the Bible at that time. But I felt all those little white fluttering insects were symbolic of angels who’d come to be with me after I’d turned from my evil ways and had chosen the God of Abraham rather than the devil.

Bottom line for this first story: it was definitely an angel, just the wrong kind and the wrong one. He’d been allowed by God to come and claim my soul after I’d gone so far away from the truth and the light. As for the little white moths or butterflies, they weren’t angels. But God allowed them there right then to be a symbolic sign of the beginning of my altered spiritual condition.

Reason? Or the Miraculous

Posted on July 14, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against reason. Isaiah 1:19 says, “Come, let us reason together” says the Lord. And it says that Paul “reasoned” with the Roman governor, Felix (Acts 24:25). But let’s face it, the devil has gotten in somewhere with the whole thing about “reason” in more modern times. Because it seems like 9 times out of 10, when people talk about reason, the implication is that we should forget about the miraculous. “We should depend on our own reasoning”, they say, “our minds and our intellect.” The idea is that there really isn’t anything other or better or higher than that.

That’s a serious mistake. It’s “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. Or letting the pendulum swing too far in the other direction. It’s like what Jesus said, “These ought you to have done, and not to leave the other undone.”(Matthew 23:23) In other words in this case, we ought to use our minds but not to where we reject the supernatural and miraculous intervention of God.

Our minds don’t have to be considered our enemies. (Of course the unbelievers would hoot and squawk immediately at that idea there, if we were to even think that our minds could be our enemy.) But in the same way that our bodies can be our enemies if we let our physical desires and impulses take us over, our minds can be our enemies if we let our “carnal mind” (Roman 8:6) take first place in our decisions.

It’s a big subject but really important. Many people have faith in God, but it’s like they say, “Let’s not take this thing too far!” “Let’s not think that God can do anything outside of the rational laws of science that we all believe in today.” This seems to be the often unspoken faith of multitudes. So they limit God by their minds. It ends up just being unbelief or a very limited form of faith.

But as God so succinctly spoke to Job around 4000 years ago, “Should it be according to your mind?” (Job 34:33) Things were going really bad for Job. He’d been so good, really, and he’d tried so hard, sincerely. But then it seemed all hell was breaking loose. It just didn’t make sense! It wasn’t fair! And he was right in many ways; it didn’t make sense and it wasn’t fair, according to the natural, normal way that most people in their natural reasoning would look at things. But in the end it all worked out, totally contrary to how Job saw things happening and he ended up being doubly blessed.

In Isaiah 55: 8 & 9 God says, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are you ways My ways. For as the heaven is higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Our natural reasoning and understanding might make it through some situations but those things totally fail at other times.

Thomas Paine, author of “The Age of Reason”

But “reason” came to virtually replace God long ago. “The Age of Reason”, as they called it. It looked pretty good and there were a lot of good points there. But what was the end result? In turning to exalt and embrace Reason, the miraculous, the supernatural, the living presence of God not only took a back seat, it was kicked out of the car and left by the side of the road.

It certainly was not through Reason that I came to faith in God. It was the miraculous. But how many people of faith, regardless of their religion, really are looking for the miraculous intervention of the God of Abraham in their lives in these times? For so many, their faith is subservient to their reason. And perhaps this is because they are partially ashamed of their faith and don’t want others to think of them as strange or out of line with modern times.

This is what I wrote about in “Will He find faith on the earth?” Jesus virtually predicted that at the time of His return, the level of faith in the world would be at a very low ebb. It was the utterly miraculous that turned me from an atheist to a believer, even before I became a Christian. And that wasn’t just something that happened long ago. You can read “God’s Little Miracles” to find a miraculous thing the Lord did in my life just a few months ago.

So I’m thinking about writing some articles on some of the things I’ve experienced personally, not stories from centuries ago but things that have happened to me personally, that hopefully will inspire faith in others to know that God is not dead or even sick. I think I’ll call them Angel Stories. Here’s one about an incredible experience I had where angels saved me from death when I pretty much deserved death at that time. It’s called “Lights on the Road”.

