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Hi, my name is Dean and in this podcast, I want to discuss the world’s greatest earthquake. This one, of course, hasn’t happened yet.

It is one that the Apostle John saw occurring during the apocalyptic events leading up to Christ’s second coming recorded in the Book of Revelation. It is based on a vision that John had of the end times events while banished by the Romans to the Island of Patmos.

Now we have had some powerful earthquakes over the past few millennia, but the one that John saw will make these other ones pale in comparison.

We have only been measuring the intensity of earthquakes since 1935 when the Richter scale was developed and has since been transformed into the Moment Magnitude Scale.

The scale does not reflect a gradual increase in power. For example, according to one report an 8.7 magnitude earthquake is 794 times bigger than a 5.8 magnitude one. Essentially, larger earthquakes are catastrophically more destructive than smaller ones.

Since we started measuring earthquakes about 90 or so years ago, the largest recorded earthquake in human history is the one that took place in Chile on May 22, 1960.

It had a magnitude of 9.6.

Now there may have been larger ones in the ancient past and we have no real idea how powerful they were other than studying the kind of damage they caused, which can give a bit of a clue.

Considering how powerful the Chile earthquake was, the death toll was relatively small killing between 1,000 to 6,000 people.

This was due to a couple of things. First, it didn’t take place in a highly industrialized area.

Secondly, it took place in midday, so most people weren’t sleeping and there had been several tremors before the big one which caused people to leave their buildings and go out into the streets.

But its power was demonstrated by the resulting Tsunamis that produced waves so large they killed 61 people in Hawaii, which is 6,700 miles or 10,800 km away.

The waves traveled at an estimated 200 miles an hour, and the main wave was 35’ or 10.7 meters high when it hit the island paradise.

The waves also reached the Philippines killing 32 people, which is 10,600 miles from Chile.

This was one powerful earthquake and it even spawned an eruption at the Cordon Caulle volcano located near its Chilean epicentre.

But as we turn to the Book of Revelation, we see that earthquakes will play a major role in end times’ events. And make no mistake about it, John is very clear on one thing. God is the one initiating them.

It also reveals that there will be three distinct periods of judgment.

The first set involves the breaking of the seven seals which starts in Revelation 5, the second, the sounding of the seven trumpets begins in Revelation 8 and the third, the pouring out of the bowls of wrath starts in Revelation 16.

This vision cites five specific earthquakes. There will undoubtedly be many more earthquakes than five during this period, but John cited five as being significant.

Earthquakes will take place in each of the three judgment periods, but the last of these earthquakes which is part of the bowls of wrath recorded in Revelation 16, is going to be the mother of all earthquakes.

John leaves no doubt that it will be the most powerful earthquake ever seen in human history:

We read:

17 Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl upon the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple from the throne, saying, “It is done.” 18 And there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder; and there was a great earthquake, such as there had not been since mankind came to be upon the earth, so great an earthquake was it, and so mighty. 19 The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. (Revelation 16:17-19)

Three times John refers to it as great or mighty emphasizing how powerful it was.

It will be so devastating that it will split what John calls the ‘great city’ into three parts.

Over the years, many have wondered what ‘great city’ was John referring to?

Now there have been three approaches to determining this.

First, some believe John was referring to a great or prominent city in his day. It was one that he was familiar with, but he was purposefully disguising its identity.

If this is the case, most basically agree that this ‘great city’ would be either Rome, which was the center of John’s known world at the time, or Jerusalem which was the spiritual center .

A second group doesn’t believe John is referring to an actual physical earthquake but rather looks upon it as a more symbolic description.

Some even suggest that it had already taken place and involved the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish temple by the Romans in 70 AD and noted that Jerusalem was at that point divided into three rebel Jewish factions.

One was led by Simon Bar Giora who had 15,000 men in his rebel faction, John of Gischaia who had 6,000 and a rebel leader Eleazar who had 2,500 rebels in his group.

In their mind, this is what John meant when he said the great city was split in three.

But the biggest problem with this theory is that the Apostle John had this vision of the end times around 90 AD, about 20 years after the fall of Jerusalem.

A third interpretation is that since John’s vision is referring to events that would be taking place at a future date, it would make sense that he would be referring to a great city that existed at the time it took place.

So if that Great earthquake took place today, what ‘great’ cities come to your mind?

When I look at this from my Western perspective, I immediately think of London, Paris, New York, LA, and perhaps even Rome. Jerusalem could even be thrown into the mix.

We all have different perspectives on what constitutes a great city in today’s world.

If we consider it from a more pragmatic perspective such as population size, then Tokyo, Japan, with a population of 37 million, is the largest city in the world and it would certainly top the list. It is followed by Delhi, India at 32 million and Shanghai, China at 29 million.

Perhaps just coincidentally a powerful 7.6 earthquake hit the western side of the island of Honshu Japan on Jan. 1, 2024, killing over 200 people and destroying nearly 90% of the buildings in the small city of Suzu. The same area was hit again by a 6.0 earthquake on Jan. 9, 2024.

Tokyo is located on this island and was just 180 miles away from the earthquake’s epicenter. So it’s a possibility.

But John added another clue about the identity of the city stating that the devastation will result in the falling of cities in other nations.

Now this may indicate that this earthquake will be so powerful that its reach will extend into other countries, suggesting it will occur in an area of the world where we have several smaller countries concentrated together.

But it’s also possible, that John was not referring to the physical destruction of other cities, but rather the economic impact its destruction would have on cities in other countries.

If we look at it from this perspective, we get a slightly different list of cities. According to a report published by the Martin Prosperity Institute in 2015, the five most economically powerful cities in the world are:

New York City with its financially powerful Wallstreet, sits at number one.

It is followed by London, and its huge financial sector, at number two. These two are followed by Tokyo, Hong Kong, and then Paris to round up the top five.

But in what was undoubtedly just a coincidence, as I was working on the script, a small 1.7 magnitude earthquake, actually hit New York City, the most powerful economic hub in the world, on Tuesday morning Jan 2, 2024, one day after the Japan earthquake.

Though buildings shook, there was no structural damage or injuries because of the quake. However, it is apparent, the city is vulnerable to earthquakes.

But maybe we should be considering cities with political clout. Certainly, capital cities such as Washington DC and Beijing, China may qualify, as would New York City which houses the UN, or Brussels which is the headquarters of the European Union.

But for whatever reason, John chose to keep the identity of this great city hidden.

As I mentioned earlier, this is not the only earthquake that the Apostle John saw in his vision of judgments that would strike the earth during the apocalypse.

Similar to the mother of all earthquakes mentioned in Revelation 16, we are not provided any clues as to where these four earthquakes will take place.

This shouldn’t really surprise us as Jesus specifically warned about massive earthquakes taking place in the lead-up to His second coming. Jesus referred to them as some of the birth pangs that would take place leading up to the main event.

We read:

11 and there will be massive earthquakes, and in various places plagues and famines; and there will be terrible sights and great signs from heaven. (Luke 21:11 NASV)

These earthquakes will be happening everywhere.

So for John’s four remaining earthquakes, the first is mentioned in Revelation 6:12-14, as one of the series of judgments associated with the opening of the seven seals.

The earthquake that takes place with the opening of the sixth seal will be combined with a series of other events that will probably happen in quick succession. This will include what appears to be a solar eclipse, a blood moon and the earth being bombarded with several destructive meteors or asteroids.

This rapid succession of destruction will have such an impact on people’s psyche that it will cause people to hide in caves or underground bunkers.

The three remaining earthquakes will take place in the second set of judgments, the sounding of the seven trumpets.

As part of this, an earthquake is mentioned in Revelation 8:5 at the announcement indicating the seven trumpet judgement is about to start.

The second earthquake in this set, Revelation 11:13, will coincide with other events including the deaths of the two end-time prophets.

John adds that the earthquake will strike ‘the city’ destroying a tenth of it and resulting in the deaths of 7,000 people.

Obviously, John has one particular city in mind but doesn’t reveal its name. It appears to be the same city where the two prophets died.

Though there have been earthquakes that have caused much more massive destruction than this one, its uniqueness is seen in the number of reported deaths. I do not believe that this is referring to exactly 7,000 deaths as similar to today, people back then rounded their numbers.

It seems that this earthquake also caused a bit of a revival among those who survived.

The third earthquake will take place at the sounding of the seventh Trumpet in Revelation 11:19. It will coincide with the opening of the Temple of God in Heaven.

Many believe we are entering the end times and it seems that earthquakes are starting to become a thing.

In February 2023 a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria killing nearly 60,000 people.

It doesn’t seem to fit the description of any of the five earthquakes mentioned in the Book of Revelation, but it would certainly qualify as one of the birth pang earthquakes that Jesus warned about.

If so, this may even be more concerning because this is just the start, and it is only going to get worse. And with that final bit of good news, I would like to thank you for joining me on this podcast, and I will catch you again.

