Category Archives: Basic Christianity

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

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

So, Mark, are you religious?

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“So, Mark, are you religious? Do you think that religion will solve the problems of the world today?”

You’ll hardly every find me using that word, “religious”. I think that word is only twice found in the Bible. I’m not religious, but I found out by severe experience that there is a spiritual world. That Satan, Lucifer is real and so is the God of the Bible.

You don’t like that? I know how you feel. But when reality and truth raised their strange heads directly into my life, then the wise thing to do was to just accept it, whether it was my former viewpoint or not.

That’s how it is for me. There is a spiritual world. The most severe, taxing, words-fail-me-to express experience of my life involved coming to find that there is a spiritual world, inhabited by good and bad spirits. And I had to make an immediate decision at that time as to which group I wanted to align myself with.

That wasn’t religion; please don’t demean me and minimalise me by using that now-hated word. But truth it was; the most fundamental battlefront and expose of truth that could happen.

I don’t come here to discuss religion but to tell you what I found from the most existential personal battle I ever experience in my 70+ years of my life. Don’t talk to me about religion. You are seriously missing the point. It’s the spiritual world I found was real and which I love to talk about, whether it be the miracles I’ve experienced or the fundamental truths I’ve based my life on since I was 21.

Face it. You are trying to trivialize me and mock me when you talk about religion. If there is a spiritual world, and that is what I found, then YOU may find that YOU’re ill-prepared and on shaky ground, if you’ve no knowledge or experience of that realty.

And probably a little “PS” needs to be added. It’s possible that someone reading this might think, “Why did he get so upset? Wasn’t that just a simple, innocent question Mark was asked?”

What I wrote above was the result of a conversation and experience I had with someone. In that situation, it was clear through the tone of voice and overall demeanor of the person I was talking to that it was not a sincere, seeking question but a snarky, veiled attempt to hang the “religious” label on me.

I can see how that question asked by someone else, seeking to understand me better and what I stand for, might have said the same thing. In that case, it would be easy to hear the sincerity in their voice and in that situation I would have answered completely differently.

 

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.

 

 

What has the Lord already done?

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So often Christians pray but the Lord’s already answered. Moses was almost overwhelmed by the calling he was given by God and he knew his own weaknesses. But God told him, “What is that in your hand?” (Exodus 4:2)

In Moses’ hand was his own old, personal staff. But when Moses cast it to the ground, it turned into a writhing serpent. The lesson is, so often the Lord has already given us what we need for our calling and battle. But then we don’t recognize it or even see it.

It’s just so fundamental: you’ve got to see God. In this case it doesn’t mean to see the Ancient of Days in His glory but you really do have to see what the Lord has done and is doing in your life. And I think almost all of us Christians are somewhat deaf, dumb and blind to a degree in the things of the Lord.

In one of the greatest crisis of my life, in the aftermath of my divorce, I was so much groping for understanding of it all and desperate to be free from the bitterness and hurt I felt. I knew I had some deep problems but I couldn’t find the way forward and really get any kind of handle on what the Lord was doing.

In abject desperation I looked again at the only really clear verse in the Bible that talks about bitterness, Hebrews 12:15. “Looking diligently lest any man fail the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled.” I had reviewed that verse so many times and so many people had shared it with me that I was almost sick of it. But still I was floundering .

Finally I thought to try to go back and squeeze that verse again, like if you do a second or third squeeze of an orange. Was there some juice in that verse I was missing? I looked again at it slowly and deeply. “Looking diligently lest any man fail the grace of God…”

What does that mean? How in the world can you “look diligently..”? But the verse goes on to say that if you don’t “look diligently”, then that is when you “fail the grace of God” and a root of bitterness springs up. Therefore it must mean that the antidote and prevention of bitterness is to “look diligently”.

It came to me that it means that you have to see God in things. You have to look and believe that there is something there from Him for you, a lesson, a way of escape, some “grace of God”, as the verse says, that can be missed if we don’t look diligently.

So I realized more deeply than ever before that we have to “see God”. We have to see the Lord in things and what He is doing, in spite of what it really looks like that people are doing. Joseph in Egypt told his brothers,

“You meant it for evil but God meant it for good.” (Genesis 50:20) An incredible verse and possibly one of the best examples in the Bible of someone not getting bitter because he truly “looked diligently”.  Joseph really saw the hand of God in his life, regardless of what his brothers had done to him.

