Draw me a picture of someone with his/her head in the sand.

I read the first two chapters of Ezekiel out of the Message translation and I didn't like it. Don't get me wrong, the translation is fine. I dig it. I didn't like the actual message God gave him:

"I'm sending you to the family of Israel, a rebellious nation if there ever was one. ... hardened in their sin. ... Don't be afraid when living among them is like stepping on thorns or finding scorpions in your bed .... Your job is to speak to them. Whether they listen is not your concern."

At that point I thought of John, the baptist. Just why was he crying in the wilderness and not on the street corner or in a nice clean house with nice clean listeners? Maybe he stanketh.

Neither of these men were socially palatable. They did not tickle a single ear. Neither these two nor several others were welcomed warmly. Few listeners said "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" If there were any Joel Olsteens among the prophets of old, I need to reread Genesis through Malachi to find them. Not even Moses, loved and respected, was full of good news.

It is the end of the week, the end of the month, the threat of mandatory Saturday overtime withdrawn when at last the full team was checked in and working full steam. We've had a wave of a viscious virus causing near death experiences in cubies all around me. The yakkin n hakkin sounded like a typical church congregation when the sermon gets long. Maybe not that bad. After my own personal 10.5 hour day, I could feel the body parts go numb one by one behind the wheel.

Since my only choices were elevator music, country, nerve jangling 21st century pseudo rock n roll, Michael Savage, or silence to fall asleep by, I chose Savage. He at least kept me fired up enough to get in the front door. I think I'll have popcorn for supper. Honey is putting in overtime at the company's annual 2 day festival. I don't have to pretend to keep up my end of a conversation. After this, I will catch the CSI rerun. Tomorrow, we'll see.

The prophets were admired and appreciated only after decades and centuries of hindsight. I look at the political mire, the determination of the enemy, and I cry out here in cyberspace.

There's a couple in our Sunday small group who will not show up if they think a lesson or series of lessons will look at the end times. In their last church in Florida, the pastor spent two solid years discussing it. They are fried. I see a pattern here. The current Christian is so accustomed to the promise of the Rapture happening any moment during this time of comfort and prosperity, they are totally unaware of the possibility of bad times before the baddest ever time of the Tribulation.

A suprised Christian is a vulnerable Christian, one who may cave in to capture by the enemy, one who hasn't prepared himself for the worst. Yes, I too am betting my chips on being taken before the tribulation's 7 years begins. But I am highly suspicious of being persecuted before that happens.

Exactly what is the posture of one whose head is in the sand? Where is the most vulnerable anatomical location?

Yea thy fingers are in thine ears and thou shoutest blah blah blah

The latest bloody piece of meat thrown to the sharks aka New York Times was single line from the document that the congress has had since April. Timing is everything.

That single line was a statement that the Iraq war has created more terrorists. George B identified the leak as a political move to influence the election a move from which neither party
can claim innocence. Nevertheless, a leak is a leak is a leak and classified is classified is classified. The people entrusted with this information who used this single line from this information can't be trusted.

So GW released the summary of the document.

"OH NO!" they cry. "We want the whole thing declassified to get the whole picture!!"

Excuse me. Weren't you guys the ones who were satisfied with one line?

If you go after a wasp nest in order that your family will not be stung again, will not that action cause more wasps to emerge and defend their home and sting freedom??

I saw on Fox this morning that a letter was confiscated. It was from one Al Q leader to another stating in so many words that their fear that the organization had been so weakened by our presence in Iraq that they feared they would lose the fight.

Did CNN (Crescent Nation News) air that? You tell me. If I use my precious time watching that, I will stroke out.

Excuse me while I relax in front of CSI. I could use a good autopsy to distract me.

Will you be comfortable underground?

Our adult Sunday school class has begun a study of Ephesians. I am so weighed down with why I started this blog, I would on my own see this study as fluffy. Big mistake. It's food, the same as all scripture is food for the mind, soul, and spirit. So at the same time I want to roll my eyes, the Holy Spirit is ready to cuff me if I do. I'd much rather dig into Ezekial in a group setting and of course the end result would be one foot exchanged for the other in my mouth as I carry on about the current political swirl. Thou shalt not discuss religion and politics and particularly not politics in a religious setting. Is that what Mama said?

Messianic music is playing in the background. My computer area, decorated in a landfill motif, needs sorting and rearranging. Clutter is not a sign of genius, it is a consequence of procrastination. There is no pill for this. But instead of cleaning up first, I blog. I think I'm terminal.

