Massive Disasters

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Romans 8:38-39  Good News Translation

³⁸ For I am certain that nothing can separate us from his love: neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future, ³⁹ neither the world above nor the world below—there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

When I booted my computer this morning, there was a horrific picture of the fuselage of a passenger jet lying upside down with smoke billowing from one end. The wings had been ripped off the plane, and the whole airfield was covered with snow.

This year has already had more than its shares of disasters. Sylvia and I have both contracted Covid and recovered—again. We have visited loved ones some of whom have suffered much worse, including heart attacks, mental breakdowns, and other major health problems—hey! We are in our ninth decade, and many of our loved ones are there, too. Many Americans succumb to death in this decade.

Unquenchable fires have ravaged great parts of Los Angeles. Fierce winter storms have flooded and frozen much of this nation. It seems like there have been more catastrophic plane crashes than usual. Thousands of people have been snatched off our streets or from their jobs by a vengeful and unsympathetic government and flown to some destination across the globe without any due course to law—and that’s America. Hundreds of government workers have been fired with no warning and left to flounder on their own. Internationally whole cities have been bombed out of existence. Those who have fled have nothing to return to.  

Are we headed into the prophet[2] Daniel’s “time of trouble such has never was since there was a nation”? I rejoice with St. Paul that no amount of disaster and trouble can separate us from the love of God, not even the devil himself!

Lord, thank You that nothing can separate us from You. All we have to do is to daily remind You, by reminding ourselves, of Your promise to keep us from being separated from You.

 

 

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[1] https://www.thetimes.com/world/us-world/article/california-los-angeles-fire-pacific-palidades-la-evacuation-latest-news-wctv8656d

[2] Daniel 12: 1 (KJV)

What You Think Will Change Your Life

 

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Proverbs 4:23 Good News Translation

²³ Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.

 

Solusi, the first Adventist mission station amongst non-Christian peoples, was founded in 1894 about 30 miles west of Bulawayo, the second largest city in Zimbabwe, Africa. Elder William Harrison Anderson moved to Solusi about a year later to replace several of the first missionaries, many of whom had died of malaria and are buried on the campus of what is now Solusi University. He was about 25 years old and stated he would take quinine to battle the malaria, in spite of council against using it as a drug for humans. By 1901 he and his wife Nora Haysmer were the only missionaries left at Solusi. The other missionaries were either dead or had moved on.

He spent 50 years as a missionary in Africa. About the malaria, he is quoted as saying, “Ellen White or no Ellen White, I’m going to take quinine.” She later supported his choice and remarked that she had not been talking about the use of quinine for curing malaria. While teaching at Solusi and Rusangu that he later founded in Zambia, he found that students would start attending classes but would give up after the novelty wore off. He is credited with taking a sjambok, or hippo-hide whip, to drive the students into class. In support of this he quoted Christ’s parable of the feast where he sent his servant to “go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”

To eliminate lice, he shaved all of the students’ heads, which became the common practice in almost all of the missionary and government schools in Africa. One young fellow had a lock of hair that was over a foot long. When Anderson went to shave his head, he protested that the witch doctor had told him not to cut that lock—if he did, he would surely die. Anderson told him that the Lord was stronger than any witch doctor’s curse and shaved the lock off. Within a few days the fellow was dead! It was determined that he died of malaria—but he was dead. As our verse teaches us, “Be careful how you think; your life is shaped by your thoughts.” Of course, all of the animists in the area were sure that his death was on account of the curse. Animism is the major religion of Africa. Even Christians and Muslims often follow what they believe their ancestors tell them today.

Satan’s first lie to the human race was when he told Eve “That's not true; you will not die. God said that because he knows that when you eat it, you will be like God and know what is good and what is bad.” [2] This doctrine of Satan is the foundation of animism. Anyone who subscribes to this doctrine can be deceived easily by having evil spirits impersonate the departed soul and continue Satan’s deception on the unsuspecting victim. This lie of Satan is perpetuated in many Christian churches that teach that when people die, their spirit goes to heaven, and they spend their time looking back to earth to see what foolish things their former loved ones are doing with their earthly lives. It is then but a small intellectual leap to consider that the departed can communicate with the living—and, voila, Christians are sucked down into animism: direct manipulation by the evil one.

Lord! Preserve us from Satan’s trap of believing that at least part of us continues to live after we die.

