March 6, 2015

 

 

Greetings, Salutations and Blessings on you as we head into another weekend. I will continue this week with one more set of stories before we resume doing series-type Coffee Breaks. Next week we will dig into the Sermon on the Mount and begin taking a look at the character and nature of the Lord Jesus Christ. Today, however, we're going to stay kinda casual and relaxed as we talk around the morning table.

My French Double Roasted Columbian coffee (compliments of David Dnistran, who had it custom roasted in Beijing) – and man, is it ever dark today – is freshly steeped, my cup is poured, and I’m ready. Hope you are, too.

Ever seen a flying saucer? Maybe not a flying saucer, per se, but some kind of UFO? Ever wondered where they come from, or what they are doing here?

In case you are part of that group of skeptics who doesn’t believe in the existence of flying saucers, you’re looking at a guy (sorry…reading a guy) who has seen them on two separate occasions. I have many friends who have likewise seen them. In fact, one of the scientists I used to work with at NASA many years ago -- Bob Lazar -- was asked to come to the White Sands testing grounds to reverse-engineer the propulsion system on an extra-terrestrial craft in the possession of the federal government. His reports afterward made clear the fact that this was no sci-fi fantasy.

 

I'll never forget the day we had taken a mid-morning break for coffee and discussions at the Palo Alto laboratories when one of the scientists (he stood over seven feet tall!) came running in breathlessly. It was a funny sight to see him run, but what he had to share was rather startling for all of us.

"I've just been inside a UFO inside the blimp hangar at Moffett Field," he puffed, out of breath. There were a few skeptical glances thrown his way by some of the engineers I was talking with. He continued.

"A friend told me about this UFO that had been flown in under the cover of night and was parked inside the hangar. Because of my Top Secret security clearance, and the badge I wore, the guards didn't question me when I entered the gated area; and I walked straight in to where the UFO was sitting. A ramp led up to an opening in the ship's side, so I waltzed up like I belonged there. Not until I was looking around inside did one of the security folks realize that I didn't belong there and he quickly escorted me outside with a stern warning."

So what was it? Where did it come from? Why was it here? Was it simply another sign in or from the heavens – albeit a very tangible sign -- in a long string of events that have happened since 1947? OK, how about this one?

The date was July 17, 1994. Della and I were working at the Calgary Stampede with Eileen and crew. A CBC news crew showed up outside the Country Kitchen really early, and decided – when they smelled the ranch coffee I was cooking, the fresh hot rolls being baked by Eileen’s sister, Rose, the Black Forest Ham Eileen had just pulled out of an oven, and saw the omelets Della was making on the wood-fired cook stove – they needed to have breakfast. Well, hey, wouldn’t you, with all those tantalizing smells hitting you in the face?

Anyway, the news crew was all abuzz about an astronomical event unfolding as we were talking. It seems that a comet – named for the two astronomers who identified it and its path – was just hitting the planet, Jupiter. Shoemaker-Levy had begun disintegrating – it broke into 21 pieces – and over the course of the next seven days, each of those 21 pieces collided with the planet producing a series of explosions unparalleled in recorded astronomical history.

The energy released exceeded one million megatons of TNT (that is another way of saying 1 trillion tons), dwarfing the power released if all of the nuclear bombs on the earth were to be exploded at the same instant.) It resulted in tunnels of fire on, and above, the surface of Jupiter as large as, or larger than, the state of Texas in diameter, and mushroom clouds above the surface of the planet larger than Earth. Shock waves were generated by these explosions creating a "sound" (inaudible low-frequency, geo-magnetic and gravitational waves) which reverberated throughout our solar system.

I’ll come back to this event momentarily. Less known was a series of non-astronomical events that had begun some five weeks prior.

They began on the evening of June 9th, 1994. On that evening, one of Eileen’s friends was driving in towards the city of Edmonton, and saw a hitchhiker. She would not have, under any normal circumstances, stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. The Holy Spirit prompted her to stop and pick up this hitchhiker, but she drove past, arguing within herself that it was "not the thing to do."

The Holy Spirit then said to her, "I said, Stop! Go back and pick up that hitchhiker." She was surprised by the urgency within her spirit, and obeyed.

