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Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast I will answer that question burning in everyone’s mind, what did Yahweh hot dogs and Dorcas have that King Jehoram didn’t have?

I recently watched a testimony by a man named Jeff, broadcast on a church website in our community.

I loved it.

Jeff has been a Christian for nearly two years. He came out of a rough background and was caught up in drug and alcohol addiction and abuse.

Jeff was an angry man and he blamed God for all the bad things that had happened in his life.

But he became a believer and decided he wanted to make a difference in people’s lives.

Now Jeff’s story was a stark contrast to King Jehoram who ruled Judah between 853 BC and 841 BC.

Jehoram was the son of King Jehoshaphat, a decent king who served God.

But the person writing the book of 2 Chronicles made this every odd statement about Jehoram:

20 Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He passed away, to no one’s regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.

When Jehoram passed away, no one regretted his death.

Unlike Jeff, Jehoram grew up in a life of privilege. He had wealth, servants and because he was the son of a King, he inherited that powerful position of authority.

Jehoram had the power and influence to make the lives of thousands of people better. He had a tremendous opportunity to make a difference.

But Jehoram’s life was cut short by a painful bowel disease and nobody, not a single person, regretted his passing because he didn’t take advantage of his great opportunity.

Then there was Jeff with his rough background. After he became a Christian and started attending church, he realized he needed to forgive those who had mistreated him over the years. As he forgave, this process began to transform Jeff’s life.

He had only been a Christian for about six months, when God spoke to Jeff, because God had a call, a plan and a purpose for Jeff’s life.

It all started as he was listening to a man preaching at church.

As Jeff listened, God dropped a thought into Jeff’s mind that he needed to start a hot dog ministry and he couldn’t shake it.

God told Jeff that he needed to start giving free hotdogs to people and telling them how God had helped Jeff break free from his alcohol and drug addiction.

Now Jeff and Jehoram had one thing in common. Both of them were uniquely positioned to make a difference in people’s lives.

As the son of royalty, Jehoram had the power, authority and finances to make a big difference.

Jeff’s advantage was that he was a child of the King of Kings, and he lived on a major thoroughfare bordering one of the poorest and roughest neighborhoods in the city where he lived.

Because of where he lived, people were constantly walking down the back alley behind his home – the down trodden, the poor, drug addicts and prostitutes.

God told Jeff to start offering free hot dogs to these people, so Jeff set up Yahweh Hot Dog Ministry in his garage that opened to the back alley.

Jeff painted Bible verses on the door of the garage and along the fence that bordered the back alley, and as well added a sign broadcasting Yahweh free hot dog ministry

And Jeff opened up once a week on Saturday, offering free hot dogs to everyone who wanted one.

And then Jeff shared his testimony with anyone who was interested in hearing how God transformed his life.

Since he opened his garage door in the spring of 2019, he has had as many as 151 people drop by in a single day for a free hot dog and averaged about a hundred a day over the summer. Though that number has dropped off in winter because of the extremely cold weather, on the upside people are staying longer giving Jeff better opportunity to share and pray with them.

He is providing a free hotdog to people who in some instances hadn’t eaten for a couple of days.

And God has provided for Jeff as well.

Jeff started out in this ministry by himself and quickly realized he needed help and the day before his grand opening he ran into a friend from church and Jeff asked if he would be willing to help. The man readily agreed because he had been praying that God would provide him an opportunity for ministry.

Now, Jeff is not a Bible school graduate.

Jeff is also a new believer.

Jeff is not perfect, but God had a purpose and plan for Jeff’s life and Jeff just did it.

As I mentioned Jehoram had the incredible potential to impact thousands of people’s life, but the writer of Chronicles said no one regretted his passing.

In fact, the writer noted Jehoram wasn’t even buried in the tombs of the Kings, that involved a series of tombs carved into the rocks south east of Jerusalem that was reserved for Royalty. Jehoram didn’t even deserve that.

Jehoram was also a dramatic contrast to Dorcas, also known as Tabitha. She was a disciple of the early church who lived in Joppa, a town along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.

She had no position of authority.

But Dorcas chose to make a difference in her realm of influence as she sewed clothing for the widows in her church and community.

When she died of a sudden illness, Luke describes what happened next:

36 In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (in Greek her name is Dorcas); she was always doing good and helping the poor. 37 About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room. 38 Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, “Please come at once!”

When Dorcas died, people immediately sent for the Apostle Peter to come and pray for her. The Greek word for urge, “parakaleo,” includes the idea of begging. They were pleading for Peter to come.

When Peter arrived at Joppa, the widows clamoured around the apostle showing all the items that Dorcas had made for them.

39 Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

In utter contrast to King Jehoram, people very much regretted Dorcas’s passing.

Peter sent everyone out of the room and prayed for Dorcas and raised her from the dead.

Now here is an important fact, Dorcas was one of only nine people recorded in the Bible as being raised from the dead. She is in very select company.

Meanwhile, they couldn’t even be bothered to bury Jehoram in the tombs reserved for the kings.

Dorcas was not in a position to make a difference like Jehoram, but she chose to make a difference in whatever way she could. She chose to be a person of influence, in her realm of influence.

It is very important we understand what was happening here in Joppa. This was not a one off. Dorcas didn’t just make one piece of clothing for a widow in her church, she had developed a bona fide ministry that was impacting several people.

This didn’t happen in a vacuum. There are probably several important ingredients that led to Dorcas’s ministry:

Number one: making clothes was Dorcas’s passion. She enjoyed doing it. She enjoyed the creativity.

Secondly: Not only was it a passion, she was good at it. It was her gift. She took what she was good at and simply turned it into a ministry.

Thirdly: She developed skills. Being good at something means you take the time to get better. You learn new techniques.

Fourthly: Through this she understood that God wanted to use her gifts and passion. God had a purpose and call for her life.

Fifthly: Dorcas took the initiative. She just started doing it. She didn’t wait for an angelic visitation. She didn’t wait for someone to tell her to do it. She just did it.

The biggest obstacle to initiating any ministry is conquering our fear. What if I am wrong? What if I didn’t hear God? What if no one comes? What if I fail? What if people think it is a crazy idea?

And when Jeff started his hot dog ministry, he even asked God to confirm that God was in it by having 12 people drop by for a hot dog, instead God sent 71.

And finally, God took Dorcas’s ability and passion and turned it into a ministry that would impact millions world-wide.

But it didn’t start out that way. She wasn’t focused on that. She was just focused on her first small step. Sometimes when it comes to starting a ministry we focus on the end first and because of this it seems like an impossible task. Yes, God has a vision and plan for you, but God is not concerned about the end result, God is most concerned about the first step.

It is called inertia. It takes more energy to start something moving than it does to keep it moving. The most difficult step is the start.

The prophet Zechariah addressed this very issue when he wrote:

9 “The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you. 10 For whoever has despised the day of small things shall rejoice, and shall see the plumb line in the hand of Zerubbabel.

Zerubbabel was the man assigned to rebuild the temple of God in Jerusalem after the Jews returned from their captivity in Babylon.

And I believe God was as excited by the start of construction, as He was by the ending.

I believe God and the angels rejoiced when they saw the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand as the work was about to start.

Because nothing will happen without someone being willing to take that first step. That first step is absolutely critical.

Don’t worry about what your ministry is going to look like in the end. Focus on the first step. God rejoices when the first, small step is taken.

God and the angels in heaven were rejoicing when Jeff started painting his signs. God and the angels in heaven where rejoicing as Dorcas picked out her first piece of cloth to make that first robe.

I said earlier that Dorcas’s ministry had a world-wide impact. You probably are wondering how I know this. Well, it’s because her story was included in the Bible and has literally been read by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

You don’t know where God will take your ministry, but don’t worry about where it will end, just take the very important first small step and start.

Even Jeff’s hotdog ministry is taking an unexpected step that he never anticipated. He will soon be starting a Bible study because it was something people visiting his garage were asking for.

So don’t let your station in life be the deciding factor on whether you are a person of influence.

As soon as you became a Christian, you became a Holy Spirit empowered person of influence.

No matter who you are or what you do, you can make a difference in people’s lives.

You have an area of influence:

• It could be a nation, like Jehoram.
• It could be state or province.
• It could be a city.
• It could be your neighborhood.
• It could be your street.

God has a purpose and call for you.

So what did Jeff and Dorcas have that King Jehoram didn’t have? Jeff and Dorcas have no regrets.

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Hi my name is Dean Smith and this podcast I ask the simple question: Would you have done it?

My dad was a World War II vet and as a young boy I loved listening to his stories about the war where my dad was part of a forward scouting team that went behind enemy lines in an armored vehicle looking for the location of enemy units.

He had lots of stories to tell.

But I particularly enjoyed it when he got together with an old army buddy who we called Uncle John but was not a relative. They would start talking about the darker side of the war.

I was enthralled by these stories and developed a keen interest in World War II and as I found out more, my disgust for the Nazis and all the evil they did grew.

Now, I wouldn’t become a believer until I was in my late teens and attending university in the early 70s.

A few years after I became a Christian, I met an older fellow about my dad’s age. He was a believer. He was a good man, a Godly man and regularly attended an evangelical church.

But he had a dark secret, he was also involved in World War II. But there was one big difference, having been born in Germany, he fought on the side of the Nazis. He started off as a teenager in the Hitler Youth movement, where they pledged blind allegiance to Adolf Hitler and learned all the basic skills needed as a young boy, such as how to knife a person with a bayonet, shoot a rifle and of course throw a grenade.

There is a possibility, he may have even been a Christian at that point, but I am not sure.

Fortunately, he survived the war and with no future in Germany, he eventually moved to North America.

Of course, once the war ended people started finding out about the full extent of the Nazi horrors under Adolf Hitler, from his genocidal attempt to exterminate the Jews to the sadistic experiments conducted on identical twins in concentration camps by a real medical doctor, Dr Josef Mengele.

People were quick to judge the Nazis. How could anyone support that megalomaniac Adolf Hitler? How could anyone stoop to such evil?

