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THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, November 2, 2024 – Becoming more like Jesus doesn’t mean we have to grow our hair long and wear sandals. It means we make the same choices he did and embrace the same values he did, not because we’re trying to mimic him for the sake of mimicking him, but because he did things right.
If you’re genuinely born-again, you want to do things right. The desire to do things right is your default position in everything you do. You don’t consciously make it your default position; it becomes your default position at rebirth.
I was born-again from atheism, so I don’t share the mindset of people who are happy to remain in churchianity. When I say I don’t share their mindset, I mean I don’t understand it. I’ve never experienced it. For me, it’s been either zero belief or 100% belief. For me, there was never anything in between, by which I mean that in-between place where most people in churchianity dwell who say they believe but don’t live their belief.
When Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead, he took only three of his disciples and the dead girl’s parents into the girl’s room. There is a reason why Jesus did this and why it was meticulously recorded in the Gospels. Outside were crowds of people who mocked Jesus for saying the girl was not dead, just sleeping, but also outside and far far away were the rest of Jesus’ disciples whose faith wasn’t as strong as Peter’s and James’s and John’s. I wonder how they felt when Jesus looked past them and chose instead those three disciples to accompany him for the miracle. Was it a wake-up call for them, an incentive to grow their faith? Or did it shame them? Hurt them? (Maybe even get them a little angry?) All the disciples had been called at the same time to follow Jesus, but some had become much stronger in their faith than others. Why was that? Why did some grow fast and deep in faith, while others lagged behind?
We know it wasn’t for lack of opportunity that some of the disciples progressed more slowly than others. I mean, they were all living and working with Jesus. I can’t imagine a better opportunity to become more like Jesus than by watching him and hearing him and interacting with him day after day. So what makes people drag their heels in their faith journey? What side-tracks them? What makes them draw the belief line this far and no further?
Jesus gives us the answer:
If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.
This is not the first or the only time that Jesus tells people they have to leave their old life behind if they want to be his follower. It’s a theme that runs through the gospels from start to finish. But Jesus didn’t tell people to leave their families, quit their jobs, and give up all their possessions for his sake. Jesus wasn’t gaining anything from having them do these things. It wasn’t for his benefit that Jesus had them walk away from their old lives – it was for their own benefit. They were the ones who would gain from it.
And what would they gain? A closer relationship with God and everything that goes with having a close relationship with God. And how would they gain it? By relying more and more on God than on people and possessions. By leaving their minds undistracted and unburdened by “the cares of this world”, they’d be free to focus fully on the task at hand, as directed by Jesus.
The call to walk away from your old life is as loud and clear as it was when Jesus chose his first disciples. The call has not changed, even though some claim it was only for the early church, not for us today. But I disagree. Clinging to your old life lies at the root of weak and superficial faith, and weak and superficial faith explains why so many people who say they believe end up spinning their wheels in churchianity. Not making God their priority, they can’t receive what God wants to give them. Sure, they’ll have their family, but at what cost? Sure, they’ll keep their job and their possessions, but at what price and for how long?
Rebirth is like a birth: you arrive with nothing and are given everything you need to survive. But imagine a newborn refusing to let go of its placenta and umbilical cord. Imagine a newborn refusing to use its lungs to breathe. Imagine a newborn refusing to suck on a breast but instead crying for the blood transference that fed it in the womb. That newborn wouldn’t survive very long.
Yet that newborn is not unlike a Christian who refuses to let go of his old life.
Becoming more and more like Jesus is a call we need to answer every day. We do this by making the same choices Jesus did and for no other reason than that they were and are the right choices. If Jesus unequivocally says we’re to leave everything behind, we leave everything behind, and we do so not for Jesus’ sake, but for ours. We can’t claim to have a close relationship with God if we’re hanging onto the world’s umbilical cord. Letting go of our old life – giving it all up for God – is not only the best way forward for genuine believers, it’s the only way forward.
