Abused by Proxy

August 18, 2011 - September 3, 2011
Post 217

I am finding myself flying deeper into this box canyon as it grows ever narrower and darker and foreboding. I really don’t want to be here and if there were an acceptable escape I would be taking it, but such an escape is not offered and so I keep flying.
I want to ignore this personal conflict and continue with the study of Revelation but that is not going well either, I get little in that direction at this time (rowing against the wind?). What I do get is focus on this personal issue that has earmarks of not being so personal as I thought and so as frightening as the end result appears to be I am compelled to continue flying in that direction narrating as I go
"Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths." Psalm 25:4-5
"Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty." 27:11-12.
Those familiar with these chapters of scripture will be quick to jump to the positive confirmed hope clearly provided “in context” of the verses that follow these; God’s sure salvation and protection from evil. But that is a general simplistic view of scripture that does not always apply the way we want it to. We must in the Spirit of wisdom use the entire scripture to identify just when to apply what, as Jesus did when he read only part of Isaiah 61:1-2
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,” and then he just stopped there at the comma as we are told in Luke 4:17-21 (the slight variation of the words between OT and NT is due to the Greek to English translation of the original Hebrew text of the OT which they used at that time). After stopping at the comma Jesus declared; “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” Luke 4:21.

Today, we well versed bible readers would have, like them, been incredulous that he would misuse the scripture so obviously. You cannot just pick and choose half a verse to make a declaration! And we, like they, would be right. But Jesus did not build his argument on half a verse. He was basing his declaration on the entire message of the scripture and in that much larger context he used that small portion of scripture to make his declaration. Who could have known that he the Messiah would be killed, and then resurrected, return to the father for a very long time, before returning to fulfill the rest of the passage? The Spirit of wisdom in the entire body of scripture gives that message but only to be revealed in its fullness at the appointed time.
We are now entering the beginning of the period ending in the fulfillment of the second part of that passage which he didn’t read; “...and the day of vengeance of our God;” (Isaiah 34:8).
And so I too leave out the rest of the passage I referenced because “the comfort of all that mourn” and "...the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living" appears to come later still (Luke 21:21-22…).
To provide further support of my questionable use I submit the chapter that follows my use; Psalm 28.
If I were to call upon verses 4-5 in my case “Give them according to their deeds, and according to the wickedness of their endeavours: give them after the work of their hands; render to them their desert. Because they regard not the works of the LORD, nor the operation of his hands, he shall destroy them, and not build them up.” There is great comfort in knowing those who oppress God’s people will fall into their own destruction.
But how does this really work when the oppressors are, say; your own government? Reading the passage again with this question of how does that actually work out in reality, it tells me that my wicked government will bring itself down, but being that I am affected by their experience I cannot suppose I will not suffer further as a result of this prayer fulfilled.
In wisdom we understand this verse is not a vengeful desire initiated by David, it is David simply repeating a promise of God that the guilty will be accountable and fall by their own plans. David was simply expressing this known Principle of God; I can know that my wicked government will also fall in this manner and it is not wicked to pray this to be so, not in vengeance but in agreement with God.
NOW with this big picture understanding I can apply the rest of Psalm 27:13-14 with the awareness it does not come right away; In fact it will get worse before it gets better, which is why I left out this part. We have the verification of this idea in the Children of Israel fleeing Egypt when their prototype Savior Moses came to rescue them, and their burden got greater not less (Exodus 5:7-8), also in the fear of the disciples after Jesus showed up to help (Matthew 14:26), quietly suggested in Matthew 24:14 coming after v.13, and again shown in Daniel 12:12 after verse 11. This is a critical concept of Christianity that must be viewed from God’s perspective before it can become useful to us. Patience of the Saints (Revelation 13:10, 14:12).

So back to my thought regarding the verses I selected from the text of Psalms;
I am struck by a reoccurring question; “Why did God abuse his prophets so greatly?” How do you suppose these following prophets viewed those scriptures of comfort that I didn’t select?
I am not asking why he allowed the wicked people to abuse them; that I get. But why did God himself abuse them too?