Sources: Sorry, London: New York Is the World’s Most Economically Powerful City | Japan is rocked by powerful new 6.0-magnitude earthquake – as death toll from New Year’s Day tremors and tsunami climbs past 200

Hi, my name is Wayne Johnston and I want to share a word for 2024.

In November, with Christmas around the corner, I started sending Christmas cards to friends and family as I do every year.

But this year as I started to write them, after musing on the dark crazy state of the world, the cards took on a prophetic edge.

As I was writing, I started to write pretty much the same thing in every card, basically wise men sought the light. They sought the star to the Messiah, and today in this world, this dark world, we have to go back to the same thing.

We have to look at that star, focus on his light, and follow that through the darkness.

We read in the book of Isaiah:

Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.
2 For behold, the darkness shall come upon the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the Lord will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you. (Isaiah 60:1-2 NKJV)

To begin with, I want to focus on verse 2.

The prophet talks about deep and gross darkness covering the earth.

Sounds really exciting.

Deep means gloom or gross, thick dark clouds. Just think about the tornado type of weather.

Darkness refers to: ‘wickedness, misery, destruction and death, sorrow, ignorance (figuratively or literally).’

So basically, deep dark thick clouds of destruction, death, and gloom. All that fun stuff, but that is the state of the world.

That is how it was in Christ’s time, and it is today and I get it is not a pretty picture, but Isaiah describes our day and our misery pretty well.

So let us end with verse one.

“Arise, shine, for your light has come.“

Arise in Hebrew is the word ‘koom’. It is a prime root meaning, ‘to get up, to rise up, abide, accomplish, make good, make clear, confirm.’

It is almost like the military term, ‘stand to attention.’

And shine, meaning ‘to make or set on fire.’ 

Our light is here, so believers need to stand to attention and be set on fire by Jesus because a dark world needs a light to find its way.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to discuss the magi from the East, who came to Jerusalem looking for the newborn Jewish King.

Though it has been traditionally believed there were three of them, because of the three gifts, we have no idea how many there were. But there has also been some controversy on who they were with some calling them wise men and if the Christmas songs are to be believed, kings.

In fact, historically, they were considered kings by the third century, and by the seventh century, they had even been given names, Caspar, Balthazar, and Melchior.

All three were eventually declared saints by the Roman Catholic Church, which meant they had performed miracles after they died. The Cologne Cathedral in Cologne, Germany also claims to have the bones of these three as part of its relic collection.

Over the years, backstories have been developed for the three kings. Such as Caspar, who was declared to be a King and scholar from India, who died in 55 AD at 109 years of age.

According to one Catholic website, Caspar is the patron saint of playing card manufacturers, among others, and I have no idea what a patron saint does. The Roman Catholic Church even set aside a feast day on January 6 to commemorate ole Saint Caspar.

As intriguing as all that sounds, the actual Greek word, magos, which was used to describe these visitors, along with the fact they were from the East, implies that these individuals were part of a guild of influential men who advised both the Babylonian and Persian kings.

Thayer’s Greek Dictionary describes them this way:

1a) The name given by the Babylonians (Chaldeans), Medes, Persians, and others, to the wise men, teachers, priests, physicians, astrologers, seers, interpreters of dreams, augers, soothsayers, sorcerers etc…. 1c) a false prophet and sorcerer.

Many of these magi undoubtedly served as priests in ancient Persian religions. Aside from their religious duties, they also filled a powerful political role by advising kings.

We see a glimpse of this in the Book of Daniel, when King Nebuchadnezzar had a disturbing dream and summoned his advisors to interpret it.

We read:

2 So the king summoned the magicians, enchanters, sorcerers and astrologers to tell him what he had dreamed. (Daniel 2:2).

As we see from this description, these magi had multiple specialties including casting spells and uttering prayer-like incantations to curse enemies, developing magical formulas, using the stars to predict a person’s destiny, and of course interpreting dreams.

We even see their political influence in the New Testament, when Luke used the same Greek word, magos, to describe a magician or sorcerer known as Bar-Jesus who was serving as the chief counselor to Sergius Paulus, the governor of the Island of Cyprus.

He also went by the name of Elymas, which meant wise and according to Strong’s concordance was derived from the Arabic word for Wizard.

Bar-Jesus used his influential position to hinder the governor from becoming a Christian after Paul and Barnabas showed up on the island in Acts 13.

Paul finally became so fed up with Bar-Jesus, that he publicly rebuked him, causing him to go blind. But in the course of this rebuke, Paul called him a child of Satan, deceitful, an enemy of righteousness, and one who was perverting the truth. Paul clearly associated Bar-Jesus and his ilk with the demonic realm.

So it was a bit odd to see a group of these ‘magos’ traveling to Jerusalem looking for the newborn Jewish King. Their arrival also revealed their important role in society as they brought extravagant and expensive gifts for Jesus, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. You don’t accumulate this kind of wealth without receiving a few payoffs.

These men were wealthy and undoubtedly were traveling in a large Caravan, think of a convoy of armor-plated limousines with darkened windows and a bevy of heavily armed guards wearing dark sunglasses.

I think you get the picture.

Their arrival in Jerusalem caused a stir when they began asking around if anyone knew about this new king of Israel, whose star they had seen months earlier.

We have to understand if they came from Persia it was a 1400 miles (ca. 2,253 km) journey and would have taken them months to complete, so that star had been hanging around for a while.

King Herod arranged a meeting with the ‘magos’ and after explaining why they were there, we see the influence these men had as Herod and all of Jerusalem were troubled by the Magi’s message.

Herod asked them to return to Jerusalem once they had found this king.

But what was particularly curious is that God spoke to these men in a way they would understand. First, God used a star to catch their attention.

As astrologers, the magi closely studied the movements of stars, believing they somehow impacted the destinies of men. The sudden appearance of a unique star in the heavens led them to believe a new Jewish King had been born, causing them to follow it to the newborn Christ. We see references to that in Matthew 2: 2, 9.

God also spoke to them through a dream, warning them not to return to Herod. Of course, they were renowned for their ability to interpret dreams.

So God was communicating with these magi in lingo they could understand and arranged for them to come and worship Jesus. At this point, Jesus was probably a toddler, as Joseph and Mary were now living in a house.

So why would God drag in a group of men involved in the dark arts to worship Christ?

This was in no way a validation of the occult, but I believe they were plunder from an unseen war that had just taken place in the spiritual realm.

We have a record of the battle in Revelation chapter 12, where we read how a red dragon, who was none other than Satan, had enticed a third of the godly angels to join him, attacking a woman who was just about to give birth, and conspired to kill the child.

We read: 

“And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and hurled 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. (Revelation 12:4)

Many believe that this child was none other than Jesus.

As all this was occurring in the spiritual realm, Mary and Joseph would have been blissfully unaware of what was taking place.

They only saw glimpses of the raging spiritual battle, when Joseph was warned in a dream to go to Egypt to escape Herod’s attempt to assassinate Jesus.

We know from the Christmas story, that after the magi avoided Herod on their return home, Herod consulted with his advisors which included those familiar with the Hebrew scriptures and determined that the new king of the Jews would be born in Bethlehem.

When Herod ordered all the boys under the age of two in Bethlehem to be slaughtered, it was a demonstration that Herod was just a mere a pawn in this spiritual war whom the Red Dragon had just played in a failed attempt to kill Christ.

But this open spiritual rebellion against the Kingdom of God resulted in a dramatic confrontation that saw Michael, the archangel, lead an angelic army driving Satan and his minions from heaven.

We read:

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 did not prevail, 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. (Revelation 12:7-9 NASV)

Satan had just suffered a massive and humiliating defeat.

I wonder if the magi, who were involved in the occultic arts, were simply the plunder that God collected from the satanic realm after this massive spiritual battle in the heavens.

It was the ultimate display of God’s power and supremacy over the satanic realm, as He led those described as the sons of the Devil to bow their knees to Jesus and worship Him (Matthew 2:11).

This leads me to believe, that they were probably the first Gentiles to become believers in Jesus.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast, and I will catch you again.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to talk about the fathers of atheism. I won’t be discussing the key leaders of atheism, but rather I will be focussing on what may be one of the reasons they became atheists.

Several years back, I wrote an article on a book written in 1999 by Catholic psychologist Paul Vitz titled Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism.

At the time, he wrote his book, Vitz was a professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences based in Arlington, Virginia, a Catholic graduate school,

In his book, Vitz argued that as much as atheists like to claim their refusal to believe in God is due to a lack of scientific evidence God exists, Vitz states it may actually be due to a broken relationship with their father or father figures in their life.

His book caused quite a stir among atheists.

And so did my article on opentheword.org. Shortly after the article was posted, I received an email from a self-professing atheist stating that he had a great relationship with his father and this had nothing to do with his atheistic beliefs.

I responded, thanking him for his email and added that I was just reporting on the conclusions of Vitz’s book, which was based on his personal experience and research.

Then over the next couple of hours, I received another five or six emails from this fellow, none of which I responded to, telling me in no uncertain terms that I was wrong.

