“Truth be known”

Posted on April 18, 2015 by Mark McMillion

Most of you who read these posts are native English speakers. But I’m aware that there’s a minority who are not. Having lived for years in foreign countries, I’ve come to where I can speak a simplified English and can at times look into phrases that native English speakers take for granted. One example could be when we say, “Truth be known…” and then go on to reveal something that might not otherwise be said.

Truth be known. That’s really the way things should be, isn’t it? Truth should be known. But is it always? I may have written how that, in my youth, I really wasn’t looking for God since I’d concluded that there was no such thing. “God, Jesus, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny”, that’s what I always said, with a grin and gusto. “Little did I know.” There’s another good phrase but I’ll stick with “truth be known” for now. But although I wasn’t looking for God, I really was looking for the truth.

Truth has virtually always occupied a major significance on my “operating system”, if you know what I mean. But I’ve also come to realize, often by sad and dramatic experience, that truth is not that big a thing for some people.

King David said to God, “Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts…”. (Psalm 51:6) Or as Jesus said, “That on the good ground are they that in an honest and good heart, having heard the Word, keep it…”. (Luke 8:15)

Honesty. Truth. These are the attributes of the Godly, regardless of nation, culture or creed. We’re all tempted to lies and dishonesty; I certainly tried that for a while. But my conscience was screaming at me and struggling for supremacy in my soul.

Sadly and shockingly, I’ve met ones who’ve even seemed to come to the Lord and been taught by me who I found later were not really “dealing with a straight deck”, as they say in poker. They were not honest. And to my chagrin, some of these people played me for a fool and I didn’t catch on for a while.

Was I naive? Too trusting? Too unwilling to see what was going on? Probably so to some degree. But the people I’m thinking of are ones who evidently, I found later, had a history of that kind of behavior and were virtually compulsive liars. Pretty sad, no?

“So Mark, why didn’t you catch that sooner? Why didn’t you see right through them immediately, if you really have a link with the Lord?”

I wondered about that. Well, for one, I think the Lord may have even been pulling a fast one on the folks who thought they were pulling a fast one on me. All the while, “Christ was preached”. Like Paul said about some folks who were preaching the gospel but with contention and not sincerely, “nevertheless, Christ is preached.” (Philippians 1:18) In this case, these were people were coming as His sheep but they were not “without guile”. (John 1:47) But all the while I was sharing the Word of God with them and dealing with them honestly.

What do you do in situations like that? You could get mad at them for their dishonesty and evidently trying to trick you. You could get mad at yourself for being somewhat deceived and made a fool of. I’ve definitely felt that in some cases.

But it does help to have a deeper, higher view of it all. In the times this happened to me (it hasn’t been often), it’s been where I was honest and up front with these people, sharing my faith with them and in some situations trying to strengthen and establish in the faith some who were posing as Christians.

Were they Christians? Deep question. If you feel that folks have to be perfect in spirit to receive the Lord and become a Christian, you might say no. I do know that they all received a strong witness. They said they were Christians. I was sharing the Word with them, praying with them and in some situations having classes with them. It’s good to remember that obscure verse, “God’s Word does not return void. It accomplishes His purpose.” (Isiah 55:11)

Everyone will be accountable for the truth they’ve been shown and seen. It seems like some folks would almost rather hold on to their abilities (if we can call it that) to trick and deceive people. On the other hand, many who’ve dabbled in deep dishonesty and deception have thrown off that temptation when confronted with the pure truth and light of the love of God and His Word.

But for us who know Him, it’s good to remember that “Truth” is right up there with “Love”, when we’re talking about the things of God. Many of us know that “God is love.” (I John 4:8) But equally, Jesus said “I am … the truth..” (John 14:6) “Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” (John 18:37) We should extol, strive for and exalt truth in the same way and as much as we do love. Or so it seems to me.

Tales from Trondheim (Part 1)

Posted on April 11, 2015 by Mark McMillion

My former wife is from Norway and when we’d been married less than a year, we were living in Trondheim, Norway. In the winter, the sun comes up at 10 in the morning and goes down at 2 in the afternoon, whereas down south in Oslo it comes up at 9 and goes down at 3.

It’s wonderful to be newly married and expecting your first child. We had a little base in Trondheim and were witnessing to people about the Lord, especially the young people. But frankly, it was a rather rough time for us both physically and even financially. On the other hand, there were also some amazing spiritual times there where the Lord was really working.

Some friends of ours in Oslo had led a young man to the Lord who came from a very rough “street culture” background. He’d been a drug addict but through salvation he’d become “a new creature in Christ Jesus” (II Corinthians 5:17). He was still a teenager, a big Norwegian guy. But he had a meek and changed spirit and we were glad to have him to come work with us in Trondheim as we tried to strengthen him in his new life for the Lord.