Lets review a few of them:

Daniel: That great man of God from his youth was taken into Babylonian captivity just as if he was rebellious to God like the others who actually caused the captivity, and for the rest of his long life he faithfully served the Pagan king that castrated him (Daniel 1:3,6,17-18). Now although this was not specifically by the command of God I put it here because we naturally assume God would divinely protect his faithful prophets from such atrocities against them personally. Did Daniel question the many promises of scripture regarding Divine protection to the faithful?

Jeremiah: similar to Daniel he was not specifically abused by God himself but experienced great suffering in his personal participation in the captivity of the wayward people. He is known for his weeping (Jeremiah 9:1) because of how heavy was the burden he foresaw soon to come on his fellow people (Jeremiah 1:1-3). He experienced a progression of bondage until eventually serious abuse close to death (Jeremiah 37:4,15,20-21,38:6,9-13), but being it came from the wayward people and not from God directly, I leave that part for another argument.
But it was God himself who required Jeremiah to abstain from marrying or having children in the land of Israel (Jeremiah 16:1). Are you serious? Could God not have saved out a single woman for his prophet? Were there no righteous women in the entire nation even though it was admittedly so wicked God sent it into captivity? Was there not one? But that was not the reason for Jeremiah’s required abstinence; Read Jeremiah 16:2-6 to find out the actual reason for this command of God that affected this man’s “normal” life.

Apostle John: was given the incredible Revelation… after spending years in a cave on an island as a prisoner in basically solitary confinement (Revelation 1:9 + historical record).

Hosea: a faithful prophet of God gets a message from God to deliver to God’s wayward people.
And what is the first thing God tells Hosea to do? “The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD” Hosea 1:2.
God actually commanded Hosea to marry a known unfaithful woman from a line of unfaithful women. Through their troubled marriage she bore three children whom God commanded him to name: Jezreal - as a testimony of doom against the northern kingdom, and Loruhamah - meaning “Not having obtained mercy”, and Loammi - meaning “Not my people” (Hosea 1:3-9). What a happy family that must have been. Talk about bringing his own curse upon him and his family!
Are you kidding!? Why would God command his faithful prophet to seriously harm his own entire life and that of his resulting family in this way? This man’s potential tranquil life of beauty in the holiness of the Lord was ruined by this requirement and he spent the rest of his life suffering in the heartbreak of a whorish woman who kept running off on him to take pleasure in other men while he worked hard to bring her back each time. It was not Hosea’s lusty departure from God’s commands that got him such pain, it was God himself who ordered it up special.
But we read it once as a youngster and think we got the message? Hosea spent his whole life in consequence of that one message of 14 chapters. Perhaps we can respect him enough to read it a second time? Just maybe the message that cost him lifelong unhappiness might have something important?