By the sixth email, I was thinking of that line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet which reads, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” which speaks of an overreaction that causes a person to doubt the sincerity of the truth behind a person’s strong denial.

I think my article and particularly Vitz’s book had struck a nerve in this man’s life.

Vitz came to this conclusion about atheism after studying the biographies of several radical atheists such as Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Voltaire and Nietzsche and he noticed that many of them had one common denominator, they had a broken relationship with their father.

It wasn’t just abusive. There were also instances that they had lost their father at an early age either through death or simple abandonment.

Vitz added that not all atheists came from these type of homes, but so many did, that Vitz believed that this was no longer a coincidence.

He concluded that many atheists had been spiritually impacted by what happened to them in childhood.

In an updated version of his book, Vitz cited the example of one of the world’s most infamous atheists, German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, who died in 1900. Nietzsche’s father was a Lutheran pastor. In fact, the family tree was full of pastors.

He didn’t come from an abusive home, but his father died of a brain disease when Friedrich was just five years old.

His father had been sickly for the year prior and experienced what many believe were epileptic seizures.

His death had a profound impact on Nietzsche, One biographer wrote that Nietzsche was “passionately attached to his father and the shock of losing him was profound.”

At this age, Vitz adds that children believe death is a choice and when a parent dies, they are blamed for the hurt it causes. It is the parent’s fault.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Nietzsche would begin to aggressively oppose Christianity later in life, and develop what became known as the ‘God is dead” movement, eerily paralleling his own experience as a child.

And then there was Madalyn O’Hair, a modern atheist, who died in 1995. It was her lawsuit in the 1960s that resulted in prayer being banned from American schools.

Though we don’t have a lot of information on her upbringing, Vitz points to the memoir written by her son that described the relationship between O’Hair and her father, the son’s grandfather.

He wrote:

“We rarely did anything together as a family, the hatred between my grandfather and mother barred such wholesome scenes.”

Vitz goes on to describe one incident recorded by O’Hair’s son when he saw his mother try to kill her father with a ten-inch knife. Though she failed in her assault, she screamed “I’ll see you dead. I’ll get you yet. I’ll walk on your grave.”

O’Hair had a horrific, hate-filled relationship with her father, which Vitz believes explains her vitriolic hatred of God and Christianity.

Now to be fair, as Vitz points out there are atheists who seem to have a good relationship with their father. But even in those instances, we sometimes don’t have the full picture.

In a podcast interview with Patrick Coffin, Vitz told the story of an encounter with a well-known atheist psychologist, Albert Ellis who died in 2007.

Both he and Vitz were speaking at the same conference on the topic of psychology. Vitz presented a theistic approach and touched on how a person’s relationship with their father can impact their spiritual life.

Ellis whose presentation immediately followed spoke on the same subject and presented an atheistic perspective.

As Vitz was leaving the session, he ended up walking out with Ellis who said in response to Vitz’s presentation that he had gotten along fine with his father.

Vitz responded, “well, it’s a psychological hypothesis” and it appears to be valid in upwards of 50 to 60% of the cases.

After returning to New York, Vitz sent a copy of the presentation he had made to a friend who worked as an editor for a book publisher.

Out of the blue, the man shocked Vitz by telling him his thesis fit perfectly with what happened to Albert Ellis, whose biography the editor just happened to be proofing.

T he biography revealed the parental neglect that Ellis experienced while growing up.

At five years of age, he was hospitalized for nearly a year and was rarely visited by anyone in the family during his stay in the hospital.

Then his father abandoned the family, and Ellis, along with his younger brother, had to take on the responsibility of looking after the family both financially and maternally because their mother was mentally and physically unfit.

Though the father popped into the neighbourhood from time to time, he avoided the family home and ignored his family responsibilities forcing Ellis to carry the load.

He had been abandoned by his earthly father and perhaps not surprisingly concluded there was no God either.

If Vitz is right, this would suggest that being an atheist is as much an emotional decision as it is a mental one.

And this emotional connection shows up in an interesting study conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Wyoming.

We often hear people expressing a common sentiment that our thoughts and prayers are with those who are going through extremely difficult times.

But how much do people receiving these thoughts and prayers actually value them.

In the follow-up to Hurricane Florence which slammed into the state of North Carolina in 2018 causing massive flooding and damage, the researchers asked 482 people from that state how much they would pay for people to pray or think of them during a time of crisis.

The 482 people ranged from atheists to Christians and everything in between. As part of this study, each participant was given $5 and told to use it to get people to either pray for them or think of them during this time of crisis.

They found that those on the Christian side of the spectrum were willing to pay up to $7.17 for a priest to pay for them. This meant that in some instances they were actually chipping in money from their own pocket. They were also willing to pay on average $4.36 for a stranger to pray for them.

But what shocked the researchers was the strange thing that happened on the other side of the religious spectrum, those who were closer to atheism.

They were willing to pay Christians $3.54 NOT, I repeat ‘not’ to pray for them and $1.66 for a priest NOT to pray for them.

This is puzzling because if atheism is solely an intellectual decision why would you pay someone NOT to pray for you. At best an atheist should be indifferent. If God doesn’t exist, why would you care if a person prays for you or doesn’t pray for you, much less go to the extreme extent of paying them not to pray.

University of Wyoming economics professor Linda Thunström summed up their study this way, stating:

“The last result is surprising because one might expect that atheists/agnostics would be indifferent to people praying for them — why care if you don’t believe in the gesture.”

Instead of being an intellectual issue, is it possible that atheism is an issue of the heart?

This leads us to an interesting verse in the book of Genesis that may explain the curious connection between the relationship we have with our parents and our perceptions about God.

In Genesis 1:26, we read that God said, “Let us make man in Our image, according to O ur likeness.”

The Hebrew word translated ‘likeness’ — demuwth — means to model or shape. Though fashioned in flesh, God created us with a mind and emotions giving us the ability to have a relationship with our Heavenly Father.

The second word —‘image’ (tselem) — means to be a representation or representative figure. The writers and prophets of the Old Testament used the same Hebrew word to describe idols as we see in 2 Kings 11:18, where the word was used to describe a Baal idol.

It would seem that God intended men and women to be the idols that represented Him, not chunks of rock or carved wooden figures.

But it begs the question — who were we supposed to represent God to? If we were all created in the image of God, it would be fruitless walking around and telling everyone we meet, “ ” because we all look divine.

I believe God intended husbands and wives to be a representative — or an idol of sorts — of what God was like to their children.

As children interacted with their parents, they gained an intimate understanding of who God was. This perception would be a natural bridge leading children into a personal relationship with their true spiritual Father as they mature.

But then came man’s catastrophic fall into sin. In an instant, these perfect idols were scarred and disfigured leaving all children with a flawed impression of what God was really like.

In extreme cases, it would easy to see how a person’s perception of God would be so flawed, he or she would simply reject God’s existence altogether.

But does this distortion only impact atheists?

Smack in the middle of the Ten Commandments, we are told to honour our mothers and fathers (Exodus 20:12).

This commandment is strangely directed at those who believe in God. As believers, we are commanded to honour our parents.

Because of man’s fall into sin, parents are not perfect and believers are equally impacted by parental failures. But even so we are commanded to honour them.

Depending on how bad the abuse was, this may be a bridge too far, even as Christians. How can we honour a father who was a drunk, belligerent, demeaning and even violent?

However, I wonder if unresolved issues between us and our parents can potentially hinder our relationship with God. Can these family struggles potentially become spiritual barriers?

I wonder if our flawed perceptions of God such as He loves others more than you may be based on your perception that your parents loved your brother and sister more than you.

Maybe you don’t feel you can ever meet God’s expectations. Could that be based on the feeling that you could never please your parents? That no matter what you did, it was never good enough.

We all have flawed parents who unfortunately are the byproduct of their parents.

God deeply desires to have a personal and trusting relationship with you and one of the blockages that could be hindering this from happening are resentments that you may hold against your parents.

We need to resolve these heart issues by forgiving our parents. They may even be dead and if so then you need to finally bury them by forgiving them.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast, and we will catch you again.

READ: Did your absentee father make you an atheist? AND The sins and neglect of fathers leads to atheism, says author AND Study: Atheists, agnostics dislike prayers from Christians so much they’re willing to pay money to avoid them: The Blaze

In a recent interview on an Apple Fitness show called Time to Walk, actress Goldie Hawn, 77, said back in the 1960s she had an encounter with aliens that actually touched her. She described it as being touched by the finger of God, Fox News reports.

It is an interesting story and if true may have the hallmarks of an encounter with a fallen angel.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to compare famed Hollywood actress Goldie Hawn’s alleged encounter with an extraterrestrial with the prophet Daniel’s encounter with an angel, because there seems to be some similarities.

Hawn was in her 20s living in California and working as a dancer. She said during the ’60s, there were countless reports in the media of people seeing UFOs.

Hawn said that one evening she was sitting on a ledge outside her home and she looked up at the night sky and wondered about life on other planets.