We just have to do that. We have to see what is already in our hand, what has God already given us, or what has God allowed and His hand even ordained, even though it looks in the physical and temporal to be totally against us and even contrary to God’s will.

So one of the greatest things we can do or strive to try to do is to see the Lord in things. The story is told of a man in the flood, on his roof as the waters rose. Some locals came around with a boat to rescue him but the man refused, saying “No thanks, I’m trusting the Lord!” Two more times that happened and then the floods rose and the man drowned.

In heaven the man was questioning God. But God said in return, “What do you mean? I sent that boat around 3 times!” The man didn’t see what God was doing and very often we don’t either. We don’t recognize the hand of God in our lives, or His input, His answers, His provision, His outstretched hand with the answer to our needs.

God help us all to have seeing eyes and hearing ears. He’s so often already answered prayer, already answered or is answering. May He help us all to be spiritually awake enough to recognize it and to go forward with his answers and provision.

The horse latitudes

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In the time of sailing ships, they’d often get stuck in “the horse latitudes”, a place in the Atlantic where the winds were often calm and the ships would stay for weeks, without wind in their sails. They’d end up having to get towed by row boats of their crew to zones where the winds would be there again.

Sometimes we ourselves are in “the horse latitudes” in our lives. It reminds me of what the ancient Jews said, “We see not our signs”. (Psalm 74:9) God seems to be silent. Our ability to “discern the times”, as Jesus called it, evidently has diminished. (Matthew 16:3)

Before, we were swept along by the mighty winds of God’s will and were able to see the hand of God closely guiding our lives. We felt at the apex of history, a part of it and willing to do what we could to further the cause of Christ and to see truth and justice triumph over darkness and deceit.

But then we find ourselves in the horse latitudes. The clarity, so strong in other times, appears to abandon us. Everything feels to be relative. You are stilled, like a ship in a calm on an open ocean.

Perhaps earlier, a calm is all you prayed for, as a respite from the storms that were assailing you. But now you pray for clarification, for the hand of God to even send lighting on a dark night to illuminate, for wind, for direction in your surroundings, to help you know where you stand, what’s around you and where you are going.

I’ve certainly been in the horse latitudes for periods in my life. It’s like the verse about how “the Lord will restore the years that the locusts have eaten”. (Joel 2:25) But I suppose there must be these pauses, these stops, even as there are in a piece of music, to complete the symphony of our lives.

Maybe the Lord does it to see if we’re satisfied, if we’ve gone as far as we want to go. Are we ready to quit? Had enough? Ready to throw in the towel and to sink into somnolent surrender?

Or are you looking for a breath of wind? Are you looking for the next leading from God? Are you looking for the wind to blow, the lights to come on, for the vision in the night, like Paul experienced when he saw a man of Macedonia in a dream saying “Come over and help us”. (Acts 16:9)

Paul and his companions could have just thrown in the towel. “Well, the Lord has stopped leading us. We tried to do this and that but He’s not leading any more so I guess it’s all over. Time to go back to Jerusalem and get my job back with the Pharisees.” No, Paul didn’t say that, even though he might have felt at that time that he was in the horse latitudes, unsure which way the wind blew and feeling in a bit of darkness at the moment.

But then it came; the wind began to blow. A direction and the presence of God began to be made manifest, as He’s done so many times to His servants. Elijah, alone in his cave, thought that he was the only one that was left of the faithful in Isreal. But the Lord told Elijah that “7000 have not bowed the knee to Baal”. (I Kings 19:18) “And besides that, Elijah, I’ve got a new direction for you. You need to get up and get moving”, just like Paul needed to do some 800 years later.

The Lord sends the wind after the stultifying calm in the horse latitudes. It’s not the end; just a bend in the road, a lull before the magnificence of the next stanza in the sympathy of our lives.

Are you becalmed in “the horse latitudes”? It almost reminds me of the verse in John 5 about the man by the pool of Bethesda, “waiting for the moving of the waters” (John 5:3). You have to admit, the things of the Lord do sometimes work that way. I think about Cornelius in Acts 10, a man evidently faithful all his life.

And then one day the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Your prayers are come up as a memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa.” (Acts 10: 4 & 5) You can read Acts 10 to find out how that turned out and how the history of Christianity and human history itself was changed by the Lord honoring the faithfulness of that man.