And this former German soldier carried the shame of his involvement with the Nazis when he moved to Canada. And though people were quick to judge him because of this, nobody judged him more than he judged himself.

How could he have supported this evil regime? And he is probably not alone, I suspect many Germans from this tumultuous time in German history have struggled with the same thoughts.

Of course, the rest of us, including myself, also wondered the same thing, as we carefully polished our halos. We judged the Germans because we would not have done such horrific acts.

But recently I have had this decade’s old opinion of myself challenged a bit.

It all started a few months back, as I was listening to a podcast by famed University of Toronto Psychology professor Jordan Peterson. He has gained international fame with the strong stand he has taken against political correctness that is being pushed on society primarily by those on the progressive left.

During the podcast, Peterson made a statement that really struck me. He said that if we had been living in Germany when Adolf Hitler rose to power we would have undoubtedly embraced the Nazi ideology.

Yes, we would have become Nazis.

To be honest, I was caught a bit off guard by this statement. I honestly believed, if I had been living in Germany at that time, there is no way I would have supported Hitler.

But Peterson’s blunt statement challenged me.

Then more recently, I read a story about a social experiment conducted in 1961, and now I am even less sure.

It involved an article written by Barbara Kay from the National Post entitled The Shocking ‘Obedience’ experiment that shook the world.

In her article, Kay talked about the recent passing of a friend, Herb Winer, a fellow Jew who died at the age of 98.

Winer, who Kay described as a gentle man, was involved in a bizarre study conducted at an American university in 1961 where he actually ended up torturing people. But I need to qualify this a bit, by saying, he only thought he was torturing people.

Kay wrote:

“He was the last person, I’d have imagined willingly torturing a helpless stranger.”

Winer was part of a social experiment conducted by Stanley Milgram, a social psychology professor at Yale. For the record, Winer was also a professional and worked as a forestry professor at Yale as well.

In the set up for this study, Milgram advertised for male volunteers between the ages of 20 to 50 who would be paid $4, plus 50 cents for gas, to participate in this study.

People were told that Milgram was studying the quote on quote “effects of punishment on learning.”

The reality was Milgram was secretly trying to find out how far people would go in inflicting pain on others.

Now it is important to note that most of this study was fake. This included the person who was considered a slow learner and strapped to a chair with electrical wires attached to his body.

Winer was part of the real study group and their job was to sit in another room, and ask this tied up man a series questions. As part of the study, this group was told they needed to get this restrained man to answer the their questions correctly. If he didn’t answer the question right, they were told to punish him by releasing an electrical shock administered through a dial in their room.

Each time he got the answer wrong, they were told to turn up the dial, increasing the electrical shock, until he answered correctly.

As they were torturing this poor man, one of Milgram’s associates was in the room telling them they were doing the right thing and encouraging them to raise the voltage when the man invariably answered the question wrong.

Winer and his fellow torturers were also told that a 100-volt charge was extremely painful and aside from the voltage numbers on the dial, there were even words ominously warning of the dire effects of a higher electrical shock, words such as “severe shock” and at the highest level the ominous word “Danger.”

Of course, there were no electrical shocks being administered and the person in the other room was faking being hurt as his screams got louder and more panicked as the voltage increased with each wrong answer that he purposefully gave.

As the imprisoned man continued to answer incorrectly, the study group dutifully increased the voltage.

Some people actually pushed their dials up to the maximum 450 volts in their effort to force the man to give the right answer. When the voltage hit the higher levels, the screams would suddenly stop in the other room as the man being tortured, pretended he had either passed out or even died.

One of the participants even asked his supervisor if the man had died, as he repeatedly jolted the man strapped in the chair with 450 volts.

After they were done torturing this man, Milgram had a few questions for the group inflicting the pain. Milgram discovered that a handful had figured out that this was all a hoax, but the majority had not and believed they were genuinely torturing this poor person.

When asked why they continued increasing the voltage even though they believed they were inflicting unimaginable pain, they said that they did it to be obedient.

In a paper released the next year on his study, Milgram said it showed that people could be coerced into performing horrific acts of evil through simple orders. Perhaps, not surprisingly, these same words, “I was just following orders” was one of the main defenses used by the Nazis being tried for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials following World War II.

In her article, Kay wrote:

“Milgram seemed to be saying that any American could have done what the Nazis did.”

 In other words, this ugly experiment suggests that all of us are capable of horrific evil in the right situation.

So at this point, you are probably wondering so what spiritual lesson can we learn from a story on fake torture.

Well there might be one.

To discover it we have to turn to the gospel of Matthew and these words spoken by Jesus:

7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Is this passage, Jesus talks about not judging others because you will be judged by the same standard. He then says why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye when you have a plank or a some translations read log in your own.

What was Jesus referring to?

Is it possible that the Lord was simply saying that though we are judging a small flaw in our brother, we not only have the capacity to do that, but to do much more, as illustrated by the larger log in our eye?

If we have the capacity to perform Nazi-level evil, what right do we have to judge anyone, for anything.

Look, for evidence we only have to look at the life of King David. He is easily one of the top five men of God in the Bible and who the Bible describes as a man after God’s own heart. But he was also a man who committed adultery with another man’s wife and then basically had Bathsheba’s husband executed to cover up David’s sin.

The truth is we all have a sinful nature and under the right circumstances we are capable of some horrendous acts.

So why are we, and I include myself in this, so susceptible to judging because I have been guilty of doing this for years?

Well the answer to that question is not fun.

Because, it is due to our sense of self-righteousness or superiority as we fundamentally believe that we are better than the person we are judging.

Jesus told a parable recorded in Luke 18 that exposes the ugly root of a judging heart:

9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like the other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all that I get.’

Notice how the Pharisee looked down at the robbers, the evildoers and tax collectors. He felt superior and he judged them. But in the end, the Pharisees were no different as they were responsible for murder as they helped sent an innocent man to the cross.

This sensedof superiority is a temptation for all humans and even all Christians. Yet as believers we have no excuse, we are not better because of anything we have done, but solely because of what Christ did for us.

In Galatians 6:1, the Apostle Paul gives a final clear warning against judging. There are times when we may need to take a stand. There are times when we may need to correct a brother, but Paul warns that we need to do it with a spirit of gentleness, and not with a judging spirit.

Then he gives the reason why. He says if we judge harshly, we make ourselves susceptible to the same temptation and sin.

Harsh judgments not only expose our sense of superiority, but they act like a lightening rod attracting satanic beings because they know we are now especially vulnerable to their spiritual attack.

Sources:

• Barbara Kay: The shocking ‘obedience’ experiment that shook the world: National Post

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Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast I want to talk about the curious theory that King David may have actually fought unicorns.

And no, you don’t have to turn up your volume, I said unicorns.

There is strange verse in Psalm 22, that was written by King David and according to the introductory remarks was set to the melody of another popular pop song of the day entitled: “The Deer of the Dawn.”

In the New King James the verse reads:

Save Me from the lion’s mouth
And from the horns of the wild oxen!
You have answered Me.

Now when we look at this verse, nothing seems too outrageous here. King David was calling on God to save him from Lions and wild oxen and implied that God had answered those prayers.

Of course, lions we understand because they are predatory and actually will stalk humans, while wild oxen are not that way. They don’t eat humans and will typically flee human contact.

But something strange happens when we read that verse in the old King James, Aside from a slightly different reading, it switches out the word wild oxen and replaces it with unicorns. Yes, unicorns. Of course, that doesn’t help things much either. The image of cute little pink horses with white, flowing manes and horns sticking out of their foreheads doesn’t sound very fearsome either.

But the verse seems to suggest that King David was in some battles with unicorns. And if you make it to the end of this podcast, you will hear a brief description of how unicorns attacked humans told by an explorer from the tenth century.

But to understand what is going on in this verse we must first talk a little bit about the Rouffignac Cave located in South Western France. It is made up of a series of caves and caverns that extend more than 8 km underground. There are even several deep shafts that have not been fully explored yet.

The cave was first mentioned in 1575 and has become a tourist attraction because of the hundreds of ancient cave drawings on its walls that includes 224 animals – 158 of which are Mammoths, those giant woolly elephants with elongated, curvy tusks. There are also images of horses, bison, and ibex.

But there are also 10 drawings of rhinos, and one in particular has caught everyone’s attention because it is so unusual.

It is a drawing of a rhinoceros with a towering single horn. I mean towering.

Now maybe this was the work of the world’s first abstract artist but most believe it  is a drawing of an elasmotherium, a now extinct species of rhino.

It was massive, the size of a woolly mammoth. It stood seven foot tall at its shoulder and 15 feet long weighing an estimated 3.5 metric tons or 7,700 pounds. It towered over modern rhinos that come in at around one metric ton.

But perhaps elasmotherium’s most distinctive feature was a huge horn estimated to be over two meters or six feet and half in size that towered over this beast.

So what in the world do elasmotheriums have to do with unicorns in the Bible?

During the past century when the King James Bible was widely used, atheists and secularists mocked it because of its reference to unicorns.

And in fact, the King James mentions unicorns nine times in five different books of the Bible. Now, we all know unicorns are make believe, but it appears the writers of the King James Bible, that was first printed in 1611 weren’t as enlightened as we are today, and didn’t realize these delicate pink creatures were mythical.

Well if you think that, you are missing one key point. The King James Bible was written over 500 years ago in the English of that day.

But that English has become archaic and difficult to read as it uses words that are no longer spoken today.

Such as cogitation in Daniel 7:28 that refers to meditation or wimples and crisping pins in Isaiah 3:22 that refer to coats and purses and firkins in John 2:6 that describes about nine gallons (34.07 l) of water.

We have these old medieval words and have no idea what they mean because the English language has changed.

And the same thing applies to unicorns, but in this instance the word is still in use, and it is the meaning of this word that has changed.

When we look up the word in a 2013 Mirriam-Webster dictionary, it provides the following definition:

“an imaginary animal that looks like a horse and has a straight horn growing from the middle of its forehead.”

But what did the word unicorn mean when the King James Bible first went to press 500 years ago. Well fortunately Webster’s dictionary has been around for a few years. Noah Webster wrote his first dictionary in 1806 and then released an expanded edition in 1828.