She said:

“That was a time when, you know, there was a lot of UFO sightings. I remember this so clearly. I went outside my door, and I sat on the little ledge, and I looked up at the dark sky. And I saw all these stars. And all I could think of was, How far does this go? How little are we? Are we the only planet in the whole wide universe that has life on it?”

But it didn’t stop there. The actress then looked up to the night sky and spoke out loud to aliens.

“I know you’re out there, I know we’re not alone, and I would like to meet you one day,” Hawn recounted.

About three months later, that brief statement would be answered, and she would come in contact with two or three extraterrestrials while at a dancing job in West Covina, California.

During a break, she decided to lie down in her friend’s car, when she heard a high-pitched sound. Looking out, Hawn saw two or three silver aliens outside the vehicle that she described as having triangle-shaped heads.

She said they seemed to be pointing at her and talking amongst themselves about Hawn.

Terrified by what she was seeing, and not knowing if this was real or not, Hawn said she immediately tried to get out of the car, but said, she felt paralyzed and unable to move.

“I was paralyzed,” Hawn said. “And I thought, Oh, my God. I want to get up. I didn’t know if it was real or not real.”

Then the aliens touched her face.

“[The aliens] touched me, and it felt like the finger of God,” Hawn said. “It was the most benevolent, loving feeling. This was powerful. It was filled with light.”

This sounds strange, and maybe it wasn’t real, but it does have the hallmarks of having an encounter with a spiritual being or more specifically a fallen angel.

We know from the Bible that there are both godly angels and as well a group of fallen angels, which chose to follow Satan in their rebellion against God.

We read of that rebellion in Revelation 12 when the Archangel Michael drove Satan and a third of the angels out of heaven down to earth.

In the book of Corinthians, the Apostle Paul warns that the satanic angels appear to have the ability to masquerade or disguise themselves as an angel of light.

We read:

14 No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14).

Notice how Paul specifically referred to this fallen angel as an ‘angel of light” which is similar to Hawn’s description of being filled with light after the encounter.

The Greek word translated as disguised in this verse speaks of Satan’s ability to appear as something he is not.

This leads to the obvious question if a demonic angel can disguise himself as an angel of light, can he also appear as something else, say an extraterrestrial.

The Bible also tells us that angels have a unique ability to impact humans with a touch or word.

We see an example of this in a dramatic encounter that the Prophet Daniel had with a godly angel while he and his friends were enjoying a day along the banks of the Tigris River while in captivity in Babylon.

This encounter is recorded in Daniel chapter 10.

When the angel first showed up in verse 8, the other men with Daniel fled in terror. Daniel would have undoubtedly joined them, but similar to Hawn, the angel’s appearance paralyzed Daniel causing him to fall to the ground.

Daniel described what happened this way:

“Yet no strength was left in me, for my complexion turned to a deathly pallor, and I retained no strength. 9 But I heard the sound of his words; and as soon as I heard the sound of his words, I fell into a deep sleep on my face, with my face to the ground.” (Daniel 10:8 NASV)

Over the next several verses, we read how the angel was able to impact Daniel by word and touch.

Anyone watching the weird things that happened to Daniel would not have associated it with the angelic activity unless they had a split-screen TV and saw what the angel was doing:

But we read:

Now as we read both Hawn’s and Daniel’s accounts there is a second similarity.

Hawn described the extraterrestrial touch as powerful and similar to being touched by the finger of God, Daniel said he was instantly strengthened when he was touched by the angel.

So while Hawn described it as an encounter with an extraterrestrial being, Daniel attributed what happened to him to contact with an angel.

But there is one critical difference.

It is important for us to understand, that when a third of the angels fell and chose to follow Satan, these demons or evil spirits didn’t suddenly lose this ability to impact people through words and touch.

Though what happened to Daniel was the result of an encounter with a godly angel, demonic angels, even though they have fallen away from God, still retain this same ability to affect people from the spiritual realm.

And we see it on display in one of the most unusual visions recorded in the Bible.

Typically, visions found in the Bible allow us to see what is happening in the spiritual realm.

In 2 Kings 6, when Elisha’s unnamed servant was terrified when he saw that the Aramean army had surrounded their home, Elisha prayed for his servant’s eyes to be opened.

As soon as that happened, Elisha’s servant saw angelic beings, literally horses and chariots of fire, had surrounded them and were fighting on their behalf.

But the book of Zechariah provides a completely different vision as it shows how those of us living in the physical realm appear to those who are in the spiritual.

In this vision recorded in chapter 3, Zechariah saw Satan standing beside Joshua who was serving as the High Priest in Jerusalem at that time.

We read:

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. (Zechariah 3:1 NASV)

Joshua was serving as the High Priest at the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, and it appears he was performing some type of service.

Zechariah saw two things.

First, he saw Joshua standing before the Angel of the Lord and that Satan was standing at Joshua’s side sending a barrage of accusing and condemning words at Joshua.

As he was performing his service in the temple, Joshua would not have been aware of either the angel of the Lord standing in front of him or Satan, who was standing at his side uttering words of condemnation.

Secondly, Joshua would have been dressed in his elaborate High Priestly garb. That is how he would have appeared in the physical realm, but that is not how he appeared to those looking at him from the spiritual realm.

In verse 3, we are told that Joshua was wearing filthy garments.

The Hebrew word “soi” s – o – i  — translated filthy is literally the English word for poop.

Now Joshua would not have been wearing clothes covered in excrement while working in the temple. Nevertheless, this is how he appeared to those in the spiritual realm because Joshua was feeling the spiritual impact of the condemning and accusing words coming from Satan.

He would have not heard those satanic utterances, but he would have felt condemned, and how he felt is how he appeared in the spiritual realm.

Similar to Daniel’s encounter with the godly angel, the words that Satan was throwing at Joshua from the spiritual realm were having an impact.

But over the next several verses, we are told that the angel of the Lord rebuked Satan. God then ordered that Joshua’s filthy garments be removed, and new clothes be put on Joshua.

Again, Joshua would have been totally unaware of all this, but suddenly his spirit would have lifted as the accusations stopped, and new spiritual clothes were put on him.

This story demonstrates the ability of fallen angels to impact our daily lives if they so choose.

So while Goldie Hawn attributed what happened to her as being the result of an encounter with extraterrestrials, the Bible speaks of similar things happening through encounters with angels, both good and fallen ones.

What exactly did Goldie Hawn encounter in West Covina, California.

It may be another reminder for believers why we need to make sure we are wearing the full armor of God that Paul speaks about in Ephesians 6.

READ: Actress Goldie Hawn says aliens touched her in the 1960s: ‘It felt like the finger of God’ AND Goldie Hawn says she ‘made contact’ with aliens: ‘They touched my face’

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I want to discuss the tendency many of us have to treat God as little more than a good luck charm.

It showed up in two battles separated by nearly 3,100 years when two armies tried to use a God-good luck charm and it failed miserably.

One involves a battle between the nation of Israel and the Philistines around 1000 BC and the second is a more recent battle that took place during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

You may have heard of the sinking of the Moskva, Russia’s flagship in the Baltic Sea on April 14, 2022. The high-tech missile ship provided protection to the Russian fleet trying to supply the country’s army that had invaded Ukraine.

Like the Titanic, it was considered invincible.

But Ukraine’s military sunk the ship with land-based cruise missiles. It was a humiliating defeat that the Russian government initially tried to cover up by suggesting there was a fire on board the ship.

Moskva had a crew of over 500, and it is uncertain how many lives were lost in the attack. But it was the largest warship sunk since World War II.

There were also reports, that Moskva may have had nuclear warheads on board when it went down. But that was not all the warship had as part of its arsenal.

There was also a good luck charm.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Moskva also carried a fragment of the True Cross on which the Romans crucified Christ.

In 2020, Sergiy Khalyuta, an archpriest with the Russian Orthodox Church, told the Russian news outlet, TASS, that the church had put an ancient Christian relic, a piece of Christ’s True Cross, onboard the Moskva.

I had heard of the archangel Michael, but never heard of archpriests before, but apparently, they oversee several parishes.

The relic was embedded in a 19th-century metal cross used onboard the ship during services in the Russian Orthodox chapel.

Though medieval writers reported that there were enough pieces of Christ’s cross circulating at that time to build a cathedral, the Russian Orthodox Church claims that this particular relic was special.

According to church tradition, Empress Helena, the mother of the Christian Emperor Constantine who ruled Rome between 272 AD and 337 AD, had found the original cross on which the Romans had crucified Jesus.

Over the next few years, Helena distributed pieces of this cross to churches throughout the Roman Empire.

In an interview with TASS, ArchPriest Khalyuta said:

“This relic used to belong to a Catholic church, but was acquired by anonymous patrons of arts, and it was their will to send the relic to the [Black Sea] fleet. The Moskva cruiser has an onboard chapel, where services take place.” 

Though it’s highly doubtful that this fragment was part of Christ’s original cross, the Russian Orthodox church believed it was, and it seems to be part of human nature to treat religious artifacts as good luck charms.

Sure radar and missiles are nice, but nothing provides a shield of protection like a relic.

