Conviction or Condemnation

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Mark McMillion

The difference between conviction and condemnation was something I struggled with a lot as a young Christian. It seems to be something that’s not often touched on or even understood by many Christians. But for me, learning the difference between conviction and condemnation was a battle that I had to win if I was to grow in my Christian life.

Simply put, God convicts us of specific sins or weaknesses, giving us hope that if we bring it to Him, He can and will forgive us and heal us. On the other hand, it’s the Devil that condemns us, saying that we’re just generally bad and hopeless. It’s been understanding the difference between these two that has been an essential part of my being able to get to grips with some of the sins, failures and shortcomings of my life and to also recognize when the voice of Satan is trying to bring hopelessness to me in some matter.

Is what I’m saying here according to God’s Word? In John chapter 8, the Pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who’d been caught in adultery. They called upon Jesus to agree to the writings of the Jewish law that she should be stoned to death. But Jesus said to them, “He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone.” And the next verse says, “When they heard it, they went out being convicted by their own conscience”. (John 8:9) Jesus’ words brought conviction.

How about the Devil’s words? In Revelation 12:9 the Devil is called “the accuser of the saints”. The devil is like the prosecuting attorney in a courtroom, constantly bringing our sins before ourselves and God, calling for our condemnation and judgment.

But there’s another kind of condemnation and one that’s perhaps even more subtle. The apostle John wrote, “If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” (I John 3:20) Some people have a lot of trouble with that. Their heart condemns them in several ways. For one, since we are all sinners (Romans 3:23), then without the rebirth through salvation in Jesus, each of our hearts overcomes us through one sin or the other.

Sometimes though, even if you’re saved, your own heart may have the habit or tendency to condemn you. It’s like negative thinking. A verse that helped me on this one time was “He that justifies the wicked and he that condemns the just, both of these are an abomination to the Lord.” (Proverbs 17:15) You can get to thinking, “Oh I’m really humble because I’m always so down on myself”. But it’s not the way the Lord wants us to be in the spirit. For us to condemn ourselves is actually an abomination to God, according to that verse, just as much as if we were justifying the wicked,

Maybe the most famous verse about condemnation is, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which be in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1) But in some ways, it’s a thin line to walk. On one side, we don’t want to “fall into the condemnation of the devil” (I Timothy 3:6). God forbid. But that sure doesn’t mean in any way that we want to harden our hearts against the gentle chiding voice of the Holy Spirit which “will reprove the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment”.

It comes down to which voice you are learning to listen to. We don’t want to be in tune with “the accuser of the saints” or our own heart that can condemn us. But we do want to have a clean conscience that can help to be a guidance to us. And even more than that, we want to have a clear channel to the voice of the Lord Who will convict us and lead us in the paths we are to walk in.

Someone said one time that it’s like a chain with a weak link. We’re that chain and we all have weak links, sins, and weakness, areas that we need to change and grow in. The Lord takes a look at the chain, probably sees a number of weak links and He points out the one that He wants to work on. He points to one weak link and says, “That one right there, give that one to me and I’ll fix it.” But then the Devil comes along and says, “Oh my God, that is a bad chain! It’s bad! It needs to be totally thrown away!”

That’s the difference between conviction and condemnation. One is specific, doable and brings hope for change and improvement if there is repentance. The other is general, totally negative and also hopeless. God help us all to know the difference between condemnation and conviction and to learn to recognize the Lord’s voice of conviction that brings change, hope and progress. “For Godly sorrow works repentance to salvation, not to be repented of. But the sorrow of the world works death.” (II Corinthians 7:10)

God’s Little Miracles: Palaces & “Signs Following”

Posted on December 1, 2013 by Mark McMillion

I believe in miracles. I don’t only believe in them, I’ve had a few happen to me over the years. One of them, in Budapest, Hungary 22 years ago, was very precious, very personal and very amazing. I’ll need to give you a little background to set the stage so that you can see how it was so amazing.

I went through a heartbreaking marriage breakup back in the 80’s. My wife and I had been missionaries based in Vienna, Austria for 5 years, with the goal of reaching what then were the Communist countries in eastern and central Europe. But our breakup meant that we needed to leave that part of the world which I loved and felt called to.

During those months right after the breakup in 1984, I had an amazing dream. I dreamed that I was in a large house full of joy and laughter, also full of young east European people who were happy and full of faith in God. And I remembered that the place in my dream was on or near the Hungarian-Czechoslovakian border. It was an amazing, happy dream. But I just tucked it away as being something encouraging but certainly not something that could ever really happen.