And that expanded edition included the word unicorn, that Webster defined as this:

1. an animal with one horn; the monoceros. this name is often applied to the rhinoceros.

In other words, unicorn, which is from the Latin word “unicornis,” that means simply single horn, was commonly used to describe the single-horned rhinoceros.

So when the writers of the King James Bible used the word unicorn they were not talking about some magical pink horse as we envision them today, but rather the ornery rhino.

So when the translators were working on the King James version of the Bible, they defined the Hebrew word ‘re’em’ as unicorn. Now the Hebrew language has changed over the centuries, just like the English, and today people have no idea what ‘re’em’ referred to.

But the modern versions of the Bible no longer translate ‘re’em’ as unicorn because the meaning of unicorn has changed.

Today they often translate ‘re’em’ as the wild oxen, a reference to the extinct aurochs. But some versions still footnote the word with “or rhinoceros”.

But do the two-horned aurochs fit the description of ‘re’em’?

Not really, because Psalm 92:10 uses the word ‘re’em’ in a unique way:

10 But my horn shalt thou exalt like the horn of an unicorn: I shall be anointed with fresh oil.

As the translators looked at this verse in the Hebrew, they understood that the word horn was in the singular, in other words whatever ‘re’em’ was it only had one horn.

Which is why they translated the word as unicorn, a one-horned animal. But we will see in a couple of minutes, why others have translated ‘re’em’ as wild ox.

So how many one-horned animals are there today?

Well there is only one, the rhino. There are five different species of rhinos today, three of which have two horns, and two species have only one horn

But as we look at this verse in Psalms one other thing sticks out. The psalmist says that his horn will be exalted like the horn of the Unicorn.

The word exalted in the Hebrew, spelt ‘rum,’ but pronounced ‘room’ means to be raised up, to tower over.

And again this doesn’t exactly describe aurochs, whose two horns spread out horizontally, not vertically. In other words, they don’t go high.

But modern rhinos don’t really fit this description either. Though Rhinos have a horn, they only range in size from 8 inches (ca. 20 cm) to 36 inches (ca. 91 cm).

But if the horn was over six and a half feet tall and towered over an animal, well that would be a completely different story, because the elasmotherium had a massive horn that was easily its most distinguishing feature.

So are there any other verses that suggest ‘re’em’ may be speaking of an elasmotherium? In fact, there might be. To find that, we have turn to another Psalm written by King David:

6 He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.

The Hebrew word ‘ragad’, means to skip, dance and jump.

Ok maybe it’s just me, but I have a hard time envisioning a lumbering rhino, even their young, skipping around the meadow like a young calf.  And because ‘re’em’ does this, it may be the reason why modern translators went with wild ox as the definition for ‘re’em’.

Though rhinos and skipping are not two words you would use in the same sentence, the same can’t be said for elasmotherium. Though it is part of the rhino family, it didn’t have the short stubby legs of Rhino, they were more horse-like.

Here is how Wikipedia describes an elasmotherium:

“It’s legs were longer than those of other Rhinos and were designed for galloping, giving it a horse like gait.”

So the young of an elasmotherium would be completely capable of skipping and jumping through a meadow.

But if elasmotherium was a super-sized version of a modern rhino, it is likely they also had the same ornery temperament of today’s rhino that are notoriously short-tempered, aggressive, powerful and dangerous.

If the elasmotherium was similar, it helps us understand several other verses that refer to the power of the ‘re’em’:

8 God brought him forth out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn: he shall eat up the nations his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows.

In this verse, the false prophet Balaam uses the metaphorical power of the ‘re’em’ to describe the absolute power and fierceness of God when He delivered Israel out of Egypt. In Balaam’s mind ‘re’em’ was the closest wild animal he could think of to describe this power. It was even more suitable than a  lion.

And for those Bible versions thinking re’em is a reference to a wild ox, God asks Job this question:

9 Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib?

10 Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?

The word crib is the Old English for pen. God is asking can re’em be put in a pen and forced to stay there? Can it be domesticated so it can be used to pull a plow?

The answer to both those questions is a rhetorical NO.

This verse was obviously not referring to wild ox, which were tamed, penned and used for plowing.

So as we wind down this discussion, let’s take a final look at the verse I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, Psalm 22:21, when David thanks God from saving him from the mouth of the lion and the horns of ‘re’ems’ implying that he had been attacked more than once.

Though paleontologists do not believe that elasmotheriums were around during the past few thousand years, there are drawings and writing that say they did. The 3rd Century BC, Chinese encyclopedia, Chunqin, said they actually caught one and an engraving on a Chinese bronze pot from that period is very similar to the drawing in the French cave. There are also Turkish writings telling of a massive beast over 10’ tall with a single massive horn.

But perhaps the most intriguing description of an Elasmotherium was provided by a tenth century explorer named Ibn Fadlan. He lived in what is today modern Iraq.

First he described the animals, horse-like appearance:

Near this river (the Volga) is a vast wilderness wherein they say is an animal that is less than a camel and more like a bull in size. Its head is like the head of a camel, and its tail is like the tail of a bull, while its body is like the body of a mule, and its hooves are like the cloven hooves of a bull. In the center of its head, it has a thick round horn, which as it rises from the head of the animal gets to be thinner until it becomes like the point of a lance. The length of some of these horns is from three to five cubits, [roughly 4.5′ to 10′] and there are those that may attain to a greater or lesser length.

Now remember how King David said he had been saved from re’ems attacking him with their horns, Fadlan also adds that this beast had a notorious reputation for attacking people and also provided a description of what it did:

“When it sees a horseman, it makes straight for him, and if he happens to have under him a fast horse, he is rendered safe from it with some effort. If it overtakes him, it removes him from the back of his horse with its horn, hurls him into the air, and then catches him with its horn. It continues in this manner until it kills him. It does not bother the horse in any form or manner.”

Then Fadlan ends this description by telling how hunters killed the animal and then as well noted its similarity to a rhino:

“They seek out this animal in the forests in order to kill it. They do that by climbing the tall trees among which it is found, and with this object in mind, they assemble a number of archers with poisoned arrows. When it stands in their midst, they shoot at it until it is severely wounded and killed by them.

“I saw in the king’s house three large bowls which looked like [they were made of] the onyx of Yemen. The king informed me that it was made from the base of the horn of the animal. Some of the people of the country told me that it was a rhinoceros.”

Was Fadlan in fact describing an elasmotherium? Many believe he was and even some encyclopedia type websites have cited Fadlan’s story when describing an elasmotherium.

So can I say with absolute certainty that elasmotherium is the fabled unicorn mentioned in the Bible? Of course not. But is there evidence it might be, that is for you to decide.

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A few days before Christmas, and my wife and I were out doing my most favorite past-time at Christmas, returning an item we had bought a few days earlier. Hey, any time you reduce your credit card bill, it is a step in the right direction.

Anyway, we were driving down a street when we drove past a brightly decorated home. It had a large, inflatable Santa being pulled by reindeer, and then I saw in the corner of the yard, secured between two trees, a large six-foot, red and green dragon with a Santa cap on its head.

So when did dragons become a Christmas decoration?

Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to discuss the other Christmas story, that no one talks about, and its odd connection with a story out of Louisiana about a woman whose Christmas display in 2018 also included dragons.

As we read through the Christmas story, recorded in both Matthew and Luke, we envision an idyllic scene.

It’s a peaceful night with a beautiful clear sky showing off an expansive heaven. A bright star silently wafts its way through the night sky, followed by three wise men winding their way through the Judea countryside as they follow the star to its final resting place.

Off in the distance, an angelic choir, dressed in long white, flowing robes, is singly softly in the background, and shepherds in the surrounding hills are receiving an angelic visitation announcing the birth of Christ.

Down below Jesus lies tightly wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger in a Bethlehem stable.

It’s calm, serene, and peaceful.

But don’t let outward appearances fool you, because there is actually a third Biblical account of Jesus’s birth, that provides a description of Christmas from a slightly different perspective.

But before we tell you that story, I must first set the stage with a strange incident that happened in December 2018 in Louisiana.

As she had done for the previous few years, a woman named Diana Rowland set up a Christmas display that included several inflatable dragons. They were big, human size, and Rowland set up a similar display at Halloween.

But that year, Rowland received a complaint from one of her neighbors, who, according to an article on Buzzfeed, left Rowland a note that she then tweeted out:

“Your dragon display is only marginally acceptable at Halloween. It is totally inappropriate at Christmas. It makes your neighbors wonder if you are involved in a demonic cult.

“Please consider removing the dragons.

“May God bless you and help you to know the true meaning of Christmas.”

After reading the note, Rowland admitted she briefly thought of taking the dragons down, but in the end, she actually added more dragons and even put halos on them.

Now I completely understand where the neighbor was coming from. We certainly don’t see a dragon mentioned anywhere in the Christmas story recorded in Matthew and Luke. But oddly there is a dragon in the other Christmas story recorded in the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John’s vision of the End times:

The Woman, Israel

12 A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars;  and she was with child; and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth.

The Red Dragon, Satan

3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. 4 And his tail *swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child.

The Male Child, Christ

5 And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; and her child was caught up to God and to His throne.

Bible scholars are universally convinced that this description in Revelation refers to the story surrounding the birth of Christ. And in fact, it revealed what was taking place in the spiritual realm behind the idyllic scene portrayed in Matthew and Luke.

But at the beginning of this passage, John describes the woman who gave birth to Christ as clothed in the sun, wearing a crown of 12 stars and with the moon under her feet.

While some Catholic theologians believe this is a reference to Mary, giving her almost a god-like appearance, most commentators believe the woman portrayed is Israel because in (Genesis 37:9), Joseph used the same words — sun, moon, stars — to describe the sons of Jacob who would form God’s chosen nation.

But the key here is that the Apostle John was pulling back the veil and revealing what was going on in a spiritual realm as Christ was being born.

And we see an attempt by Satan, pictured as a red dragon, to kill Jesus. And John adds that the dragon enticed a third of the angels to join Satan in this assassination attempt.