How would God allow any enemy to sink the Moskva if it had a piece of Christ’s original cross on board?

But you know nearly 3,100 years ago Israel tried that same trick with basically the same result.

Israel was involved in a war with the Philistines and during the first day of the battle, Israel suffered a crushing defeat losing over 4,000 men. The battle is recorded in 1 Samuel 4.

It was an absolutely devastating loss and immediately people asked what happened?

Who was to blame?

What caused this catastrophic defeat?

And Israel’s elders in full political, scapegoat, mode blamed God.

“Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines?” the elders whined in verse 3.

They actually claimed it was God who beat them. God was fighting on behalf of the Philistines.

What an outrage!

So if this was true, there was an undeniable solution. The elders needed to find out why God was doing this and then repent of that sin.

It was a very simple formula.

But the elders came up with a better plan. A more devious plot. They ordered that the Ark of the Covenant be brought to the battlefield.

The Ark of the Covenant was the most valuable item in Israel’s religious life because the very presence of God rested between the golden Cherubim located on top of the Ark which was located in the Tabernacle of Moses at Shiloh.

After the order was given, a couple of Jewish priests hauled the Ark to the front line of the conflict, literally putting it in danger.

Though the elders never said this part out loud, by doing this, they were basically threatening God, either you fight for Israel or the Ark of the Covenant will be lost to a pagan nation.

They were forcing God to fight for them, or else.

Well, the ‘or else’ happened. Israel was smashed again. God will not be mocked.

In fact, ten times more men died in the second battle than had died in the first. Not only was Israel soundly beaten, but the Philistine army captured the Ark of the Covenant and killed the Jewish priests who had brought the Ark to the front lines.

The victorious Philistine army hauled away the prized Ark of the Covenant and set it up in one of their pagan temples.

However, this arrangement wouldn’t last long, as God revealed that He was quite capable of looking after the ark and brought a series of devastating judgments upon the Philistines.

By the time God was done, the Philistines were using overnight delivery to ship it back to Israel.

God’s judgment included mice that wiped out their crops. In 1 Samuel 5:1-6, God judged the Philistines with emerods, which some believe included severe cases of bleeding hemorrhoids. Yes, I said hemorrhoids.

The Septuagint, which is based on Hebrew texts hundreds of years older than what is used for our modern Bible translations, suggests that God may have also judged the Philistines with the Bubonic plague because it adds this statement:

“And in the midst of their land rats sprang up, and there was a great death panic in the city.”

Whatever the case, by the time God was done, the Philistines, desperate to stop the pain, returned the Ark of the Covenant to Israel.
God was quite capable of defeating Israel’s enemies and had done so several times in the past.

But we can’t force God’s hand. We are not to test God, and we are not to treat God as our servant or good luck charm.

There is only one thing that pleases God. We are told in Hebrews 11:6:

6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”

READ: Sunken Russian warship may have carried Christian relic ‘True Cross’ piece

In the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John’s vision of the calamitous events that will be occurring in the end times, we read of the strange thing that will be happening on Earth when God touches the sun.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and as we study the Book of Revelation, we read that God will put the world through three sets of seven different judgments. This will include the breaking of the seven seals in Revelation 6, the sounding of the seven trumpets starting in Chapter 8, and the final set, the pouring out of the bowls of wrath in Chapter 16.

And within the final group, the seven bowls of wrath, we have an interesting judgment aimed directly at our sun.

We read:

The fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun, and it was given to it to scorch men with fire. 9 Men were scorched with fierce heat; and they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues, and they did not repent so as to give Him glory. (Revelation 16: 8-9 NASV)

Three things immediately stick out in this passage.

First, there is no doubt that God is the one who initiates it. It is part of God’s judgment upon the Earth.

Secondly, we read that when the fourth angel poured his bowl of wrath on the sun, it released a massive amount of heat upon the earth.

It was described as a fierce heat that scorched men. In fact, according to Thayer’s Greek Dictionary, the word scorched can mean”to be tortured with great heat.”

Thirdly, we see man’s response, they actually blasphemed the name of God. In other words, they blamed and cursed God, but they did not repent.

Now anyone following the mainstream media over the summer of 2023 has undoubtedly seen news of the record-breaking heat waves that took place over the summer.

Look at some of these headlines:

Predictably, the media’s climate activists have been trumpeting the recent record-breaking heat as another sign that we have to stop carbon emissions as seen by these headlines:

No one questions that the climate is changing, because that has been going on for the past 2,000 years, but what is debated is the cause.

Is it being caused by human activity or is there a natural explanation for what is happening?

Though this heat is being blamed on human activity such as driving SUVs and eating meat, what isn’t getting as much press is the unusual sunspot activity that took place on the sun over the summer of 2023.

The sun, which is so large that you could fit 1.3 million Earths inside it, has a profound impact on Earth’s temperatures and seasons.

Now astronomers have been studying sunspot activity for well over four hundred years, and they noticed a peculiar thing taking place during the mini ice age that struck Europe between the 1300s and the 1800s.

There was a significant drop in the number of sunspots and there were actually months when they did not record a single sunspot.
It was a very unusual celestial event.

This cooling resulted in significantly heavier snowfalls across Europe and paintings from the 1600s depicted people skating on Britain’s frozen Thames River, a very unusual event.

But perhaps most concerning the cold resulted in crop failures across Europe leading to famine and disease.

And it was not just Europe. In 1779, the New York harbor froze over allowing people to walk on the ice from Manhattan to Staten Island.

Now to be sure scientists have stated that other natural causes probably contributed to this mini ice age, but most agree that the reduced number of sunspots was certainly a major contributing factor.

So if a reduced number of sunspots can result in cooling, then obviously too many sunspots could arguably have the opposite effect and cause an increase in temperatures.

And this is where it gets interesting, because according to an article on Space.com, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that the sun became very active this past June recording 160 sunspots, the most in a single month for over 20 years.

I first saw reports of this in an article by Michael Snyder on the Washington Standard website. Snyder who publishes The Economic Collapse Blog specializes in events associated with the end times.

He stated that this increased activity was a shock to both NASA and NOAA as both agencies were projecting much less activity.

But it was not just the number of sunspots it was also their size.

According to an article on LiveScience on July 4, 2023, one of those sunspots called A3354, was ten times larger than the Earth and grew to that massive size in under 48 hours before releasing a massive X Class flare that hit Earth causing a short radio blackout.

In its article, LiveScience tells us a bit more about AR3354.

We read:

“The enormous dark patch, named AR3354, emerged on the solar surface on June 27 and within 48 hours had grown to cover around 1.35 billion square miles (3.5 billion square kilometers), or 10 times wider than Earth. Space weather scientists were alarmed by the colossal sunspot’s rapid emergence and feared it could spit out a barrage of potentially harmful solar storms, according to Spaceweather.com.“

So while the experts were caught off guard by the sudden and dramatic increase in solar activity, this may be one of the reasons why we had such dramatic weather this summer in addition to the heat waves.

This included a tornado mega cluster that hit Chicago in mid-July canceling flights and leaving thousands without power.

Then in mid-July 2023, ABC News reported that over a two-day period, the state of Vermont received as much rain as it would typically receive in two months resulting in the worst flooding the state has seen in 100 years.

Along with this, there were also reports of catastrophic flooding in India.

But aside from these recent reports, a very curious thing has also been taking place on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Experts are warning that the Euphrates, a massive river system that travels through the Middle East, including Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey may be drying up.

It is so bad that according to an article in the Irish Times, the UN issued a warning earlier this year stating that the Euphrates is at its lowest water level in 40 years and this is starting to impact the people who depend on this river for their survival.

In fact, in 2021 the Iraqi government even issued a warning that the Euphrates as well as the Tigris River could be completely dry by 2040.

There seem to be a number of factors contributing to this decline in addition to the higher temperatures and drought, including mismanagement of water resources, and the construction of several hydroelectric dams on the river in Syria, Turkey and Iran.

So why is this relevant?

Well, at the beginning of this podcast, I discussed the fourth bowl of wrath that was poured upon the sun mentioned in Revelation 16:8-9.

But then two verses later in Revelation 16:12, we read about the sixth Bowl of wrath being poured upon the great Euphrates River causing it to become completely dry:

We read:

12 The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East. (Revelation 16:12)

So 2,000 years ago, the Book of Revelation warned that in the lead-up to the second coming of Christ, one of the world’s greatest water systems would become completely dry.

It is pretty apparent that the two bowls of wrath, the extreme heat and the drying up of the Euphrates, are probably connected.

But the Euphrates is still flowing, so we haven’t entered the Bowls of Wrath judgment yet.

But it is clear at some point, the fourth bowl of wrath will be poured out and we will enter a time of unprecedented intense heat that will be significantly more severe than anything we have experienced up to now and that will ensure the drying up of the Euphrates River.

And curiously, men will not see this heat as a judgment of God, because they will be too busy blaming SUVs and climate change for the problem, instead of God touching the sun.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast and I will catch you again.

