Category Archives: Insights and personal views

16 tons, what do you get?

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When I was a kid, there was a pop song whose words mystified me. My dad explained that it was about an American coal miner trapped in debt slavery to the mining company he worked for. The company owned the grocery store where he bought food, and his wages were set so low that he could never earn enough to escape his debt.

The refrain went like this:

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ’cause I can’t go—
I owe my soul to the company store.

My dad’s explanation was a real eye-opener for an eight-year-old. It was an inflection point in my growing awareness of basic economics and the harsh realities of this world. The singer laments that Saint Peter shouldn’t call him home to heaven because he still owes not only his bill but, in a sense, his very soul to the company store.

Bonded labor in that form no longer exists here in the United States, as far as I know. But severe poverty, often driven by heartless mercantilism, has been a reality for people throughout history. John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, written in 1939, was a blistering critique of the conditions farm workers faced in California at the time—working for 25 cents a day, barely staying ahead of starvation.

In recent months, I’ve learned about a man in his late forties who has essentially been enslaved for the last 27 years. He works in a brick-making company, often putting in 14-hour days. He earns just $3 a day, in a country where that amount buys very little.

Like the song above, he owes his soul to the company store. Legally bound to his employer until his debt is paid—a debt he can never repay at such wages—he lives in a hopeless cycle. He has a wife and three children, is illiterate, and his health is failing. He is also a Christian living in a non-Christian country.

And here I sit—my air conditioner is humming, my stomach is full from a nice lunch, and I just finished my afternoon coffee. Yet my heart is troubled, because the gulf between my comparative wealth and this man’s crushing poverty feels like an unspeakable unfairness. We often say, “We live in a fallen world,” and sometimes we catch a glimpse of the depravity and injustice that are all too common.

So, what can I do? What do I plan to do? First, I can write this and share it with you, my friends. I can ask for your prayers—not only for me, but especially for this exploited man and his young family. You don’t need to know his name or his country to lift him in prayer.

And for me personally: please pray as I research and take steps toward finding ways and organizations that can help this man pay off his debt and free him from the hopeless bondage he has endured for so long. It can be done. There are ways. True, it won’t change life for the hundreds of thousands of similar Christian families trapped in the same system of “bonded labor”.

But I can still help this man and his family. I’m sure not rich but I do have enough to try at least to buy this man out of utter literal slavery and into some form of labor that will lift them up to a more endurable daily existence.

The Bible says, “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in the power of your hand to do so. Do not say to your neighbor, ‘Go, and come back, and tomorrow I will give it,’ when you have it with you” (Proverbs 3:27–28). And of course, there are countless more verses that carry this same truth.

I personally believe in both a social gospel and a personal gospel. Jesus “went about everywhere doing good” (Acts 10:38). At times, I feel overwhelmed and crushed by the injustice and falsehood that seem increasingly pervasive. Yet the Lord continues to show me things I can do personally—things that matter and make a difference.

Maybe I can’t right all the wrongs that glare at us daily.. But I can still do what I can. As the Lord said of one woman: “She has done what she could” (Mark 14:8).

 

You live and are dead

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It was dead. The summer heat of Texas had killed the tree I’d planted in my yard. All the leaves were brown after not being watered while I was away for a few weeks. I was both mad and sad—not only because of what it had cost me to have it planted, but also because I’m “a tree person,” the way some people are cat or dog people.

I kept watering the other new trees after I returned. But the dead one I simply forgot about. Then, after a few rains, to my surprise I saw green shoots poking out of its trunk, below where the main branches had been. Evidently there had still been life in the roots underground, even though everything above ground was completely dead. That really surprised me.

And I couldn’t help but see a spiritual parallel. Jesus of Nazareth said to some people in the book of Revelation, “You have a name; you live and are dead” (Revelation 3:1). Can you be both? How does that work?

I believe this sadly describes the condition of many people. They appear to be utterly dead spiritually—no leaves, no fruit, seemingly lifeless to the things of the Lord, even if they were once alive in Him to some degree.

I know a lot of people like this but I won’t name names. They give every impression of being estranged and indifferent to anything about God or Jesus. Often, they’ll even make sarcastic remarks if the subject comes up.

For believers, this can be discouraging—especially if they remember what that person used to be like. There’s just something heavy about death, even when it’s in “the living dead,” as Jesus described in Revelation 3.

But I’m convinced there’s often more going on than what we see. King David wrote to God, “Where shall I go from Your Spirit, or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, You are there. If I make my bed in hell—behold, You are there” (Psalm 139:7–8).

I think some of these “dead trees” believe they’re utterly separated from the Lord. But God is  bigger than us—older, wiser, kinder, and far more powerful. An obscure verse in the Old Testament says that God devises ways “so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him” (2 Samuel 14:14).