And I believe at this point, Satan crossed a line in the sand. It was a cataclysmic turning point in world history.

Now before this event, we had a very different spiritual world.

The Book of Job provides an overview of how things were working at that time in the heavenly realm. In the first chapter, we are told that the sons of God presented themselves before God (Job 1:6). The sons of God, of course, were angels and during this angelic meeting in heaven, we read that Satan, who had been out wandering the earth, actually joined this group and made accusations against Job.

At this point, Satan had direct access to God. But when Satan, the dragon, tried to kill Jesus, the Son of God, this was the final act of defiance and God said no more.

The Apostle John describes what happened next after the attempt to kill Christ:

7 And there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, 8 and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

There was a massive spiritual battle raging in the heavenly realm behind that serene scene portrayed in Matthew and Luke, as Satan and his minions were driven from heaven.

The angelic choir often pictured on Christmas cards in their long white, flowing robes holding candles is frankly a bunch of malarkey

The word describing this angelic choir in Luke 2:13 is “host” the Greek word “stratia.”

The Greek word “stratia” does not refer to a choir, but rather describes an army or a military unit. The Apostle Paul uses the same Greek word in 2 Corinthians 10:4, when he says that the weapons of our “warfare” (stratia) are mighty.

The angelic host that appeared at Jesus’s birth was not a choir dressed in long white robes, they were battle-hardened, angelic warriors wearing battered and dented armour. They were not holding candles, but swords, spears, and shields.

We see hints of this raging spiritual battle taking place in the background popping up at different moments in the Christmas story.

We see how King Herod ordered the killing of all the boys two years and younger at Bethlehem when the Magi warned by a dream didn’t return to tell Herod, they had found the New King, as Herod had requested. And of course, an angel appeared in a dream telling Joseph to take his family to Egypt to avoid this mass killing.

This was totally in character with Herod. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus tells the story of what happened when King Herod was on his deathbed.

Herod knew that people hated him and would be glad when he died. To counter this, he ordered the arrest of several prominent Jews and ordered they be killed on Herod’s death, so the Jews would mourn the hated king’s death. He was an evil man easily manipulated by the satanic realm

However, Josephus wryly noted when Herod died, those ordered to kill the Jews no longer had the threat of Herod hanging over them and instead released the Jews and Herod’s death became a time of national celebration.

But as we read these accounts, we also see the ultimate demonstration of the Angelic victory over the satanic realm.

Matthew tells us that magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem looking for the new king of Israel because they had seen a star heralding Christ’s birth.

The Greek word “magos” describes a priestly group of astrologers and sorcerers who advised the Kings of Persia and Babylon. In fact, Paul uses the same Greek word “magos” to describe a man by the name Bar-Jesus who was an advisor to the Roman proconsul on the Island of Cyprus in Acts 13.

When Bar-Jesus warned the proconsul to avoid Paul and Barnabas, the Bible says that Paul filled with the Holy Spirit rebuked  Bar-Jesus cursed him with blindness, well at the same time referring to him as the “son of the devil” and “enemy of all righteousness.”

For all intents and purposes, these magi worked in the dark and some would describe satanic arts. These were among the leaders of this realm.

So the story of the magi tells us how God pulled out men involved in the dark arts to come and worship Jesus (Matthew 2:11).

It revealed God’s total domination of the demonic realm when men who would be considered the leaders in the dark arts submitted themselves to Christ.

God literally pillaged the satanic realm.

The fact the Bible refers to their expensive gifts as treasure in (Matthew 2:11), speaks to another promise recorded in Isaiah:

I will give you the treasures of darkness
    and the hoards in secret places,
that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
    the God of Israel, who call you by your name.

And my final comment about the Christmas display featuring the dragons is this.

Dragons are part of the Christmas story, just ditch the halos.

Sources:

• Christian neighbor attempts to slay dragon Christmas display: Christian Post
• This Woman’s Fight With Her Neighbor Over Her Christmas Dragons Is Beautifully Petty: Buzzfeed

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Hey, before I start this podcast, I want to give an advisory warning. Not the PG – or rated R or Mature type of warning, but a warning this podcast may involve some bad news about the end times, so proceed with caution.

Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast I want to share with you my theory on whom I think the two end time witnesses or prophets that are mentioned in the Book of Revelation might be. Revelation is a prophetic vision given the Apostle John of events that be taking place in the end times leading up to the Second Coming of Christ.

He writes specifically about the appearance of two witnesses:

3 And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.”

In addition, they will perform great miracles during this period of time. Now, there has been a lot of speculation on whom these two witnesses might be.

I have a theory and I might even know their names.

I suspect most people won’t agree with me, and I am not going to be adamant I am right. This is just a theory. And to be honest since the book of Revelation was purposefully written in symbolic language, in many instances it won’t become apparent about what the Apostle John is talking about until it happens.

As I have mentioned in previous podcasts, I was saved in a Jesus’ people church in the early seventies. It was a hippy church, where I joke that everyone had long hair, even the girls.

It grew out of powerful moving of the Holy Spirit on the long-haired, free love, drug taking, hippies in California. Chuck Smith, the pastor of Calvary Chapel, in Costa Mesa California was one of the key figures in this movement.

As part of this outpouring we witnessed a free-wheeling use of the spiritual gifts in these churches that led to a lot of strange things happening.

I remember during one my church’s service that was held in the basement of a local Bible store, a young woman who no one had ever seen before stood up in the middle of the service and prophesied that she had been called to be a prophet to the city and I guess our church.

And I even know of a couple people who believed that God had called them to be one of the two-end time’s witnesses mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

And one of them even moved to Israel to prepare the way for his revealing. I have no idea what happened to him.

So who were these two end-times prophets?

In the account described in Revelation 11, John says for a period of 1,260 days, the two witnesses will be given special authority and will display great power and miracles.

At the end of this period, a beast will rise up out of the abyss and kill these two witnesses and for a very short period of time, three and a half days, their bodies will lie dead in the street.

When that happens, people will be celebrating. In fact, John says that some will treat it like Christmas and hand out gifts to each other as part of this celebration.

But at the end of three and a half days, God will breathe on these two witnesses, and they will rise from the dead and it will cause terror to fall upon the people who were celebrating.

The question that has puzzled end-time scholars is who are these two witnesses?

Some suggest Moses and Elijah, because both of them are seen talking to Jesus at the transfiguration (Matthew 17:3-4).

Another possible combination is Enoch and Elijah, because the Bible says that neither of those two men experienced physical death and were taken to heaven before they died (Genesis 5:23-24; 2 Kings 2:11).

Others believe they are two yet to be revealed prophetic witnesses. Whoever they are, most believe they are two uniquely called prophets anointed to be a voice for God in the end times.

Now when I got saved in the early 70s, there was a strong emphasis on the second coming of Christ. Many believed Christ’s return was imminent and a lot of this centered on the restoration of Israel as a nation in 1948 which is an important sign post of Christ’s second coming.

But when it didn’t happen right away, the enthusiasm for it sort of waned.

But interest in the end times has been revived recently. But is this a repeat of the seventies’ scenario? I can’t be adamant that Christ’s return is imminent, but there is one significant difference between what I saw happening in the seventies and I see happening today.

And that difference is that we are seeing a definite upswing in persecution of Christians that wasn’t happening in the early seventies. And in the Book of Revelation one of the significant characteristics of the end times was persecution. People were dying because of their faith in Christ.

And that is happening today.

On December 6, 2019, Christians travelling on a bus in Kenya on a trip from Nairobi to Madera were stopped by a group of Islamic extremists. People were separated into two groups based on whether they could recite the Islamic Shabada. Nine Christians were killed in the attack.

Two Christian pastors in Ethiopia were also beheaded in December when a mob stormed their home in a rural community just outside the capital city of Addis Abada. The English newspaper, The Guardian, even wrote an article on the persecution of Christians in the Middle East stating it was verging on a genocide.

Along with this China is arresting Christians, setting up re-education camps popularized by Mao Zedong and bulldozing churches and Breitbart reported that the persecution of Christians in India jumped 57% in 2019 over the previous year.

Though Christians in North America are not experiencing the same degree of persecution, they are now under repeated attack in the public square and on social media.

But here is the curious thing, Christians aren’t alone.

Along with this there has been an uptake in persecution of Jews as well.  Many believe the two people who were involved in a recent two-hour shoot out with police at a Jewish market in Jersey City, USA purposefully chose the market because of antisemitic comments allegedly found on one of the killer’s social media accounts.

Six people died including three orthodox Jews, a police officer and the two suspects.

The Jerusalem Post reports on the same day of the Jewish market attack on December 10, 2019, a young Jewish man was beaten unconscious while on a train in Paris when two people overheard him speaking in Hebrew on his phone.

A year earlier in (October 2018), a gunman stormed the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during a morning service killing 11 people and wounding seven.

The murderer had posted anti-Semitic comments on social media prior to the attack.

 Is it just a coincidence that the persecution of Christians and anti Semitic attacks are both on the rise at the same time?

I don’t think so.

Because I wonder if the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation are in fact Israel and the Church. And curiously, I am not alone in this view. Many of the Bible commentators from the 1700s and 1800s, such as Mathew Henry, believed these two witnesses were Israel and the church.

So what caused the change in thinking?

That took place in the 1800s when a Plymouth Brethren pastor by the name of John Darby came up with a new theory of the end times. He promoted the idea of a pre-trib rapture that had never been heard of before.

He believed Christians would be raptured out of the world before the start of the end-times revealed in the Apostle John’s vision. If that was the case, then the church could not be one of the end time prophets because the believers would not be on earth.

As Darby’s version of the end-times flooded the church, the ideas promoted by the older commentators were basically dismissed.

I mean who wouldn’t want to believe this. The end-times was promising plagues, wars, devastating asteroid hits, massive earthquakes, volcanoes and a nuclear apocalyptic war to finish it all off. And the pre-trib rapture promised believers a way to escape all this. Who wouldn’t want to believe that?

So what are the arguments in favor of these two witnesses being Israel and the church, meaning the church will go through the end-times?