But if you’re in a calm and stillness, when you’re hoping for the leading and intervention of God in your life, do keep holding on. Keep praying, keep believing. God’s delays are not denials. Wait till the lights come on. Wait for the winds to pick up and for the Lord to set your sails again with the wind of His will.

If you’re in the horse latitudes, just hold on. It can be scary, it can be almost suffocating. But the Light of the Lord and the wind of the Lord never fail to show up in our lives, even if there are pauses from time to time. “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thy heart.”  (Psalm 27: 14)

Floors and ceilings

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Most of us want to hit the ceiling, but we aren’t always as thankful for the floor. We mostly want to ascend the heights of the Lord, to have the thrills of heaven and the visions He gives, from time to time. But perhaps we should be more thankful for the floors He provides. That’s how I am now. I’m seeing how I need to be thankful for how the Lord provides the floors and often even strengthens them and raises them.

Tonight I had friends to pray with. I wasn’t just alone in my room, going through my battles of the day alone. I know, lots of people do that and I’ve certainly had times like that. But presently He has given me a good and solid discipleship couple here, who I can pray with, talk with, fellowship with and just be in the Lord with.

All the lonely people, where do they all belong? There certainly is a time to get alone with the Lord and it’s a known fact that many of God’s saints had years where they were often alone with only the Lord as their companion and friend. But then, “The Lord sets the solitary in families”.  (Psalm 68:6)

One of the first things God ever said was, “It is not good for man to be alone.”  (Genesis 2:18) And when Jesus described the final days before His return, one of the characteristics of those times, Jesus said, was “Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold.”  (Matthew 24:12) What an apt and brief synopsis of our present modern world.

But for those of us in the Lord, He often engineers ways for His sheep to find other sheep, for them to find the fellowship, warmth and camaraderie of fellow believers. There’s just something about it. We’re just made for this, being together, bouncing things off of each other, being in community, hanging out with friends and our family, if nothing else our spiritual family.

Believe me, I know so many really don’t have this. So, so many are alone, and just that experience can contribute to mental anxiety, depression, negative thoughts and premature old age, not to mention succumbing to drug or alcohol addiction and even suicidal thoughts. And so often it’s because someone is a sheep of God who is separated from the flock.

What a wonderful verses that is, “Underneath are the everlasting arms.” (Deuteronomy 33:27) If we will receive it and recognize it, the Lord doesn’t just have our backs but He’s got our floors. “Whosoever shall fall on this stone...”. (Matthew 21:44) The Lord talked about building our house on a rock. We’ve got good floors because we’ve got a good foundation, which is actually built upon a Rock, the Lord Himself.

The problem of course is that we rather easily get our eyes off of this. Like Peter, we start looking at the waves, start looking at ourselves, our present conditions, anything actually as long as it doesn’t involve our remembering the foundations of our faith and the multitude of promises that the Lord has made, to “be with us always, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:20)

So if you aren’t exactly hitting the ceiling right now, maybe at least you can be thankful for your floor. Or the Lord’s floor that He keeps under us, all the things that don’t happen to us each day because of His protection. The accidents that don’t happen, the sicknesses we don’t experience, the overall good fortune that is almost always a constant of our lives.

“Mark! What are you talking about!?! Mark, I’m sick, my kids turned against me and the Lord! I don’t have almost any friends! I’m struggling to pay my bills!!”

Yep, that does happen to most of us, at times. But here’s a verse that has greatly inspired me and one that I really recognized when I came to the Lord as being true, even during the horrific times before I got saved, when I was on drugs, in mental anguish and in many ways suffering the torments of hell, while just living here on earth as a college student.

Here’s that verse that I experienced during those times, even before I got saved. “The Lord will not allow us to be tempted above that we are able to bear. But will, with the temptation, also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it.” (I Corinthians 10:13)

Truly, things can get really rough, really. But for those who know the Lord, He always makes a way to escape and doesn’t let us be tempted above that we’re able to bear. He prompts us to phone someone and ask for prayer. Or even to ask if we can come to their house and visit before we go crazy. Or He speaks to our heart. Or we unexpectedly meet someone who turns out to be the Lord’s love for us.

“Been down so long, it looks like up to me”, someone once said. I’ve experienced that. Still, even there, God put a floor. “If the foundation be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3) God’s foundation doesn’t get destroyed. It’s just good to remember this and to even claim His promises like this at times. Certainly our own foundations can be destroyed, especially if we’re building and standing on foundations and floors that are not of Him.