It’s tempting to give up hope on people like this, just as I gave up on my tree. Even Jesus told the parable of the barren fig tree: after three years without fruit, the order was given to cut it down. But the gardener pleaded, “Leave it alone for one more year; I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine. If not, then cut it down” (Luke 13:7–9).

That tree in my yard has been a lesson to me about the goodness and greatness of God. “If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things” (1 John 3:20). Our own hearts condemn us because of sin, but God is greater than our sinful nature. Even though my tree looked dead, unseen life was still in the roots. And by God’s hand, it sprang back.

I believe He can do the same with people. Scripture is full of stories of those who were spiritually—and sometimes even physically—dead, yet returned to life through God’s mercy. The prodigal son was, for all intents and purposes, dead to the life he once had. But when “he came to himself,” he returned to his father, who welcomed him with open arms (Luke 15:11–32).

The lesson for me is simple: Have faith in God. If that dead tree in my yard could still have life hidden in its roots, then those who are “alive yet dead” can also be restored by the undeserved, overwhelming, omnipotent power of God. “With God, nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37).

Thoughts on Present Europe

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I’ve just returned from Europe and my heart is deeply stirred for that continent and its people. My children and grandchildren live there. I myself lived in Europe for 25 years of my adult life, across more than 20 countries. From what I can see, there is a growing awareness that Europe now faces challenges unlike anything since the Second World War. Decades of prosperity and peace have left the continent emasculated and unprepared. And now, almost suddenly, it finds itself confronted with a ruthless, unyielding adversary in the leader of Russia.

Oh, that Europe had at least one leader like Winston Churchill today—whose iron will was perhaps the single greatest factor in saving Europe from Hitler, and who later did what he could to limit Soviet Russia’s exploitation of Germany’s defeat. I earnestly hope that today’s European leaders will rise to the occasion and discover within themselves the courage and resolve to unite against their common foe, Putin.

But will they? That is the question. Because it will take more than strong national leadership. Generations of peace seldom prepare a people to quickly stand in defense of their nations when an enemy is at the gate. I almost shudder to imagine what it would mean if today’s fighting-age men of Europe were suddenly called upon to stand alongside Ukrainians against the relentless “meat grinder” waves of Russian soldiers that Putin sends to their deaths in pursuit of what he calls Russia’s glory.

And yet, I see glimmers of hope. To be frank, I am not “woke.” That ideology has plagued Europe for years, and in fact Putin has at times gained ground by portraying Russia as a defender of Christianity against what he calls the moral decline of Brussels and the spread of gender ideology. Across Europe, however, there are growing movements often labeled “far right” or “nativist.” In truth, many of these movements reflect ordinary people who are simply fed up with the godless, secular “progressive” wave that has steadily undermined traditional—and often Christian—values in nearly every European country.

Britain is a vivid example. In some places, local councils have gone so far as to order police to stop people from flying the Union Jack, Britain’s flag, on their own property! Meanwhile, others are arrested merely for standing silently across the street from abortion clinics. Such measures show just how far things have gone astray.

But the backlash is growing—the “natives are restless,” as the saying goes. It reminds me of the story of the boiling frog: slowly turn up the heat, and the frog won’t notice until it’s too late. But across Europe, many frogs are noticing—and they’re deciding to act. I find that encouraging.

Still, the reality remains: the enemy is at the gate—at several gates, in fact. Will there be a deliverer? From the top to the bottom, across the continent Europe needs… well, it needs God perhaps like never before. Will Europe’s leaders and people return to the values and convictions that sustained them through centuries of hardship? Or will this be one of those times when dark forces prevail and civilization retreats?

One way or the other, I believe a remnant of the people of faith will remain in Europe, as they have in one form or the other since Roman times. I find consolation in that. But for me, it is a sad, ominous, foreboding time and I do hope and pray for a better outcome in these things than what seems to be unfolding before us.

 

 

Commune with your own heart

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I had a rough night. Woke up at 5 AM and started thinking about current dilemmas I’m in. I was soon wide awake and thinking hard, as well as also praying and looking to the Lord. At length I got up, took a small amount of a sleep aid and went back to bed.

But I was troubled and searching my thoughts and heart for a solution. After a while an idea kind of rose to the surface that I’d not thought of before. I was hoping for something more of a direct revelation that I could be sure was straight from the Lord.

Hours past as I eventually went back to sleep and woke somewhat refreshed. The new idea had come to look like at least a reasonable possibility which I want to try to put into action today.