Budapest, Hungary

Then through a series of events and the road of life that the Lord often leads us on, it happened that around 5 years later I was able to return to central Europe in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of Communism in 1989. I moved to Budapest, Hungary with several of my children and was overjoyed to be able to again be back where I felt the Lord had called me to.

Northern Hungary

It ended up that I was looking to find a large house in the Budapest area to be a mission station for the extensive missionary work going on in Eastern Europe at that time. My translator and I found an amazing place but I personally thought it was just way more than we could afford with the budget we were working with. But then in negotiations with the owner of the place, it turned out that they trusted us with their property more than other people who were also interested and could pay more. We were able to agree to a rental fee which, although not cheap, was an incredibly good deal for that property. (And, yes, as you may have guessed, this was north of Budapest, up near the Czechoslovakian border, just as I’d dreamed of years before.)

But here’s the little miracle part, or perhaps I should say the icing on the cake. There came a fateful day in June of 1991 when we were handed the keys to the place and spent our first night there.

A Hungarian “panzio”, a pension or hotel

It was actually not a house but what is called a “panzio”, kind of like a little pension or very small hotel in a village.

So four of us were there for the first night in what was a pretty big place. We decided to have a time of devotion and prayer as some of us had some devotional material with us. Here’s part of what the first passage we read for that day said,

“God has promised us palaces and cities and the cattle on a thousand hills. So if you find the right place, claim it for the Lord and march around it, like Joshua’s people did with Jericho when they conquered the Promised Land.”

We were blown away! “If we find the right place”. Wow! That’s exactly what had happened and we’d just moved in that day! What a confirmation!

But then there was more. We read the second devotional book for that day. Its opening statement was from an obscure verse in Haggai which says, “The glory of the later house shall be greater than the glory of the former house.” (Haggai 2:9) We were speechless! A second confirmation, also talking about houses, promising a greater time than what we were already experiencing! We took all this as a powerful sign that the Lord was going to do mighty things.

And He did. The work that went on there, and in the generally area of central and Eastern Europe over the next few years, was some of the most fruitful and inspiring that I’ve every experience in my 40 years of missionary work.

That wave has now passed and those times have come and gone in a sense. But that time was an amazing fulfillment of the hopes and needs of the many millions of people who’d lived under Godless regimes in those lands for many decades and who finally were able to hear the gospel and to come to know the truths of God.

For me, that happy dream I’d had in my discouragement in 1984 was sent by God as a promise of wonderful times to come. And it even had a specific literal fulfillment some 7 years later in a house near the Hungarian-Slovak border, full of joyful east Europeans, exactly as I’d seen in my dream. It reminds me of the last verse in the book of Mark. “They went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming His Word with signs following.” (Mark 16:20)

Texas People

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Mark McMillion

It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the States. So maybe it’s a good time to tell you about something that had a major influence on my life when I was growing up that I’m very thankful for.

I’m from Texas. When I lived abroad for 36 years and someone would ask me where I’m from, often I’d say “Texas”, rather than the US. Why? Most of the time I’d be in places where the USA, because of its foreign policy, is sometimes not really liked. But no one ever was hateful towards me because I said I was from Texas.

When I was 1, with my parents and grandparents. Kinder people and perhaps better times

So let me tell you about some Texas people I’ve know and come from. In the picture above are my parents and my grandparents at my first birthday party. This will mostly be about my grandparents, especially my dad’s parents. Probably to many people they would seem like the most non-descript, plain, ordinary folks you could think of. They were born in the 1890’s and lived to their 60’s and 70’s. They never did anything really “great” or noteworthy in the way most people think. But they had a tremendous, fundamental influence on me when I was growing up, like Jesus said of some people of His day, “the salt of the earth.” (Matthew 5:13)

They were kind. They were friendly. I never saw them argue or be mean in any way. In fact, that whole side of my family were some of the nicest people I ever met. And in my heart I just knew at an early age that this was the way people were supposed to be. When we went to their house, we “said grace”. That’s what you call it when folks pray and thank God before the meal. We always did that there. They were Christians. Not loud, in-your-face Christians but just simple, sincere country people Christians.

My dad’s mom had a tremendous influence on my life through her kindness and humility.

We used to go to family reunions of my dad’s mother’s side of the family. There were 6 sisters and one brother and of course by the time I came along, these folks were in their 50’s or pushing 60. There would be these big get-togethers out on the central Texas countryside at someone’s house with lots of food and fried chicken, potato salad with general milling and mixing, talking and chatting.