Faith in the miraculous should come first, before our reason. We need both to be well balanced. But the presence of God should have first place in our sight, not our own reasoning. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your path.” Proverbs 3:5 & 6

He said it 3 times

Posted on June 7, 2013 by Mark McMillion

God doesn’t waste His breath. Like a good Father, He just expects that, if He says something, we’ll respond and do it.But on rare occasions, He said something three times. So, probably, whatever He said was important. One of those places is in Daniel chapter 8, the chapter I’m making the next video on currently. But let’s start off with what’s probably the most famous example of the Lord saying something three times.

After His resurrection, Jesus was with His disciples beside the Sea of Galilee. They’d just finished a fish supper that Jesus had prepared for them and it says in John 21:15-17, “So after they had dined, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs’ . He said to him a second time, ‘Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.’ He said to him, ‘Feed My sheep’. He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?’ Peter was grieved because He said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to Him, ‘Lord, You know all things. You know that I love You.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed My sheep’”.

That’s an amazing passage in Scripture. Jesus told Peter three times, “Feed My sheep.” It must have been that important to the Lord that He did something that emphatic and insistent. Feeding His sheep, teaching, instructing, nourishing and guiding the Lord’s sheep, His flock of believers is obviously just as important as it gets in God’s eyes.

And strangely, another time in the Bible it says that Peter was told something three times from God, in no uncertain terms. In Acts chapter 10 Peter was in Joppa in northern Israel. Peter was the head of the growing group of believers who spread Jesus’ message and truth, after He’d ascended to heaven years before. Peter was on a house top, in prayer, when in a vision he saw a sheet let down from heaven with all kinds of “unclean” animals. The Laws of Moses gave strict rules for the Jews as to what animals were “clean” to eat, permissible, and which ones weren’t.

So Peter sees this sheet coming down with these “unclean” animals and then he hears God’s voice, “Arise, Peter! Kill and eat!” Peter, being a righteous Jew replied, “Not so Lord, for I’ve never eaten anything that’s unclean.” And the voice said to him, “What God has cleansed, you do not call common.” (Acts 10:13-15)

It says, “This happened three times” (Acts 10:16) and then the sheet was let back up to heaven. It sounds like Peter was arguing with God but this seemed so contrary to everything Peter thought was righteous.Then it says that immediately there was a knock at the door downstairs at the house Peter was at. And the Lord told Peter that there were three men there who’d come to see him and that Peter should go with them, “doubting nothing”. (Acts 10:20)

“What’s the big deal with that?” you might say. The big deal is that these men at the door were Romans, “Gentiles”. The Jews weren’t supposed to have anything to do with Gentiles and certainly not go to their house. But Peter went, as the Lord had so firmly told him. The result? Peter preached to a big gathering of Gentiles, telling them about Jesus and they all experienced the infilling of the Holy Spirit, just as the first disciples had in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2.

Nowadays it’s easy for us to not appreciate all this. But it was a very, very big deal at that time. Basically this event was when the Lord opened the door clearly to non-Jews to receive all the blessing and provision of His promises, breaking down the wall between the Jews and the Gentiles, making it possibly for anyone through Jesus to receive salvation through Him. But God had to tell Peter plainly and emphatically, three times, that this was of Him and that Peter should go and flow with it, “doubting nothing.”

In Daniel chapter 8 something similar also happened. In a vision, Daniel was by the river Ulai, in what’s now modern Iran, and the angel Gabriel was commanded to explain what Daniel had just seen, a goat and a ram clashing in battle and the goat conquering the ram. But there was more to it, much more, and Daniel tells us he just didn’t understand it. But the angel Gabriel then tells Daniel three times in two verses that “at the time of the end shall be the vision”. (Daniel 8:17-19)

Daniel chapter 8 is a somewhat difficult chapter to understand or even to teach. Prophecy teachers through the years have had some huge debates about parts of it and I’ve been in some of those debates. Some say that it’s all already been fulfilled. But then we can go back to the words of Gabriel, spoken three times to Daniel, “at the time of the end shall be the vision.” At the time of the end. And we’re not there yet. But we may be getting real close.