NOAH’S NEIGHBOURS AND THE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 7, 2024 – During the long slow decline of Judaism, in the years between the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and the coming of Jesus the Christ, the enemies of the children of Israel would get elephants drunk, poke their feet with sticks to enrage them, and then send them rampaging into Jewish towns and villages, trailed by enemy soldiers. These “war elephants” were styled after those used by Hannibal in his battles against the Romans and were considered a superweapon for their sheer size and weight alone. Not meaning to kill, the otherwise docile giants couldn’t help but cause death and destruction in their drunken fury. Tolkien’s mumakils are based on these beasts.
The human capacity to twist the natural use of God’s creation into unnatural and evil purposes seemingly has no bounds, which is why God on occasion issues a Time Out. These may take the form of a flood or world-wide war or genocidal event whose intent is to reset human desire back to basic survival mode. Ravaged by destructive forces, the blood-thirsty quickly devolve into the just plain thirsty who spend their days looking for potable water and scraps of food rather than plotting revenge. The famished, sick, and freezing, as both Hannibal and Hitler found out too late, make for poor soldiers.
If the current level of excessive twisting of God’s creation is any indication, we’re long overdue for a Time Out. Perhaps we’re already in the midst of one, but instead of a flood of water, it’s a flood of euphemistically labeled “newcomers” pouring over the borders of former Christian nations; instead of a declared war, it’s an invasion of military-aged males with military-grade experience masquerading as asylum seekers.
But have no doubt, we’ve earned these interlopers. They’re a reward, not a test or imposition: a reward. We collectively had them coming after we consistently, resolutely, and proudly turned away from God and embraced the ungodly. Given free reign to choose, we showed by our choices that we wanted a world without God, and he’s now in the process of giving it to us.
There are now so many drunken rampaging elephants in the room, it’s impossible to ignore them let alone avoid them. We see them coming but are warned to unsee them; we try to unsee them but succeed only at seeing them all the more. We are by turns drowning and being trampled, with no safe haven but under the shadow of God’s Hand.
And so we scurry under here and crouch, panting and wounded. We dare not venture beyond these confines, even after our breathing has calmed and our bleeding has stopped. Here is where we need to stay, aware of the carnage happening all around us but just as aware that we can do nothing to stop it. Earned rewards cannot be stopped, though they can be mitigated while there’s still time.
Is there still time? Can the floods be rerouted and the elephants made docile again? Can we lure these great beasts out of the room and back into the jungles where they belong? Is there still time to mitigate the damage and recalculate our rewards, or is it already too late?
How much time did Sodom have?
How much time did Noah’s neighbours have?
Is this a Time Out or a Time’s Up?
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I see and am commanded (not by God) to unsee, but I only take my Commands from God.
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A PALE HORSE
What the world says:
The rider emerged from the river on a dappled grey horse at the Trocadero at the base of the iconic and resplendent Eiffel Tower. A parade of flag bearers from all countries assembled behind the rider as they walked together through the streets of Paris to raise the Olympic flag and sing the Olympic anthem.
It was magnificent and humbling.
What the Bible says:
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
WAYNE HANKEY: IN MEMORIAM
“But if you will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret places….” (Jeremiah 13:17)
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 27, 2024 – Yesterday was the first time I’d been to his library, and the last thing I expected to see when I walked through the door was a teapot. It was part of a display of fine porcelain that I didn’t bother to investigate any further, it seemed so out of place and yet so apropos for the man who had given birth to the library all those years ago. In fact, a teapot was one of the main things I remember about him – how he would hold a tall silver one aloft while parading a procession of young men to his rooms after lectures, like a pied piper in flowing academic robes.
They would always trail behind him, those chosen few, at what you might call a respectful distance. And it was always young men, never young women. From my third-storey perch in the empty lecture hall, looking down, I could see him pontificating on one point or another and the young men listening in silence, as if afraid to interject or respond. So many were afraid of him for no reason. A big personality is no reason to fear someone.
I liked Hankey. I didn’t know him on a personal level, but our few interchanges as student and professor, reader and librarian, examiner and examinee, were cordial and professional. I also felt that he was kind to me during our brief conversations. I respected his rank and role, and knowing he didn’t like women in “that way”, I kept my feminine wiles to myself when I was around him. Being female, I don’t think I made much of an impression on him one way or another. I doubt that he even knew my name.