I believe we are in the days of Ezekiel. I believe the bones coming to life is Israel in the 20th century, 1948 to be exact. That said ........... I'm going to go read Ezekiel after this in between The Book of Enoch, laundry, finishing the blanket I promised for the Buddy Walk, color my hair, and add or correct at that point. This logic allows for the procrastination, and justifies the impatience. Others call it shooting from the hip.

It was one of those perfect evenings on the patio in Minnesota. Honey and Son had been piling up the wood scrap from the door replacement project and decided to burn it in the nifty little metal campfire-on-legs. DIL nursed the newborn, cuddled his sleeping body and passed him to his daddy. One of my greatest blessings is that after stumbling through the parenting process, failing at every turn, fighting over this and that, and negotiating church attendance, the son eventually gave his heart to Jesus. wow. I think surviving a quadruple rollover on a wet Texas highway while stormchasing might have gotten his attention as well. This perfect evening, we talked.

They had just completed a casual discussion format in their small group in which they shared their observations and assumptions of other religions without doing a lot of research. It was more mind mining than data mining. So Son asked me, "What's up with the Messianics?" As he explained his question, I realized that neither he nor his group knew much about them and assumed that the Messianics were wierd at best, mysterious, not like standard Christians, that maybe they haven't gotten the Jesus thing right or are they just another Jewish sect?

My answer was short: worship style. They worship the same Jesus we do, call Him by His Hebrew name Yeshua, they know his physical ethnic origin and believe His current ethnicity to remain Jewish, and as a matter of comfort zone, may worship Him in the style they grew up with, which is Jewish. They refer to themselves as completed, not converted. "Converted" brings back ghosts of the Spanish Inquisition. I know of an American Jew who worshiped for many years in a typical gentile Assembly of God style and he is pentecostal. He and his wife, also Jewish, are now in Jerusalem ministering to their own in more of a gentile style than Jewish. The reason for that is that the youth they reach in Israel are tired of the orthodox ways. The American Messianic congregation here in Tennessee is reaching out to the Jews and worships in a Jewish style complete with the shawls and scroll. They sing and pray in both English and Hebrew (so G-d doesn't have to translate -- that's humor), and celebrate the Jewish festivals, all the while acknowledging Yeshua as Messiah. They embrace both testaments since the New mostly quotes the Old anyway (more humor).

Style. I am swimming in the music by Paul Wilbur and when I wind up this post, I just may run around the house for a while. If I were speaking to the sunday school class and said that, some of the eyebrows would rise and stick. Someone would undoubtedly dive into a diatribe of you can if you want to but not everybody has to dance. Happens every time in non-pentecostal groups everywhere. Raising hands in worship starts those conversations too. Let's not go to the tongues discussion. Who's right and who's wrong and never mind Psalms 100.

We're studying Ephesians. Safe. Comfortable. Familiar. Don't we know these basics already? I'm not able to judge the needs of the others as I look around the room. Isn't our time left too precious to go over the same material again and again? Yet, when our Bibles are burned, our buildings turned into "One World Centers", and we're meeting secretly, this old familiar basic stuff needs to be in our hearts.

When that happens, how concerned will we be about style? Is it ok if one of the group wants to dance? Speak in tongues? Raise hands in worship? Wear a Jewish prayer shawl? Or will we be networked according to our personal traditions and taste in what is right and wrong about worship style?

I pray we will finally be the answer to Jesus' prayer in the garden when He prayed in John 17:21 that we be one. His prayer does not refer to worship style per se as much as our schisms of doctrine and endless quarreling.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we stopped bickering about who is right and who is wrong before that persecution/purification process begins? How strong we might be as a unified church body by focusing on reaching out instead of criticizing each other.

The great body of the church grew cold. Many were offended.

Another 24 hours

I'm pretty sure the two world slimers that filthed our shores this week were coaxed and coached. Now who would have done such a thing?

What part of the statement "as it was in the days of Noah" was I so ignoring that I was blindsided? All of it. And just how bad were the days of Noah? Bad enough to use up even God's patience. DO OVER!! Remember that line from City Slickers? When something is unfixable, declare a "Do Over." Start again as God did with Noah and his family.

But we don't want things to get bad at all let alone worse than they already are. We don't want our unsaved loved ones to be caught in the web of deceit. We want to fix what we have, pull on the reins, slap a few faces, assign some serious blame, and just plain fix it -- our way, whoever "our" is.

It is getting worse. And it will get worse than that, and worse than that. Look at world history, for instance, in Europe during the Dark Ages, that period of centuries between the corruption of the church by Constantine and the migration of the pilgrims from oppressed Europe to a new and free land. Never mind that, human nature not having changed a scintilla, those participants mishandled that too, since not all the settlers -- very few of the settlers --- uh --- nobody but Jesus Himself has had this religion thing completely right yet.