First John uses the term witness to describe the two and the Bible talks about both the Church and Israel being witnesses of God on the earth.

When addressing the Jews, in Isaiah 43:10, God told Israel: “You are My witnesses.”

Then just prior to His ascension to heaven in Acts 1:8, Jesus continued that theme telling his disciples that they would be the Lord’s witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and the outermost parts of the earth:

Secondly John then uses two other symbols to describe these witnesses — olive trees and lamp stands:

4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.

And in Romans 11, Paul used an analogy of two olive trees to describe the relationship between Israel and the church. Israel was a tame olive tree representing the Kingdom of God and the gentiles were a wild olive tree whose branches were grafted into the tame olive tree when they believed in Jesus. Those Jews who did not believe in Jesus were considered dead branches and broken off the tame olive tree.

Paul adds though many Jews rejected Christ, there was a time coming when the Jews would embrace Jesus as their Messiah in mass and be grafted back into the tame olive tree. I wonder if we are seeing the first fruits of this in the dramatic growth of the Messianic Jew movement.

For the second analogy, John refers to the two witnesses as a lamp stand. In his letter to the seven churches found in the first couple of chapters of Revelation, the Apostle John very clearly refers to the church as lamp stands (Revelation 1:20). And though there is no clear reference to Israel being called a lamp stand, the Menorah, the seven-candle lamp stand used in the Temple is perhaps the most iconic symbol of Judaism today.

In closing, as we look at this description in Revelation 11, God gives both witnesses a time to flourish. They will be moving in power and anointing. It is time of extraordinary power. They will have the power to shut down the rain. Angels are even moving on their behalf and striking down their enemies.

But then the beast will make war with the two, and they will be killed. The Bible says the whole world will see them lying dead in the streets (Revelation 11:7-10).

But if this is a reference to Israel and the church, how will they be killed?

Well I am not exactly sure.

If this interpretation is right, at some point there will come a time, when the existence of Bible-believing churches as we know it will abruptly come to an end.

It could happen with these churches losing their charitable status and with church property being taxed or being forced to close if they don’t embrace certain ideologies.

But there is a day coming when the church will be shuttered. The phrase “will make war with them” (v 7) suggests a prolonged battle implying it may not happen all at once.

John says for three and a half days, the two witnesses will lie dead in the street. Though both may look like they are down, the Bible says that God will revive them.

This revival will be so great it will strike fear in the hearts of those who killed them (Revelation 11:11).

The church in its outward form may disappear, but as it has done for so many times in the past when persecuted, the church goes underground where it begins growing in power and purity.  

This is exactly what happened to the church in China when the communists persecuted the Christians. A Pew Forum survey conducted in 2011 estimated that there are 67 million Christians in China. And reports are coming in that the fastest growing church in the world is found in Iran, where believers are also facing heavy persecution.

And John says God will blow His Holy Spirit upon the church and people will be shocked, even terrified, by its sudden explosive growth.

The bad news is I think the pre-trib rapture is a fake promise. It is easy believism, who wouldn’t want to escape. But I believe the church will go through the tribulation and believers, especially in North America, we need to start toughening up.

The good news is that God and His Holy Spirit will be there to help believers go through this.

Sources:

• Persecution of Christians ‘coming close to genocide’ in Middle East – report: The Guardian
• Report: Christian Persecution in India Jumps by 57% in 2019: Breitbart
• Israeli student attacked at Paris metro for speaking Hebrew: Jerusalem Post

Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to ask: Are you rejecting yourself?

For several years, I worked with an organization that was actively involved in politics. Now, it was not a political party, but rather it focused on how governments spent tax dollars.

So we were thrust headlong into the political world.

It was a late Friday afternoon around 5:30 pm, and I was ready to head out the door and go home after a long week at work.

That’s when a man showed up at the office asking to speak to someone.

That someone ended up being me.

He was sharply dressed in a suit. He had a briefcase in one hand and a bunch of pamphlets and literature in the other.

He introduced himself as being a board member of a new political party and he wanted to introduce his party to our organization and explain what his party was all about.

Now, I had previously heard of the political party and was actually interested in finding out more about it.

But it was late Friday afternoon and as much as I was interested in hearing more about the party I was not interested in a political discussion that could potentially go on for a couple of hours on a late Friday afternoon.

So I told him that I was heading out, but I specifically mentioned that I was interested in finding out more about the political party and wondered if we could make an appointment the following week to talk about it.

But that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted to tell me about it that evening and handed me a brochure.

I simply repeated what I had said moments earlier. I was genuinely interested in finding out more about the political party and again, added let’s schedule a time next week, and he could tell me all about it.

At that moment the man became noticeably irritated and said that I obviously wasn’t interested in finding out more about this political party.

In fact, I had said the exact opposite. I told him I was interested and wanted to find out more, but wanted to book a time when we could have more time to talk.

Did I mention it was 5:30, well it at this point it was probably closer to six, and I was tired and just wanted to go home?

I repeated what I had said a third time, this time particularly emphasizing that I wanted to learn more about this political party, but could we meet next week to talk about it.

Suddenly things took a dramatic change, in a huff he said I obviously wasn’t interested, abruptly turned around, and walked out the door and I never heard from him again.

It is funny how a conversation can sometimes stick with you and this one plagued me for the rest of the evening.

That night as I lay in bed, I couldn’t fall asleep as I replayed the conversation over and over in my mind trying to figure out what happened. He said, then I said, he said, then I said and then he walked out.

I couldn’t shake it and after mulling over this conversation again and again, I finally asked the Holy Spirit why I couldn’t shake what happened that day, and I remember the Holy Spirit specifically saying to me it was because that man reminded me, of me.

Like me, this man was suffering from a rejection wound.

And what he was doing was so subtle it was barely discernible. I knew what he was doing because I had done it many times myself – this man was actually rejecting himself.

Now, what do I mean by that?

Even though I told this man several times that I wanted to meet with him the next week, because I was genuinely interested, he did not hear that.

He believed I was rejecting him when I actually wasn’t.

And in the end, he completed this process by rejecting himself on my behalf. Even though I had specifically said I wanted to hear what he had to say, he decided that I actually didn’t and said no by walking out of the office.

And this is what happens to people who have a rejection wound in their life. They began to interpret everyone’s response through a rejection lens. They believe that people are rejecting them even when they aren’t.

You walk by someone after church, and they don’t say “Hi” — “REJECTION, THEY MUST HATE ME!”

They then move to the next stage and begin rejecting themselves by presuming that people are going to reject them anyway, so they avoid this by pulling out of situations before this imaginary rejection can actually happen.

Because this is what he was actually doing, he was saying “NO” on my behalf.

As a result, they will not take advantage of opportunities because they believe it will end like it has always ended in the past with more rejection and more hurt.

And the best way to avoid this inevitable rejection is not to do it all. But this defeatest thinking is caused by a rejection wound.

And I believe Jesus wants to heal us of our rejection wounds and there is a verse that specifically speaks to this.

Matthew writes:

 17 This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.”

This verse talks about Jesus healing two different types of conditions — diseases and infirmities.

The Greek word “nosous,” translated as diseases, is very straightforward and refers to illnesses and sicknesses.

However, the Greek word for infirmity, “astheneia,” refers to something different. It refers to weaknesses and is used to describe both physical and emotional weaknesses.

We see the same word being used in an emotional sense in 1 Corinthians 2:3-4 when Paul said that he was coming to their church in weakness (astheneia) and then added specifically he was coming with much fear and trembling.

He tied that word weakness to his emotional struggles, a lack of confidence, and fear. What was Paul fearing? I believe he feared being rejected by the Corinthians.

Matthew says Jesus wants to take away our infirmities, and the Lord wants to heal our emotional wounds and struggles including those caused by rejection.

And this verse in Matthew puts emotional agony on the same level as physical pain because it is talking about sickness and infirmity in the same verse.

In fact, this is what researchers at the University of California found out in their study conducted in 2003 and reported in a publication called Journal Science.

Thirteen people, four men, and nine women, had their brains scanned as they played a computer game.

Each of the study subjects was told that they were playing a game of catch with two other participants in the group. In fact, the other two participants were just computer simulations.

At the end of playing catch for seven rounds, the researchers programmed the two computer-simulated players to stop throwing the ball to the real person and for the simulations to just play catch with each other.

When this started happening, the real person believed that the other two supposed people in the study group were purposefully rejecting them and when this happened, the scans started picking up activity in the anterior singular cortex area of the brain.

This was interesting because this is the part of the brain that is used when a person feels physical pain – like when you stick your hand on a stove.

In other words, the rejection these people were feeling was as real as physical pain.

This is why the Bible puts infirmity or emotional hurts on par with diseases and illnesses in Matthew. It is as real. It is painful and God wants to heal these rejection wounds.

While Matthew says that Jesus wants to bear or carry our diseases, it says that the Lord wants to “take away” our infirmities.  The Greek word for take away or took, “lambano,” means literally to “take with the hand.”

This means that something specific needs to happen.

If you are holding a ball and you want me to take it from you, there is one thing you need to do, you must let it go.

Jesus wants to take our rejection, but for that to happen we need to release the hurt or the rejection. I believe this means that we need to forgive those people who have rejected us in the past.

The man who walked out of my office on Friday evening was not responding to my rejection, he was reacting to all the rejection he had experienced in the past that he was still holding on to him.

But we know that Jesus wants to deal with our rejection because the Lord dealt with rejection in all aspects of His life.

Isaiah 53 provides a breakdown of the physical pain Jesus would endure on the cross. But two verses in this chapter specifically deal with the multifaceted rejection that Jesus experienced before He died on the cross:

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

The first thing we see in this passage is that Jesus experienced rejection as a child because verse two talks about Jesus, a tender shoot. It says that he had no beauty or majesty that attracted the other kids. He was not part of the cool crowd at school. When they chose teams, Jesus was the one usually chosen last.

When the Lord is described as a root out of dry ground, it suggests that he grew up in poverty. He lived on the wrong side of the tracks.

