The Gifts Are For Today and They Will BE 100% Essential for the Tribulation Time That Is Yet to Come (very soon)

 Peterism and Amillenialism, in whatever form that they come are heresies of the worst kind. The God of Israel who promised faithfulness to an ethnic people and a geographical land for a 1,000 generations is certainly not in the business of changing His mind.

To say that the gifts have somehow expired is to proclaim a lie and to exalt the written word above the Holy Spirit.

The pre-trib rapture is often taught alongside this cessationism and they do go hand in glove, but at least there are some who stay away from cessationism even while teaching the totally unbiblical pre-trib nonsense.

Messiah's community will be under severe persecution in the end times. They will need unusual discernment, as a gift of the Spirit. They will need prophecy to determine the proper direction. They will need supernatural hospitality, when it would be easier to just shut out the Jew and those fleeing the wrath of the anti-Christ.

Each of the gifts will be needed. There will be no more hiding people behind a book shelf, the technology that is out there at this time is scary in its accuracy and what it can reveal.  

We will be put in a place of 100% weakness where we rely 100% on the Spirit and the gifts of God. Maranatha!

Perfectly Good, But Perfectly Wrong

 Isn't it amazing how if you repeat a false claim or a lie often enough it becomes something that people claim to be true.

These words were in an otherwise very good Bible study I was a part of yesterday. 

"Of all the major world religions only Christianity claims its founder was resurrected from the dead."

Do you want to follow me down the rabbit hole?

In the eyes of the God of Israel, God Most High, God the Father, who sent God the Son to be the fully human, fully divine, entity on earth for 33 years, there is no such thing as "Christianity" and since it does not really exist, it was not "founded" on Pentecost.

Pentecost is the Greek name for the Jewish Festival called Shavuot in Hebrew.

In English when I look at a tree, I call it tree, but if I were French I would call it arbre. My point is, it is still a tree even though different languages have different words for it. The dividing of the languages was a curse from God Most High. 

So "Pentecost" was a Jewish festival being celebrated by Jewish believers in the God of Israel. Shavuot is a fascinating study, the fourth of the seven annual feasts and the one commemorating the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people. Obedience to the Torah given by God is one of the things that separates the ethnic Jewish people from the rest of the nations, the gentiles. There is a Jewish teaching that says the stone tablets carried their own weight down the mountain after Moses received them from God, that blesses me mightily, because it indicates the beautiful truth that the Law was never meant to be a weight that we had to carry. God empowers it with the ability to carry itself in us. 

What did happen on the Shavuot after the resurrection of Yeshua? 

The Holy Spirit was poured out on all those gathered in the upper room. This event is a fulfillment of one of the things to be accomplished by the Messiah of Israel. God the Spirit now enables the body of the followers of the Messiah of Israel to obey and follow Him, to the glory of the Father. We "bear the Name" in the midst of the nations and our lives point them to the God of Israel. 

If we are reading the Bible with the thought that there is an Old Testament and a New Testament you are perfectly good, because even the highly regarded King James Bible has those pages dividing the book so it must be true, right? Wrong! The new covenant spoken of in Jeremiah and Hebrews is a covenant made with Israel and Judah, kind of hard to make that something that just gets started at the Pentecost after the resurrection and is centered on gentiles and a "church"! Well NOT JUST HARD, THE WORD I AM LOOKING FOR IS IMPOSSIBLE!

If we read 1 Peter 1:10,11 "10 Concerning this salvation the prophets, who prophesied about this gracious gift of deliverance prepared for you, sought wisdom and searched carefully for understanding, 11 trying to make out the kind of person or the appointed time concerning which the Spirit of the Messiah within them was giving them and more clarity, as he told them ahead of time about the things that the Messiah was destined to suffer and the glorious things that would follow these sufferings." We can see that the prophets as individuals had the Spirit of the Messiah, the Holy Spirit in them, the "pouring out" on this Shavuot was different because it was a lot of people all at once who were then empowered to proclaim and live out of the resurrection life of the Messiah. 