“Underneath are the everlasting arms.” And He even does the work of helping us to somehow recognize it, to “see God” or at least His workings in our lives. Thank God for the floors; they are just as important as ceilings.

 

An Answer from the Lord

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I got a little answer from the Lord today to a major question that’s been on my heart a while. He’s so faithful to get through to us with some new viewpoint or insight on what’s been a personal dilemma. For me, it’s been about how much I should be involved in what many could consider just worldly, secular politics.

Politics is the background I come from. I was planning for a political career before the Lord really “rang my bell” with a horrific near-death experience while I was in university that thrust me from atheism into being a startled believer. Months later I came to Christ and became after that a missionary abroad for close to 40 years.

I embraced the words of Jesus that He spoke to His disciples and took those to be His words to me. His cause became my cause, His solution to the problems of individuals and the world at large became what I’ve held to be the highest and best path for all mankind.

But for a couple of years, I’ve been deeply concerned about situations happening in my local community. I wrote about that in a recent article, “Checking your local school board”.

All the while though, there’s been this gnawing question on my heart, “Are you getting tripped off? Moving from your calling as a Christian missionary and disciple back into your former ways and mindsets?” It’s been a real question on my heart as I try to be certain that I’m following the Lord’s leading and not my own personal inclinations.

Today though, I feel I’ve had a breakthrough with this uncertainty. So often with these things, it’s just a simple thought that comes to you, a new viewpoint that you’d not had before that brings light and simplicity as well as clarity and relief. The Lord put this whole question about involvement with the local school crisis into a framework of what some have called “consider the poor”. This comes from the verse in Psalm 41:1 that says, “Blessed is he that considers the poor, the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble.”

The whole Bible is full of this, as was the life of Jesus on earth. He said for us not only to love God but to love our neighbor. To explain, He told the story of “The Good Samaritan”. The Samaritan stopped on his way to help a man who’d been beaten by robbers. According to Jesus, several very religious priestly types had already passed by before but they’d done nothing for the beaten man. In other words, taking personal, physical action to alleviate the wrongs we are confronted with in this world is definitely what Jesus did Himself and what He taught in the gospels as well.

And this morning the Lord brought back to me a time when I was in my early 30’s, a missionary in Vienna, Austria with my wife and kids, trying to reach the nearby closed-to-the-gospel countries of Communist eastern Europe. We’d taken some clothes and food to a nearby camp for Romanian refugees who were in very meager circumstances. It was a way to get to know them, to try to help and to try to bring the gospel message to those folks.

But it created a stir among some of our missionary friends who thought we were going down a strange path, getting off into social work and humanitarianism, rather than really sticking to evangelism. Then, back then, someone shared  some wise council with us on this subject. It went something like this, “Feed the poor and cloth the needy if it gives you an opportunity to share the truth and love of God with them. But don’t let feeding the poor become your main occupation. Continue to primarily follow the example of the Early Church in putting salvation and ministering the Word first.”

This was such a help at that time to clarify the place and priority of this kind of activity. And it was a very similar feeling I had in the Lord’s thoughts this morning. I came away with the feeling that the Lord approved of my concern for the situation in the schools near me. It doesn’t have to be a trip-off or a departure from Christian discipleship to be involved and active in that.

But at the same time, there’s the gentle guidance that it shouldn’t become my all in all. And I do approach it as an activity that the Lord is leading me to be involved with, rather than as a political activist of some political party.

And meanwhile I still have plenty of other things that the Lord has done in my life, such as the two web sites and the YouTube channel in many languages that I’ve been maintaining for the last few years.

It just helps to know that I’ve gotten a word from the Lord on this, some direction and guidance on how a measured approach to these present distresses in society around me are things that He approves my taking some time and involvement with.

Maybe it’s like what Jesus said, “These ought you to do, and not leave the other undone.” (Matthew 23:23) I feel freer to go forward with these things but to also keep it all in perspective within the overall plan of God in my life. I hope it’s ok to share this personal lesson and victory with you as we all individually keep looking to the Lord for His daily leading in our lives. God bless you!

 

Checking your local school board

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I’m flooded daily with info/spin regarding our society. But I’ve come to feel that the local schools in, not my country but my county is the realm in which I can and should try to take action.