But a life of full time discipleship is not easy and we didn’t have it easy then. Not everyone is cut out for a Christian missionary lifestyle and it was becoming evident to us that, as sweet and transformed as our new friend was, he was having a very difficult time to “take up his cross daily”. (Luke 9:23)

At length my wife and I really prayed as we just felt this wasn’t working and the trajectory of this young man’s life was not moving towards full time Christian discipleship. But he was a nice guy, really saved and thankful for his salvation. At times back in those days, it was a temptation to look down on someone if they weren’t ready and able to serve the Lord full time. There had been many from those days who did become full time disciples and missionaries who went on for the next decades to serve the Lord at the ends of the earth. So we sometimes were tempted to look down on ones who didn’t make that standard, Lord forgives us.

But in this case, after my former wife and I prayed together, the Lord led us to have personal communion with this dear young man, encouraging him that perhaps full time Christian discipleship was not what was for him. We had a sweet time of fellowship with him, encouraging him in the Lord and sending him back south to Oslo before the weekend.

Around Monday I made our regular call to friends in Oslo. They asked me, “Do you remember Bjørn?” I said, “Of course, he just left here a few days ago.” So they said, “Well he’s gone to be with the Lord”.

I was really, really shocked. My friends went on to tell me that he’d gone down to Oslo and then on to Bergen on the Norwegian west coast. He stayed with his uncle’s family and the next day after he got there, didn’t come down to breakfast. They went up to see how he was and found him dead. Evidently the drugs that he’d been doing before he got saved caused an air bubble to enter into his blood stream and that night it had lodged in his brain, taking his life.

My former wife and I were in deep shock on so many levels. I was not yet 26 and my wife was 22. Death was not something we experienced much, especially with someone we’d just been very close to a few days before.

But we were so glad that the Lord had led us in prayer to be gentle with this young man, not to condemn him for his weaknesses but to have a time of communion with him, something very unusual for us at that time, and to send him on his way with love when we might have condemned him for his weaknesses.

We just felt very strongly that the Lord had taken him home to be with Him before he might be tempted to return to his former lifestyle that he’d been delivered from. He’d been saved from a very hellish existence on the streets of Oslo and the Lord saw fit to take him home to be with Him at that point, when he’d had a victorious life.

It was an exceedingly sobering experience to be so near to someone who was a few days away from their graduation to heaven. It helped us, during our time there, to keep the heavenly vision and to stay true to our callings at a time when in many ways we were “troubled on every side”. (II Corinthians 7:4)

And I just thought about all this tonight as one of the so many experiences I’ve had in a life as a missionary and disciple of the Lord. It was the direct leading of the Lord to have communion with this precious young man and to send him on his way with encouragement, rather than condemnation, that so touched us as the Lord’s mercy on us, that we somehow were able to show His mercy towards this young man, which we might not have done without prayer.

“Fleeing into the wilderness”… in Bulgaria

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Mark McMillion

During my recent trip, an intriguing verse came to mind about where I was in Bulgaria and it’s possible place in the future, especially related to the events prophesied to come before the return of Jesus. A few of you know this verse well but probably most will have little or no idea what it means. It’s Revelation 12:6 “And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there one thousand, two hundred and sixty days.”

You may ask, “How in the world could that verse have anything to do with southern Bulgaria where you were?”

Let’s see if I can simplify this to where most everyone can get the idea. According to Scripture and His Own words, Jesus will return to earth at some future time to establish His rule in our world. But, again according to Scripture, there are a number of things we’re told will happen in the time very near to this return of the Lord. And things get particularly specific about the last 3½ years, leading up to His return.

Some of you know all this like the back of your hand but the vast majority of folks don’t. So, speaking to that vast majority, I can tell you that Jesus called that last 3½ years before His return a time of “great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world”. (Matthew 24:21) Not good news at all, it seems. But at least we’ve been informed about it and can prepare in the ways we can, as He leads.

And that verse which came to my mind in Bulgaria, Revelation 12:6, is actually talking about that last 3½ year period. The “1260 days”, spoken of in Revelation 12:6, when divided by 360 days (the length a year was considered to be in ancient times) comes out to 3½ years. So who is “the woman” who is “fleeing into the wilderness” during that final 3½ years before the return of Jesus?

A large group of people who study these things feel that “the woman in the wilderness” is the Christian “body of Christ”, the believers and receivers of Him and His love who will be persecuted like never before during that last 3½ years. The Bible calls God’s people His Bride, both in the Old and New Testaments. (Isiah 62:5, Revelation 19:7) This woman fleeing into the wilderness represents what we could call the collective church and overall congregation of believers throughout the earth.

“Mark, why would the Christians be ‘fleeing into the wilderness’ during that last 3½ years?”

One major reason will be that, by that time, a world-wide economic system will be in place, according to Revelation 13, where each participating citizen will be required to have some kind of “mark in their hand or forehead.” (Revelation 13:16 & 17) This is what I was talking about the with the Kurdish women on my trip that I wrote about in “Tea and Endtime with the Kurds.” In my visit with them, they were telling me that they could see how they would have to flee out to their villages in order to escape the bestial totalitarian Anti-God, Anti-Christ government and its Satanic leader. So even those Muslim women could see a time where “the woman fled into the wilderness” would be the best path for them in this time to come.