 

 

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[1] http://animismspirit.weebly.com/uploads/5/7/3/3/57336339/3757006.jpg?1439982013

[2] Genesis 3:5 GNT

Gird Up the Loins of Your Mind

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1 Peter 1:13 (Margin) Holman Christian Standard Bible

¹³  Therefore, when you have the loins of your mind girded ready for action, be serious and set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

 

Our church has started a plan this year of reading the whole Old Testament in one year. I encourage you to adopt it. I encourage you to discover YouVersion.com for yourself. I first tried it several years ago, and it had so many features that I finally gave up in disgust. Judson Nelson, my brother-in-law, helped get back on it in a meaningful way a year ago. Thanks. Jud!

However, install it on your phone and sign into it. It has well over a hundred different versions of the Bible The second language I learned as a kid (English was my mother-tongue) was Afrikaans. At one point in my life, I learned the Lord’s prayer in Afrikaans. At the end of its Sabbath worship service, the church urges all its members to pray the prayer out loud together, “In any language that you wish.” So, I started praying it in Afrikaans. Well, after 60 plus years, I didn’t trust my memory. I checked out YouVersion.com, and after some experimentation, I found at least five different translation versions of the Afrikaans Bible! I have no clue how many English versions it has, but there are many.

As you open YouVersion, it gives you the verse of the day. At the bottom are several icons representing various popular features, one of which is “plans.” Click on that one. Click on the button “Find Plans”. One of the plans is “Bible Projects | Old Testament in a Year.” If you start today, you have only thirty-six sessions to catch up.

This morning, we read Genesis 12-14. It starts the story of Abraham. In chapter 14 Lot is captured by a Persian invading army and carted off with his wife and children towards Persia. In Abram’s entourage, he has 318 trained soldiers. Together with his allies they spring a night surprise attack, and he defeats the reveling invaders and recaptures all of their loot including the people they were taking back to sell as slaves in Persia.

What never ceases to amaze me is the size of Abram’s household. If he has 318 troops, he must have had well over a thousand people, including wives and children, etc. In other words, this was no lonely Bedouin camp with a dozen or so people camping out in the desert. He also had his troops ready for action so they could set out at a moment’s notice.

Our verse encourages us to have girded up the loins of our minds, ready for immediate action—in other words, be ready to fight to retain the grace we have been so graciously given. God has freely given us a vast store of His grace. Let us be ready to defend it at all costs until He comes.

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[1] https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FGNQHGXeC4TKxHrX6_XoXvOTERRJdyNqx5rfu9x4-BHI.jpg%3Fwidth%3D900%26height%3D471.204188482%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D34adac866fccb5d199143cdfe0f3a2124974bf2b

 

Fruit in Season

 

January 29, 2025

 

Happy New Year—The Year of the Snake!

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Blessed is the one
    who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
    or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and who meditates on his law day and night.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
    which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
    whatever they do prospers.

 

Psalm 1: 1-3

 

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[1] https://www.nateholdridge.com/blog/the-importance-of-waiting-for-fruitfulness-psalm-1-3

The Lord Is Your Shade

 

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Psalm 121:5-6 King James Version

⁵ The Lord is thy keeper:
               the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
⁶ The sun shall not smite thee by day,
               nor the moon by night.

 

Our family moved to Solusi, Southern Rhodesia, in 1954 when I was 12 years old, and living in tropical Africa was a brand-new experience for me. When we arrived, well-meaning folks warned me, “You are red-headed, blue eyed, and pink skinned. You had better wear a hat all the time you are outside, or you’ll have a sunstroke for sure!” A stroke sounded pretty bad to me. My grandfather had died from a stroke just days before we moved, so I started wearing a hat often when I went outside.

The E. B. Jewels, second generation missionaries at Solusi, decided to retire in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, so they bought a bungalow on Khami Road west of Bulawayo near Solusi. Their son Laverne and I were good friends, and they invited me over to help whip the neglected yard into shape. We worked all morning in the tropical sun. I wore a hat as per instructions. By lunch time, I started throwing up, had a fever, and was feeling extremely exhausted. Mrs. Jewel was a nurse and suspected I had gotten a sunstroke. She rushed me off to the Bulawayo hospital, and they gave me an IV to combat my dehydration. I felt miserable but recovered readily enough.

In 1967 when Sylvia and I arrived at Ikizu in Tanzania, a degree or so off the equator, I knew that I had better wear a hat. My picture as I left the airplane shows me wearing one. I think that was the last time I wore a hat at Ikizu. For five years, I usually dressed in short pants, a T-shirt, and sandals locally made from an old car tire. I decided that the only time I had gotten a sunstroke was when I wore a hat. I figured out that the hat must have been the cause. I relied on the Lord’s promise that He would be my shade, and that while I was doing His business, He would protect me. He did.