READ: Is Bizarre Activity On The Sun Causing Catastrophic Disasters All Over The Globe? AND Sun breaks out with record number of sunspots, sparking solar storm concerns AND Giant sunspot grew 10 times wider than Earth in just 48 hours, then spat X-class flare right at us AND ‘Desert’: drying Euphrates threatens disaster in Syria AND UN warns of ‘devastating impact’ as Iraq’s marshlands in danger of drying: Alarming fall in water levels in Euphrates and Tigris rivers during worst heatwave for 40 years AND Sun breaks out with record number of sunspots, sparking solar storm concerns

Hi, my name is Dean Smith and in this podcast, I discuss the concept of Divine Providence which holds that God is actively working in our lives and situations, even though we may not be fully aware of it.

Now there are times when God’s divine providence is fully on display such as the day Christ intercepted Paul on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians. God not only stopped the horrific persecution of the church but also transformed Paul into a great apostolic leader of the early church.

However, at other times God’s divine providence is not so obvious.

The Apostle Paul explains Divine providence this way:

“We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

In this passage, Paul writes that God works ‘all things’ together for good. ‘All things’ means exactly that ‘all things’. It refers to malicious acts, sin, betrayals, mistakes, and even satanic forces manipulating the situation for evil intent.

The Greek word, sunergeō, translated ‘work together’ is derived from another Greek word that means fellow worker. It brings with it the idea of two people working together to accomplish a goal.

Notice how the verse says that God takes all these circumstances, the negative, the betrayals, and our stupidity, and works them together for good.

This is not a happenstance. This is God’s divine providence at work.
However, when you are sitting in the middle of the situation, you may not see God’s hand at work. All you see is the pain, the suffering and everything going wrong.

But God has not abandoned us.

The Patriarch Joseph was a classic example of how God’s providence can sometimes be difficult to recognize because there is part of Joseph’s story that we often miss. And that is how God took Joseph to a dark place to connect him with his destiny.

The youngest and favorite son of Jacob, Joseph was an arrogant loudmouth and when he had a dream that his older brothers would be bowing down before him, he couldn’t wait to tell them.

It was this type of behavior, that eventually got Joseph into trouble. The fed-up brothers sold Joseph into slavery where he was purchased by Potiphar, the head of the security for the Pharaoh.

At this point, he was one of thousands of nameless slaves living in Egypt. He had no rights and no freedoms. Though he didn’t deserve this treatment, Joseph brought a lot of it on himself.

Having gone from being the favored son of his father to a slave in Egypt, things couldn’t get much worse than that.

But in fact, they did.

When Joseph rejected a sexual advance by Potiphar’s wife, she falsely accused him of trying to rape her and Joseph ended up in an Egyptian prison.

Though being imprisoned in this Egyptian jail was the lowest point in Joseph’s life, it was the critical step in connecting Joseph with his destiny.

It was in this prison that he accurately interpreted a dream for the cupbearer, who had fallen out of favor with the Pharaoh. When the cupbearer was restored to the royal household, it paved the way for Joseph to end up as second in charge in Egypt after successfully interpreting the pharaoh’s disturbing dreams.

When drought hit Canaan, Joseph’s brothers were forced to go to Egypt looking for food, and were shockingly reunited with Joseph who acknowledged God’s sovereign hand in his circumstance and forgave them stating:

20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (Genesis 50:20)

The Hebrew word, châshab, translated as ‘intended’ in this verse literally means ‘to design, invent, and to plan.’ We are not talking about a haphazard series of events, but rather a coordinated plan, leading to the desired outcome.

God took Joseph’s arrogance and stupidity, threw in the brother’s evil intent, added in the false accusations of Potiphar’s wife, mixed in a few years of jail, stirred it together well, and presto we have a cake called, Divine Providence.

I have an example of God’s divine providence in my own life, where God took a horrible situation and turned it into good. When the worst-case scenario, actually became the best-case scenario, and I am thankful it happened the way it did. But I wasn’t so happy going through it.

Where I live the government provides and pays for most of our medical care. But this also means that you are subject to its limitations. For example, if you need a hip or knee replacement, the wait list is currently about three to four years.

In late February, my wife and I were pretty excited when I got a call asking if I was available last minute for a knee replacement operation. I suspect there had been a cancellation.

It was providential, considering I had only been on the list for a knee replacement for just a year and four months.

I immediately said yes, and the next week was a whirlwind of tests and picking up the needed equipment for what would become a painful and extended recovery.

My knee had started acting up several years back. I went for arthroscopic day surgery, which did help. But it didn’t last and when the pain returned a few years later, the doctor told me that knee replacement was the next option.

Over the years, I had prayed for God to heal my knee, but it never happened. I can blame my lack of faith.

But though I failed the faith test, God didn’t abandon me.

God didn’t say, “Well, Dean that’s just too bad, but your lack of faith is the reason you are in this predicament, and really there is nothing more that I can do for you here.”

I remember a story from the Gospels of the young father who asked Jesus’ disciples to deliver the man’s son from an evil spirit.

When they failed, in desperation the young father asked if Christ would be able to deliver the boy.

But look what the man actually said:

“But if You can do anything, take pity on us and help us!”
23 But Jesus said to him, “‘If You can?’ All things are possible for the one who believes.” 24 Immediately the boy’s father cried out and said, “I do believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-24 NASV)

The father not only questioned Christ’s ability to deliver his son but in the process also revealed his heart was full of unbelief.

But did Jesus just say to the man, so sad too bad, and abandon this man to his doubt and unbelief?

No. The Lord delivered the boy anyway.

When we fail, make mistakes, and are even full of unbelief, God does not abandon us. The Lord will work within the limitations of our faith and understanding.

And I witnessed God’s providence a few minutes after I had my knee surgery. While in recovery, I had a heart attack.

I remember in the week leading up to my surgery telling my wife, that I wasn’t feeling very good. I also felt a heaviness in my chest, but sloughed it off as heartburn and nerves over the upcoming surgery.

It ended up being a small to moderate attack, and knee surgery was put on the back burner and all the attention was focused on what was happening to my heart.

Knee replacement is one of the most painful surgeries you will ever go through and instead of bed rest, I was thrown into a battery of tests.

The pain was unbearable as I was wheeled from ward to ward. I prayed several times for the strength just to endure the pain. I was in such pain, I remember at times just praying one word, ‘mercy.’

But through this battery of tests, they discovered some serious blockages in my heart and put in several emergency stents.

I am very thankful for the great care I received from the nurses and doctors.

But here is the thing, I had been sitting on this heart attack time bomb for months, and the knee surgery exposed this much more serious problem. And slowly I began to recognize God’s providence in it all. If you are going to have a heart attack, the best place to have it is in the hospital.

As I was on the recovery ward with others who had just had their knees replaced, one had waited four years for his surgery. No one I talked to was less than three years.

I believe God had somehow snuck me in months earlier. Though I was officially in the hospital for knee surgery, God had booked me in because of my heart issues.

If my knee surgery had not taken place, I would be sitting here doing a different podcast, on a different subject of course.

I also would have no idea that my heart was a ticking time bomb, just waiting to be set off.

A heart attack would still be pending and the circumstances and severity could be completely different. I mean you could have a heart attack out in your backyard or while you are driving, or you could have one at the hospital.

So I see God’s providence in all this. God took a horribly painful experience, and He worked it all together for good.

We need to be aware of God’s handiwork in all of life’s circumstances. It is easy to see God’s hand when things are going good, but the Lord is also at work when things are going bad. Even if you are responsible for your pain and suffering, God will not abandon you.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith, and welcome back to the second of my two-part series on Christians and UFOs.

In my first podcast, I looked at the possibility that there might actually be life on other planets. It was the opinion held by perhaps the world’s greatest evangelist, Billy Graham.

Though the Bible does not mention extraterrestrials, if they do exist, we know from Scripture that God created the heavens and earth.

God knows of their existence and is in control.

But there is also a second alternative which I will discuss in this podcast, that aliens don’t exist. But if this is true, it opens up another perhaps bigger issue: How do we explain the numerous sightings of UFOs, some of which seem quite credible?

Now the vast majority of them are either fake or can be explained away as natural phenomena.

Or in the case of the sensationalized discovery of the remains of a destroyed alien spacecraft in 1947 by personnel from the Roswell Army Airfield base, government officials initially classified it as the wreckage of a weather balloon and then upgraded it to a secretive military balloon project a few year’s later.

Of course, to this day many still believe the whole episode is a cover-up insisting the government not only found an alien spacecraft, but an alien body as well.

But still, we do have some unexplainable sightings.

In 1969, the US Government released a report entitled, Project Blue Book, which detailed 12,618 sightings that the US military classified as unidentified flying objects and was able to explain 94.4% of sightings leaving only 701 as uncertain.

This doesn’t automatically mean they were aliens, only that they were unexplainable.

Then in 2021, the US government released a second report on 144 sightings in which it would only explain one as being a collapsed weather balloon, and 80 of the sightings were made by Navy pilots and caught on radar and other sensors, which made them extremely interesting.