“But Mark, it says, that the woman ‘has a place prepared of God that they should feed her there 1260 days from the face of the serpent.’ God has some place prepared and ‘they’ shall feed her there?”

That was what I was seeing and feeling in those towns in rural Bulgaria [Here’s a link to a blog post that tells more about the details of my recent trip to there.] They were already almost totally self-sustained and self-sufficient economically. From where I was, it was close to a three hour drive through the mountains to even get to a city of 100,000. In the final endtime, the Antichrist world government will aim to control every nation and every city they can.

But they won’t be omnipotent. The eleventh chapter of Daniel speaks of a number of wars the Antichrist and his forces will be having, even during the last 3½ years. I believe God will lead multitudes of Christians to flee into the wildernesses of their nations where they’ll be helped by the simple, Godly people who so often live in places like that. “They” shall “feed her there” during this last horrific time in the history of mankind before the return of the Lord when “the cities of the nations fell” (Revelation 16:19) and then His Millennial rule will begin. It’s like the verse “the people that were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness.” (Jeremiah 31:2)

God always cares for His own. Even during this future time of great tribulation, when so many Christians will be uprooted from the comfortable surroundings they live in now. They still will be helped, through God’s pre-vision, by the simple, Godly rural peoples around the world to whom we will flee for help and shelter during that time.

God Needs You

Posted on March 18, 2015 by Mark McMillion

One morning while I was in Bulgaria, I was in a room above the little church where they were hosting me. I’d been speaking to around 70 people for the first two nights who’d braved the late winter snow to come and hear what the foreigner had to say. I’d shared my life story of how I came to believe in the God of Abraham and then in Jesus. Another night I’d shared some basic classes on the importance of Jesus, the subject of Salvation, the significance of the Holy Spirit, the need for the Bible in our lives.

But I somehow felt that the last night’s time with these folks lacked the full power that an opportunity like this requires. So the next morning I felt desperate that things go better. I’ve already written about this some in “Work? Or Prayer…in Bulgaria” There I mentioned how that I felt the Lord answered my desperate prayer by laying something on my heart which I wrote down after my prayer. Here’s an edited version of that and what has come to be one of the main things I’ve shared with these ones since then.

God Needs You

In Ezekiel there’s an obscure but extremely significant passage. God is speaking and He says, “I sought for a man among them to stand in the gap and make up the hedge, that I should not destroy the land. But I found him not.” (Ezekiel 22:30) The picture is of a broken wall. We can think of it as the city of our fellowship and heritage of the people of God. There was a gap through which the Enemy could attack and God needed a person to rally the forces of God to stand up for Him in the battles of the Lord. But the Scripture says, “He found him not.” God found no one to take up the mission of His will and service.

In another place, God is speaking in Isaiah, “Who shall I send, who shall go for us?” Then Isaiah answers “Here am I Lord, send me.” (Isaiah 6:8) That’s what is needed, but there are so very few. Jesus said the same thing. “When He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion. For they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray to the Lord of the harvest that He will send laborers into His harvest.’” (Matthew 9:36-38)

And it’s certainly still the same today. God needs and wants fighters, not just believers. There is a raging war going on. Souls are dying without the Word of the Lord. In the endtime, we are destined to be winners in the battles. Where are the victors of God? Where are the heroes? Where are the “mighty men”, like David had, who knew there was a battle and that they were on the side of the God of light and love and truth?

That’s what is needed. Not spectators, but players on the field of battle. God has a destiny prepared for those who will claim it in their lives. God has victorious battles to be won, souls to be set free, lights to be lifted up, and multitudes to turn to Him. But He doesn’t want to do it alone. He wants us to work with Him; He wants to work with flesh and blood us.

Who can He use in your community, in your family? Who does He chose? “The foolish things to confound the wise.” (I Corinthians 1:26). “When they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled and took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” (Acts 4:13) That’s really all that’s needed. Not theology school, a university degree, the right skin color and the backing of a large denomination. What’s needed is that “they had been with Jesus”. And so, so many have been with Jesus and are with Jesus. But their lights remain “under a basket” (Matthew 5:15), rather than really on a candlestick. The church of our times has left the arena and now sits in the grandstands.

How can we rule with Him in the Millennium if we are not working, fighting and winning with Him right now? “Now is the day of salvation“. (II Corinthians 6:2) Today is the day that souls are fainting in the land, dying and giving up hope. Today is the day that God needs you to step out of your circle of normalcy and to go a little further. It says of Jesus, “He went a little further, and fell on His face.” (Matthew 26:39) That’s what each of us should be doing each day: going a little further and falling on our face in desperate prayer that we can be all that He wants us to be and needs us to be.