In all the overstatements and hyperbola that’s so normal now, I hesitate to explain how important I’ve come to see simple school board elections going on in the 20 miles around me. In the last few months I’ve often spoken at school board meetings for the independent school district that I live in, which has around 40,000 students.

Again, there’s so much overstatement in our times that if I try to tell you what’s going on, you’ll very easily default to the “my eyes glaze over” attitude that so many of us have had to take on, just to survive all that we’re almost assaulted with.

But, friends, this is not about the border, not  about gun rights or black lives matter or Afghanistan, Hillary, Hunter, Benghazi, Israel, Iran, inflation or the price of gasoline. This is about your and my children and grandchildren. It’s plainly and simply as clear as that.

Let me offer you a realistic scenario that’s not at all outside the possible. Your 11 or 12 year old son, daughter or grandchild comes home from school and wants to talk with you or their parents. Haltingly, they announce that they’re no longer the gender they were born with. They explain that they’ve been learning in public school that they’re free to choose their gender and that they can be liberated from the shackles of society’s bonds and “to be what they inwardly have come to realize they really are.”

Ones in school have been helping them in this “transition”, there are medical procedures that have been offered them and they feel they have the boldness to break free and to change their sex and their identify.

You gasp. “Where did you get that idea?!” They calmly explain that they’ve been getting council and help for months if not years from teachers and councilors at the public school you’ve been trusting was taking care of the most precious thing in your life, your child or grandchild. But it is too late.

Without your knowledge, this influence has been going on for months or years in the public school your child or grandchild has been going to. And by the time you find out about it, it’s too late. They openly now wear clothing contrary to the gender they were born. They’ve morphed into another person than the one you raised. You are helpless, enraged and desperate. But it’s too late.

And this scenario is playing out in innumerable families across America and the world for that matter. While parents and grandparents were lulled into a false sense of security that “certainly our children are safe in the public schools of Texas!” or where ever you live, these outside forces have persistently and with great organization and cunning been able to implement agendas in schools across the country that have made this nightmare a reality for parents and grandparents across this nation.

Is there any solution? Can anything be done? If we change Presidents, will that change things? Or change governors or senators? From what I’ve been experiencing, I’ve found that the lynchpin in all this lies much closer to the local level. Evidently the real center of power in these things is the local school board that oversees the local schools in your area. Where I live, there are 7 members on the school board. Presently, one of them is a dedicated Christian, vehemently opposed to the gender dystopia that is funneled into the school district classrooms from “woke”, ultra leftist gender-bender organizations at the national level.

And there are school board elections coming up in the elections in November. While we are so swapped with controversies about national elections, the fact is that the members of your local school board are the ones who make the decisions as to what is let into the curriculum of the schools your kids and grandkids go to. And what is kept out.

You didn’t know that? The local media didn’t report any of this? They don’t because even here in supposedly ultra Christian central Texas, virtually every element of the media is safely in the hands of the most “progressive” elements of the leftists. So what I’m sharing here just goes unreported.

I grew up in a media family and was around newspapers almost daily from the time I was 4. This is the background I was brought up with and it grieves me how much the modern media has ceased to portray any form of balanced, unbiased information.

The bottom line? If you don’t know where to put your time and energies, I suggest you check out the situation in your local schools where your kids and grandkids are being educated. Concerned, often Christian, parents and grandparents have been “flipping” local school boards in Texas and elsewhere over the last year or so and have been able to turn the tide of ungodly filth that has made such an inroad into the lives of our children and grandchildren. “Woke” school trustees have been voted out in elections and ones with traditional values have been voted in to turn back the influx of evil that has been filing schools.

Thank God we still have a pretty good dose of democracy still with us. I mean really, thank God. Elections can still change things, especially at the local level. So, I suggest you perhaps look into it. What kind of “gender studies” are your children and grandchildren being subjected to in elementary and middle schools, not to mention high schools? What kind of books do they find in the school libraries? Have you ever looked at some of those books? So often books are there that are literally “as gross as it gets”, fully illustrated. Your local media didn’t tell you that? No, they usually don’t.

This may be one of the greatest spiritual battles of our times, of our generation. It reminds me of the place in Revelation where it says “The dragon stood before the woman to devour the child as soon as it was brought forth.” (Revelation 12:4) Whether the Dragon devours children though abortion, before birth, or whether it devastates the souls of children through gender dystopia in public schools, either way the devil is in an active onslaught against children in these times and he’s gotten away with a lot.