Making a U-turn, she went back, turned around and pulled over to let the hitchhiker get in. He got in, and she proceeded back into the lanes of traffic. Because she was concentrating on the traffic conditions, she did not look directly at the gentleman sitting in the seat, but began to ask where he was headed. Before she could say anything, she heard him say, "The trumpet has been set to the mouth!" Startled, she looked over to where he was seated, and he vanished -- disappeared into thin air.

Obviously, she was awestricken. When she arrived at her destination, she called the RCMP office in Edmonton to report the incident. The officer on duty said to her, "Lady, you are the sixth person to call in with that same report tonight!"

To the south some three hundred miles, the RCMP office in Lethbridge, Alberta, received an identical report from three additional motorists. In each case the report was the same. The motorist stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. Shortly thereafter, the hitchhiker made the statement to the driver, "The trumpet has been set to the mouth," using exactly those words. The fact that nine motorists felt prompted to call the RCMP offices in Edmonton and Lethbridge that night is, in itself, astounding. It would seem that the Lord was making a statement that needed to be published abroad.

In the weeks that followed we began to hear of more reports. In five separate incidents, Montana state troopers stopped to assist individuals they thought were hitchhiking. In each instance, the report was identical to those we heard about in Alberta. The hitchhiker said to the trooper, “The trumpet has been set to the mouth,” or in a couple of instances, “I have set the trumpet to the mouth.” The case of the five troopers was very distinctive in that none of them were Christians, and at least three of them had been very antagonistic towards Jesus Christ and Christians in general. More spectacular was the fact that each and every one of those troopers accepted Jesus Christ that day as their personal savior. One trooper, who had been on the force for many years, resigned that very day.

In Tacoma, Washington, a Washington state trooper stopped to assist a lady who was walking along the side on Interstate 5. When he asked her if he could help, she looked at him and said, “The trumpet has been set to the mouth,” and vanished before his eyes. In Seattle, a nearly identical event took place with another state trooper. Another report came in from Portland where a city police officer stopped to check on a hitchhiker. He pulled over just as the other officers had done and asked the hitchhiker if he needed assistance. The hitchhiker said, “I have set the trumpet to the mouth,” and suddenly was gone.

We later heard of similar stories occurring in Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and even Toronto. No doubt there were many other similar events we did not hear anything about. Here’s where it gets really interesting. Every single one of these events took place on June 9th, 1994.

Signs. That’s what they were. Signs.

OK. How about this one?

The date was….dum..de..dum..dum…..June 9th, 1994. An earthquake of epic proportions struck in La Paz, Bolivia. Originally put at a 7.8 on the Richter scale, seismologists later upgraded its intensity to 9.2. The quake’s epicenter was more than 70 miles underground. It caused a ripple effect that reached along fault lines through South America, under the Gulf of Mexico, through the central states, and as far away as Toronto, Ontario. Though there was minimal loss of life (resulting in minimal news coverage), seismologists couldn’t remember any quake with such far-reaching effects.

When we heard of the quake, a couple Scripture verses from Isaiah 5:14 and Isaiah 14:9 went through Della’s mind, “Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure…” The verse in Isaiah 14:9 was specifically targeted at Satan, “Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee…”

Why all these seemingly unrelated events on June 9th? Why the unusual events that followed five weeks later?

We were -- and are -- being forced to throw away our textbooks and discard our doctrinal understanding of how the Lord is fulfilling many prophecies. He is doing it outside the realm of natural understanding, knowledge, and perception. That which was prophesied by John (in Revelation), was prophesied in and by the Spirit of the Lord. In order to see that which is taking place, it must also be unraveled in and by the Holy Spirit.

Any attempt to explain what the Lord is doing and how He is fulfilling His Word -- when that attempt is predicated on our knowledge of Scripture, our knowledge of history, and our perception of how the Lord has previously fulfilled His Word -- will only get us into trouble. All we will get for our efforts is a lot of dead bark in our mouths from the Tree of Knowledge. (Pun intended.)

By the same token, those who live daily -- 24 hours per day -- in the presence of the Lord, in an intimate love-relationship with Him will have no struggle whatever as the Lord fulfills His word, since He clearly explains that which He is doing to those with whom He has an intimate relationship.

What is the Lord saying in the midst of all these events? What is He doing? Anyone?
Was the comet event a sign from the Lord to confirm that "the trumpet has been set to the mouth?" Try this on for size.