May God help all of us to not be complacent, not satisfied with the normal hum-drum tediousness of our lives. May we obey what the Lord said, to “Lift up our eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest.” (John 4:35) The Lord needs laborers, the Lord needs soldiers, the Lord needs simple people like you and me to take the mantel of His mighty men of old in these desperate end times, to have the vision of fighters, winners, overcomers, harvesters, soul winners, sheep-feeders, comforters of the weak, whatever the call or need is, that His people will have the vision of the service He has called us to and which is so very needed in these desperate times.

It’s just a very basic principle of God for centuries, “If you draw out our soul to the hungry and satisfy the afflicted soul, then your light will rise in obscurity and your darkness will be as the noonday.” (Isiah 58:10) Even in your own life, if you “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, then all these things will be added to you”. (Matthew 6:33)

It all comes back to love, to love God and your neighbor. But that love is a compassionate, active, stirred up love, love that doesn’t get stopped by barriers, love that ends up being something that isn’t really often seen to the degree it needs to be. It was love that sent the shepherd boy David to the front lines to see and confront the enemies of God. “Is there not a cause?”, young David said. It was love that cause Philip to run to meet the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8), “The love of Christ constrains us”, Paul said. (II Corinthians 5:14)

This is what I have come to share here with these precious ones. I felt the Lord would challenge them to go further in their lives, to look outward to the circle of friends and acquaintances they come in contact with daily, to witness and share the Love of God with the unsaved, those who’ve never heard the message of salvation, so many of whom will willingly come to Him, if someone will just reach them with His love.

Preserve the Pillars

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Mark McMillion

Holding on to our faith is paramount. Paul said, “Holding faith and a good conscience”. (I Timothy 1:19) Because a loss of faith can be a terrible, almost indescribable thing. I know because I went though it to the nth degree and was in profound despair when faced with the fact that I had nothing, I knew nothing, I could hold onto nothing. I wrote about this experience recently in “Hell”.

But coming out of that, I was brought by the love and mercy of God to come to know, “Whom to know is life eternal”, Jesus Christ. But not right away. At the very first it was just an experience with the forces of darkness, a presence that tried to claim me and extract me from this world. I thank God from the bottom of my heart that somehow He gave me the grace at that moment to have the presence of mind and heart to recognize the spirit of Satan and to turn from him to the Spirit of the God of the Bible. Those experiences were the beginnings of the turnaround and life I’ve lived since that time, going back to when I was 20 years old.

But I feel I know what it is like to be without faith, in the most tangible and disturbing way one can possibly experience. And I’m sure hundreds of millions, if not billions of people are more or less in that condition in our world every day.

That’s why it’s so important what the Bible says, “Cast not away your confidence which has great recompense of reward.” (Hebrews 10:35) Oh my gosh, how many people every day cast away their confidence? We worry about ISIS. But so many people every day abandon their faith, turn their back on their birthright and “do despite unto the Spirit of grace.” (Hebrews 10:29)

That’s why it is vital to “stablish, strengthen, settle” (I Peter 5:10) the foundations of our faith and the faith of others. Faith works. Faith will move mountains, we’ve heard it said. “But without faith, it is impossible to please Him”. (Hebrews 11:6) It might be added, without faith, it is impossible to survive the storms and vicissitudes of the world we live in. By His grace I’ve lived a life of faith by holding on to His Word which has sustained me for 45 years through 40 countries and innumerable “trials and tribulations” which I never would have been able to survive without supernatural faith.

It’s those pillars of faith, founded on the solid rock of God’s Word, that we have to maintain and strengthen, both in our own lives and the lives of others. I’ll quote that verse again, “Cast not away your confidence which has great recompense of reward”. How often that truth has been a personal experience for me. I won’t get specific here as some of this is personal and there are perhaps ones reading this who would be hurt or offended if I got too specific. But I can tell you that the Lord has let me experience heartbreak that has taken me to depths I could have never survived without the pillars of faith that I found in His Word.

I was in Silkeborg, Denmark back in the late ‘70’s and I woke up one morning, thinking that was going to be the day I would finally say “uncle” to defeat and death. I really didn’t think I would survive that day with my faith and soul intact. There had already been many like it and I was at my wits end. Before I even got out of bed, the verse came to me, “Save me oh Lord, for the waters are come into my soul. I sink deep where there is no standing.“ (Psalm 69:1 & 2) That’s how it felt: just completely drowning in hopelessness. But later that same day, just out of nowhere, in my time of being past hope, the Lord came though and did things so that the winds of misfortune and hopelessness gave way to a new spring of better times.