Ezekiel: Another faithful prophet of God was taken captive into Babylon with the rest of the punished people of God (Ezekiel 1:1) and there God gave him visions. This was no second-class prophet, God gave him several very great messages and prophecies to deliver and he did his job faithfully. So why would God in effect turn him into an eccentric or insane man as we see beginning in chapter 4? His first mission was to set up a little mock event and play with what was in essence plastic army men in the sand in front of everyone in town (Ezekiel 4:1-3,8) while taking up a public protest in a “lay-in” for well over a year (Ezekiel 4:4-6) all the while chastising his bare arm scolding it in front of his toy army scene as a mad man (Ezekiel 4:7). All this was to take place over this long period of time in a specific public display and like a mime he was to make a show of weighing his designated food and water allotments carefully before cooking it over human excrement, all in their sight (Ezekiel 4:9-12).
Poor Ezekiel was willing to do it all if that’s what God wanted, but even he couldn’t stomach that last instruction and begged God to give him a break (4:14) and so God did, and allowed him to use cow dung instead (4:15) not as a change of plan but simply a proxy for Ezekiel’s sake. God’s disgusting intent did not change.
Why would God put his faithful man through all that shame and misery and in essence destroy his life and dignity? I bet his wife really liked explaining that at the weekly ladies tea.
Oh but that was not enough, he gets more:
He was to shave his head and beard and then separate it into three clumps by weight. Then he burnt one clump, and repeatedly stab another clump with a knife like a madman trying to hit a cockroach on the kitchen table, and chuck the last part into the wind but take a few strands and tie them into his cloths before later tossing them into the fire too (Ezekiel 5:1-4). This guy was just plane whacko!
But Ezekiel was not mad and the national elders knew it as we see in Ezekiel 8:1 “…as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, that the hand of the Lord GOD fell there upon me.”
Believers love to imagine the glory of the past prophets and often wish to be counted among them wishing themselves recognized as extraordinary by the people and honored of God, but Ezekiel was not so disillusioned as he prophesied horrible things as is recorded in Ezekiel 11:13 “And it came to pass, when I prophesied, that Pelatiah the son of Benaiah died. Then fell I down upon my face, and cried with a loud voice, and said, Ah Lord GOD! wilt thou make a full end of the remnant of Israel?” (the last hairs thrown into the fire).
Ezekiel was heart sick at his own message and the anger of the Lord against his people. He was not having fun obeying the Lord but he was obedient.
Next in Ezekiel 12 we see him commanded to make a public display of moving from his house by first packing stuff into it to be moved. But of course it could not be in dignity, he had to dig a hole in the wall of his home and pack his stuff out through the hole while the people stood there and watched with raised eyebrow.
All this the Lord God required of his faithful servant, but yet that was still not enough.

“Also the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Son of man, behold, I take away from thee the desire of thine eyes with a stroke: yet neither shalt thou mourn nor weep, neither shall thy tears run down. Forbear to cry, make no mourning for the dead, bind the tire 6287 of thine head upon thee (put on your fancy dress hat), and put on thy shoes upon thy feet, and cover not thy lips, and eat not the bread of men.
So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was commanded.” Ezekiel 24:15-18

Tell me, who wants to be a prophet of God now? Who thinks it is a glamorous and envious job? And these men devoted their lives abandoning a normal life of happiness for this? Is this the reward of righteousness? Why would God himself do this to his faithful prophets? Where’s that American God-of-love for them?

According to modern logic of reasoning this is unacceptable; “A God who does this to his prophets is twisted”. In fact I am surprised the Dark One has not yet capitalized on this in his vilification of Jehovah.
We find the beginning of the answer to “Why” in the very next few verses;
“And the people said unto me, Wilt thou not tell us what these things are to us, that thou doest so?”
Isn’t it strange that in Ezekiel’s time of sorrow in which he did not mourn even a little, the people were so taken aback by his conduct that they wanted to know what it meant to THEM. They knew the cause and his reaction to the death of his wife was a message to them and they gave no thought to his own emotional needs, they only saw how it might apply to them… and this was the reason for his commanded reaction; so that they wouldn't pity him and miss the message. It wasn’t about Ezekiel, Ezekiel was abused by proxy. And Ezekiel knew it was not his place to rebuke them for their self-centered attitude, it was indeed a message to them, they understood that, and so he gave it:
“Then I answered them, The word of the LORD came unto me, saying,…” Ezekiel 24:20 and we learn that it was a direct representation of what they would later experience themselves on several levels (Ezekiel 24:21-27).
* * *

What is the Job of a prophet?
What’s the point? Why does God send them? Don’t the people have the scriptures? Why send his messengers to experience in real life these horrible destructions to their own lives?

The reason is staring America and the rest of the world right in the face today:
The all-consuming motivation of the religion of Islam is a hatred of Jehovah God. They have made their hatred of God as clear as possible by declaring war on all His followers. They publicly call Israel the Little Satan and America the Great Satan in their effort to get the point across clearly. They intend the extermination of all people on earth who will not follow Islam, starting with God’s own followers. Their hatred is so great they will send their own offspring to kill themselves if it means taking out a few of God’s followers.
And still America can’t quite get that message.
So they send jet liners full of our own hostage citizens crashing into several American targets killing even more than those on the planes, and finally we get a small light of dawning and retaliate with a pathetic half hearted “war on terror” with so many rules that we can’t actually get the job done. And still we appease, and negotiate, and placate, and coddle this demonic force bent on global oppression.

