It’s one thing to be simple, but another to be ignorant and lacking understanding. It’s often so shocking, heartbreaking and infuriating for me to see in my home country the level of ignorance concerning the things of the Lord or especially the history of faith.
If I asked 100 Americans who Martin Luther was, I honestly believe over 90% would ask if I meant Dr. Martin Luther King. Here’s another example. 
I have some friends here with master’s degrees or doctor’s degrees and often I’ll hear from them that “Allah” is a moon god, an idol that the Arabs worship.
My reaction is exasperation and real sadness. Maybe it’s like when God spoke through Hosea to the nation of Israel some 2800 years ago, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you.” (Hosea 4:6)
And I’m not just talking about “taking God out of the schools”. I’m talking about a huge falling away from a knowledge of the significance of spirituality in the civilization of mankind. I was in my third year of university when I personally experienced that the God of Abraham was for real. Among my many emotions at that time was anger at how little I’d learned about anything having to do with the great changers of history who were not politicians, businessmen or scientist but were purely spiritual people.
I myself had no idea who Martin Luther was, the German priest who set in motion the Reformation in the 1500’s and changed the course of European history. Joan of Arc? Never heard of her. But an illiterate girl who herded swine “heard voices” in the 1400’s. And by obeying the voice of God, she ultimately led the armies of France to defeat their invaders at that time, the English.
And there’s so many more. Saint Patrick? “Ha, ha, ha! Let’s all wear green and get drunk”, most would say. But that man virtually alone changed the course of the history of Ireland, starting a wave of faith and devotion in what was a land beyond the edge of civilization at that time. Patrick’s influence continued in his followers for several hundred years, inspiring other missionaries in the next two centuries to go out to places like the darkest … no, not Africa but places like modern Holland, Germany and the rest of Europe to take the light and love of Jesus Christ and to turn those peoples to the Lord during the times called the Dark Ages.
Did you know that? I didn’t until I was way up into my adult years. But it was those spiritual people, people of faith who changed their generations, brought civilization and spiritual enlightenment to their times and neighbors and that’s why we have what has been called “Western Civilization”.
So there’s just this huge irony. We have smart phones, the latest apps, Google glass and every kind of advancement and technical innovation that our hearts could desire. But all the while, the gloom of ignorance and the lack of basic knowledge of the spiritual world increases like the armies of Mordor across the world. Even a knowledge that there is a God is less and less a part of the mentality of hundreds of millions of people in the “advanced” and “civilized” nations of the world.
It’s a sad, ominous, foreboding situation to observe. Hosea also said, “They have sown the wind and they will reap the whirlwind.” (Hosea 8:7) How can there not come a reaping and reward for society’s abandonment of God and our eternal foundations, for ignorance of the reality of the spiritual world?
I experienced it myself. I was brought up in a home that didn’t acknowledge a prayer-answering God. “Maybe there’s a God but He is way off somewhere. Don’t bother Him and He won’t bother you”, seemed to be the idea. So in my greatest time of trial and difficulty, I simply and truly didn’t know there was a God, didn’t know or understand virtually anything about sin, faith, repentance, submission, redemption or grace. These were all utterly unknown to me. It’s an absolute miracle of God that He somehow pulled me through that time.
How many hundreds of millions now are in just as much spiritual darkness and delusion, no matter how advanced the technical gadgets they have? May God help us to do all we can to share His light, spread His truth and to keep our candles burning in this time of billowing darkness that we live in, even though most are blissfully ignorant of their ignorance.
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.
The Jews weren’t supposed to have anything to do with Gentiles and certainly not go to their house. 
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 “
“
I was on the ground floor of the massive social changes that went on there at that time, both the counter culture as well as the political movement. But all the while, my soul shriveled and my mind got more mixed up and into the darker side of life and even the spiritual world.
Well, sometimes people have that kind of faith. Jesus asked one man if he believed that Jesus could do the miracle he’d asked Him to do. The man said, “
At least you aren’t searching for the truth because you know you have found it and it’s found you. Maybe that’s why it says that we have “
So this morning when I was out in the park, something happened and I knew that it probably was significant or had some meaning but I didn’t get it right away. I was sitting there on the bench and then right in front of me was this worm or caterpillar, seemingly suspended in the air. Then it moved downward a little. Then again. And I realized it had some kind of thread like a spider that was suspending it in the air that had been attached to a branch of a tree above me.
Most people probably don’t have thoughts like that. But through experience I’ve learned that often you can get some significance from things like that. I wrote a story a while back about
But then I thought, at the end of the caterpillar’s life on earth, eventually that same thread is what will be wrapped around the caterpillar and form it’s cocoon. It will be his casket, binding him to his death. But then, out of that cocoon which the caterpillar made from that thread that had helped him all his life, it will burst forth at the end of winter into a butterfly or a moth. From the death of being a caterpillar or wrapped within a cocoon, 
it will appear suddenly as a new and totally different life. But the silver thread that was there for the caterpillar during its life was also there at its death, to envelope it and provide a casket of darkness and protection where the miracle of transformation takes place and it comes out as a butterfly.
But then the local enemies of the Jews wanted Nehemiah to “
Where there is faith, reverence and obedience to God, the Devil is always going about in one form or the other to try to destroy God’s plan and His people. This is a constant throughout history and it’s shown in this amazing way in the book of Nehemiah. We often think of Satan “
And those words, “