Hope. Faith. Knowing. In Him we don’t just have to have ”hope”, or even “have faith”. We can know. That’s what the Bible says. “Faith” can seem kind of weak at times. But the Bible speaks of knowing. “For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” (II Timothy 1:12)

Those pillars of faith, those absolutes that we have staked our lives on are not irrational, as the secularists say they are. They are faith in the God of love and His Son who died for us and was raised from the dead. Yes, it doesn’t make sense to the agnostic minds of our world today. But we have more than that. We have what the people of faith have had for 1000’s of years. Deliverance. Truth. Joy. A power unknown by unbelievers. Pillars of faith that are strong enough to get us through whatever this life may throw us. “The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work and shall preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom, to whom be glory for ever and ever.” (II Timothy 4:18)

Hell

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Mark McMillion

Maybe I should write more about hell. I’m tempted to say, “If anyone could write about hell, it’s me”. I wrote an article about my experiences which ultimately brought me to faith in God, called “Lucifer and the White Moths”. It was perhaps the seminal experience of my life, in which Satan came to claim my soul.

But when the Bible talks about hell, what the experience is like, it’s not as strange and foreign to me as it might seem to some people, perhaps many. But it’s hard to describe because it is such a different experience from what we have here. Another place I wrote about this is “The Parable of the Seed and the Egg”.

There’s the phrase that’s used in some places, “middle earth”. Although it comes from the fantasies of J. R. R. Tolkien, it’s a useful phrase because it is a little bit accurate. In this world, we are somewhat in a middle zone. We can be raised through faith in God and Jesus to the glories of heavenly experience and that has happened for some, recording in the Bible and other places. But at the same time, we are susceptible to the magnetism of hell, the unutterable horrors, the hopelessness, the eternity, the indescribable remorse, the reality of eternity without hope of ever being able to undo the mistakes that you made and the damage you did.

King David said to God, “You’ve delivered me from the lowest hell.” (Psalm 86:13) Many of the preachers from years gone by really dwelt on hell. And it seems they actually scared a lot of people into heaven. We today look down on that approach. But it sure worked back then. And that was the only way that God could get through to me. As I’ve mentioned before, “others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire” (Jude 23) has always been a verse that I’ve felt has described my experience.

“Oh, Mark, that’s so horrible! How could a “God of love” do such a thing to you! You poor, poor thing!”

Friends, how could a person so alienated from the life of God, so hard-hearted, so obstinate and continually in resistance of the Holy Ghost find pardon and forgiveness in the infinite mercy of God? Truly, I can find no fault in God.

And then, as I wrote in “Lights on the Road“, even after He delivered me from my soul being seized and taken to hell by Satan, a few months later I was back doing my own thing on drugs in my sports car with my girl friend, utterly impudent in my returning to my vomit of my former druggy ways.

“So this time He’d had enough and He allowed you to have what justice would allow, a just reward for your foolishness and backslidden nature after He had kept you from death a few months before? Right?”

No, He was merciful again, when I really, really didn’t deserve it.

But what about hell? How bad is it? It’s so bad that I’m always hindered from writing about it because truly, words fail me. And also it’s just so unutterable and hopeless, so much a condemnation of my own sins, so clear that I deserved every bit of it and so final and complete. I just don’t write about it as it’s just no fun and utterly something else from this world of “middle earth”. But I do feel this is what the Bible has described and when I first read about hell in the Bible, I immediately related it to what I’d experienced and come out of.

In my first months as a Christian, I memorized a few verses from the Old Testament that most reminded me of my experiences in hell. Here’s one. “There is one alone and not another. (The utter, utter alone-ness of hell was so vast and complete. I was alone, in solitary confinement, with only myself) yea, he has neither child nor brother (just nothing, nothing. No one in your universe. You are cut off.) Yet is there no end of all his labor (you are constantly striving to get out of that situation, your very being is intensely trying to “find a way out of there”, as Bob Dylan sang) neither is his eye satisfied with riches (no matter what you had, riches, intelligence, beauty, potential, whatever, it’s all utter vanity in the hereafter without the salvation of God) Neither does he say, for whom do I labor and bereave my soul from good? (You know something is terribly, terribly wrong, but you just don’t know what it is. You are in utterly dazed and confused and perplexed, but you can’t find the answer. And that is your eternal state,) this also is vanity, it is sore travail”. (Ecclesiastes. 4:8)

It sure is. “There must be some way out of here, say the joker to the priest. There’s too much confusion here, I can’t get no relief” Amen to that. Even Bob Dylan somehow had some glimpse of the reality of hell.

Honestly, maybe I should talk more about hell; maybe I would help more people if I really dwelt on this subject. Even the Apostle Paul said, “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” (II Corinthians 5:11) It ultimately took a repeated series of experiences like this with eternity without God to finally get through to my hardened heart and reprobate mind that I was an utterly hopeless sinner, that life went on in one form or the other after death, and that I was ripe for “the grim reaper” of Satan to claim my soul, unless I turned in repentance to God.

I sure hope you’re not in that condition or situation. Friend, it is so utterly horrible that I may have failed to testify of its reality and its unspeakable horror. Get right with God. Even better, call out to Jesus; He’s the “mediator between God and men.” (I Timothy 2:5) Even if you just have a little faith and a lot of doubts, call out to Him. Hell is indescribably bad but you don’t have to go there. “Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your heart.”(Psalm 95: 7 & 8) Call out to Him now. “Call unto Me and I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which you know not.” (Jeremiah 33:3)

Speaking Truth to Evil

Posted on February 14, 2015 by Mark McMillion

I heard recently, “People need to see more heroes.” Well, here’s one, as far as I can see. She may not be “one of us”. But then that depends on how you see what “us” means.