I can't even begin to understand or communicate how the resurrection of the Jewish Messiah changed everything, but that change was the fulfillment of what the prophets of spoken and when He returns it will be the fulfillment of ALL the prophets have spoken. He will stand on the physical location the Mount of Olives in the physical land of Israel and He will see to it that ALL Israel (a distinct ethnic people) is saved. 

New would be more clearly stated as fulfilled. The idea that the sovereign God of the universe would have to go to a plan B after establishing His everlasting covenant with Abraham is patently ridiculous.

Individual gentiles who believe and trust in the Messiah of Israel are grafted into the already existing vine of Israel and they have nothing to boast in. Nothing about being a gentile is worth boasting in.

  

Great is Thy Faithfulness

 The location of these 4 words in sacred scripture is positively amazing. 

Pretty much the center of the book of Lamentations.

The book where the prophet Jeremiah was living through the horror of what he prophesied for Israel if they as a nation did not repent. Parents eating their children due to the starvation that was taking place because the forces from Babylon were not letting anything get into the city. Horrifying things, each one yet another proof that the God of Israel was still and forever will be in covenant with His people, a covenant that is 100% dependent on HIM and HIM alone.

When God proclaims judgment if you do not repent and you don't repent and that judgment comes, THAT PROVES HE IS STILL IN A VERY LOVING, VERY FIRM COVENANT WITH YOU.

So, GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS

TRUE IN LAMENTATIONS

TRUE IN MY LIFE

Suicide and Self-Harm

 My brother committed suicide.  We do not know why. We have some guesses, but we don't know why.

Overwhelming sadness? Loneliness?  The knowledge that he was declining physically and could no longer help people?  The thought that his health decline would be a burden on the family?  Some other health problem that his VA records might reveal but that I have never had the courage to check out?

We don't know.

He didn't tell anyone he was sad.

My wife noticed that he left the room that my mother lived in, in the house we grew up in, exactly as it was when she died, but I protested that it was a 3 bedroom house he was the only one living there and there really was no reason for him to get rid of anything. He did not clean the tub and it was getting pretty bad, but I probably made excuses for that too, because he was a bachelor living alone and he could make that choice.

We don't know.

We never had guns in our house because my father who was an alcoholic had threatened the family with guns when I was around the age of 6.  My brother had to go out and purchase a shotgun and ammunition with this specific act in mind.

My brother had all of his insurance and bank records and everything we would need to access his files in a plastic bag inside of the truck, that he drove to a quiet remote location.

My brother sat in the bed of that truck and pointed the gun under the front of his neck and aimed it at such an angle that he blew the back portion of his head off.

Some hunters found my brother, my sister was called, her friend Caroline came with her, and by the grace and mercy of God, her friend Caroline who knew my brother identified the body. 

My sister called my niece and early in the morning on April 4th, I don't know what year because my mind refuses to keep track of that kind of stuff.  I received the phone call in the basement of our house, no idea what I was doing down there at the time. No idea. I could not comprehend what my niece was saying. The words she was saying did not line up with the reality of my brother as I had always known him. 

Did I know him?  Apparently not, he went through a divorce that he called the hardest thing he had ever went through, incredibly painful. He had married a young girl right out of high school who was just trying to escape her family situation.

Finances forced this young couple to live with my mother. That did not go well and as soon as he could on a "Sears" salary, he purchased a home that was small and needed a lot of work. 

He was not a "let's go out and bar hop and have fun" type of a guy.  Our father was an alcoholic, and he treated my brother badly, very badly, so alcohol was never associated with fun. This young bride, wanted to go out and dance and "enjoy that scene".  

They stayed together as long as they could, then she began cheating on him.  The divorce went smoothly as those things go, he gave her the house in exchange for no further contact with her, no alimony (no kids were involved, he had gotten a vasectomy).  

Like I said in a rare moment of emotional honesty, he told me that was THE MOST PAINFUL THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO HIM.