The authors of the report were reluctant to provide any explanation of what the remaining UFOs were.

In an article for Reason.org, Mark Clark provides an alternative explanation:

“The two most likely explanations remain if the previous pattern persists (more than 94% with natural explanations). First, these phenomena may have natural explanations. They may come from advanced research in either drone technology or electronic warfare. As the report indicates, the skies are becoming increasingly cluttered with drones and other aircraft, making military training more and more difficult. This could be creating an environment where previously unobserved or rarely seen anomalies are quickly attributed to UFOs or ET instead of being examined in the context of drone technology.”

But aside from these natural or technological explanations such as drone activity, there may also be a spiritual one.

A few weeks back, I watched an interview with a former US Navy serviceman who claimed that he along with US Navy pilots encountered alien spacecraft while out at sea. As he was watching it on a radar screen from the ship, he specifically said that the UFO was defying physics, as it maneuvered in the sky.

And this is when I turn to Hugh Ross who has a Ph.D. in astronomy. He is also a Christian and he makes an interesting point about UFOs and the laws of physics.

Ross, who helped found reasons.org, says when we hear of UFOs defying the basic laws of physics, he believes we are no longer looking at something natural, but rather supernatural.

This is because only supernatural beings would be able to defy physics and travel at what has been described as unbelievable speeds, stop on a dime, and then instantly travel upwards equally fast.

Though the Bible does not speak of life on other planets it does speak of a spiritual realm that involves supernatural beings such as angels, seraphim, and cherubim.

We know from the Bible, that cherubim were used for protection as they guarded the Tree of Life in Genesis 3:24, after Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden because of their sin.

There are several mentions of Cherubim throughout scripture, but certainly, one of the more intriguing descriptions of Cherubims is found in the Book of Ezekiel.

I want to take a closer look at Ezekiel’s description of Cherubim found in chapter one:

He starts off in Chapter One verses four and five, describing their arrival.

4 “As I looked, behold, a high wind was coming from the north, a great cloud with fire flashing intermittently and a bright light around it, and in its midst something like gleaming metal in the midst of the fire. 5 And within it there were figures resembling four living beings. And this was their appearance: they had human form.”

When we read this verse, we see metal in the midst of fire, along with flashing lights and smoke. And in the midst of this, he saw four living beings that were not human but had a human form.

And then from verses 14 to 20, Ezekiel provides a more complete description of these Cherubim:

14 And the living beings ran back and forth like bolts of lightning.
15 Now as I looked at the living beings, behold, there was one wheel on the ground beside the living beings, for each of the four of them. 16 The appearance of the wheels and their workmanship was like sparkling topaz, and all four of them had the same form, their appearance and workmanship being as if one wheel were within another. 17 Whenever they moved, they moved in any of their four directions without turning as they moved. 18 As for their rims, they were high and awesome, and the rims of all four of them were covered with eyes all around. 19 Whenever the living beings moved, the wheels moved with them. And whenever the living beings rose from the earth, the wheels rose also. 20 Wherever the spirit was about to go, they would go in that direction. And the wheels rose just as they did; for the spirit of the living beings was in the wheels.

As we look at this description of Cherubim we see several unique characteristics.

First, in verse 16 we are told that they appeared in some type of vehicle that had two wheels with one intersecting the other at right angles allowing them to travel in any direction they wanted without turning. The wheels also had eyes all around the rim, which meant they could see all directions at the same time.

In verse 14, Ezekiel added that these Cherubim traveled at incredible speeds, comparing them to lightning. They also could change directions instantaneously, defying the laws of physics.

In verse 19, we are told that they also have the ability to fly.

So what would we think of these Cherubim, if they suddenly made an appearance in our natural world?

Well, it would probably be similar to the conclusions of some UFologists who claim that Ezekiel was actually describing aliens and a UFO.

This was the premise of a book, Chariots of the Gods, written in 1968 by Swiss author, Erich Anton Paul von Däniken who stated that Ezekiel was actually describing aliens who had previously visited Earth.

Though just pulp fiction, the book sold well and was translated into 32 languages and sold over 63 million copies.

But then NASA scientist Josef Blumrich who died in 2002 made the same claim in his book, Spaceships of Ezekiel, published in 1974.

But here is where it gets interesting. When Blumrich set out to write his book, he intended to disprove von Daniken’s theory that Ezekiel’s fiery chariot was a spacecraft, but in the end, Blumrich changed his mind and agreed that Ezekiel had seen a spacecraft and perhaps even aliens.

So if Ezekiel was seeing things from the spiritual realm that could be mistaken as UFOs, could this still be happening today?

Could the small percentage of UFOs that we are unable to identify actually be Cherubim manifesting in the natural realm?

And Cherubims aren’t the only creatures from the spiritual realm that can make appearances in the natural realm, so can angels.

In Genesis 18:8, the two angels that visited Abraham in Genesis appeared as humans and were able to eat food. In other words, they were solid, not apparitions.

In his book, Jewish Wars, ancient first-century Jewish historian Josephus recorded what some have described as the best-recorded historical description of angelic activity when he reported seeing angels and chariots in the sky over Jerusalem around 66 AD. They apparently appeared over Jerusalem and several other cities.

Josephus wrote, “Chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were running among the clouds.”

He even admitted that people would have a hard time believing his story, describing it as beyond belief, but he said others had witnessed it as well.

This took place in the lead-up to Rome’s eventual sacking of Jerusalem and the complete annihilation of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD suggesting the angelic activity may have been connected to this historically significant event.

But this story takes an interesting twist as Roman historian, Tacitus, who lived at the same time also wrote about this incident in his book, Histories, writing, “There had been seen hosts joining battle in the skies, the fiery gleam of arms, the temple illuminated by a sudden radiance from the clouds.”

Particularly interesting was Tacitus’ description of the Jewish temple being illuminated by a light in the sky. Two historians, who were essentially bitter enemies, recorded the same angelic activity.

But aside from angels, the Bible also speaks of the existence of the satanic realm made up of fallen angels, which the Apostle Paul warned could even appear as an angel of light.

But notice how Paul words this:

14 And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14 NIV)

Paul says that Satan has the ability to masquerade or disguise himself as an angel of light. This leads to the obvious question, can fallen angels also disguise themselves as say a ten-foot greenish alien with big eyes, if it suits their purpose. Which is what a Las Vegas family said they saw in their backyard in April 2023.

Or more recently, in July, members of the Ituk tribe in Peru petitioned the government and the military to come to their aid insisting that they are being attacked by 7-foot aliens with large heads and green eyes that can float in the air. There are reports that people have been hospitalized as a result of their encounters with them.

According to an article in the Daily Caller, one of the leaders of this community claimed he had shot at them with a gun, stating:

‘They appear to be armored. I shot one of them twice and he wasn’t injured, he rose and disappeared. We’re very frightened about what’s happening here in our community.”

So are they really aliens, maybe people disguised as aliens, figments of their imagination, or something else?

In a recent podcast, Jason Jimenez, a Christian apologist and founder of Stand Strong Ministries stated that he believes that some of the unexplainable UFO sightings are simply times when the spiritual realm manifests itself in the physical.

He said quote

“I wholeheartedly believe that there are times when we have witnessed or even captured the footage of a spiritual being interacting in the physical realm.”

“Maybe it’s a spiritual battle between an angel and a demon. Maybe it’s demons messing around in using this type of influence to continue to strike fear or curiosity to lead people away from God.”

In closing, I want to describe my one and only UFO encounter, that I had several years ago. I was traveling home late at night after visiting a friend in another city when I had my ET encounter.

The highway was empty of traffic when suddenly I noticed a light following beside me in the night sky on the driver’s side of my vehicle.

My adrenaline was pumping, and I remember being absolutely terrified as it seemed to be following alongside my vehicle.

This went on for several minutes as I repeatedly looked up to see if it was still there and it was.

I had no idea what was going on and then in a moment of clarity, I felt that the Holy Spirit tell me to rebuke it.

So as I was driving along, I prayed and rebuked the unidentified flying object in Jesus’ name and as soon as the words came out of my mouth, it disappeared.

It was gone and never appeared again. So was it an alien or UFO or something demonic? By its reaction to my prayer, I think it was demonic.

But certainly, this is a controversial topic and many Christians have different opinions about aliens and UFOs, and I am just providing my perspective on aliens, which seems to be at odds with perhaps the greatest evangelist the world has ever seen, Billy Graham who believed it was possible aliens existed.

Thanks for joining me on my podcast, and I will catch you again.

READ: Peruvian villagers claim they were attacked by seven-foot aliens AND Billy Graham on the Bible and Alien Life AND The Bible’s explainer on UFOs AND UFO and Alien Encounters in the Bible AND Demonic Deception or Reality? Possible Alien sighting ‘Terrifies’ family AND New US Government UFO Report: A Christian Perspective

We live in interesting times. We have atheists, who refuse to believe in God, because they claim there is no scientific evidence He exists, but according to a 2021 Pew Survey, 55% of atheists and agnostics do believe in aliens, even though there is no evidence that they exist.