[Since completing this blog post, I’ve also completed the full video on Daniel chapter 8. That video in English can be seen here.]

When God says something three times, it’s important. Whether it’s to feed the flock of God, or to not call unclean what God has cleansed, or that the prophecies of God are going to have a future, endtime fulfillment, God thought those were important enough to say it three times. Lord help us to get the point , to believe it and act upon it.

Red lights and the Sabbath

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I was out for a walk. I think it was a Tuesday. I had so much to do that it was really weighing on me. In Nehemiah it says “the people had a mind to work.” (Nehemiah 4:6) I guess I’m like that sometimes. I have so many things that I feel I need to do and they all seem to be within God’s will and the way He is leading.

But sometimes I don’t take a break. Or I have to make a conscious effort to do so. Also, I am not one who is really feeling bound in a legal sense to “keep the Sabbath”. Paul said “One man esteems one day above the other, another esteems ever day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” (Romans 14:5)

So I don’t have a real big thing about not working on Sundays. And I had worked the rest of the afternoon Sunday after I got back from church. But I wasn’t feeling really good. I just couldn’t understand why. I was thinking about all I had to do as I was walking down the sidewalk towards the park.

I finally just shot a quick prayer up to the Lord to please help me and give me some hint or nudge as to what was wrong. Immediately my attention was drawn to a bright red lawn ornament in a yard I was passing. It was the only thing red in the whole scene I could see.

I didn’t get it. So I “thought” to the Lord, “What does that mean?” Again immediately He turned my attention a different direction and down at the end of the street was a bright red stop sign.

“Stop.”

“Oh. I get it. You want me to stop. You don’t want me to keep putting my shoulder to the bolder, to take up my cross, to lay down my life and to keep sacrificing and getting things done for You. You want me to take a day off. It doesn’t matter if a bunch of stuff doesn’t get done today. I can do it tomorrow. Maybe I could have even just taken the day off on Sunday like You were talking about on the mountain with Moses. OK, I get it. Yes sir; good idea.”

And this has happened before. I’m one of those who don’t believe we are still under the Laws of Moses. If you want some real controversy, start getting into that subject. This may mean I’m an Antinominalist. But I’ll need to do some more theology reading before I’m sure about that.

But what I’ve found is that there are all kinds of good reasons and wisdom in the Old Testament law. Yes, I eat pig. But I sure want to know it’s been overseen by government regulations or I might get trichinosis. Pig was considered unclean in the Mosaic Law and there were oodles of requirements and commandments which all had a huge amount of wisdom and reason to them. So many of them were quite scientific as well, even though back at that time they might not have had the knowledge that we do now.

I’ve learned though experience that “if you don’t make an offering, sometimes God takes a collection”. If I don’t just take a day off once a week, I end up really getting run down and tired in the next few days. When the Communists took over Russia, they tried to institute a 10 day working week, instead of 7, just to get more labor out of everyone. But it didn’t work. We just seem to have some kind of inward clock that says we need to knock it off after around 7 days. Even if we are no longer under the binding legalism of the Mosaic Law, we ignore its wisdom at our peril.

Well, thank the Lord for the operation of His Holy Spirit. On that walk, the Spirit was there to answer my prayer and even use the only red things that I could see, first the lawn ornament and then the stop sign, to get through to me that it was time for a day off.