The mind of man that turns his heart away from God becomes fogy and simply cannot see the obvious. Very clear and specific words mean nothing to him as they are just words. This is not a metaphor as I watch in real time the mental fog roll in on regular people I know very well. I am stunned to see their mind go sleepy and they recognize it themselves to the point of comment but are powerless to fix it, while I notice God increase the clarity of my own mind as I stay focused on him!
And so to help the confused figure out the solution God sent his written word of warning in scripture.
But not getting the message, he sends the prophets to speak his word of warning.
But not getting the message, he sends the prophets to act out his word of warning.
But not getting the message, he sends his prophets to live out his word of warning. But not getting the message, God finally sends his own Son to die out his word of warning (Matthew 21:33-38). Why?

God sends his servants to deliver the message in a way the fogy mind might see the real pain in someone’s real life and relate; the reality of the message delivered means; “This is representing YOU in a very real way”. Its supposed to jolt the fogy mind to comprehend this is not a video or a TV show; this is real life and death stuff that needs to be addressed by YOU. In the image of Christ, God sends one of his own faithful to suffer loss in the desire to save many from the suffering represented. All the suffering of Christ ending in his death, is not something that might befall you IF… It is guaranteed to be your lot UNLESS. Your sins have already condemned you. You are already judged and sentenced by your own life;
(18) “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only Begotten Son of God.
(19) And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” John 3:18-19
But in the fog, the children of God to whom this passage was written, cannot see how this applies to them in the reality of their very comfortable lives of convenient sin. This is the warning message of the prophet telling of the unpleasant future that is coming, and the nature of the message therefore must be futuristic which makes it a prophecy; By nature a warning regards something to happen in the future.
To be clear; very, very few of God’s warnings of scripture are to the Godless, they are to His wayward children. Yet in the fog the children assume this is a warning to the heathen and does not apply to them as children even though verse 19 follows verse 18 as an explanation and they fall condemned under the description of verse 19.
And so God sends another stronger message of warning.
* * *

To be very frank I have been stalling the public declaration of my message in fear that it would lock into my personal life what still seems to be avoidable. But now I understand my message in a very clear way; weep for me mother as God has made me a prophet. But wait! Ezekiel was not allowed by God to weep for his loss, why? He was not to focus on himself but in faith he was to focus on God. This will be a war of wills until our master is singular. Is God really your master in love or in regret? I choose God because I trust his perfect will. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end” Jeremiah 29:11. The question is; do you believe God when you can’t possibly see it? “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” Hebrews 11:1. DO NOT weep for me mother; GOD HAS MADE ME A PROPHET!

First - My personal events in my life are for my own verification of empowerment that I indeed have a message from God. Unapplied faith is just empty words and without tangible effect they are as meaningless rhetoric. God’s message through me is made very real to me as I experience the message in real life painful representation.

Second- My public events I am compelled to share are my living out the represented real life message to you in proxy. What I am experiencing is God’s personal prophecy to you for the days ahead. “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7. It is too easy to hear the words "America" and "Global", and so miss that this is a personal message to you as an individual, So you read of my personal difficulties and hopefully it sinks in; This is personal to real INDIVIDUALS that happen to be in America, in the globe. Suddenly the fog lifts and you realize; "hey, this is a real guy with a real message in a way I can see the reality of it apply in a real way".

Third- My private and public message comes in two levels:
1- My easy to understand firewood collection for winter is a metaphor of spiritual preparation.
2- My more complex life problems I have represented by analogy *1 is a metaphor for the physical tribulation coming soon through ever increasing compounding problems that cannot be answered.