But the real kicker came later this morning, after my daily devotion time, when I went out for a little prayer. A verse came to mind, “Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.“ (Psalm 4:4) It wasn’t until I got to the second part of the verse that I realized how closely it matched my experience a few hours earlier. I had been communing with my own heart upon my bed.

That realization astounded me. I guess I had never thought of it that way—that simply searching my heart in the quiet of the night could be a form of hearing from God or at least a space where He could bring ideas to mind. But that’s what had happened. And then, as I was walking outside, the Lord brought that very verse to me—an obscure one, yet perfectly fitting.

Of course there were so many “knock on” effects to this. There’s nothing more encouraging than knowing the Lord has spoken to you, even in a quiet, unexpected way. It’s easy to feel like “it’s all over now,” that your best years are behind you, and there’s nothing left but to be put ‘out to pasture’ by the Lord. But getting something from the Lord helps to dispel thoughts like this.

And then there was more. When I went back inside to add that verse to my memory system, my eyes landed directly on Psalm 4:4—already written on one of my memory cards. I had evidently memorized it some time ago. But today, the Lord led me to look directly on it as I was going through my memory system, bringing it back a second time in such a personal, unmistakable way.

Well, God’s little miracles. I really needed this. Since returning from Uganda three weeks ago, I’ve faced some intense battles in my ministry. I know I’m at a major crossroads, needing to move in new directions, but many things still feel uncertain, and I’ve been wrestling with “the big picture.”

So I just wanted to share with you this little thing I got from the Lord and how “communing with your own heart upon your bed” can be a way sometimes for the Lord to bring things to your mind, answers from Him, even though it can almost seem like “leaning to your own understanding”. (Proverbs 3:5)

Sometimes the Lord can use our good common sense and gifts of the Spirit like wisdom and knowledge, instead of any outstanding revelation, thundering down upon us from heaven. May He continue to bless us all with His presence and whispers. He’s the one who’s way out in front and knows what’s going to happen and is able to lead us and guide us and show us what to do.

“For the Lord your God, He it is that goes before you.“ (Deuteronomy 31:8)

Christmas thoughts

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Whew! I’m glad it’s Christmas time. Just to have that whiff of fresh air that comes with the sounds, sights and thoughts of Christmas. I’ve had a somewhat traumatic year. It’s not only been the two major surgeries and numerous teeth removed, it’s been the constant depressing news from both abroad and here in my country.

But that’s why I’m embracing Christmas more this year than at other times. I need to get my mind out of the dismal turmoil of the present and on the verities of the enumerable miracles that occurred at the birth of Jesus, which still resonate and impact our present, so many centuries later.

They say, “the greater the darkness, the greater the light” and that’s how Christmas is to me right now. Medically for me this year, there was lower back surgery in February, several months of dental work and then “full reverse shoulder replacement” in August. And I am so very thankful and amazed to be able to say that those all worked out extremely well, with utterly competent doctors and dentists so that I’m now feeling better than I have in years. I really do have a lot to be thankful for.

But also this year, my heart has been grieved and heavy for the plight of the Ukrainians and those suffering in Gaza. I lived 2½ years in eastern Ukraine and Moscow so I feel I know that part of the world pretty well. It has so upset me to hear of the plight of those dear folks and the utter unjustness of Putin’s aggression there.

And although I’ve never been to Gaza or the West Bank, I have friends who’ve lived for extended periods in those places, in Christian service to try to alleviate the suffering there. And in both the news from Ukraine and from the Middle East, the frustration and heart ache builds up in me to an unbearable degree.

Of course, all the while, we are to “cast all our cares on Him for He cares for us”. (I Peter 5:7)  And I do that. Also I am thankful that the Lord has made a way so that I’ve been able to have material produced in both Russian and Arabic which I air weekly throughout the Russian and Arabic speaking world.

Back, before the fall of Communism, Radio Free Europe would broadcast into the countries “behind the Iron Curtain” to provide an alternative view of realty that contradicted what totalitarian Communism propagated to its captive peoples. And still today, though Communism fell over 40 years ago, there’s still an incredible need to broadcast the truth of God to so many parts of the world that are mostly cut off from hearing the gospel of God.

Bethlehem-at-ChristmasSo, thank God for Christmas. Thank God for a “holiday season”, as it is called now, in which nations hearken back to the birth in Bethlehem 2000 years ago of the most unique Man in history, prophesied to come, born of a virgin, despised by His own people, willingly crucified and raised by God the Father on the third day. CNN will probably not be running a special on this and in some places in the West it’s nearly become illegal to even mention it or openly celebrate it.

Nevertheless, the celestial elixirs of God yearly blow upon us like refreshing heavenly monsoons each Christmas, to refocus our minds on the eternal truths that pull us out of the chaotic present and back in to the saving power of God, to deliver us yet again from ourselves and this present evil world.