The Ethiopian Christians include the Book of Enoch in their canon. I have a copy of that and have skimmed a bit of it just to know enough to realize it's really complicated and requires some study. Now what do I do? Study a book of alleged scripture before I've mastered the scriptures I already have in the more widely accepted canon? Can I do both?

That was the thought this evening coming home the 23 mile commute in a fatigued state of "are we there yet?" after overtime. More overtime is on the manager approved agenda for tomorrow but it being Friday, I just may plan on pulling out the Book of Enoch (between laundry loads, I promise) over the weekend to browse for what the days of Noah were like. I do remember giants from the cosmos (bad angels?) mating with humans and teaching them sorcery. Beastiality and cannibalism rings a bell too.

So what manner of evil awaits the end of this age? What more than viscious acid tongues in our hallowed halls of Washington has to poison our nation to bring it full circle from a Christian foundation and world power completely and irrevocably to it knees in dissolution? How much hell on earth will finally sicken God, eat up His patience again, and push Him over the edge far enough to shout "Enough already! DO OVER!!"

How long will it take? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

What happened in the UN?

Just where is the outrage from the left? Would this have been tolerated if that oily little lying weenie from Iran and that rotted despot from Venezuela had attacked Clinton? Or Kennedy? Or Boxer? Or Pelosi? Is no one in that camp the least bit concerned for our safety? Do they allow that to go unanswered to prove our international disrespect at the expense of our very lives? Or are they just crossing their fingers that nothing will happen until they're back in power so they can make the very decisions in a position of majority control that GW wants to make now?

I am nauseated by the news this week of what went on in the UN, that noble bastion of deceipt and corruption, so much so that I am speechless. My job allows me to have my headphones on all day and listen to Boortz, Rush, and on the way home, Savage. Boortz is a foot stomper, Rush is optomistic, and Savage is in a constant state of rage. If I didn't think the analyses as vital, I would turn to the sappy Easy Listening that plays Sinatra and elevator music. I hate Sinatra.

I'm trying desparately to assume that GW and Chaney are not tipping their hand, that telling the Hitler of the 21st century that he is a man of peace after his well received tirade is nothing more than a plan to get us through the mid term election after which, oh God, hopefully GW will take back his testosterone.

It looks like we have one more chance, this election, to regroup and call their bluff.

If I had any valium, I'd pop the contents to prepare myself for a heartfelt analysis of Jimmy Carter's patriotic contribution to international respect, peace in the Middle East and his diplomatic influence in Venezuela. But I don't have any, so you'll have to wait.

I've been taking notes like crazy every day for over a week, scribbling on notepaper page after page and have no clue how to lay it out. Maybe something will dawn on me as I try to blot out the whole thing. Oh, I suppose I could pray about it.

Pray for me.

The Last Chapter

I see the US as a super athelete, heady with success, who became fat and happy, relaxed, assumed too much, and allowed itself to be nibbled by the ducks it used to have in a row, all the while unaware of the splits and schisms that are seeping into the skin with one virus after another. This athletic giant beat two worldwide foes simultaneously, cleaned up the mess, and later toppled an idealogy without firing a shot. It has become drunk with prosperity and left the doors unlocked in a house controlled by a disfunctional family that rivals that of a crack house in a bad part of town.

Is this generation the last chapter in the book? I've read it. We, the pure and holy bride of Christ, wins. But I'm afraid the mighty US of A is not a key player in the final battles. I'm afraid the athelete is too slow and out of shape to haul out the Bowflex and make a comeback without a great deal more time. I really hope we're not running out of time. If we can elect strong leaders, maybe we can pull out of this fire.

Do not confuse the church with the nation. This nation was founded on Judeo Christian beliefs only for the most part, mostly from a secular generalist perspective. Our portion of the body of Christ by accident of birth was located within the borders of the USA. We are not taking full advantage of our government guaranteed freedoms in combating the threatened coup from within by being the salt and light we were told to be. When I say we win, I mean the pure and holy shining Bride of Christ. Right now she needs a hot shower. Sadly and with big gulps of air, I point out that her purity depends on the discipline of persecution. Did not Yeshua Himself say we would have trouble? If the flabby athelete isn't able to resist the political diseases already at work, she will suffer here in the US as she already is in Sudan and other parts of muslim controlled portions of the globe.

I know with certainty it's late in the day. Just when the sun sets is not predictable but the signs are all around us.

I want to lay out those signs on this site. If I say something you don't agree with, if I don't have it straight, if I leave out something you see as critical, and you don't join in --- oh well. I guess I have the last word on it.