“The thief comes not but to kill and to steal.” (John 10:10)

In our times, if the devil can’t kill them through abortion, he now tries to steal them in public schools after they are born. So there is nothing new under the sun.

But if you’re waiting for the news of this to appear on your local TV, you may not hear of it until your children tell you they want a sex change, if then. And it will be too late.

In summation, simply put, check it out. Before it’s too late. Which it already almost is.

Jesus returned to earth in 70 A.D.?

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Did Jesus of Nazareth’s 2nd coming happen in 70 A.D? Did the fulfillments of dozens of prophecies reach their final climax then? Don’t laugh. Sadly there has been a ripple in the community of those who believe in the Lord’s return, somehow gazing toward this view that the return of Jesus to reign and rule happened in 70 AD.

Instead of sharing thoughts I have on this, I think it would be best to just share what the Early Church Fathers said on this subject. Several of these men died a martyr’s death. And they lived and led the Christians at the time when the vehement fires of Christian discipleship were at their strongest, in the first one to three hundred years after the ascension of the Lord.

If anyone had a close understanding of the original mindset of the “church” that Jesus left behind on earth, it would be these men and women. Did they believe the Lord had come back in 70 AD? Were they looking to that date as the time of the fulfillment of most all prophecies?

Of course you know the answer. None of them talked or taught that way. They all looked forward to the future, yet-to-be-fulfilled return of the Lord, after 42 months of great tribulation and the revelation of the endtime antichrist spoken of in prophecy throughout Scripture. Here’s what they said.

Barnabas, who  traveled with the Apostle Paul,  wrote: “The final stumbling block approaches…for the whole past time of your faith will profit you nothing, unless now in this wicked time we also withstand coming sources of danger….then the evil one Antichrist may find no means of entrance….” (Epistle of Barnabas, chp.4)

Justin Martyr (100-165) wrote: “The man of apostasy, [Antichrist] who speaks strange things
against the Most High, shall venture to do unlawful deeds on the earth against us the Christians..” (Dialogue with Trypho, chp.110)

Irenaeus (138-202)  a contemporary of  Justin Martyr, wrote: “And they, the ten kings who will arise, shall lay Babylon waste, and burn her with fire, and shall give their kingdom to the beast antichrist and put the church to flight” (Against Heresies, V, chp.26)

Tertullian (150-220)  a contemporary of  Irenaeus,  wrote: “The souls of the martyrs are taught to wait [Rev.6:9-10] that the beast Antichrist with his false prophet may wage war on the Church of God…” (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chp.25)

Cyprian (200-258)  a contemporary of  Tertullian,  wrote: “The day of affliction has begun to hang over our heads, and the end of the world and the time of the Antichrist to draw near, so that we must all stand prepared for the battle…” (Epistle, 55, 1)

Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386),  wrote: “The church declares to you the things concerning Antichrist before they arrive…it is well that, knowing these things, thou shouldest make thyself ready beforehand.” (Catechetical Lectures, 15,9)

And there is much more than this, from the pillars of Christianity from the Early Church Fathers to modern times, pointing towards the future coming of the Lord as well as the end time events that the Bible says will happen in the very final days before His return. If you have an interest in these things and want to read more on this, you could go to this link, https://earlychurchbelief.blogspot.com/2008/08/early-church-fathers.html

But certainly some will ask, “Why does any of this matter?”

If the enemy of God can get us to drop our spiritual sword and shield, then he gains victory over us. And it can be a very disarming thought that virtually all Bible prophecy was fulfilled in 70 AD, that the climactic, world- shattering prophecies of Daniel, Revelation and many others in the Bible, not to mention the words of Jesus Himself, were all drained of their significance at the time of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

It’s like that cartoon I put in another article on this subject, which I’ll add again here. “Relax, it all happened in 70 AD.” Exactly, if that’s the conclusion you come to. Relax.

Except that that’s not the voice of the Lord and the doctrine isn’t either.

I’ve tried to make this article short enough so that folks will feel they can read it without getting bogged down. If you’ve somehow come in contact with this doctrine, it’s technical name is “preterism”, I hope that these quotes on the subject from the Early Church Fathers will persuade you that the earliest Christians did not at all look at 70 AD as “the end”. But they looked forward, as many of us now do, to a coming return of the Lord to establish His Kingdom on earth. God bless you.