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!