“Lots of fights?” Never even close. “Lots of bragging, boasting and chest puffing?” Nope. I guess I’m a little sensitive to that kind of thing because in Texas you do run into a lot of rather proud, tough, assertive people.

But my relatives weren’t like that. They genuinely liked each other and had almost continual harmony; you didn’t feel threatened around them, you felt safe and welcomed.

Probably back then I wouldn’t be able to describe it the way I do now. I wouldn’t be able to verbalize what I was experiencing. But on the inside, it was really affecting me. I just knew that these were the best people I had ever met. “Lots of money and plenty of university degrees?” No. Mostly farmers, small businessmen and middle class folks with high school diplomas, which was pretty normal for their generation.

But there was wholesomeness; I’ll even use a seldom used word in our times, a purity about these people. They were “without guile” (John 1:47) , as Jesus described one of His disciples. Somehow to me it just made common sense that this was the way everyone should be. But of course they weren’t.

When I was 4, at perhaps a happier, more wholesome time in the history of America

As I grew up, I realized more and more that many, if not most, people were not like my grandparents’ generation. They didn’t have the sincere and unfeigned faith in God that they did. They didn’t live their Christianity in their relationship with other people as my grandparents did.

By the time I was twelve, I had pretty much become an atheist. My dad’s father had passed on and we’d moved away from the town where my dad’s mom lived. And probably I’d lost some respect for her and those folks as I became more “educated” and “modern” and strived to be cool and intelligent.

It was only after I had my near death experience in university and then became a Christian that I remembered again what an impact those folks had on me. I’d been given an incredible sample of what it means to be a sincere, simple, unfeigned Christian. This is the type of Texas person that almost no one ever hears about. You’ll hear about mass murderers, hard-hearted haters or raunchy movie stars and rock band heroes from Texas.

But I can tell you that there were some humble shining lights of faith and simplicity here when I was a kid. Unknowns and unsung heroes, the kind of people that God blesses and wants us to be. If there were more folks still like that, perhaps this world would be a better place and we wouldn’t be overwhelmed with the daunting problems we’re faced with today. Thinking about it, they remind me of that famous verse in Ephesians, “And be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32)

Kindness, humility, brotherly love, a lack of hatred, an aversion to pride, genuine friendliness and warmth. That’s what I saw in those folks when I was growing up. And I know that’s the way we should be and the way I want to be, God helping me. Texas people. I know there are still some of them around.

A Parable of Yogurts & Warm Milk

Posted on October 9, 2013 by Mark McMillion

Have you ever made yogurt? I used to do that 30 years ago in Vienna, Austria when my little family was together. It was easy. First you had a big pot of milk. But you had to heat it to just the right temperature. It couldn’t really be “lukewarm” (Revelation 3:16) but you didn’t want it scalding hot either. If I remember, it had to be hot enough that you could just barely keep your finger in it.

Then when the milk was the right temperature (maybe you had two gallons of it or 8 liters), you added just a spoonful of what was yogurt culture. Then we’d wrap it up on top of the heater and leave it all night as it stayed right at that “just right” temperature. In the morning I’d come back and it would all be changed. The tiny little bit of yogurt that I’d put in had “infected” the big container of milk and it had all become yogurt! Sometimes it was so good that you could put a spoon into it and the spoon would stand up because the yogurt was so thick and strong.

It was like the milk had gotten stronger. It wasn’t really “meat” but it was more than just “milk” (Hebrews 5:12). It had been “infected” for good by the little spoon of yogurt that had been put into the milk. It was now more valuable than just milk, it had been changed. Actually it had good bacteria to it, it was healthier and it contributed to your health more than when it was just milk. All that was needed was to get that milk just at the right temperature and then add that tiny “culture” of yogurt. The milk had gotten “culture”, refinement, improvement, fulfilling its previously unknown destiny.

Could it mean anything? It usually does; that’s what Romans 1:20 says. I really believe that so many “milky Christians” are ready for something to be introduced to them that can change them and make them better. This can be especially true if the have come to “the right temperature”, more than just “lukewarm” but not really scalding hot.

But what’s that yogurt culture? Well, I know quite a few former missionaries who are more than just milky Christians. So maybe they’re not strong meat Christians but they aren’t just milky either.