He was a local boy who’d “made good” through membership in the old boys’ club. That aspect of him I didn’t know about until after I was reborn, long after I’d finished university. The few times I attended mass at St. Mary’s Basilica in Halifax as a new Christian, I would see him sitting up at the front with others in the club who attended mass as an agreed-upon condition of their club benefits. Once or twice our eyes met, but he showed no flicker of recognition. I remember wondering why he was even at a Catholic mass, as I was sure he was an Anglican minister. Only later, when the scandal went mainstream just before he died, did I learn that he’d been defrocked by the Anglicans and quietly embraced by the Catholics.
The silence that met his untimely (or some may call it very opportunistically well-timed) death lingers to this day. Even after two and a half years, there’s been no university memorial service, no public occasion of mourning. The usual outpouring of accolades for a man who’d held near-celebrity status on campus for decades has been entirely absent. The reported cause of death has also been vague, though there is some speculation it had something to do with his heart. His body had grown as large as his personality in his later years, so even the offhand mention of “heart” by someone in the media was sufficient for most to nod a silent “oh” and question no further, thinking it must indeed have been his heart that had done him in.
I can only imagine all the sleeping dogs that heaved a huge sigh of relief at the news of his death, the dirt piles under their rug safe once more from public scrutiny.
This is what I remember about Wayne Hankey – a booming voice that preached God to me as a wide-eyed undergrad atheist; an ornate silver teapot held high and steaming; long flowing academic robes fluttering in the breeze; one library lorded over and another given birth to; and a gaggle of young men perpetually trailing behind him. From this you can see that I didn’t really know him, not personally and not academically, but someone has to say something. Someone has to say: He lived. He made his mark. He imprinted on people. He was and still is part of our lives. And as such, he deserves a kind word on parting, regardless of his alleged crimes.
Even Satan got a mention in the Gospels.
The official silence around Wayne Hankey’s death is not right. I know that those in the club have been silenced and are afraid to say anything, but I have no such muzzle and I don’t share their fear.
And so, being free, I shout from the rooftops:
THANK GOD FOR THE GOOD THAT WAYNE HANKEY DID IN HIS LIFETIME!
THANK GOD FOR HIS MANY KINDNESSES!
HE WAS LARGER THAN LIFE AND TRULY ONE-OF-KIND!
I LIKED HIM.
HE WILL BE MISSED.
Charlotte Creamer (FYP 1983-84)
PRAYING THE WITCH AWAY: SPIRITUAL WARFARE FOR BORN-AGAIN BELIEVERS
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 14, 2024 – Someone contacted me the other day, wondering what could be done about a witch in the family. I had written about this dilemma a few months ago, and my answer remains the same: You continue being a follower of Jesus. That’s how you deal with a witch in the family.
What does being a follower of Jesus mean? You live the Gospel teachings.
What are the Gospel teachings? Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; treat others as you want to be treated; love your enemies; and keep the Commandments.
Keep the Commandments. All of them. Especially the one about honoring your mother and father, keeping in mind that honoring means to be respectful of them in your words, deeds, and thoughts. If you have issues with your mother and father, you take them to God, not to your minister or random strangers on the internet or “health professionals” or friends, neighbours, relatives, or spouses. You take your issues to God and God only, in prayer, and ask God to help you keep the Commandment.
Spiritual warfare isn’t waving crosses around and dousing the offending person in holy water. Spiritual warfare is being kind to people who are unkind to you – kind to them in your thoughts as well as in your deeds. Being kind to them in your thoughts is the most difficult and highest level of spiritual warfare, but also precisely the level of warfare that we’ve been called and equipped to do as born-again believers.
Spiritual warfare is also helping people who come to you in sincerity looking for help. For those people, God will give you the means, wisdom, and wherewithal to help them. But like the person who contacted me about the witch in his family, the people coming to you for help might not always want to hear let alone heed your advice. They will probably want immediate action to end the offending behaviour, but that’s not what the Gospel teaches us. We don’t wave a magic wand and make everything nice and good in an instant. That’s not what we’re called to do. We respect other people’s free will to make the choices they make; we don’t have to respect their choices if they choose against God, but we do have to respect their free will. God does.