This is the kind of news you won’t see normally on American news media. But it shows us something of the little people, the unheard of’s, the forgotten of this world who still stand up to evil in their land, among their people, and in these times. May the gracious God of Abraham see and bless this dear soul and all those like her.

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Seeking Truth, without a spin

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Mark McMillion

All my life, truth has really been important to me. I haven’t believed in God all my life, but I have believed in and reverenced the truth. That’s one of the reasons why, when I came to God, the God of the Bible, it had such an overwhelming impact on me.

Here was raw, pure truth to have and love and swim in for free. At last I had found it. I soaked in it, reveled in it, memorized it daily and shared it thrillingly with everyone I could.

But it also underlined to me, even more, the darkness that the world and the nations live it. I already knew this in many ways but this just made it clearer. I come from a family of journalists, grew up around the media and worked in the newsroom of a large daily newspaper when I was going to university. This was all before I came to know the God of Abraham and then Jesus. And being back here in the States after 36 years abroad, it’s a heavy feeling of sadness to see the degree of constant disinformation that most Americans consume each day. And then think they’re informed.

“You are what you eat” and you are also what you read, listened to and believe. It grieves and saddens me so much to know how very many Christian brethren here are less than fully informed of the world we live in, by their choices of where they get their information from.

Lies can come in many forms. It was Hitler that said, “If you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one that no one would believe you would say unless it was true”. But there are other kinds of lies, where the truth is shaved and shaped to fit an agenda that doesn’t want you to know the full truth. So there’s some truth there, it’s not a totally unadulterated lie.

But it’s not the unbiased, unvarnished, “unspun” truth. It’s “brought to you” by someone. It’s “genetically modified” truth from the sponsors of the broadcasting network or the owner of the publishing empire. So it fits their desire that you see things a certain way. It looks pretty much true; handsome men and beautiful woman are there to tell you how it is. But much of the picture is left out.

In a few weeks I’m (by God’s grace) going to be taking a trip to a part of the world that is in the news every day. I have many hopes for this trip. But one of them is to be able to come back to my friends here in the States and to tell them plainly, first hand, “This is what I saw and what I learned”. Because they seldom if ever hear that. We’re told what the powers that be want us to know.

And I’m not talking about the government here since we have an ostensibly free press. But I’ve had to, over and over again, speak to my Christians friends to tell them my personal experiences outside the United States. And often this has meant I’ve had to break the stereotype my friends have been feed through the media and the websites they get their info from.

What can we do? “Hunger and thirst after righteousness” (Matthew 5:6), that’s what the Bible says. Be desperate for the truth, like the Berean’s were in Acts 17. “These were more noble that those of Thesallonica in that they searched the Scriptures daily whether these things are so.” (Acts 17:11)

Let me tell you, friends, “we” are not always right and “they” are not always wrong. If you want the truth, strive to get a full picture, even if you have to go to websites and news agencies that may not be what you would consider part of your group or your people.

Have you ever had someone you thought was your “enemy” say something to you that hurt, but you knew there was some truth to it? Something your buddy-buddy friends didn’t or wouldn’t tell you? That’s sometimes how you have to find truth, even from someone not of your camp or group. And today America is so very divided that most folks won’t begin to believe anything they hear unless it comes from “their side”. That’s a bad sign.

In Old Testament times, Isaiah said of the people of his day, “Who say to the seers, ‘See not’; and to the prophets, ‘Prophesy not to us right things, speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits.’” (Isaiah 30:10). Just before the destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah said of those then, “The prophets prophesy falsely and My people love to have it so.” (Jeremiah 5:31) Probably there are many millions like that today. They don’t even want the truth; they’d rather have the pleasing lies, the “smooth things” and so they remain in their stupor.

“Hunger and thirst after righteousness.” Realize that you are being heavily propagandized every single day. You may be concerned about the food you eat; how about the news you believe?

I look forward to being back here here from my trip and being able to share with my friends first hand experiences from real people that are in the middle of what we see on the news every day. I hope to be able to share what is really happening, what also can be done, what God is doing there and what those people really need.

Truth is a precious thing. Without truth, we may not be lost when it comes to our souls, if we are saved and believing in Him. But we can be walking in darkness and deceived in a major way if we just drift with the tide of what we’re told here daily, not only by the main stream media but by extremists with their own agendas.

Jesus said, “Everyone who is of the truth, hears my voice.” (John 18:37) May we all be desperate and searching for what is actually true and real in these dark and desperate times.

History, prophets and progress

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Mark McMillion

I read a lot of history, basically almost every night. Most of it is in relation to the history of Christianity and faith over the last 2000 years. It fascinates me. I’ve already written elsewhere about Saint Patrick, one of the most influential people in the history of Europe and certainly of the Irish and Scottish people that my ancestors come from.