What could happen is, if these “yogurt Christians” (who are few, far between and some are feeling rather useless nowadays) could find a big bunch of milky Christians who are pretty warmed up and ready for change, if these little spoons of “yogurt Christians” could just get mixed in with a big bunch of pretty warmed up milky Christians, if they’d mix for a while and let things happen, pretty soon that process would happen, just like with yogurt. A little spoon of one or two of “yogurt Christians” could transform a big bunch of warmed up “milky Christians”!

Result? Progress all the way around. The yogurt Christians are no longer feeling alone, useless and “on the shelf”. The milky Christians go through a big transformation so they become more nutritional, valuable and “solid in the Lord”. It’s a win-win situation.

And actually I know more spoons of yogurt than I know large amounts of warm milky Christians. Are you a lonely spoon of yogurt? Why not try to find a way to reproduce yourself by searching out some medium hot milky Christians? Maybe if they’re already pretty warmed up and the setting is right, they’d love to turn into yogurt and be more than they were before.

OK, admittedly, back in Vienna 30 years ago, it wasn’t a foolproof thing that every night the yogurt converted the warm milk. The yogurt culture had to be pretty good. Most often the temperature of the milk had to be pretty constant throughout the night. That’s why we’d leave it on the heater overnight. It couldn’t cool off. But it couldn’t get too hot either. If either of those happened, the yogurt culture didn’t change the milk to yummy, thick, healthy yogurt. Instead, the milk changed the yogurt! We don’t want that. But most often it worked the right way.

Yogurts! Find some warm milk! Fulfill your destiny! Warm milks! Move further up the food chain! Solidify your convictions! Find out your inward potential and be stronger and healthier than you are right now! Accept change! Seek it out! You need each other! “Except a corn of wheat (or a spoon of yogurt) fall into the ground (the warm pot of milk) and die, it abides alone. But if it die (gets mixed into the warm milk), it brings forth much fruit. (Or in this case, more yogurt!)” (John 12:24).

“Jesus coming back? No way!”

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Mark McMillion

When I was 20, I’d sometimes met Christians who’d talk to me about Jesus of Nazareth. I usually really enjoyed it. I felt I could always out talk them and usually make them feel stupid or embarrassed about their faith. Back then, I liked to do that. So I know how nutty it can seem to some people when they hear about the idea of a person who died 2000 years ago “coming back” to our modern world.

I won’t tell you how I came to believe in God, you can read some about that here and here. But if you’re wondering how anyone could have such an eccentric idea, let me give you some information which you may not know. Maybe you’re a very rational person and like facts. Let’s look at some.

First, let me introduce you to something which you are perhaps not familiar: prophecy. Now, don’t run off. I said I wanted to share some facts with you. But the word “prophecy” may conjure up for you some crazed fellow in robes, running around shouting about the end of the world. Or maybe some strange mumbo-jumbo of predictions someone said was going to happened, when there was nothing really prophetic about it.

But what if there was a phenomenon of prophecy that consistently came true? What if there were people who really had a proven track record of foretelling future events and those events happened? Well, there is. And this is going to bring us back to our original subject, Jesus of Nazareth.

[By the way, one of the videos that I’ve produced is explaining the phenomenon of prophecy, against the backdrop of the history of ancient Israel. It’s called “An Introduction to Prophecy in History“. You can view it here.]

In the centuries before Jesus, the ancient nation of Israel from time to time would have Hebrew prophets. Maybe you have heard of David or Isaiah or Elijah or Daniel? One of the things these prophets told the people of Israel was that God was going to send them a very special king. This king would liberate them and he would be incomparable to anyone before.

And these prophecies would get pretty specific. Let’s look at one of them. In 700 BC the prophet Micah wrote, “But you, Bethlehem, though you be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth He which is to rule my people Israel, whose going forth is from old, from everlasting.”(from the Old Testament) Micah chapter 5, verse 2

Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, during the time of the prophet Micah, 700 B.C,

That’s one of those prophecies about the king (here it says “ruler”) that God said He would send to the world. It says that king would come from a small town south of Jerusalem, called Bethlehem. Now you may be like me, I wasn’t brought up a Christian or hardly a believer in God. But even though I wasn’t a Christian, I still knew that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem.

If you look closely, you’ll also see in that prophecy that it says the king to come was from old, “from everlasting”. That’s one of those places where the prophecies indicated that the king to come would not be like anyone before him.

Here’s one more. The prophet Isaiah wrote that the king to come would be born of a virgin. Isaiah said, “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bare a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, meaning God with us.” (from the Old Testament) Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14; (and in the New Testament) Matthew chapter 1, verse 23

Most likely you have heard (even if you find it hard to believe) that Jesus was born of Mary who was a virgin when she bore Jesus. And there are a lot more like this, very specific, all of which were fulfilled in the life of Jesus.