We also need to remember that prayer (which should always be our default in every situation, whether good or bad) is not talking to God but talking with God. If you’re not hearing from God (that is, if your conversation is one-sided), you’re not praying, you’re petitioning. You can petition God all you want, in the same way as you can send someone a letter in the mail when you instead could just visit them in person. Prayer is visiting God in person.
As a born-again believer, you should always visit God in person. Jesus sacrificed himself so you could do that.
Once upon a time a long time ago, I was the witch in the family. My grandmother prayed for me without telling me she was praying for me, and she did so for nearly 36 years. That’s a long time to be praying for someone while seeing the someone you’re praying for get progressively worse and worse. My grandmother didn’t confront me or throw holy water on me or wave crosses at me: She simply was kind to me in all her interactions with me and prayed for me with a grandmother’s heart, in her room with her door closed, not announcing it.
God showed me all this after I was born-again; that is, he explained it to me after I was born-again, because although I’d seen evidence of it at the time, I hadn’t understood what was being done behind the scenes, being blind and deaf and dumb as I was.
We don’t get to the top of the mountain by flying there; we can’t fly there, because we don’t have wings. We get to the top of the mountain by walking there step by step, prayer by prayer, kind thought by kind thought, helping hand by helping hand, prayer by prayer by prayer by prayer.
The world is under Satan. God made the world and then put it under Satan’s administrative authority. All those who aren’t God’s people are Satan’s. There is no third option. With the majority of the world being under Satan’s administrative authority (with God’s permission), it’s no wonder that we all now have at least one witch in the family, likely more. But the answer isn’t to rant at them or warn them of their coming perdition if they don’t change their ways: They’ll be too blind, deaf, and dumb to hear you, like I was when I was a witch. Pray for them. Treat others as you want to be treated. Love your enemies. Keep the Commandments.
Being a follower of Jesus rarely involves grand gestures in the worldly realm of Satan; the grand gestures take place behind the scenes – in God’s realm in your prayer closet and in your heart, soul, and mind.
WHEN JUSTICE COMES CALLING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 28, 2024 – Just because God’s justice is unavoidable doesn’t mean you have to like it.
Jesus didn’t want to be crucified. Even at the 11th hour, he tried to find a way to wriggle out of it. When he finally accepted that no other option was on the table, he bowed and powered through it. But that doesn’t mean he wanted it or liked what was happening to him. Agreeing with God’s justice and realizing it’s unavoidable doesn’t mean you have to like it. You’d have to be a sadist or a masochist to like it. You just don’t fight against it.
Former Christendom is devolving into a strange hybrid of Babylon and Sodom. It’s a spiritual and cultural disaster everywhere you look with no reprieve but in the Kingdom. I hate living in this hybrid, but I also know that it’s God’s justice, so I have no intention of fighting it. You can’t have whole nations turning their backs on God and then expect life to be grand. It doesn’t work that way. You turn your back on God, he’ll accept it and leave you to the demons that you’ve chosen. Because if you turn your back on God, there’s nothing left but the demons.
I’ve recently returned the city after nearly three years of living in rural areas. I never thought I’d live in a city again, but here I am. You go where you’re called. In the city, the curses Moses warned us about in Deuteronomy 28 are more obvious than they were in the country. Everywhere I look, there’s decay and disintegration without the softening effects of a breathtaking view. Everywhere, born-and-bred Canadians have become strangers in their own land.
I will not fight this, not the way that people here are starting to fight it through protests and boycotts and publicly voicing their outrage. You can’t stop the rot and the invasion because they’re earned rewards: what was done is done and cannot be undone. You can’t stop the delivery of earned rewards, but you can slow their impact with a different kind of fighting – the kind that Jesus taught us. The stand-your-ground kind of fighting. The treat-others-as-you-want-to-be-treated tactical offense.