In fact, Hebrews 5:8 summed up Jesus’ childhood with “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things He suffered.”

In Isaiah, it says that Jesus was like those whom people hid their faces from. We all have been in situations where we are embarrassed by the other person’s behavior. This is what the Bible is referring to. We feel sorry for the person and as a result, are uncomfortable around them.

Well, this is how Jesus was treated by his family.

In Mark 3:21, we are told that Mary and members of his family were so embarrassed by Christ, that they thought he was crazy (literally out of His mind) and they wanted to take Jesus away, lock Him up in a room somewhere, and keep Him out of sight.

When Jesus was talking to one of his brothers in John 7:3-5, the brother told the Lord that He should leave and be out healing people. We know he said it mockingly, because verse 5 specifically says that the brothers didn’t believe. This brother was making fun of Jesus when he made that statement.

The word despised used in Isaiah 53 to describe Jesus is the same Hebrew word used in Genesis when it says that Esau despised his birthright when he gave it away to his brother Jacob.

The word means to undervalue. Nobody saw Jesus’ potential. They thought he would amount to nothing.

He was despised for being the son of a carpenter. He was despised for coming from Nazareth.  When Philip told his friend Nathaniel about Jesus, Nathaniel quipped “Can anything good come out of Nazareth.” Even the town where Jesus was raised was looked down upon.

Isaiah says he was rejected by mankind. Other versions say forsaken by man.

The word forsaken implies a slightly different idea than despised because it includes the concept of a person of lower caste or status. In fact, in their commentary Keil and Delitzch believe the word men used in this verse is more accurately translated as “lords” and they believe that this is referring to the fact that Jesus experienced rejection by the leaders of his day.

Those in power put him down.

This idea is clearly stated in Mark:

31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.

And we see this at play at Jesus’ crucifixion.

As was tradition, on the eve of the Jewish Passover, the Romans offered to release a man scheduled to be executed, when Pilate offered to release Jesus, stirred up by the priests and scribes, the crowd chose a known brutal murderer, Barabbas, to be released over Christ (Matthew 27:15-18).

Rejection from leaders can come in many ways. Maybe you have been overlooked for a promotion at work. Maybe someone less qualified got the position. Maybe, they were buddies with the boss.

But it still hurts.

Rejection is one of the most painful and demeaning things a person can go through. Jesus experienced it in all aspects of his life, from family to society, to leaders. He experienced it as a child and because He went through it, Jesus identifies with what you are going through and wants to heal your rejection wound.

And do it, we are required to take one step, we need to forgive those who rejected us.

As Jesus was dying on the cross, which was the ultimate rejection of His ministry, Jesus said:

“Lord Forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”

You can’t ask God to forgive people unless you have first forgiven them yourself.

Jesus wants to take your rejection. Let go of it. The first step involves forgiving those who have rejected you.

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Hi my name is Dean Smith, and in this podcast I want to talk about angels. According to the Bible, angels are spiritual beings inhabiting the Heavenly realm that have the ability to appear in human form.

But first I want to share a couple stories about my mother who passed away a few months ago. She was in her nineties, and believed in Jesus later in life. Mom also had a bit of dementia. It wasn’t bad, and the majority of time she was fine. But I wanted to add this as a caveat.

Shortly after my dad died in 2017, I was visiting with my mom at her care home in another city and she made the craziest statement to me.

She told me that someone had come into her room and asked her if she was interested in moving to a different place. My mom told the person that she was completely fine with that.

It was such a weird conversation to have with your mother shortly after your father had passed. I was immediately gripped with the fear that she would also soon pass, you know go to a completely different place, heaven.

I told my wife what she said and didn’t think anymore about it and because of the nature of the conversation, I decided not to tell my sister, who lived in the same city as mom.

About five months after this conversation I got a phone call from my sister, who lived in the same city where mom was because she had found out that the care home where my mom was staying had another residence that was only five minutes from where my sister lived and wondered if we should move her.

In fact, this other residence had a room available and within a few days my mom was in her “new place.” Aside from being only a few minutes away from my sister, this new care home was totally set up for people in my mom’s stage of care.

When I went to visit her, you never knew where she would be because they had activities going on all the time. Even the doctor noticed a distinct improvement in mom after the move.

My mom passed away at the end of September this year and my wife reminded me of the second strange conversation that I had with mom in the previous year, August 2018, after she had moved into the new care home.

A man came into my mom’s room and had another conversation with her. He asked mom so “how about another year, Mrs Smith” and as she had had answered previously, my mom said that she was fine with that.

And about one year later, mom died. I remember getting the call Saturday morning from my sister shortly after the care home contacted her about mom’s passing. We were surprised because she was doing well and even the care home staff were surprised, because there are usually signs that a person is in the final stages of life. None of these took place for mom.

Looking back at those two conversations, they are not the type that staff would have had with mom. Both my wife and I wondered if these were angelic visitations because of their prophetic tinge.

The Bible mentions angels between 295 and 305 times. There are some very obvious descriptions of angelic visitations and a handful that are uncertain.

But here is an interesting factoid, while the Old Testament makes up 75% of the Bible, the New Testament has 175 references to angels compared to only 110 for the Old Testament. Clearly, angels were playing a bigger or, at the very least, a more obvious role in the development of the fledgling church.

Along these lines, the Book of Hebrews provides two interesting verses about angels. First it says:

2 Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.

What does this verse tell us?

First it suggests that most of the work of angels is secretive – they purposefully don’t want you know what is happening or what they are doing. They just do it.

Of course, sometimes the circumstances hint of their involvement, such as with my mother. There are also several examples in the Bible of where angels made their presence clearly known.

In the second verse, the writer of Hebrews provides a description of an angel’s primary role:    

14 Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

Angels serve those who, and notice the tense here, will inherit salvation. In other word, angels will not only minister to those who are Christians, but those who will become Christians.

So what roles do angels play in the Kingdom of God. I am going to discuss three of these along with what I believe are modern examples of angels working in the world today.

To discover how angels can strengthen believers we need to look at the prophet Daniel’s encounter with an angel in Daniel chapter 10.

From verses 8 through 19, we see the seven different interactions the angel had with Daniel and the impact the angel’s word and touching had on the prophet.

In verse 9, the angel touched Daniel and he fell to his knees trembling. But in verse 19, we see that the angel specifically spoke these words to Daniel:

“Do not be afraid, you are highly esteemed. Peace! Be strong now; be strong.”

And then Daniel described what happened to him after the angel spoke:

“When he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, “Speak, my lord, since you have given me strength.”

The angel was able to strengthen Daniel, by simply speaking words to the prophet.

We find the exact the same thing happening in the Garden of Gethsamane as Jesus braced Himself for the crucifixion. Jesus was in an intense time of prayer where He was actually sweating blood and we are told that an angel of the Lord came to Christ to strengthen Him.

The Greek word translated strength is “enishuo,” that literally means “empowered.” At this moment, Jesus was functioning as fully man and I believe the Angel spoke words to Jesus that gave him the inner strength, courage and fortitude to press ahead.

And I believe angels are still ministering to people today during difficult times.

An article in England’s Daily Mail cites the amazing story of an angelic visitation that Annabel Beam, then 12, experienced when she fell 40 feet (ca. 12 m) down the inside of hollowed Cottonwood tree on their Texas property in December 2011.

It took several hours, for Annabel to be rescued and taken to the hospital. However, after a thorough examiniation revealed no serious injury, Annabel was released.

However, a couple days later, Annabel told her mother a strange story. As she sat at the bottom of the Cottonwood tree she had seen Jesus in heaven and He told her that everything was going to be alright. And as she waited for the emergency crew to rescue her, a small angel stayed with Anabel and comforted her.

Concerned that these bizarre stories suggested a concussion, Annabel’s parents took their daughter back to the doctor, however, after additional tests revealed no hint of a concussion, Annabel was sent home.

So did Annabel see Jesus and experience an angelic visitation?

Well in fact, there might be evidence she did, but I will let you decide.

In 2008, Annabel was diagnosed with intestinal pseudo-obstruction mobility disorder and has been in and out of the hospital. It is an incurable condition where the intestines do not work properly and can’t push food through her digestive track.

It is a very painful condition and at times Annabel even wished she could die. It’s also potentially life threatening and she was on a very restrictive diet and taking 10 medications a day.

Shortly after her encounter with Jesus and the angel, Annabel’s symptoms completely disappeared. Her parents took their daughter back to the doctor who didn’t know what to think because there is no cure for her condition.

But the doctor agreed to start weaning Annabel off some medication to see what would happen.

Today, Annabel is completely healed of an incurable affliction. Throughout the book of Acts, we are told repeatedly that God confirmed His word through signs and wonders.

By that I mean they play an active role in people becoming Christians and we see a clear example of this in the early church.

In Acts 8, we have the account of how an angel told Philip, one of the lesser known 12 apostles, to specifically walk down “the desert road” where he encountered the Ethiopian Eunuch and led him to the Lord. The Eunuch’s master was a person called Candace, which was the official name given the mother of the Ethiopian King.

Of course the big question is are angels still doing this today?

I recently read a story by popular Christian columnist Lee Grady, who told the remarkable story of the conversion of an Iranian Muslim living in Australia. It is a serious step for a Muslim to become a Christian. At the very least they risk being cut off from their family and friends and in extreme situations their lives could even be in danger.

Because of this, making the decision to become a Christian is taken very seriously and often requires some type of miraculous intervention. In 2016, the young Iranian man saw the movie Hacksaw Ridge, that told the remarkable story of a Christian medic, Desmond Doss, who became the only conscientious objector during World War II to win the medal of honor.

One scene in the movie caught the Iranian’s attention as it displayed the Lord’s prayer in a picture frame — you know, “Our Father who art in heaven.”

Intrigued by the prayer, after the movie the young man looked up the Lord’s prayer on the internet. But what happened a few days later is what caused him to become a Christian and get involved in a church.

He found two pieces of paper in front of his home. They were pages out of a Bible containing the Lord’s prayer.

Believing this was a sign from God, he became a Christian and according to Grady the young man still has those two pages tucked away in his Iranian Bible.