But over and over again I’m struck by how it so often came down to change. Would the (what we now call) “religious people” make spiritual progress, expand and be renewed with what God was trying to do in their lives? Would they change with the new day or hold on to their old ways?

It’s such a hideous trap. Hideous! People of faith think they have to hold on to the basic tenets of their faith, which often is true. “Let that therefor abide in you which you have heard from the beginning.” (I John 2:24) But some of these can be just religious traditions, rather than really make-or-break absolutes of the faith.

This is why Jesus said, “Well has Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, ‘This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from Me; howbeit in vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men’.” (Mark 7:6 & 7) Some of those folks perhaps originally were, to some degree and measure, genuinely worshiping God. But when Jesus came along, His reality, His warmth, His truth and His miracles were a manifold greater witness of God’s power than the vain traditions they’d come to mostly be holding on to.

What happened? Some people quickly caught on that “No man every spoke like this man.” (John 7:46) They knew that “He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (Mark 7:29) But some people, the majority, held on to their “old wine”, as Jesus called it.“No man, having drunk old wine immediately desires the new; for he says the old is better”. (Luke 5:39)

And this is such an incredible truth; you can see this repeated down through the centuries and the fate of nations and civilizations hung on it. Some folks were confronted with the “New Wine” of the presence of God in the apostles He sent to the nations. Some pagan kings had the grace and the wisdom to recognize the hand of God and the presence of God in the apostles of their day and they received them and worked with them. The result? Their nations converted from heathen darkness to the God of Light. Read about Boniface and his work to bring Christianity to what we now call Germany. Or the incredible effect Martin Luther had on the history of Europe in the 1500’s. Luther brought change, not with the sword or economics or science, but simply in leading his generation to return to the original truth of the Word of God. And Europe was never the same after so many nations received the truth of God through Luther.

But the sad thing is the times when the people or the rulers were presented with a new message from God, an exposure of their lapses or a call to take a further step in the path of faith and righteousness.

Jerusalem destroyed; 586 BC

History is full of examples of both leaders and the masses who shunned the voices of God that He sent, rejecting His messengers and His truth that was sent to deliver them from the troubles they were in. This was never more clearly happening than with the people of Israel, before their destruction and subjugation by Babylon around 586 BC. “They mocked the messengers of God, and despised His Word and misused His prophets til the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, and there was no remedy.” (II Chronicles 36:16)

The history of Europe is strewn with examples of these times, some of which went well and many which didn’t. Multitudes of blog articles could be written regarding these things when the subject of the French Revolution comes up. Or the history of Russia, leading up to the fall of the Czar and the overthrow of Orthodox Russia, bringing in the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist Empire of the Soviet Union.

There were opportunities in all these things where a leader could have arisen to courageously lead his people out of their dilemmas by taking the higher ground of God’s will, truth and Word. But so often, this just didn’t happen. It reminds me of the heartbreaking verse in Ezekiel, “I sought for a man among them that might stand in the gap and make up the hedge, that I might not destroy the land, but I found none.” (Ezekiel 22:30) How often in history this has happened! God sought for a man among them to stand up for God and His ways in their desperate times. But He “found none .”

No leader of stature could be found by God to “stand in the gap” of the broken wall of God’s will and protection. No leader or even a commoner, like Joan of Arc was so dramatically for the French in the 1400’s, could be found to lift up the message of God, to rally the people to spiritually higher ground, greater obedience, further truth and to continue in the paths God was leading them. So He could no longer protect them.

“They that wander out of the way of understanding and shall remain in the congregation of the dead.” (Proverbs 21:16) God didn’t fail to send them His truth in many forms. When you read history, you can see this over and over. Sometimes it was heeded and the nation was saved from what looked like was doom. Many other times it was rebuffed and mocked. As the martyr Stephen cried to his brethren the Jews in Acts 7, “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?” (Acts 7:52) And so destruction and even annihilation came.

This is what happened with ancient Israel, so clearly recorded in God’s Word so long ago. And it didn’t just happen with the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586 BC. This has happened again and again to societies and nations over the last 2500 years .

Like the old song said, “When will they ever learn?” Well, some do. But the warning to us all is fearful and awesome. “Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe His prophets, so shall you prosper.” (II Chronicles 20:20)

Heat to Light

Posted on January 29, 2015 by Mark McMillion

So we were talking about the Middle East, about Islam and Islamic fighters, extremism and the phrase that was used back in the 70’s, “hearts and minds” came up.

Yesterday on the national news a German reporter was telling about his experiences in the radical Muslim camps in the Middle East and how new volunteers from the West came every day to join the forces there.

The reporter said that even the very best combat troops from the West would not really be able to defeat the Islamic fighters. The reason he gave was that all the Western forces basically still hoped they would finish their tour of duty and get back to their families. But the Islamic fighters, they were fully ready to die for what they were fighting for.