I don’t like what’s happening to the place I used to call home, even though I understand why it’s happening. Yet understanding why it’s happening doesn’t make it any more palatable to me. Some days I have to work very, very hard at accepting that the rot and disintegration are earned rewards. Like Jesus in the hours before his execution, I try to find another way around the inevitable, and God lets me try. My unvoiced anger is a natural and healthy response to what lies before me; if I weren’t angered by what I see, I wouldn’t be God’s child. How can you look at the way things are and not be angry? The way things are is God’s justice playing out in real time, the delivery of the curses foretold in scripture.
My anger is not with God.
I am reminded of the holy angels written about in Revelation and elsewhere who very cooly behold and describe the horrors unfolding before them as God delivers his Judgement. Rather than rushing to save the “victims” or tearing at their robes and moaning “Why? Why?”, the angels stare the rot straight in the face without flinching. Some of them even participate in delivering God’s Judgement.
Jesus never fought against the earned rewards of his people. His battle was solely with those who misrepresented God and his Word. The Roman occupation and all the horrors it unleashed was an earned reward. The demonic occupation today and all the horrors it’s unleashing is likewise an earned reward. Nothing and no-one can convince me otherwise.
There’ll either be suffering now or suffering later, but you can’t imagine there won’t be any suffering or that no penance is required.
I would rather have the suffering now and get it over with.
But I don’t have to like it.
FIVE RIGHTEOUS SOULS, AND COUNTING
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 9, 2024 – YouTube’s algorithm recommended a video to me a while ago featuring a YouTube prophet with a following of nearly a million. I know he had a following of nearly a million because that’s the first thing he mentioned in the recommended video. But rather than rejoicing that he was reaching so many people with (what I hope was) the Word, the YouTube prophet was instead lamenting that he “only” had nearly a million subscribers and that he was praying to get millions more.
This got me thinking about Jesus and about how many followers he had during his ministry years. We don’t know exactly how many he had (and I suspect he didn’t know, either, unless God told him), but their numbers waxed and waned according to what he was preaching. When Jesus was preaching about love and healing and being showered with blessings, the numbers were high; when he was preaching about loving your enemies and doing without, the numbers dropped off. Towards the end of Jesus’ time on Earth, the numbers dropped off especially precipitously (leveling off at nearly 0 at one point) before slowly and steadily climbing to where they are today.
But where are they today? What I mean is: how many genuine followers does Jesus have? I’m not talking self-professed followers; I mean people marked by God and filled with God’s Holy Spirit. How many of these do you reckon Jesus has today? I’d wager it’s a lot fewer than the YouTube prophet’s “nearly a million”. I doubt it even breaks 10,000. Whatever it is, it’s a number known only to God (and maybe now also to Jesus).
The exact number of Jesus’ genuine followers is important, though, because it determines how much more time we have before the Judgement. Remember how Abraham bargained with God to forestall the destruction of Sodom if a certain number of righteous people lived there? Abraham was a pretty good negotiator because he bargained God all the way down to five righteous souls. Abraham probably thought that five righteous souls would be a slam-dunk – what self-respecting metropolis couldn’t come up with at least five righteous souls? Sadly, Sodom couldn’t.
So numbers are important, just not the way the YouTube prophet views them. Also important is the degree of a soul’s righteousness. Every righteous soul has a specific degree of righteousness, depending on the measure of the Holy Spirit that God has granted that soul. Another word for degree is value, but most people don’t like the word “value” in relation to souls. They don’t like the thought that some people’s souls have a higher value than others, even though it’s true. God loves us all the same, but that doesn’t negate the fact that our souls have different spiritual values depending on the choices we make.
There’s a threshold for righteousness in a soul. When the value is below that threshold, the soul is considered unrighteous; when it’s at or above the threshold, it’s considered righteous, and the more righteous choices that soul makes, the more righteous it grows. Again, the value of the soul comes from the choices people make, not from something God has or hasn’t done. God measures and designates a soul’s value; he doesn’t impose it.
These spiritual facts are crucial for understanding the state of the world. Just like every individual soul has a spiritual value, so, too, does every family, every neighbourhood, every village and town, every city, every state and province, and every nation. When summed together, these values give the world its total spiritual value.
I don’t think it’s very high these days.