In the spirit of the Gospel message delivery of Matthew 10:5-6, originally my message was specifically for America first but is now Global (Acts 13:42, Ephesians 3:8). Like the Daniel 2:38 prophecy interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom being “global”; it does not mean directly affecting every home in every village in every nation on the planet but the odds that it means you are still very high, this is the meaning of global.
* * *

Here is the complex message as represented in the previous “6th 7 Pause” posts by analogy:
For several years in singular worship of God I was granted divine miraculous provision that blessed my life in ways not normal to others.
In time the Divine provision became comfortable and even expected by the repeated and consistent frequency. There was not fault in this just as the rapture of a new marriage matures into comfortable familiarity and the love grows deeper though less flamboyant.
But then, and quite quickly, the miraculous provision stumbled and I did not know why, and through searching to no real conclusion I thought; “somehow I must have resolved the issue because everything turned out ok”.
But the miraculous provision HAD ended though the transition was hard to identify because normal events came at just the right time to enable me to continue on. Was this not also Divine?
But as time progressed the timely events also failed to continue, so I began to use my “inventory” to keep up; still not sure what happened I eagerly anticipated the blessing to soon return.
But quickly it became commonplace to use up the inventory as a means of continuation which allowed me to keep my head above water, so I learned to get used to being wet. “I can survive” became the new thought of hopeful perseverance having dropped behind the easily forgotten glory days of so much extra I could grow an inventory.
But then the troubles grew larger and faster and the waves now washed over my head as the inventory is gone and the needs consume things actually painful to loose. But each time I came up for air I realized this too was survivable and so the new thought of hope became “I can reach the surface in time”. Isn’t it strange how quickly we can leave behind the old thought of hope no longer useful? When you exhaust all avenues of discovery and come up empty, you can do nothing but just move on, finding new fragments of hope to keep you going.
Now the troubles come in the form of sharks and the hope of survival seems to flee entirely with the will to try. Exhaustion sets in and giving up just seems like the thing to do. What’s the use? Hope is gone. And the black cloud on the horizon promising a great hurricane threatens to bring real significant change to an already hopeless situation *1.

Here is the spiritual message in simple form as represented in the previous posts:
I live in Alaska, I know about long hard winters, I know what it means to be cold.
It is normal to spend some time in the pleasant days of summer to collect ten cords of firewood all split and stacked for winter heat. A cord is 4’x4’x8’ tightly stacked. By doing the math of experience, ten cord is about 80 small pickup truck beds randomly heaped to spilling out. And by experience, ten cord will just get me through an unusually cold or long winter.
For several years I have had no problem easily collecting, splitting, and stacking firewood each winter, but last winter I was just not able to get around to finishing it until almost too late because of a preoccupation of something else (by instruction of the Lord for the sake of the message - Oct 2010 post 092 Your Doing What?). As winter was falling I scrambled, working hard to finish the firewood collection and was able to get what I needed enabling me to make it through the winter in relative comfort with the added frustration of green (wet) firewood.
But this winter, I was not able to make it happen at all in the summer (by instruction of the Lord for the sake of the message) and now as the last few weeks of fall are here I am suddenly allowed to get whatever I can (allowed by the Lord for the sake of the message). Clearly by the math alone it will be impossible for me in my present condition to get even half of what I desperately need to survive the winter. But every stick I bring in is a few minuets of warmth to keep the miserable cold outside, yet the discouragement of the obvious is very hard to face in the effort to even try. The years of easy collection now makes the unblessed effort that much harder, so it is very easy to sit inside in the comfort of a still warm house and watch it rain outside while the very real cold draws ever closer but is not here yet.