Electric heat

It really gives one pause for thought. I told my family that it’s almost like spectrums, how scientists say that in a sense, light and heat are the same thing, just different frequencies and ranges. In the same sense, it’s like the motivations that motivate someone when it comes to patriotism, nationalism and pride could be compared to heat that motivates us and even inflames us.

Electric light

But further up the frequency is the realm of light, or what some people call religion. So many Islamic people worldwide today feel strongly about their faith in God, which incidentally they will tell you, if you ask them, is in the God of Abraham, regardless of what some American Evangelicals will tell you otherwise.

But it’s like the phrase again, “hearts and minds”. The early Christian movement in the first centuries started out with a band of 70 to 100 young Jewish men and women in an obscure province of Rome. And in around 200 years, it had mostly taken over the Roman Empire.

How did they do that? With weapons? Technology? Education? Culture? Entertainment? No, it was what today is called religion. But back then it was more a matter of what was totally believed to be truth, love and a revealed reality. They reveled in the light that the promised Messiah of the Jews had indeed come, had risen from the dead and was now at the right hand of God, ready to forgive sins and to give eternal life to those who came to Him in prayer.

You may not believe that. Certainly 100’s of millions of people in the West think that’s not really true or relevant anymore. But Islamic people have not had the falling away from their faith that Westerns have had. They don’t separate out religion from the rest of their lives, like most Westerns do. Even that is as fairly recent event in our history.

Usually, in some sense, you could say that light will generally trump heat. Back at the time of Rome, the Christians had so much light, they didn’t physically attack the Romans, but the Romans attacked them. And it became clear over the first two centuries or so that the Christians were so full of their light and faith that they would joyously die for their faith, rather than renounce it. And eventually the light of Christianity defeated the heat of the Roman civilization of that day.

Mark, are you trying to say that the Muslim’s faith in what they believe is the light in their religion will not be overcome by the strength of our patriotism, our nationalism, our advanced civilization?

I don’t know. I do know from my experiences that I found the faith of many Muslims is often pretty strong and intact whereas the faith-foundation of many Westerners is kind of flimsy at best, if you really test it. People have souls and spirits. And patriotism, materialism and nationalism are just not really designed to enlighten our souls the way the God of the Bible and His Son can and will, if we let Them.

So I was telling my family tonight that I feel what’s really needed is to move out of the spectrum of heat and move towards the spectrum of light. For me, it wasn’t till I came to “the Light of Israel”, Jesus Christ, that I had the transformation of soul, spirit, mind and character that has carried me through my last 40 plus years. The Western world, what overall could be called “the Christian world”, is really pretty weak in spirit right now. So very few are strong in their faith, strong in its tenets, strong in a personal experience with God and with Jesus. And it’s just a law of nature that weakened, confused, unmotivated forces will loose to more highly motivated, envisioned, inspired forces of what are seen to be the enemy.

Most experts on international affairs and the intelligentsia of all that will openly admit that tactical, physical warfare can only do so much. If “hearts and minds” are not won, then you’re just chopping weeds without rooting out the cause. What of course is truly needed worldwide is for the people of Lord to be strengthened mightily in their innermost being, not with military weapons, foreign aid or patriotic pageantry but in the utter fundamentals of the faith of their forefathers.

Paul said, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but might through God to the pulling down of strongholds.” (II Corinthians 10:4) “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12) This is a Biblical way of stating what folks were saying at the time of the Viet Nam war that “hearts and minds” needed to be won, not just to do battle in the physical.

But how many Christians today know how to fight with the spiritual weapons of His Word and love to bring this world to Him? Most of them seem to default to “send in the troops” or just to collapse in fear of Islam, rather than knowing how to move to the “higher frequencies” of the light of the Lord to win souls and win this world to Him.

Without a knowledge of God, a relationship with God, the protection of God and the salvation of God, no amount of carnal, mental machinations of man will stand up to stronger spiritual forces, if God deems it time to unleash them on a backslidden people. Heat has its limits and weaknesses. We must all get further up the frequency, into the realms of Light.

Mark McMillion

Creeds and Deeds, Facts and Acts

Category Archives: Personal views & lessons

“Truth be known”

“So Mark, why didn’t you catch that sooner? Why didn’t you see right through them immediately, if you really have a link with the Lord?”

Tales from Trondheim (Part 1)

“Fleeing into the wilderness”… in Bulgaria

You may ask, “How in the world could that verse have anything to do with southern Bulgaria where you were?”

“Mark, why would the Christians be ‘fleeing into the wilderness’ during that last 3½ years?”

God Needs You

God Needs You

Preserve the Pillars

Hell

“Oh, Mark, that’s so horrible! How could a “God of love” do such a thing to you! You poor, poor thing!”

“So this time He’d had enough and He allowed you to have what justice would allow, a just reward for your foolishness and backslidden nature after He had kept you from death a few months before? Right?”

Speaking Truth to Evil

Seeking Truth, without a spin

History, prophets and progress

Heat to Light