I don’t know my spiritual value. I know I’m born-again and under God’s grace, but I don’t know my spiritual value. I think I’d prefer not to know (lol), kind of like I’d rather not know my exact weight. Better to focus on doing God’s will than worrying about my measured value. I don’t think Jesus thought much about his spiritual value during his time on Earth, any more than he thought about the number of his followers. He didn’t consciously try to raise his spiritual value; he just made sure always to do “that which pleased the Father”. Based on that alone, Jesus’ spiritual value remained higher than anyone else’s before or since.
Credit scores and social credit scores are the world’s latest human valuation products. Of course, you can buy good credit or social credit scores or even cheat your way into them, the way you can game pretty much every aspect of the world (including the algorithms that designate how many followers you have on YouTube). But God you can’t cheat; your spiritual value is measured and designated by God, making it fool-proof. The only measure you should ever be concerned about is God’s valuation of you. Any other value assigned to you by the world can be falsified and is therefore untrustworthy and not worth worrying about.
The takeaway from all this is that Jesus never worried about how the world valued him; his only concern was doing God’s will. As followers of Jesus, we should also not be concerned about what the world thinks of us or the numbers it assigns to us. Yes, God will love us whether we do his will or not, but it’s critical for the future of the world (and for our own soul) that we do God’s will and continue to do it to the end, as Jesus did. Being designated righteous by God and remaining righteous under God’s grace is an enormous privilege that comes with enormous responsibility.
As the scripture about Sodom attests, we’re all that stands between the continuation of the world and its destruction. We are children of God living in God’s Kingdom, so we can’t just do what we want; we need to do what God wants, regardless of the circumstances we find ourselves in at any given time. We need to be righteous and remain righteous in God’s eyes.
The unbelieving world – even as it hates us – is depending on us.
PRETTY IN PINK? WHEN AURORAS MEAN DANGER
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, May 12, 2024 – In one of the many science fiction “invasion” movies I have unfortunately subjected myself to over the years, a woman in a crowd stares up in awe at a massive spaceship hovering in the night sky over her head. The invading ship is covered in twinkling lights, and the mesmerized woman just manages a breathless “So pretty!” when the “pretty” ship fires down a laser beam, instantly incinerating her and all those around her.
I’m reminded of this and similar movie scenes when I read the breathless descriptions of the auroras that have been painting our skies over the past few nights. The shimmering and dancing otherworldly lights have been described as “amazing!”, “once-in-a-lifetime!”, “vibrant!”, “awe-inspiring!”, or just plain “WOW!”
But there’s one thing wrong with this picture – many of the auroras have been pink, and pink auroras are well known in the scientific community for being not only incredibly rare, but also a sign of extreme danger.
As breathtakingly beautiful as they may appear, auroras are first and foremost an indicator that the electromagnetic shield protecting Earth from harmful solar rays is under attack. A geomagnetic storm battle is being waged wherever you see auroras, with the colors indicating the danger level that we below the lights may be exposed to. Most auroras are red or green, indicating the battle is relatively moderate and being raged well above Earth and outside the danger zone. Red and green auroras also indicate that the shield has the invasion more or less under control. But when pink auroras appear, which prior to the past few evenings was only on very rare occasions, the battle is extreme and very close.
Not only that, but pink auroras indicate that a tear has occurred in the shield, allowing the solar wind to literally pour down on top of our heads.
A tear in Earth’s electromagnetic shield is not a good sign. In fact, a tear in the shield is a very very bad sign. As “pretty in pink” as they may appear, these auroras tell us that a major breach has occurred in Earth’s defenses, which means that all life in the vicinity of the breach is being exposed to harmful rays at dangerous levels. While pink auroras may not instantly incinerate us like a laser beam from an alien ship, their simultaneous occurrence globally is a massive heads-up that all is not well – and is in fact far from well – with our electromagnetic protection field.