If you’re feeling you are no longer under the law of Moses and you’re a “free man” now, you’d still better watch out if you ignore the wisdom and will of God. You’re safest if you are operating with the directions of the Holy Spirit. Then you may still be able to be guided by the Lord. And that’s really what it’s all about. “If you be led of the Spirit, then are you not under the Law.” (Galatians 5:18)

Miracles Per Hour

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I was thinking tonight about the idea of “miracles per hour”. I’d just told one of the teachers at school about what happened to me last week. I wrote up that and posted it here under the title “God’s Little Miracles.” So she said, “Wow, you were really lucky.” That’s often how people look at such things when they don’t have a life based on faith in God.

But it got me thinking about what happened last week. It wasn’t luck, it was a miracle. And I thought about how I’ve been in places where the “miracles per hour” were pretty high. But in other places and at other times, there really didn’t seem to be very many miracles happening at all.

And I sort of envisioned some place in the heavenlies where the “Angels’ Regional Command Center” is, or even the local command. It’s pretty clear from the Bible that there are different ranks and orders of angels and I can only assume they must have organization and communications of all kinds. And I assume angels must even be able to measure quite a lot of things that we hardly even have names for. Do you think they have some gauge somewhere that measures “miracles per hour”? Do they determine between “miracles that were recognized” and the ones that went unrecognized?

Let’s face it, there are oodles of miracles every day that we don’t recognize or that don’t appear to us as miracles. I drive 30 miles a day on one of the busiest highways in the US. Every day I get home safely, I know it’s because of the protection of the angels of God. All the things that don’t happen every day, the crazy drivers we don’t encounter, the germs that don’t take root in our bodies, so many things are part of God’s supernatural protect which we don’t usually acknowledge or even think about.

But at other times in my life, I’ve been in situations where there was a pretty high “miracles per hour” reading. And that’s fascinating to me. Why are some times and places seemingly more spiritual than others? I spent the summer of 1971 witnessing daily on the streets of Berkley, California and it was one of the most spiritual times, full of miracles, that I’ve ever experienced. The “miracles per hour” were really high and the friends I worked with back then just almost took it for granted that miracles would happen that day. The spiritual world just seemed much closer and more real, regularly manifesting itself, both the good spirits of God and the evil spirits of Satan. So many people were coming to crises and life-changing experiences at that time and for those of us who were working for the Lord, it was a very busy time. And I think the angels and their local and regional commanders were really busy, really working overtime, if that’s the right way to express it, because there were lots of spiritual manifestations back then. Another time like that for me was eastern Europe in the 1990’s.

In the early church, it says at times “many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.” (Acts 4:23, 5:12, 14:3) It must have been that miracles were almost commonplace and just expected daily, because they were happening so often. The “miracles per hour” meter at the angels’ office was really buzzing. Maybe they have one to register “recognized miracles” too? Those are the ones that not only help people but they’re also recognized by folks here in this world and we’re struck with awe at the power of God and our faith is increased, often dramatically.

But equally, and sadly, it seems our unbelief has almost a power to halt the Lord’s miracle working power. It says of Jesus, “He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” (Matthew 13:58) Think of it. Jesus Himself was hindered by the unbelief he encountered in some people. But when He was to do some of His greatest miracles, He put everyone out of the room except Peter, James and John, His closest disciples with the greatest faith. (See Luke 8: 51-54) He created an atmosphere of faith around Him. Of course with Jesus the “miracles per hour” were just at the maximum since it was the Lord Himself here on earth in His ministry. But the early apostles carried on the ministry of miracles. And if you know anything of some of the great people of God after that, Saint Patrick for example or St. Francis and many other lesser know people of God, miracles were a regular part of their lives.

So often we’re like the ones of old, “their eyes were closed” (Luke 24:16) and we just don’t recognize and see spiritually what’s happening right in front of us: an astounding act of God. But He’s still very much the God of miracles. And you may find yourself in situations sometimes where the “miracles per hour” at the local angels’ headquarters is really rising. God bless you with faith for, and the eyes to see, miracles.

Mark McMillion

Creeds and Deeds, Facts and Acts

Category Archives: Angels, Miracles and the spirit world