It seems that atheists have faith after all. They believe in little green men.

Hi, my name is Dean Smith, and in this first of a two-part series, I want to address the growing controversy today — UFOs. Almost daily, we see news stories about the latest person who claims to have encountered an unidentified flying object and in a few instances actual aliens.

Certainly, many people claim to have seen UFOs, but many question if aliens actually exist because of a lack of credible evidence, such as an alien spacecraft or even an alien body.

One of the major themes of the mega-hit movie, Independence Day, was that the US military actually has the remains of Aliens and as well an Earth-saving alien spacecraft squirreled away at a secretive US Airforce base popularly known as Area 51.

However, I have always held the opinion that it was a Hollywood movie and not an actual documentary.

But still, some insist that governments around the world have recovered damaged alien spacecraft and even the bodies of their pilots.

The New York Post had an article in June 2023 about David Grusch, a former intelligence official for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, who claimed that Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini uncovered an alien spacecraft in the Italian mountains near the city of Magenta in 1933 after receiving a tip-off from, are you ready for this, the pope.

More precisely Pope Pius XI, if it’s to be believed.

Of course, this is all rumors and speculations, because according to Grusch everything related to it has since been classified as top secret.

Then on July 26, 2023, the US Congress had an oversite committee meeting to discuss UFOs where they invited Grusch and two other US Navy pilots to discuss their encounters with aliens.

During his presentation, given under sworn testimony, Grusch stated that he was told by several government officials, who he described as credible witnesses, that the US government not only has alien spacecraft in its possession but as well their alien pilots, now deceased.

He stated that the government, which has already started reverse engineering some of this technology, has carried out an extensive disinformation cover-up to stop people from finding out about their discoveries.

Grusch then added that multiple people have actually been harmed as a result of their encounters with aliens or while examining the remains of alien spacecraft.

He added that he also knew the exact locations where the US military was storing these aliens and their spacecraft.

Another individual interviewed at this committee meeting was former US Navy pilot, Ryan Graves, who testified that in 2014 a UFO actually split apart the squadron he was flying with as part of training maneuvers at Virginia Beach.

The UFO was about 15 feet in diameter, which he described as ‘dark gray or black inside a transparent sphere’, and came within 50 feet of one of their fighter jets.

The third individual to testify before the committee was also a former US Navy pilot, David Fravor, who spoke about a Tic Tac-shaped UFO that appeared in the skies over California in 2004.

Video of that encounter was captured by a US Navy pilot and has since been released to the public.

He described the UFO as white and smooth-shaped with no windows, but two small objects sticking out underneath it.

Since Grusch’s testimony came out, the Daily Mail reports that a US official associated with the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office has categorically denied that the US government has alien spacecraft and bodies of their pilots in its possession and is not reverse engineering alien technology.

But claims that governments are covering up these discoveries, remind me of a phone call I received years back when I worked for an organization that had some political involvement.

The man at the other end of the line told me about a major court case a few years back, that the government lost, which proved Income tax was illegal.

I had heard this claim numerous times, and because the man was so insistent it was true, I simply asked where this court case had taken place and I would order a transcript of the trial.

The man responded by telling me it wouldn’t be possible because the government was so concerned this news would get out and people would quit paying income tax, it would not allow the transcript or anything related to this court case to be released.

Then the conversation took a bizarre turn as the fact, I couldn’t access any information about this court case became his proof it actually happened.

Sadly, this is where we ultimately end up with many of these conspiracy theories. The fact we can’t prove they are true is evidence they are.

Nevertheless, a 2019 Gallup Poll in America showed that while 60% of Americans are skeptical about the existence of Aliens and UFOs, 68% believe that governments are withholding information about aliens and their spacecraft.

So how are believers to react to this news?

Though many believe if complex life evolved on Earth, it could happen anywhere, it’s not the opinion held by arguably one of Britain’s most famous physicists, University of Manchester professor Brian Cox.

Though still an evolutionist, he is at least being honest about this theory. In a 2014 documentary that he produced in conjunction with the BBC, called Human Universe, Cox stated that what happened on Earth was so unique and so miraculous, it could never be repeated.

Cox admitted:

“There is only one advanced technological civilization in this galaxy and there has only ever been one– and that’s us. We are unique.”

Though we have no concrete evidence of the existence of aliens, we do have reports of sightings and of course the stories of people’s personal encounters with aliens.

One of the more bizarre stories traces back to the 1 960s and involved a couple, Betty and Barney Hill, who claimed they were abducted by aliens and taken up to a spacecraft for examination.

Betty and Barney were driving home at 3 am in the morning on a deserted New Hampshire road when a spinning saucer appeared in the night sky over their car and started following them.

However, despite remembering this detail, they had no idea what happened after that, and they only remembered returning home a bit disheveled from the journey.

To find out what happened during those missing hours, the Hills went to a hypnotist where the remainder of the story was supposedly dug out of their subconscious and it was revealed that they had been beamed up to an alien spacecraft.

They were stripped naked and the aliens took samples of their hair, nail clippings, and skin.

The grey-colored aliens had large heads and a humanoid appearance and reportedly showed the Hills a map of the universe revealing that they were from a known star system called Zeta Reticuli about 39 light years away. For the record, one light year is about six trillion miles.

When their story was published by a Boston reporter in 1965, it was sensationalized and became headline news around the world.

More recently on April 30, 2023, a Las Vegas family called 911 stating there was a greenish eight to ten-foot alien in their backyard with big eyes and a big mouth. They also reported seeing a bright light fall from the sky.

According to the Los Angeles Times, this story was all the more intriguing because an hour and a half earlier a police video cam had captured a bright blue light falling from the sky over Las Vegas. Again for the record, that strange light has since been classified as a meteor.

After receiving the 911 call, police officers were sent to investigate.

The LA Times reported that one of the officers was actually nervous because he believed they might actually encounter aliens at the residence.

He said:

“I’m so nervous right now. I have butterflies bro — saw a falling star and now these people say there are aliens in their backyard.”

This fear revealed that many are convinced that aliens are real and they could potentially visit Earth.

When the police officers showed up at the house there were no aliens. Nevertheless, they investigated the backyard and interviewed the family and the neighbors.

So as believers how are we to respond to these stories?

Well, we have one of two options.

Though we have no concrete evidence, it is possible that Aliens do exist, but we read in Genesis 1:1, that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

The Hebrew word for ‘heavens’ is ‘shamayim and refers to the entire universe beyond the earth. This tells us that God not only created Earth but the entire cosmos.

So if there is intelligent life on other planets as their creator, God is well aware of their existence. He is in control of them and their relationship to humans.

This was the opinion held by famed American evangelist, Billy Graham, who believed that Aliens might actually exist and dealt with the topic on several occasions.

While some claim that the existence of aliens somehow discredits the Bible, it had no impact on Graham’s faith, who was arguably the greatest evangelist Christianity has ever seen.

This is because according to Graham, the Bible focuses on humanity and man’s sinful condition.

In his book, My Answers, published in 1960, Billy Graham explains it this way:

“From my studies in the Scriptures I can find nothing that would change our essential faith in the Gospel if we did discover life on other planets. Our Bible is clearly designed for this particular planet with its particular problem of man’s sin. … I am sure that if there are dwellers on other planets, they are either not involved in the sin problem, or else God has made satisfactory provision for them.”

According to Billy Graham, if aliens exist, they are equally accountable to God. He adds that it is entirely possible that they never fell into sin like humans, and if they did God would have provided a way to deal with their sin.

Theologically, it was not an issue for Graham.

In my second podcast in this series, I will focus on the second alternative, that extraterrestrials DO NOT exist.

But if that is true, how do we explain all these supposed UFO sighting from around the world?

Well, I believe there might actually be a spiritual explanation, and as part of that discussion, I will examine the claims by some UFologists, that the Bible and particularly the prophet Ezekiel was actually describing his encounter with a UFO and aliens in several passages.

Thanks for joining me on this podcast and I will catch you again.

READ: Russian UFO engagements, secret ‘Tic Tac’ report and 3 key figures slip under the radar at Congressional hearing AND UFO Congress hearing: Whistleblower David Grusch suggests people have been murdered as part to keep alien craft secret AND Exclusive: David Grush’s whistleblower UFO testimony is slammed by head of Pentagon office is ‘insulting’ for accusing government of cover-up at bombshell congressional hearing AND ‘They’re 100% not human’: Las Vegas police investigate reports of extraterrestrial sightings AND ‘We were abducted by aliens’: The unbelievable story of suburban churchgoing couple Betty and Barney Hill, the first Americans to claim they’d been snatched by a UFO AND Billy Graham on the Bible and Alien Life AND Americans Skeptical of UFOs, but Say Government Knows More AND For atheists, the idea of aliens seems real. Religious people doubt it. AND Believe in aliens? Then you’re probably an atheist or Muslim: Study reveals how religion affects your likelihood of believing in ET