Scrawled across exposed desert rocks and on cave walls high up in the mountains in the western United States are depictions of auroras that were carved in stone thousands of years ago. These petroglyphs stand as a testament to a catastrophic event that wiped out much of the world’s population, with the survivors retreating to higher ground and finding refuge deep in caves. There, they would have been shielded from the worst of the electromagnetic storms, which were alleged to have lasted for years or even decades. While there’s no indication from the petroglyphs that the auroras painting the skies in those days were the notorious pink ones, we can imagine they likely were, and that Earth’s magnetic shield had been violently torn like the veil separating the Holy of Holies from the profane part of the temple was torn at the moment of Jesus’ death, signifying the exit of God’s Holy Spirit from the place.
Like pink auroras, the exit of God’s Holy Spirit from a place is a rare and very very very bad sign. So tonight, and every night from this day forward, if you look up and see pink auroras, consider whether “Wow!” is really the right response, given what the colour signifies. It’s not a time to be awed and rapt in wonder, but a time to prepare spiritually for what lies ahead. For if the state of the natural world reflects the world’s spiritual state (which indeed it does), it ain’t pretty.
WHEN SPIRITUAL VICTORY LOOKS LIKE DEFEAT
“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?“
Matthew 26:53-54
MCLEODS, New Brunswick, April 24, 2024 – Even before I was a believer, I knew that Jesus’ crucifixion was considered by Christians to be a victory. I thought it was all foolishness at the time and couldn’t be bothered even to hear their explanation as to why they saw Jesus’ torture and execution as such a good thing. Peering through my cracked and foggy lens of atheism, all I could see was defeat propped up by an improbable fairy tale that only gullible losers could believe.
Fast-forward to today.
Well, as this blog attests, I became one of those “gullible losers” myself, and I now see Jesus’ death on the cross not only as a good thing, but the greatest victory ever achieved for mankind.
God has a plan. As believers, we hear this so often that it pretty much goes in one ear and out the other, but God does have a plan. He has a plan for you and he has a plan for me, and it’s up to us whether or not we want to go along with his plan. He’s revealed his plan in scripture and he’s also revealed his plan for each of us, one on one, like he revealed it to Jesus and to Peter and to Paul.
In revealing his plan to us, God doesn’t hold a gun to our head and tell us we have no choice but to comply with it; he shows us plainly and well in advance what it is, and then he stands back and lets us choose whether to go along with it or not.
Jesus told us he always did that which pleased the Father. And we know this is true, because God told us: “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.” From this, we can see that Jesus and God were clearly on the same page. There was no divergence between them. No conflict. No contradiction. Still, when God explained to Jesus what his mission was, he left it up to Jesus to accept it or not. Nothing was forced on him.
God’s plan for each of us also includes spiritual victories that will appear to the world as defeats. Many of us may already be living that reality. We also know (because scripture tells us publicly and God tells us personally) that if we at any time feel overwhelmed by what we’ve agreed to and want to back out, all we need to do is to call out to God and he will in fact send 12 or 50 or even 100 legions of angels, if that’s how many the situation warrants. This option is always there for us.
I don’t know about you, but I’m spiritually greedy. I don’t want to settle for plan D or plan F or some other fallback plan after I’ve chickened out of the main one. I want to do plan A, no matter what it entails. And as grateful I am that God has those twelve or more legions of angels on call should I need them, I don’t want to have to use them. Like Jesus, I want to do that which pleases the Father. I want to comply with God’s plan without contradiction or conflict. I want to endure, as Jesus advised us, to the end.
Like with Jesus, this might require me to look like a loser or a failure or a criminal to the world, but if that’s God’s plan, then so be it. You can imagine that the last thing Jesus wanted was to hang on a cross with the world pointing and laughing at him and sneering that God had deserted him. Jesus didn’t go up on that cross because he wanted to; he went up on the cross because it was God’s plan, as laid out in scripture and as told to Jesus personally by God. And because it was God’s plan, saying “no” to it wasn’t an option for Jesus.
Saying “no” to God’s plan should never be an option for us, either.
God’s plan is never a mystery. God has, as Jesus pointed out, told us well in advance what his plan is, so that when it happens exactly as described, we’ll know who’s behind it. What is often a mystery to us is how God is going to achieve his plan. That’s where the miracles come in. That’s where faith comes in. That’s where we come in as we take our place up on the cross where Jesus once was, confident that this is where we need to be and that this will be our greatest victory, too.
