Phone Calls and Turds

 

[1]

Isaiah 1:18 Good News Translation

¹⁸ The Lord says, “Now, let's settle the matter. You are stained red with sin, but I will wash you as clean as snow. Although your stains are deep red, you will be as white as wool.

 

Isn’t religion a bit mysterious? Isaiah states that our sins have stained us red. Then God says: “I will wash you clean like snow or wool.” If one reads the Bible further, one will find that we are washed in the blood of the Lamb[2]. So, our red stains are washed in red blood, and the net result is white as snow.

This reminds me of a phishing call I got this morning at 6;25 a.m. I was peeved. My phone was also peeved; it warned me that the caller was “scam likely.” I answered it anyway because some scammers have turned out to be friends, and I didn’t want it to awaken Sylvia any more than it already had. The conversation went something like this: [contents in brackets were not spoken.]

Me: “Good Morning!”

Scammer: “Hello?”

M. “Good morning?”

S: “Can I speak to Sylvia Clarke?” [May I]

M: “Who is this calling?”

S: “This is erfijdsk from her shipping pharmacy!”

M: “I’m sorry, who did you say you were?”

S: “This is erfijdsk from her shipping pharmacy!”

M: “What do you want?”

S: “Are you authorized to ask questions for her?”

M: “I’m her husband.”

S: “Her new Medicare card is being shipped from her shipping pharmacy.” [pharmacies don’t create new Medicare cards]

M: “What pharmacy?””

S: “From her CVS shipping pharmacy.” [She has no occasion to deal with CVS]

M: “What do you want?”

S: “Her new Medicare card is being shipped from her shipping pharmacy via UPS.”

M: “What is being shipped?”

S: “Her new Medicare card, by UPS.” [Medicare always ships by USPS. Medicare never notifies by telephone. What a terrible thing to awaken me at 6:25 in the morning for all this pure unadulterated bull manure.]

I gently returned the phone to its cradle and sat down and read the verse quoted above.

As you know, many things come to all of us at inconvenient times. They often sound contradictory. Although at times, like the call I got this morning, they are cow turds, they sometimes have vital meaning,. A call that sticks out in my memory was a call one Saturday night at midnight.

It started out, “Do you know Elvin Oblander?” This had every sign of spam. However, if I had hung up on them, Sylvia’s Uncle may have ended up in jail for who knows how long which may have caused his untimely death. Because I answered, we were able to rescue him.

All of our carefully worked out crap filters usually protect us from harm or inconvenience, but they may occasionally cause us to reject absolutely vital information. How can we know?

\Paul warns us[3] “Put all things to the test, hold fast what is good!”

Lord, You promised us wisdom in our choices, wisdom that is extremely vital these days. Please give it to us now. Thank You.

 

 

 

---

[1] https://www.pashudhanpraharee.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/FB_IMG_1603321744305.jpg

[2] Revelation 7: 14

[3] 1 Thessalonians 5 :21 GNV

Selective Blindness

[1]

Luke 4:16-17, 28-30 Good News Translation

¹⁶ Then Jesus went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath, he went as usual to the synagogue. He stood up to read the Scriptures ¹⁷ and was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it is written, …

²⁸ When the people in the synagogue heard this, they were filled with anger. ²⁹ They rose up, dragged Jesus out of town, and took him to the top of the hill on which their town was built. They meant to throw him over the cliff, ³⁰ but he walked through the middle of the crowd and went his way.

 

Ever since I was a kid, this story has intrigued me. Here Christ preaches to His home town crowd in the familiar old synagogue. What He says riles them up so much that they grab Him, and the whole mob drags Him over to the edge of a cliff intending to throw Him over. Standing momentarily immovable there on the edge of the cliff, He simply starts walking right through the midst of the mob and away from them.

Suddenly those who were clutching Him all lose their grip on Him. He disappears from their view, although He is still right there. A ripple occurs in the mob as they temporarily move aside to let Him pass—but they don’t see Him and cannot feel or sense Him. They see someone enough to make way for him, but they don’t perceive that it is He. He casually walks back though the village and doesn’t visit again until their anger is forgotten, maybe never.

That reminds me of Lot’s experience in Sodom, told in Genesis 19. All the depraved men in Sodom were trying to beat down Lot’s door to get at two strangers they had seen enter there. Suddenly the angels inside the house strike these perverts “blind.” But the blindness is more than a lack of sight. They can’t even find the door that they were trying to beat down immediately before. They apparently can’t even feel the door. The fact that they were still trying to get at these strangers indicates that they were seeing everything except their goal. If they had been truly blind—as in unable to see anything—they would have been crying out in terror.