How did those two pages end up in front of this man’s home?

Certainly, a wind could have blown them there, but I suspect it is more likely an angel deposited the pages.

As part of this, I believe Angels will play a significant role in spreading the Gospel in the end times.

In the book of Revelation, we read that during the end times there will be an angel preaching the Gospel in the mid heavens:

6 Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people.

As I mentioned earlier, angels have the ability to impact people by the words they speak. Now I don’t believe that people will become Christians directly by this, but I believe it will cause people to be more open to the Gospel and even increase their interest in spiritual things.

I believe this will pave the way for one of the greatest revivals in world history.

According to the Christmas cards, at the birth of Christ, we are told of the appearance of an angelic choir dressed in longing flowing robes holding candles singing about the birth of Jesus.

Well the Christmas cards have it mostly right. They just made a mistake in a couple of key areas. They were not cherubic angels in long flowing robes, the word ‘host’ literally means army. These were grizzled, hardened warrior angels who were wearing scarred and battered armour. They were not holding candles, but spears, shields and swords.

They were there to ensure the safety of Christ until His death on the cross.

The angel who spoke to Daniel, who I mentioned earlier, said that he had been hindered from delivering the message by the Prince of Persia, a demonic spirit over that country. But a second angel, Michael the guardian angel of Israel, showed up and allowed the angel to deliver the message. The Angel then said when he was done speaking to Daniel, the angel would be going back to fight the demonic spirit over Persia.

There is a warrior division in the Kingdom of God and when they are not fighting demonic beings, according to the Psalmist they are protecting believers:

For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways;

In the Book of Acts, we see that an angel of the Lord broke Peter out of jail twice after he was arrested for preaching the Gospel. During his second arrest, the authorities took no chances and assigned four quaternions to guard Peter.

A quarternion was made up of a group of four soldiers. So apparently these four units worked in shifts. During each shift two guards sat on either side of Peter as he sat in the jail and the other two watched the entrance to the jail cell.

An angel of the Lord broke Peter out of jail by blinding the guards. 

So are angels still protecting people today?

In 2015, a bizarre story came out of Utah that was picked up by several media media outlets telling the story of a strange rescue of an 18-month-old girl. Lynn Groesbeck, 25, was traveling with her daughter down the road near Spanish River when her vehicle spun out of control and ended upside down in the River.

The next day, a man out fishing noticed part of the vehicle sticking out of the water and called emergency services.

Then a strange thing happened. The four police officers at the scene all heard an adult voice calling from the car. In fact, one of the police officers actually replied to the call for help and telling the person to just hang in there.

All four officers heard the call.

When they got to the vehicle, they found that Lynn was dead and the autopsy reveal she died shortly after impact, 14 hours earlier.

But her young daughter who was strapped in by the car seat was unconscious, but still alive, as the seat belt kept her out of the water.

In an interview with KSL, all officers said they heard the call for help and it was definitely an adult.

Officer Tyler Beddoes said:

“It wasn’t just in our heads. To me it was as plain as day. I remember hearing a voice that didn’t sound like a child just saying ‘help me.'”

A lot more could be said about angels, but I want to wrap up this podcast with this.

When God moved in the early church, two things happened. First there was a powerful moving of the Holy Spirit, but along with this there was a dramatic increase in angelic activity. To the point, that we are told in Acts 12, that an angel of the Lord actually killed Herod of Agrippa.

I believe angels are mobilizing. Something powerful in on the verge of happening. I think we need to brace yourselves for interesting days ahead.

Sources:

• Girl knocked out by 30ft fall inside a hollow tree claims she went to heaven and met Jesus (who looks like Santa Claus) … then woke up cured of a lifelong illness: Daily Mail  
• Rescuers recall ‘distinct voice’ that spurred them to rescue trapped toddler: KSL
• Iranian man becomes a Christian after ‘miracle’ bring Lord’s prayer to his doorstep: Faith News
• ‘Sign from God’: Iranian man becomes Christian after ‘miralce’ bring Lord’s prayer to his doorstep: CBN

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Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast I want to talk about how you can survive a spiritual beat down.

I remember it was a hot summer day I was doing my most favorite task – mowing the lawn in the back yard. I can even remember the spot on the lawn it happened. I was just pushing the lawn mower past our dilapidated green shed when suddenly it happened.

A memory of something stupid I had done years earlier popped into my mind. And though I had previously asked God to forgive me – there it was again and this time it brought along friends – waves of condemnation, shame and guilt swept over me as if I had done it yesterday.

I wondered where in the world did this thought come

I don’t think I am alone going through these experiences. I think many of us have very similar things happening on regular basis, when your mind is suddenly flooded with something you did last week or last month or even years ago.

Sometimes it is not even a sin, it is just something stupid you did and it beats you down and tells you want a horrible failure you are.

Where did it come from?

Well there are two sources of these thoughts and to find out one of them we have to study a vision given the prophet Zechariah. The Bible describes visions as simply dreams while you are awake.

Visions are strange to begin with, because I think for many of them God peels back the veil and allows us to see things as they are taking place in the spiritual realm such as Jacob who saw a large ladder towering to heaven and angels descending and ascending or Ezekiel’s vision of wheels flying in the sky with eyes embedded in them.

And to understand where these unwanted thoughts are coming from we have to study one of the stranger visions in the Bible.

Now it is not strange like Ezekiel’s visions of flying

While other visions allow us to see what things look like in the spiritual world, this vision switches it right around and reveals how humans appear to God, angels and even demonic being who are looking at us from the spiritual realm.

It switches it right around and reveals what we look

In Zechariah 3, the prophet Zechariah had a vision

3 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.

As Joshua was performing the sacrifice, Zechariah saw

We don’t know what satan was saying, but Joshua was

And in a moment everything changed as waves of shame and condemnation washed over him.

The other priests working in the Temple would have

But suddenly Joshua was under a cloud of condemnation.

But everyone in the spiritual realm could see what was going on, and they saw Joshua in a completely different light. While he was undoubtedly, clothed in his elaborate and colorful High Priestly robes clothing, angels and demons saw something else:

3 Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel.

Joshua was wearing filthy garments – filthy in the Hebrew is the actual word for excrement, yeah, poop.

Now you can be sure of one thing, as Joshua worked in the Temple performing the sacrifice his robes were not covered in excrement, but this is how Joshua appeared.

Not only that but I believe this description also reveals what Joshua believed about himself as Satan was condemning him.

Sometimes those thoughts that suddenly flood your mind come from demonic sources. Satan loves digging up our past and shaking it in your face again.

But the Bible says there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ (Romans 8:1). None.  In different languages it is nata, nee, nyet, votch, non, nein, no condemnation.

There

In

Once you have asked Jesus to forgive you, you are no longer condemned. The Bible says you are righteous in Christ. In fact, you can’t be anymore righteous than you are this very minute.

But that does not stop Satan from hurling accusation – digging up those past sins and mistakes and throwing them in your face again and again.

That is why the Apostle Paul talked about putting on spiritual armor in the Book of Ephesians, which makes me wonder, based on Zechariah’s vision, that when we have this armor on it might actually be visible in the spiritual realm.

Specifically, Paul talks about the shield of faith

16 in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

One of the hideous weapons used in ancient battles was flaming arrows. They struck fear in the heart of opposing soldiers because if you were hit, the effect of the arrow wound was intensely multiplied by the burning.

As well, these arrows could set flame to a wooden shield and ancient historians spoke of whole armies fleeing after their shields caught fire. One of the ways they stopped the fiery darts was by covering wooden shields with leather soaked in water so it would put out the fire.

And for Christians fighting condemnation you also need a shield, one wrapped with a special layer of protection called faith.

So

When you are hit by accusations, at that moment you have a decision to make – will you believe this lie or will you believe the word of God that says you are completely forgiven and no longer condemned.

It is fundamentally an act of faith.

You

It

At the moment of attack, you exercise your will, believe the Bible and by an act of faith put out the fiery dart of condemnation.

In other words, choosing to receive this condemnation is ultimately an act of unbelief.

But there is also a second element at play. There is a second source of condemnation, that often works hand in hand with the first and that is you.

The apostle John talks about our own hearts condemning us:

19 We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will assure our heart before Him 20 in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart and knows all things.

Our own heart can condemn us. We literally take that bow, turn it around, and shoot ourselves. It is a form of self-condemnation or self-hatred.

When

But it comes back again to believing the Bible that we are totally forgiven and we need to embrace it and accept it and believe it.  

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 5:17 that we are all new

We are a new creation in Christ but for this new creature to fully emerge we have to cut the link to our past.

We cannot allow our past to define who we are today.

The Bible says we are new creatures in Christ, but the biggest challenge is becoming who we already are.

The Bible says in Romans 12:2 that we are transformed by the renewing of oour mind. In other words we are transformed into this new creature that we already are by changing the way we think.

The word transformed in the Greek is “metamorphou”, which is where we get the English word metamorphosis. This word describes the process where a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. That process starts when the caterpillar builds a cocoon and then dissolves into a pool of enzymes that then transform into a butterfly, a completely new creature.

We need to go through a similar transformative

It can be one of the most difficult challenges that you will face as you try to change habits and patterns of thinking that have been a part of our life for years, in some cases decades.

I want to close with a story about the salvation and

Growing up, Nicki’s mother called him the “son of Satan.” This is what was ingrained in his psyche. And he lived it out rising to leader in this gang that was involved in everything from drugs to prostitution to theft to murder.

But Nicki Cruz, now 80, was saved at a rally put on by evangelist David Wilkerson who specifically invited Nicki Cruz and members of the Mau Mau gang to the rally, who on a lark agreed to attend.

During the service Wilkerson even asked the gang members to take the offering, and they apparently shook down people in the audience to make sure they gave more money. At the end of the service, the gang members were planning to run off with the offering, but Cruz had been powerfully convicted by the message and talked them out of it.

That night Cruz became a Christian and later went to Bible school and started an evangelistic ministry among gang members in New York.

For such a dramatic change to hold, a person must

And now it is your turn to do the same. You do it by embracing and believing who you already are in Christ.