So that, briefly, is why it’s possible that some people think Jesus will come back. But for this to have any credence, you’d have to understand that Jesus was just not exactly the same as you and me. In one way he was. He got tired, took naps, it’s recorded that he wept in public a few times, he got hungry. In those physical things that we all experience, he was just like us. But he was different in that he was more than just a man. He was what the Bible calls, “the Son of God”.

Maybe you know all this already. Or maybe you never really had this kind of thing explained to you before. I know I didn’t. I got really angry when I was 21 and had come to find that there really is a God and a spiritual world. I’d spent the last 17 years in pretty good schools and no one every told me about this. Why wasn’t this being taught in all the schools I went to? Because, if there is a God who has a plan for man and if there is a spiritual world that’s more real and important than the physical world, then what they teach you in school is not really as important as these other things. So I didn’t learn about prophecy in the schools I went to.

Perhaps this hasn’t answered you’re question about how anyone could think that someone who died can come back to this world. But maybe it’s given you some facts you didn’t know before. You didn’t know that there were a bunch of specific prophecies given hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus, telling about so much of what he would later accomplish in his life. Maybe this will give you a slightly different perspective on who he was.

Next I’ll tell you about another really crazy thing that some folks talk about: rising from the dead. How can Jesus “come back” if his corpse has been rotting in a grave for the last 2000 years? The next article is going to be called “When you die, you die like a dog, right?”

(By the way, what do you think? Send me a comment in the reply box at the bottom of the article. I’d love to hear from you, whether you agree with what’s said here or not.)

Talk to you soon, Mark

“Sound Doctrine”? or Speculation

Posted on September 22, 2013 by Mark McMillion

For all my life, truth has been important to me. Then, when I went from being an atheist to a Christian, discovering the Bible was like a real love relationship. Before I became a Christian, for several months I believed in God but didn’t know who Jesus was. During that time I read the Bible, cover to cover, but I really didn’t understand it or get much out of it. Then when I received the Lord, I read the Bible again and it was like floods of truth were pouring into me, something I desperately needed.

The apostle Paul admonished Titus to “speak the things that become sound doctrine”. (Titus 2.1) But there’s really a lot today that is preached here in America or taught on some websites that is really not sound doctrine. It’s often nebulous speculation on Bible themes, frequently mixed with a worldly agenda to compel Christians to vote for one political party against the other.

Ten years ago here in Austin, Texas I went to a large, well known evangelical church on a Wednesday night. It was packed with nearly 3000 people. The guest speaker was going to teach on a subject dear to my heart: the prophecies of Daniel. But after his first 10 minutes or so of hurriedly speaking on the things I’d come to hear, he then launched into what evidently was the main burden of his heart: a long discourse on a controversial opinion of Bible prophecy that dovetailed perfectly with his political views. I became incensed. At length it became the closest I’ve ever gotten to disrupting a church service in order to be some kind of voice of truth.

This was a church I attended regularly, where the pastor had really been teaching the pure Word of God and many people were coming to hear the sound doctrine regularly coming from the pulpit. But on Wednesday night, the pulpit was being used for propagating speculation and controversy, mixed with a strong political agenda. But the thousands of people there figured it was just as much the truth as what the preacher was telling them on Sundays. But it wasn’t. It was speculation and worldly politics.

This was an older, mainline church with many wealthy members. I was a nobody; just a returning missionary, trying to find a home church. But I felt compelled to try to contact the pastor and I went to his office to express my views. He wasn’t there but his secretary took a note of my concerns. To my complete surprise, one evening I got a call from the pastor, the head of this church of around 7,000 people here. We talked for around 45 minutes. I told him about my background of becoming a Christian through the Jesus Movement of the early 70’s. And then I poured out my heart to him about how I respected his teaching very much but felt that he’d allowed his pulpit to be used for speculation and politics when the members of the church would think that anything said there had the same degree of truth that he taught.

He took it really well, basically agreed with me and also agreed that what had been taught on Wednesday night was not really sound doctrine. It was just one of many disputed views on the subject of Bible prophecy and how it will unfold in times to come. Honestly I was stunned that he would even take time to phone me about it. It gave me a respect for that man that he would“condescend to men of low estate” (Romans 12:16), like myself.