Gracious God, thank You, for being our keeper and shielding us from catastrophes all around us.

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[1] https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Inspirational-Images/large/Psalms_121-5.jpg

Eaten by a Snake

 

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Matthew 10:16 Contemporary English Version

¹⁶  I am sending you like lambs into a pack of wolves. So be as wise as snakes and as innocent as doves.

 

When Dad was teaching at Helderberg College, we lived in one of their houses across the valley from the college. It was one of a row of five houses nestled in a peach orchard. On occasion the farm manger, Lionel Webster, would have the ground ploughed between the peach trees to keep the weeds down. On those occasions I would set out, barefoot, through the freshly ploughed clods to my friend John Raitt who lived next door.  I would take frequent, short steps and trample out a path we could use to visit each other.

On one such occasion, I came across a small snake. Much like young Gerald Durrell on Corfu, I was enamored by the wealth of plants and wildlife that flourished in the Western Cape of South Africa. I already knew about many of the venomous African snakes such as puff adders, cobras, and boomslangs. I didn’t even think of these snakes as I leaned over and picked this snake up by the tail. This one was clearly not one of those poisonous serpents.

I held it up by the tail, intrigued by three lumps under its skin, each about a handsbreadth apart from the other. The snake’s head was well off the ground, even though I was only about seven years old. I held it out at arm’s length and watched, entranced, as the little lumps slid slowly down the snake’s body towards its head. Suddenly the naked, slime covered, pink body of a baby mouse came out of the snake’s mouth and dropped gently to the ground. This tiny pink, furless mouse was galvanized into immediate action. It raced towards the nearest dark gap under the clods and disappeared from sight. Looking back at the snake I was delighted to see a second lump materialize into another naked pink body that also disappeared under the clods. The third lump followed suit.

I dropped the snake and knelt on the soft ground to see what had happened to the baby mice. They had totally disappeared. I have long since wondered how they could have lived in the body of a snake for who knows how long with no air and whether they died because they had no fur and so dried up into a frizzle or actually survived and lived the normal life of a mouse.

I also can’t help but think of how Satan is often compared to a snake. He wanders around doing his best to gobble up innocent souls. Then, sometimes, along comes a messenger of God and releases the soul to give it another chance at life. If we are fortunate to be released, do we dash away from Satan's fearsome grip?

Thank You, Lord, for freeing us from the pitiless clutch of Satan and aiding us as we dash away!

 

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[1] http://gallery.kingsnake.com/data/68690DCP_0757.JPG

Everything is New

 

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2 Corinthians 5:17 Contemporary English Version

¹⁷ Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person. The past is forgotten, and everything is new.

 

This is a new year. I have had serious reservations about what this year 2025 would bring. Our country has been divided worse than anytime since the Civil War. Only time will tell whether we can ride the crest of this wave or be drowned by it. The past is indeed being swept aside.

On the other hand, life rolls on. We have a water leak in our front yard that threatens to drain the Colorado River dry. But we will take care of that. We have a Better Than 50 Club meeting in a mere fortnight. But members will rise to the occasion. My computer, on which I am typing this, is showing more and more serious signs of rolling over and playing dead. But my brother gave me a little computer for Christmas.

When I say little, I mean tiny: it is less than 3½ inches square and 1½ inches high (less than 9 x 9 x 4 cm) Yet it is 500,000 times more powerful than the computer I used during my doctoral research at the University of Iowa that occupied a whole floor of one of the large buildings on campus, and had dozens of people running it. In less than an hour I transferred onto it more than 100,000 times the total capacity of data that IBM 360 could hold.

I am already polishing off the final chapter of my Ikizu Memoirs book on this Ace Magician. And, yes, with Sylvia’s help we have all but completed the equatorial African experience of our lives, so that part of our past is history and forgotten only in the sense that we no longer are living it.

God has had His hand in our lives through out our whole existence. We are definitely new persons, but in this case “new” includes “old” in it! Yesterday my Standard 1 grade school teacher Ruth (Miss Hurlow) Webster and her husband Eric came by our home. She will be 100 years old this year. I had found some pictures of their wedding (in 1950) that my dad had in his collection and gave them to her. I was in Standard 1 (= Grade 3) that year!

Thank You, Lord, for making us new persons—we look forward to the finished product when You come again.

Here is a wedding picture of Eric and Ruth Webster in 1950

 

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[1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51pmHZlGyaL._AC_SX679_.jpg