Do not miss the message by opinions, speculation, blame or even pity and sympathy; This is not a lesson for me, it is a twofold message from God to the Christian world;
The faithful can use the suffering of my obedience as a message of patent endurance, and the unfaithful can use the suffering of the message itself as a warning. But like the prophets of old, I will fully experience the consequences of my actions long after I post this. This too is part of the message.
* * *

Here is the meaning:
My coming temporal destruction revealed by analogy, represents the temporal hardships (tribulation) coming soon to each of us faithful and unfaithful in a very real way while my Firewood collection represents spiritual preparation for the same period of tribulation.
For some time America (and its individuals) experienced a period of unsurpassed blessing of a Divine nature. Originally recognized as the incredible miraculous hand of God, it was warmly appreciated as special among the nations of the earth. But the duration and consistency was long enough for America to become so accustom that it became familiar and even expected as natural, and so as natural, the provision stumbled. The ease at which wealth, power, sustenance, ingenuity, resources and comfort came to America was glorious indeed but we began to think it was just the luck of the draw and so as luck it had unlucky streaks too. Instead of seen as a warning that needed attention it was seen as proof that it was just luck all along, and the old history was rewritten with the new perspective of proof.

Then came a period when “its just the way things are” began to also change but it was still not known why. What was once easy with little effort, now did not come without struggle. The effort needed was that much more difficult due to the period of ease that made America soft. But America adapted and became as one of all the other nations to succeed or fail without Divine provision; by normal self-effort, which is really hard to see the difference from that place in that mindframe of rewritten history.

But before that new period could become comfortably familiar there came yet another period when with each met hard time the time of recovery became shorter before the next sacrifice was necessary. Sacrifice after sacrifice with limited recovery rapidly depleted what remained available to use for the next hard time to come along and we began to use up the necessities of comfort we could ill afford to give to the problem. And the rain of fall began to come in earnest. Summer clearly was over.
Then comes wars that must be fought and natural disasters that must be met. These are no longer choices they are demands, and each demand consumes rapidly the comforts of life, and still we simply adapt by confidently “choosing” to do without. Gone are the days of abundance but we quickly forget them and even turn on them as Lifestyles of self-gluttony to be rejected on moral grounds. Today is the only reality we know and I can survive without “that”.
And now today, we see that drought and floods and fires and legislation are almost systematically consuming the produce of crops not yet become resources intended to replace those already consumed, and still the hard times come as we can do nothing but plow ahead deeper into trouble. And this is just fall. Winter is about to come and we are more unprepared than ever, and still we don’t know how it happened.
The difficult decisions that must be made now are not at the pleasure of America but America finds itself for the first time at the pleasure of the difficult decisions. This too is divine as was the miraculous blessing but because the blessing was not recognized as Divine, neither is the difficulty and so the correct response cannot be recognized either.

This is not argued by most Christians. Anyone with one open eye while intoxicated can see this writing on the wall (Daniel 5:4-5), Christians have been watching for this to come for many years as warned in the prophecies of scripture.
But this is not my message, only the build up.

What Christians have done for years is to continue studying their scriptures instead of finding a job (meant spiritually James 2:16-18), they have been “writing their blog of faith” instead of collecting spiritual firewood.
Too many Christians have long played in the carefree sun of Grace, and more recently looked out the window at the fall rain from the dry Grace still to be had, but not feeling the cold or the wet they ignore the harsh winter coming very soon. Somehow its just hard to imagine. And because they neglected to do their work in the summer (spiritually guiding the nation), the scramble is suddenly on to make up for lost time once the chill in the air was recently felt by current political events. But in the excited confusion of a flabby and unexercised faith suddenly called upon, they have no idea how to actually go about the job and the mathematical evidence of the need shows a grave shortness of probable success (Ezekiel 7:14,23-27).
Somewhere not too far back in the mind of unpracticed hope-in-something-other-than-hope, are all those scripture verses promising wonderful and Divine protection, and so the silly confidence is bolstered by the history of Divine providence experienced by those now gone; “Something will work out, God will come through, you just have to have faith”.
But these are the very thoughts of the children of Israel and their self-prophets just before going into Babylonian captivity, they refused to hear the prophet of God speaking from the heart of God because it was a distasteful message: (Jeremiah 5:30-31,6:10,7:8,28,9:6,11:14,14:14,18:12, and 22:21,23:21-22,23:30-32,26:11 etc. well worth the time to look up.).