She went on to have a baby with the person she was cheating with him and as far as I know she still lives in that house, I don't really care, because when you hurt my brother you hurt me and I am as DONE with you as he was, have a nice life.

When he committed suicide she got in touch with us and wanted to be invited to the tiny little service we had at his grave side. I think we said "no".  I don't really remember. The days after his death are a blur.

Companies give you 3 days off for the death of your brother or your mother. Each time that happened to me I came back to work after 3 days still in a fog of pain and grief and only by the grace of God was I able to function and pass pills. 

His death still ambushes me and the grief I feel is palpable.  I could use his humor, his advice, his strength. I wish he could see my kids going through their milestones. I wish I had his support when I am feeling overwhelmed. I wish I knew why he was hurting so.

Suicide and self-harm is a situation that causes me to shut down.  

Right now, I am "shut down".  thanks for listening.

The End of This Age is Approaching

 part of the proof of this is the rise in false teachers and false teaching. The pre-trib rapture teaching is a lie. The health and wealth prosperity gospel is a lie. The teaching that this is currently the reign of "Christ" and we are in the kingdom of God right now (preterism) is a lie and a ridiculous heresy. Replacement theology that teaches that Israel, Jerusalem and the ethnic Jewish people have been replaced by the "church" is a gross lie against the heart of the God who calls HIMSELF "the God of Israel" (Jehovah-Israel) around 60 times in the Bible. If we do not read and pray for understanding of the Book of Revelation and the God revealed in that book and Deuteronomy 32 and elsewhere we are going to be completely unprepared to help the Jew through the next Holocaust. Have you noticed our great leaders are led astray by "flattery" the Bible said they would be? Have you noticed a man from "Assyria" is rising up to a position of power from being a man in charge of only a few people? The Bible said that would happen. Have you noticed some nations are pretending to be friends of Israel until it becomes unpopular? the Bible said that would happen. Have you noticed the "west" is in a steep decline and could be easily decimated in the space of a couple days? The Bible said that too. Have you noticed the Middle East is the hub of all the news in the world and the world is divided based on those who will support Israel and those who won't? The Bible says that too? Wake up! Quit worshiping false gods who are only men and not even very good men at that.

Chocolate Ice Cream Swirl or a Pile of Poop or Both

 So this honest, open view into my mind and heart is about to get real.

No many will see it in the back water of the internet, but Abraham Lincoln thought not many people would remember a little something we call the Gettysburg Address, so who knows. 

I really don't like being lied to my face.

I only have one trigger, when my opinion is denigrated.  Specifically my nursing opinion. Specifically my nursing opinion on the elderly, which has been my "specialty" for about 26 years of the 38 years I have been a nurse.

Well that is not true, I have two triggers, the other one was pulled by the managers of my facility in November of 2023.  I was very honestly and sincerely confronting them with a bad situation that was creating a hostile work environment revolving around one nurse, I was putting myself on the line to help the facility be a better place to work and care for human beings and my management fucked me over. (i know I lose language points for that and will have to put a quarter in the swear jar, but it is the truth) That event along with COVID combined to throw me into Mania, and Mania recurring at about a 60 day intervals according to those who know me best, has been very costly. Medication controls it "good enough" until Yeshua the God of Israel, chooses to say, "Be Healed". 

But when Mania is in control of me, I drive faster, lose my filter, and have an underlying anger that comes out frequently. Mostly it comes out towards my wife and that is, of course, harmful to our marriage and the trust and love that is necessary for a good foundation. During those times I hear the comment, "Oh yeh, you are mister Grace and Mercy, you are!!!"

Definitely thinking of cutting grass, or selling milk shakes, or winning the lottery or anything else to get out of nursing and the money driven reality of health care.

But, my one and only true, "God used me to bring salvation story" is located in my old nursing home and a 94 year-old probably 95 now, named Arletta is my only fruit. SOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo, I need to stay and hang in there in this evil Haman led system until the Lord gives release.

There's your honest, open view into my heart and life.

 

 

Help!

 I have no other words. 

Thank God I serve the God of Israel and that is all the word that I need.