Another occasion occurred in Acts chapter 12. Four quaternions, or 16 guards had been assigned to keep Peter in prison until he could be executed the following day. Their very lives depended on his not escaping. An angel marches Peter past all of them undetected. Evidently, they didn’t discover his absence earlier, or they would have fled, or tried to fall on their swords as the jailor in Philippi attempted to do—see Acts 16:27.

In my blog published on January 22, 2022,[2] I told the story of Mrs. Wangai who escaped death at the hands of the Mau Mau freedom-fighters/terrorists in the decade of the 1950s because her captors didn’t see her leave their clutches.

Apparently, God still employs this selective blindness in modern times to benefit his children. In Matthew 13:14 (GNT) it says the following: “They will look and look, but never perceive.”

You are still willing and able to strike Your children’s enemies with selective blindness, Lord, to protect Your children. Thank you!

 

 

---

[1] https://www.holyspiritcathparish.org/throwing-jesus-off-a-cliff/

[2] http://wils-thoughts.blogspot.com/ 

God Thunders Marvelously

Job 37:5
King James Version
⁵ God thundereth marvelously with his voice; great things doeth he, which we cannot comprehend.

 

God communicates with us in many ways. Sometimes He roars in such a way that everybody knows He is communicating with us. This happened with the Israelites at the base of Mount Horeb when God spoke the Ten Commandments out of fire and thick clouds of smoke. This happened when Christ was on the cross and darkness enveloped everything as the curtain between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place ripped apart from top to bottom.

When God spoke to Elijah after the marvelous appearance on Mount Carmel, some powerful events occurred in nature. But Elijah recognized that these were not God’s communications—they were simply sent to see if he was awake:

1 Kings 19:11-13 And he said, “Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord.” And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave. And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, “What doest thou here, Elijah?”

God was in the still small voice. God spoke to Abraham, maybe 4 or 5 times; sometimes only in a dream. When God speaks to us, it is usually in a still small voice—a voice that we can choose to ignore because it is so small—maybe to our eternal peril.

There’s an old story, probably apocryphal, that I’m sure you’ve heard. Everything had gone wrong for a man. Finally, he said to himself, “Let me see what God wants me to do.” He opened the Bible at random, put his finger on a text and it read that Judas “went and hanged himself.” (Matthew 27:5). “No,” he said to himself “God can’t be talking to me there.” He closed his Bible and opened it randomly again and read, “Go and do thou likewise.” (Luke 10:37). So, he committed suicide.

Consequently, how does one know whether this still small voice is indeed God’s voice? Or is it rather a suggestion from our own inner desires? Or, much worse still, is it the devil making a suggestion?

Isaiah counseled “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” (Isaiah 8:20) If it is against the direct commands in the Bible—it isn’t God speaking. That brings up the question:  How do we know whether it is against the direct biblical counsel?

We need to read the Bible daily to keep reminding ourselves what the Bible does teach!

Please, Lord, keep speaking to us, and help us recognize Your voice and do what You are asking us to do.

 

 

 

 

 

CYRUS THE GREAT

[i]

Isaiah 44:28; 45:4, 13 

King James Version (KJV)

²⁸ That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid…

⁴ For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me…

¹³ I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts.

According to the setting presented in Isaiah 1:1, Isaiah wrote this book between 739 and 681 BCE. History records that Cyrus[ii] lived between 598 and 530 BCE. Taken at face value, this prediction of Isaiah preceded the reign of Cyrus by well over 100 years. Christians have traditionally assigned omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence to God. As such God can read history not only in what has already occurred but equally in what is yet to come.

Many biblical scholars worry that if a supreme being has perfect foreknowledge, then that knowledge removes the possibility of created beings having free will. If these creatures do not have free will, then they are not responsible for their own sins, so Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is unnecessary. Some of these scholars date “Deutero-Isaiah,” chapters 40 to 55 of Isaiah, to a prophet who lived in Babylon during the captivity of the Jews and already knew of Cyrus. They claim his/her writings are published as part of the prophecies of Isaiah. This raises the very real concern about what we mean by all scripture being inspired by God. Is God relying on a misrepresentation to get the prophetic message to the world?

My physicist friends insist on another way to look at creation and the Creator. We must assume that in the beginning God created our entire universe, which includes both space and time. In this case God is outside of both time and space. This means that God is not restricted to the inexorable march of time. God can view time as completely and clearly as He can physical space. This concept of creation gets us around whether or not there is a Deutero-Isaiah. What does this do to the problem raised about human free will?

As I see it, in either case we still have divine foreknowledge. What I do not see is that foreknowledge automatically includes God’s fore-ordaining human actions. It does include acknowledging that God’s intellect and knowledge are infinitely greater than humans can know or understand.

Lord, I thank You that although Your thoughts are infinitely higher than mine, You still take a personal interest in me and my life.

---

[i] https://iranterritory.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/happy-cyrus-day-the-king-of-persia/

[ii] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cyrus-the-Great