And I might add, I’m so thankful for my many friends in many lands who I have known through the years, “companions in tribulation” or Facebook friends who I’ve never met physically, who keep in touch and with whom I can have a kindred spirit and to know that there is a link that unites us through faith in Him.

I hope you have had a good year, even if you’ve had to smile through your tears or even your clinched teeth. Somehow we’ve made it through the year, we’ve kept the faith (at least more or less, ha!) and we’ve been strengthened through our trials and experiences. I hope you are continuing to let your light shine before men, that you are “falling on the Rock” and letting Him sustain you and that you are at peace with Him and those around you.

Your friend in Him, Mark

 

 

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.

 

Has Putin shot his bolt?

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There was almost no fear greater than the fear of Russia. But now Putin’s had to (as they say in poker), “Put what you’ve got on the table.” And it hasn’t looked good so far. No one expected Ukraine to be able to withstand Russia. But they have.

One year into the war, it’s rather a stalemate. But that’s a defeat in many ways for Russia. They were our greatest fear and have been for over 70 years. And now? You can feel they have perhaps two choices. Go fully nuclear, the unspeakable alternative that’s remained our global fear since World War II. Or they can continue to send 10’s of 1000’s of their young men (in a nation desperate to repopulate itself) into the meat grinder of eastern Ukraine, to face resolute Ukrainians and the best weapons the Western powers can provide. Simply put, it’s not looking great for the mystique of Russian superiority and ultimate world dominance, as so many of us have bought into for so long.

And what if you study Bible prophecy? What about “the king of the north”? What about Ezekiel 38? My friends, we’ve been counting on these guys, haven’t we? No need to squirm, I could do the same. I think there are a lot of folks around who’ve been counting on Russia to provide a good deal of the power and “evil” to be fulfilled that’s been predicted in the end time build up, spoken of in the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation.

But presently, Russia is losing huge numbers of troops and equipment on the plains of eastern Ukraine. And those resources in blood and treasure are not something that springs freely up out of the ground. They are depleted, they’re being exhausted and so very many look at it and feel it’s a fool’s errand that Mr. Putin has sent Russian power and prestige into. “All for nothing”, so many feel of the present war in Ukraine. My prophecy aficionado friends, how will Russia invade the Middle East if they can’t even take the eastern most part of Ukraine?

I hope you’re not expecting me to pull the cookies out of the fire and the rabbit out of the hat on this. I’m as stumped as you are. Perhaps some scenario develops where Putin is overthrown and a new leader arises who’ll lead Russia into a wiser and more prosperous future, more than at any time in its past. But as always, “what if’s” abound at every turn.

How does this all impact the picture of the unfolding end time, which in other areas continues to proceed most forebodingly? I really don’t know. And in my searching the internet for anyone else out there who sees all these data points leading us toward… what!…, I haven’t heard of anyone coming up with a clear, cognizant foreseeing of where all this is leading.

New and stranger goings on proceed briskly in the secular nation of Israel in the Middle East. Will the new, ultra religious government there clear the way for the building of the Third Temple in Jerusalem? And artificial intelligence meanwhile is gathering pace by leaps and bounds; some now predict that “the singularity” is only 7 years away. Tragic natural disasters fall on top of immense refugee crises, war against Iran is a daily storm on the horizon, Western nations muddle through their internal befuddlements and suicide rates for young people increase year by year.

And the latest fear is that China will come to the aid of Russia with an infinity of weaponry, matching what the West is giving Ukraine. My, how that would be an unfathomably ominous turn of events in this saga. Would that not bring us face to face with the full scenario of World War III that was so before us at the height of the Cold War?

How does it all turn out? Will Russia ultimately sue for peace (as Germany did in World War I) and be defeated on the battle field after human losses unheard of before that time? Will China come to the side and aid of Russia, creating a new axis of power internationally? Will there be a cease fire where both sides get just enough of what they want so that both can claim a type of victory? Your guess may be as good as mine.

Still, I remain convinced that the end of the matter of these wars and rumors of wars is that through the haze and heartbreak will be the unfolding of Bible prophecy that will ultimately lead to the so welcomed second coming of our dear Jesus Christ to bring peace to the earth, after “a time of trouble such as was not since the beginning of the world”, to establish His righteous government, ordained and foretold by God and the prophets.

Of course that sounds ludicrous to the unbelievers who are in the majority now. But as the final events unfold, I believe so many will see ultimately that the only sane explanation of this present world is one that takes us to what turns out to be truly our only hope: God Himself and His intervention to save us all from ourselves and each other, where the people of the earth accept and welcome the intervention of God to pull our existence out of the destruction we have brought it to.

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, 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 there was 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.