INTO THE FIERY FURNACE
CHARLO, New Brunswick, April 11, 2024 – Our trials, when they come (and come they will), don’t always announce themselves in advance. Sometimes our trials are meant to blindside us because our raw response is part of the test.
Daniel’s good friends and colleagues, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (hereafter “SM&A”), weren’t entirely blindsided by their trial, but they also didn’t have months to prepare for the furnace. In the book of Daniel, we read that Nebuchadnezzar, the then king of Babylon, had a 60-foot-high golden idol set up. He was so proud of his idol, he decreed that everyone – regardless of cultural background – must fall down and worship it whenever they heard the sounds of certain instruments playing, kind of like Pavlov’s dogs responding to ringing bells. The punishment for failing to prostrate before the abomination was death by fiery furnace.
From the get-go, SM&A wanted nothing to do with the decree. Note that they didn’t lobby against it or protest it or start a petition to protect their minority religious rights. No, they didn’t engage in any kind of public protest or encourage others to do so. Instead, they just didn’t go along with it and remained quietly and resolutely standing when everyone else around them fell down.
Their decision to remain standing marked them for trouble. Soon enough, trouble came in the form of a gaggle of envious Chaldeans who gleefully snitched on them to the king. Furious, the king hauled SM&A before him and offered them a calculated deal: He promised them that if they would fall down on cue from that point onward, they’d be off the hook for their previous failings and free to go. But if they chose not to fall down, they’d be thrown into the furnace and burned alive. The king then addended his offer with: “and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?”
Who, indeed.
SM&A, knowing their God and choosing to stand firm in his promises rather than those of the king, quickly but respectfully schooled Nebuchadnezzar, stating:
If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up. (Daniel 3:16-18)
Their refusal to submit to him sent Nebuchadnezzar into a blind rage, and he ordered the furnace to be heated seven times hotter than usual and that the men be thrown into it fully dressed and bound, and without further ado.
We can only imagine what was going through the minds and hearts of SM&A while they were being hauled off to their fiery end by the king’s brutes. Whatever it was, it caught God’s attention, and he immediately sent his angel to protect the faithful trio, who ultimately emerged unscathed, unsinged, and even fresh-smelling from their trial. Humbled by what he’d witnessed, the king then decreed that anyone who spoke anything amiss against God should be dealt with accordingly.
All’s well that ends well, certainly, but I believe there’s a deeper lesson to be learned here than simply that God comes to the rescue of those who are faithful to him or that God gives you exactly what you’re asking for in prayer. In their statement to Nebuchadnezzar, SM&A not only pointed out that God was indeed able to save them from the furnace, if he so chose, but that even if God chose not to save them from the furnace, they would still remain loyal to him. In stating this, SM&A were showing that they were not putting any conditions on God or making assumptions about what he would or would not do: they were only stating what he was capable of and affirming that their loyalty and submission would remain to God and to God only, regardless of how their trial played out.
My dear fellow born-again believers – this is the crux of our faith: that we stand on the witness of our heart, not our eyes, and that we put no conditions on God or make assumptions about what he will or will not do for us. We love God and are loyal to him because we love him and are loyal to him. Full stop. We don’t stop loving him (that is, give up on him and turn from him to worship other gods) if he doesn’t deliver us from our trials in the way we think we should be delivered, or if he doesn’t deliver our loved ones from their trials.
We put no conditions on God. That, I believe, is the deeper lesson taught to us by the fiery trial of SM&A. Yes, they were delivered by God who showed he was well and easily able to do so, but even if he hadn’t delivered them (like he didn’t deliver Isaiah from being sawn in half or he didn’t deliver Jesus from being crucified), their faith (I believe) would have remained sure.
We stand on the witness of our heart, not our eyes. We love God with everything we have and everything we are and submit fully to him and to him only not because of what he can do for us, but because he is. That’s the first and what Jesus called the greatest Commandment.
If you’re not there yet in your faith, you need to get there, and the sooner the better.
A BORN-AGAIN BELIEVER 