The point; the purpose of my message from God is not so much that hard times are coming for sure (which they are), but that the coming winter is longer and harder than any now imagine through a misuse of scripture. This period of harsh spiritual winter now very close, that Christians are wholly unprepared for, will be a long and unusually harsh period that many Christians will not spiritually survive because they expect to be “raptured” out of the trouble early-on. Christians boldly preach to the heathen; warning them not to neglect salvation, but then turn and neglect their spiritual preparation in the same way, choosing instead to practice a social religion in the image of the heathen at his Lodge.

I previously thought my blog was supposed to soon cover the rise and reign of the Antichrist, and we did cover a bit of learning about that future time, but now I see that this 6th 7 Pause is very significant in both magnitude and duration. It is the needed PREPARATION for this now rising period that needs our attention and not what comes later down the road perhaps even to our children. I am stunned that there has been such blindness on the period of “the end” (Daniel 8:17) BEFORE the period of “the last end” of the Antichrist arrival (Daniel 8:19).
So in the spirit of this understanding I intend my next post to be a study of the 10 virgins of Matthew 25.
* * *

I will continue as long as possible but fear that due to the desperate times I face, my blog might not continue as still more of my message representing the time when there will be a famine in the land for the word of God (Amos 8:11-13). The dark days are not behind the world in the dark ages or even the past holocaust; the darkest days are yet before us as we watch America Fall and Islam Rise.

So where is the hope of the Lord in the time of trouble?
Of course we always have hope in the Lord if we understand that is not the same as the fulfillment of that hope which comes only at the appointed time in the trouble. Hope by its nature is a future focus. Faith casts out fear! (Revelation 2:10)
We do not find the fulfillment of hope in the past feeding of the 5000 by the meager impossible pittance brought to Jesus for the job that miraculously succeeded as representing the Church age of grace through America if you will, we find it after the period of hard rowing in the event that came next. This too is a needful study I intended to cover further regarding the period now beginning, which I hope to expand as I continue to dig deeper into the prophetic message of the two boat trips of the disciples. Very exciting stuff!
* * * * * * *

*1 I maintain sharing my personal situation through analogy because my troubles are not to be compared to those of others, this is not the point of the message. Ezekiel’s wife died by a stroke, but was his the only wife to die this way? What about the guy down the road whose wife and children were devoured by a lion for instance? The death of "Ezekiel’s wife" was not the point to focus on, though her death was a message from God. I am very aware that many, many in today’s economic collapse have already endured far more loss than I even have the potential to loose, but this is not the point. My situation was designed by God for a specific message.
It is curious to me that I of all people have the skills, and the history, and the availability to fix my present problems, but it is the Lord himself who constrained me to get into this specific boat and set sail on this specific mission knowing full well the winds of adversity that would assail me. By previous real time posts you have watched the blow by blow of my calling, and my obedience, and my confusion, and my discovery, as I sail this course really no different than the disciples of Matthew 14:22-31 with the small hope of seeing verses 32-34 come to pass as well, yet knowing Ezekiel did not get his wife back. The specific time of my message strongly suggests the later end.

I now see clearly at least one reason why the Lord constrained me to sail this particular course and why he called up this particular storm for me, and why he has denied me to wisely turn into a safe harbor short of the destination. Mine is to sail this course and wait on the Lord to meet me. And this I am committed to do as I struggle with the rowing in the storm making little or no progress by the effort. I really want to cry uncle and be delivered from this, but I know God is adding oil to my spare container for the dark days ahead.

In my message I am abused by proxy as the prophets were, in order to deliver a very real and hard to receive message of warning. I can take the abuse because I am secure in the Lord while those the warning is for are not. This is why God can abuse his own prophets; their experience of loss is fare smaller than the same loss of the wayward.
The foolish Christians will not have the sustenance to remain and this warning will be rejected as harsh and unloving by a harsh and unloving God whom they will not worship, but the wise will take heart and be grateful that God has had mercy to deliver a warning, and use the encouragement to get very serious with God, storing up oil while it is still comfortable to do so before it is too late.
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