There is another aspect of this event which bears consideration. The word in the Greek text for "thunders" is brontai. This word literally means, "a fiery and destructive sound." No word could better describe that which took place 21 times in 7 days as tunnels of fire exploded forth from the surface of the planet Jupiter with accompanying geo-magnetic shock waves.

John says (in Revelation 10:3, 4) that when the angel cried, "seven thunders (brontai) uttered their voices." Would you believe, 21 times (3 X 7) in 7 days? O.K.! O.K.! I know that this is not the traditional explanation for the "seven thunders," but I believe that it deserves consideration in the light of the other attendant events.

I spoke with an astrophysicist in Lethbridge, Alberta a few months after the Shoemaker-Levy comet struck Jupiter to ask him about the geo-magnetic shock waves. He likened them to ultra low-frequency sound traveling through our galaxy. Though they were inaudible to human hearing, our planet certainly reacted in the months that followed with auroral activity and tidal aberrations that stirred more than a little notice within the scientific community.

Let’s get a little more current. There are most likely very few of us who hasn’t seen the incredible footage of the massive tidal wave that followed a huge earthquake and struck Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and a host of other nations in the Indian Ocean causing an estimated 272,000 deaths. Was this a natural disaster, or was this a singular event related to coming judgment on this earth? Was this a sign?

Then consider this.

In Indonesia alone during the past twelve months, more than 400 churches have been destroyed or burned to the ground. More than a thousand church leaders, pastors, etc., have been shot to death, beheaded or tortured to death in other ways. I know of many leaders in the Body of Christ who clearly believe that Indonesia (which took the brunt of the loss of life (at some 156,000 deaths) suffered the judgment of God, who would no longer stand by while His anointed representatives were being tortured, mutilated and put to death. I have no statistics for any of the other nations, so I can’t speak to any of the spiritual causes or effects that could be related to the earthquake and tidal wave.

There is, however, a growing conviction among Christian leaders the world over that 2015 will bring some of the greatest so-called natural disasters anyone has ever seen. Maybe so. Maybe it will come a little later. Nevertheless, no credible leader in the Body of Christ that I know believes that we have a great deal of time left before the Lord begins to unleash a series of occurrences that will alter the course of human events. The 1994 events simply presaged events to come. They were – by all accounts – an announcement of things to come.

Daniel wrote (Daniel 6:27), “He delivereth and rescueth, and He worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth…”

Jesus said to the Pharisees, “O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” (Mathew 16:3)

On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood before the multitude of gathered folks and quoted from Joel’s prophecy, “And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2:19)

The question for you is this: Are we seeing those signs come to pass from Joel’s prophecy? Are we about to see an unfolding of signs in the heavens and in the earth beneath that will shake the human race to its core? What about the four blood moons in 2014 and 2015?

Of one thing I am certain. Having walked with the Lord for the better part of 70 years, there is no question that those who live Godly in Christ Jesus have nothing whatever to fear from any unfolding natural catastrophes. The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:38-39, “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

I have a personal conviction about 2015. I believe that this year will bring about some of the greatest miracles the world has ever seen. I believe that God’s people are going to experience an outpouring of His abundant blessings in an unprecedented manner.

There is one other thing of which I am positive: People who ignore the unfolding signs that we have seen, are seeing, and are about to see, in the ludicrous hope of escaping the wrath of God on an increasingly degenerate world – people who think they can ignore the great salvation available to them in Christ Jesus simply because “God is a merciful God” are living a fantasy.

God IS a merciful God. But He is also a just God. He is a God of righteousness. He is a God of justice and judgment. And, He is a God who absolutely keeps His Word!
Something is happening! Something is a fixin’ to happen, ready or not! Watch and see the signs. Ready?

Now that I’ve got your juices stirring, finish your coffee. Blessings on you! Have a stupendous day, and a great weekend!

I remind those of you in need of healing of our Healing Prayer Call on Mondays at 7:00 PM Eastern. Once again, the number to call for prayer is (805) 399-1000. Then enter the access code: 124763#.

 

Also want to let you know that our Sunday worship gatherings are available by conference call – usually at about 10:45AM Pacific. That conference number is (559) 726-1300, and the access code is 308640#.

 

Blessings on you!