And now, being back in the States again after more years on the mission field, I again find the same thing. I find in some places really strong and feeding sermons being preached, which I get a lot out of. But in other places there are the same spurious, specious speculations being taught, especially about Bible prophecy. And often it’s just an opening to supposedly lay a Biblical foundation for extreme political views.

It’s not only heartbreaking, it’s motivating. It motivates me to try to make the material on this web site to be “sound doctrine”. A Bible teacher should consider it essential to differentiate between their own speculations and what can be accepted as sound doctrine. Otherwise you are creating confusion in those you teach. Quite possibly you’re engendering unbelief when your speculation on current events as being a direct fulfillment of Bible prophecy turns out differently from what you taught your flock. There’s even a verse about “handling the Word of God deceitfully.” (II Corinthians 4:2) Like by using it to promote your political agenda?

My goal on this site is to lay out from Scripture what can be taken as much as possible to be sound doctrine, not politically-mixed prophetic speculation.

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)

What’s next for me?

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Mark McMillion

For so many people who believe in God, they sort of instinctively “hedge their bets” when thinking about the future. James, in his book in the New Testament, said this to folks who were boasting about how “…today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town, stay there a year, conduct business, and make money.” James went on to say to them, “You don’t know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? Instead you should say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live—and do this or that.’” (James 4: 13-15)

Maybe that’s where we get the often-used phrase, “Lord willing”, when we talk about our future plans. It’s a thought that transcends many faiths. The Muslims say, “Insha’Allah”, which basically means the same as we say in English, “Lord willing.”

But this doesn’t mean we’re to sit around, waiting for supernatural directions from heaven for every little thing we need to do. Most of the time God uses our common sense and gifts of the Spirit like wisdom, knowledge and understanding to get us through our days, rather than some dramatic, direct revelation from heaven.

Several people have asked me what I plan to do next, now that the Daniel 8 video is up on my other site. So I thought to let you know what my tentative plans and hopes are concerning the videos and other things over the next months.

As for the videos, I’ve already written and done a preliminary filming on 4 smaller videos which are basically supplementary material to the Daniel 8 class. It’s looking like they’ll be around 5 minutes each and will zero in on various spin offs or tangents from the study of Daniel 8. Here are some thumbnail sketches of these 4 videos:

“Alexander the Great comes to Jerusalem, reads Daniel 8”

The first will be an amazing story from secular history of when Alexander the Great and his generals came to Jerusalem during his conquest of Asia around 333 BC. The high priests escorted Alexander into Jerusalem and showed him the prophecy about him in Daniel 8. Alexander in response basically said to them, “What can I do for you?” This is all recorded in ancient secular history. I think a lot of people will be shocked.

“Famous Prophetic Flops”

Another video, also around 5 minutes, is going to look briefly at famous prophetic flops. Not that prophecy flopped but where individuals and religious leaders taught, “This is it!” and literally had their followers up on their roofs in white sheets, waiting for the return of Jesus that night. It’s good to realize how it’s possible to really misinterpret some of these things and how much of a bad testimony it is for the Lord and His Word when we do this. I sure believe in Bible prophecy. But I’m not blind to the many times in history when it has been misinterpreted.

“The Antichrist Has Already come?!”

Then there’s another short video, based around Daniel 8 and how this chapter in particular has been misunderstood and also challenged by skeptics. The truths in these chapters as we go forward get so deep and strong that the Darkness seems to really fight against the Light that is found in these. It’s good to be aware of this.

“God used the truths of Daniel 8 to help me in a difficult time”

And a forth short video will be about a time where the Lord used the truths in Daniel 8 to be a personal comfort and specific Word from the Lord that rescued me from a very difficult situation years ago.

Hopefully these 4 videos won’t take a long time and I am expecting them to be of special interest to a lot of people.

“Daniel 9 and Matthew 24”

After these are done, the next thing will be to continue on the main full length videos. I’m aiming to do the next chapter, Daniel 9, in two segments. The first will be about the part that’s already been fulfilled, “the 69 Weeks”, covering verses 1 to 26. Then the second video will be about the last verse in chapter 9 and how Jesus Himself talked about this verse and some others in Daniel, when He was answering questions from His disciples about His coming in Matthew 24.

This looks to be the agenda for me in the next months. I’ll be continuing my live classes and witnessing here in Austin. Also I’ll continue to post blog posts and will try to put the texts to the Daniel videos done so far into posts so that folks can read and study the material there. Thank you to everyone who has prayed for this project and for your thoughts and comments, God bless you!

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.“

Mark McMillion

Creeds and Deeds, Facts and Acts

Category Archives: My Past