Say it out loud, shout down the condemnation if you

You are a new creature. You are righteous in Christ.

Hi my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast I will

Speaking in Tongues, also called Glossolalia, is one of the spiritual gifts given to people after they have been with the Holy Spirit. It is also one of the more curious phenomena found among Pentecostals and Charismatics and in 2006, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania decided to use neuroimaging to scan the brains of people speaking tongues to see what part of the brain was being used during this religious exercise.

The researchers basically tracked the blood flow to the different areas of the brain as they spoke in tongues, with higher blood flows indicating usage.

The results including images of the scans were published in the journal called Psychiatric Research: Neuroimaging and later recounted in an article in the New York Times entitled: “A neuroscientific look at Speaking in Tongues”.

What the research team, led by Dr Andrew Newberg, discovered surprised them.

But let me set up this study by taking a closer look at the first demonstration of tongues in the Bible because it is important to understand the study results.

Recorded in Acts 2, it took place when the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples who were in a prayer meeting during the Jewish Feast of Weeks also called Pentecost. During the feast, tens of thousands of Jews from around the Roman Empire descended upon Jerusalem for the celebration.

When the disciples poured out into Jerusalem’s crowded streets, they were speaking in the tongues which allowed people from different regions of the Roman Empire to understand what was being said because it was being spoken in their native language.

But notice how the Bible describes this:

4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

The Bible says that the Holy Spirit was

With this understanding let’s take a look at the study.

As part of their study, the researchers from the University of Pennsylvania scanned the brains of five women as they performed two religious activities. The first involved singing Gospel songs and the second speaking in tongues.

They noticed a remarkable transformation took place when the women moved from singing to tongues.

First, there was a fall off in blood flow to the frontal lobes of their brains, that indicated it was not being used. This was interesting because the frontal lobe of the brain is where we do our thinking and it is where we make decisions of what we are going to do.

In other words, as these women started

Secondly even though they were talking

A third area of the brain also indicated fall off– an area called the “left caudate.”

This was puzzling because this area of the brain is responsible for both emotional and motor control. This seemed to suggest that when the women were speaking in tongues they were somehow ceding some control over what they were doing. 

But there was an area of the brain that was being activated, the self-conscious area. In other words, the women were fully aware of what they were doing meaning they were not in a trance.

The study noted that the women stated

And this is very similar to my experience when I was filled with the Holy Spirit and eventually started speaking in tongues.

I got saved in what was basically a Jesus people church in the early seventies. It was a hippy church where everyone had long hair even the girls. It was a young people’s church, the pastor was the oldest person, I think he was about 21 when the church started.

And we believed in the filling of the

But our church was also part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination. Though it did not officially reject speaking in tongues, its position was essentially, “Seek Not, Forbid Not”, with the biggest emphasis on Seek not.

This was because denomination founder, AB Simpson, who

Shortly after I was saved I started attending an Alliance

I began despising the people in my Jesus people church who were speaking in tongues.

But during a prayer meeting in the home of one of the

But then I felt a strange burning sensation that started at the pit of my stomach and then begin to travel up my chest and started to travel up my throat.

Though I describe it as a burning sensation, there was

I immediately suspected this was the gift of tongues

This same sensation returned a couple more times and

Over the next few days, I felt what could only be

But this took a dramatic change a couple of weeks later when I volunteered to work at a Christian book table at our local university.

I was sitting at the table, still feeling this incredible sense of joy and peace, when I noticed a good friend from the church walking down the hallway.

I was trying to catch his attention, when suddenly this burning sensation returned, but this time, and because I was partially distracted by my friend, the sensation rapidly traveled up my throat before I could stop it, and I was speaking in tongues.

As soon as this happened, I felt the Holy Spirit speak to me, it was such an odd statement. The Holy Spirit simply said, “now you are numbered among them.” I was now among the group that I had despised.

Like the women in the study and the people on the Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was speaking through me.

Now when it comes to speaking in tongues there are two

Now my experience, unfortunately, confirms both those

But I tend to lean to the later view that tongues is just one of the signs, because in 1 Corinthians 14:5, Paul told the church at Corinth that he wished they all spoke in tongues. Now Corinth was a very charismatic church and yet there were people who weren’t speaking in tongues.

In other words, what Paul was saying it if it was his choice, then everyone would have the gift of tongues.

In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul breaks down all the gifts of

Paul then sums it all up by saying in verse 11, that

Now I don’t want to be adamant on this, because I have a close pastor friend who believes that speaking in tongues is available to all believers who are filled with the Holy Spirit.  He believes similar to prophecy there are different levels of speaking in tongues. In prophecy, we have the gift of prophecy and then a higher level called the office of the prophet. Similarly, my friend believes there are different levels of tongues one that is referred to as speaking in tongues and a higher level called the gift of Tongues.

There is one big difference between these two expressions of tongues.

Speaking in tongues is intended for private use, while the Gift of Tongues that Paul was describing in 1 Corinthians 12 is a higher level intended for public use during Church services provided there is interpretation.

While not everyone would receive the gift of Tongues, all believers baptized in the Holy Spirit will be able to speak in tongues privately.

He believes there are several examples of this in the Book of Acts when people were filled with the Holy Spirit and everyone spoke in Tongues. It happened in Acts 10, when Holy Spirit fell on the gentiles meeting in the home of Cornelius. As soon as it happened, Peter knew that everyone was filled with the Holy Spirit because it specifically says they spoke in tongues.

It happened again in Acts 19, when the Apostle Paul ran into a group of believers, 12 men, in the town of Ephesus who had not been baptized with the Holy Spirit.  After Paul laid hands on them it again specifically says that they “all” spoke in Tongues.

My friend says this is what he refers to as speaking

And maybe he has a point.

So aside from the overt evangelistic display on the Day of Pentecost what is the purpose of Tongues? 

I believe this expression has two major functions.

First I believe it involves communication between you

2 For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit.

We

20 But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit

In other words the Holy Spirit, who knows the perfect

The second major reason to speak in tongues is because it will strengthen you personally:

4 The one who speaks in a tongue builds up himself, but the one who prophesies builds up the church.

Speaking

And because tongues has the ability to strengthen our faith, it certainly supports the notion that God would want everyone to speak in tongues.

And this falls in line with a second study conducted by researchers from the University of Albany in New York that was published in 2011 in the American Journal of Human Biology. They found indications that speaking in tongues reduced stress.

In

They collected samples on what they described as “worship and non-worship days.” What they discovered is that there was a reduction in cortisol in the saliva on worship days when all the participants, 48 men, 52 women, spoke in tongues. Cortisol is considered a biomarker for stress and this suggested that speaking in tongues reduced stress for those in the study group.

So

To

Secondly, if you have been filled with the Holy Spirit and at one time spoke in tongues, but no longer do it as regular practice, you need to re-engage this gift.

1 Thessalonians 5:19 warns against quenching the Holy Spirit. The Greek word “sbennumi,” translated quench, literally means to put out the fire. I believe many of us have put out the fire of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This can happen by simply thinking the gift is unimportant. If you have quenched the Holy Spirit, we need to reignite this gift in our life. There could also be other things hindering the release of this gift in your life and you need to ask the Holy Spirit what it is.

We need the Holy Spirit to revive us today.

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• Podchaser

I quit watching CNN years ago, but I recently became aware of a very ironic tweet by a CNN commentator named Keith Boykin.

Now I don’t know much about Boykin other than the fact he was also once an aide for former U.S. Democratic president Bill Clinton.

So what was so ironic about the tweet? Well, Boykin called former Republican President Ronald Reagan a sinner. Now there is nothing wrong with calling Reagan a sinner, because the Bible says that we are all sinners, including me, Reagan and even Boykin.  

But the irony, as we shall see shortly, lies in why

Hi may name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want

Fires are so common in California that they are starting to name them, like they name hurricanes. In his tweet, Boykin was referring to a wild fire called “Easy Fire” which started October 30, 2019, and was put out six days later on November 2. But before it was finally put out, the fire destroyed 1,806 acres in the Simi Valley, threatening about a 1,000 homes resulting in the evacuation of 26,000 people.

So what was Boykin’s tweet about?

Well Boykin was responding to an article on Fox News that stated “Easy Fire” had surrounded the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library also located in Simi Valley resulting in its evacuation.

Boykin simply tweeted in response to this Fox News article:

“For those who think God punishes sinners with natural disasters.”

Boykin, from all appearances, was sarcastically tweeting that Reagan must have been a sinner because God punishes sinners with natural disasters.

Though it was completely surrounded by Easy Fire, the

So you are probably wondering what is so ironic about

That is a very legitimate question, because the irony

In addition to the brave men and women who were

Goats. Yes G.O.A.T.S. Those four legged creatures that

Because every spring, the Ventura Fire Department brings in about 500 goats to eat the brush and grass surrounding the library creating a fire wall around the complex.

They are rented from a business called 805 Goats that supplies goats just for that purpose and in fact these goats are becoming an increasingly popular way of fighting the fires that routinely plague California.

With the brush previously cleared away by the goats,

So you are probably wondering where is the irony?

Well remember how Boykin called Reagan a sinner

Well in Leviticus chapter 16, goats played a key role

Part of this annual sacrifice included two goats. The

Once the selection was made one of the goats was

After all the sins of the nation were placed on this

22 The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.

In the New Testament, we are told that Jesus fulfilled

Speaking of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah said:

All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.

Notice how Leviticus said all the iniquity of Israel was placed on the scapegoat, and then Isaiah speaking of the Messiah, says all our iniquity was placed on Jesus.

Jesus was our scapegoat.

So yes Mr. Boykin. Ronald

And it is ironic that you mockingly said Reagan must be a sinner because his library was about to burn, but it was saved by goats, just as Jesus the scapegoat sacrifice saved Ronald Reagan because of his faith in Christ.

I think there is a bit of irony in that.

Sources:

• CNN face suggest Reagan a ‘sinner’ as fire threaten Regan library: WND
• Goats help save Reagan Library from destruction as California wildfire threatens: USA Today