Tag Archives: Kingdom of God

In the mid-1990’s, I lived within walking distance of a Midwestern university. This proximity allowed me to interact with students in many unique ways.

One such happening occurred after I felt an urge to visit the LGBT campus group. Although I had never visited the group or even knew where it was, I figured it would be an exciting venture. So, to spice things up a notch or two, I wore my JESUS baseball cap.

The group’s office was located at the end of a hallway. The door was open and I walked in.

“Hi everyone, what’s happening,” I said to a group of seven or eight college students who had their backs turned away from the entrance.

They all rotated to look at me. Then, they noticed my cap and the discussions began.

“You’re a Christian, huh? Just what we needed on a Friday afternoon,” said a young woman, rolling her eyes.

“Do you believe homosexuality is a sin?” asked a muscular man who walked up  to me, his face just inches from mine.

“Yes, I do,” I said.

The man then recited a litany of verses which he believed proved that homosexuality was not a sin. I cut him off.

“Whoa! You can turn the Bible upside down, cut out verses, paste new ones in, and do whatever you want to do, but when all is said and done, homosexuality will still be a sin,” I said. “But then again, I have the same problem with my pride. God hates it and I love it. Yet, it’s still a stinking sin in His eyes.”

Then I added, “By the way, did anyone notice my sin of pride when I walked in here?”

“Yeah,” said a young man. “It certainly does stink.”

Everyone laughed and we introduced ourselves. The conversations proceeded here and there without focusing on anything in particular. The students were fun and likable to be around.

After a while, the group broke up, with some heading to classes and two going into another room for a closed-door meeting. Only one young man, named Sal, remained. As I stood there, wondering what would happen next, I had a quick vision of Sal.

“You’re a Christian, huh?” I asked.

“Well, I was,” he whispered. His dark eyes looked down at the floor.

“I just had a vision of you at a church with people laying hands on you and praying for you. One person prophesied that you were called to be a prophet. Is that true?”

“Yes, I attended a church with my mom and a person did prophesy that calling to me.”

“What are you going to do about your calling?” I asked.

Sal looked at me like I was the dumbest person on earth. “Hey man, I’ve committed an unpardonable sin. I’m a homosexual. My mama won’t even talk to me anymore.”

I smiled. “Sal, I have good news for you.”

Then, I proceeded to teach him about grace and how his salvation had nothing to do with his character, but rather on the finished work of the cross. In order for him to ever lose his eternal salvation, all of the works of the cross had to be reversed in Jesus, first of all, and then in him. In other words, it ain’t ever happening.

When I finished, Sal smiled. I shook his hand and left.

Over the years, I’ve wondered about Sal. Is he free of the homosexual lifestyle? Is he serving God? Has his relationship with his mom been restored?

I don’t have answers for these questions. All I have is a hope that the Lord who healed the lepers of His day would do the same today.

To arrive at my present predicament, I ignored and drove through many caution signs without ever paying attention or hitting the brakes.

First, three computer programmers at work resigned the morning after Bob talked with me. Each told pretty much the same story, but the three had different ideas on where to relocate. One chose a small town in Nevada, another chose Wyoming, and the last one opted for Fargo, North Dakota.

Why in the world would anyone ever choose Fargo over San Francisco? Normal people should be warned away from that man, I thought.

Six weeks afterward, a catchy Chronicle headline, “Are Christians Acting Crazy Again,” caught my eye. I thumbed through the newspaper’s pages until I found the full article.

The journalist replayed the words of Bob and the three computer programmers. He also contrasted the actions by what Christians were doing with what Harold Camping and his zealots did a couple of years earlier.

Camping’s followers listened to him and then jumped off the ledge, following his prophecies to the ground. Although these zealots felt the pain of losing everything, their total affect amounted to a drop of water in the economic ocean of America. Too bad for them, but no permanent damage for the rest of us.

This time was different.

The article estimated that 40,000 Christian families had packed up and left San Francisco. A few, like Bob, had been able to sell their homes and their businesses at deep discounts, but most were not that fortunate. The sheer glut of homes dropping onto the real estate and rental markets depressed housing prices in the city almost overnight.

Yet, even more than that, 40,000 Christian families amounted to an estimated total of 150,000 people or 20% of the city’s population. The numbers further broke down into 60,000 job losses, $1.5 billion of gross income losses, and $400 million of tax losses for the city. These losses had already begun to fuel major layoffs at schools and retail stores.

Talk radio, TV, and other media ranted about how selfish the Christians were for jumping ship and thereby destroying San Francisco’s economy. Didn’t these Christians care about or love their neighbors? What kind of examples were they to the rest of the city?

With the wall to wall coverage, everyone in San Francisco knew the reason why the Christians left.

Somehow, this all fell on deaf ears at the time and I thought no more about it until that horrific Saturday morning.

As usual, I began the weekend sitting on the leather sofa in the living room, eating toast and drinking coffee at 6:30 AM. My laptop sat on the coffee table, waiting for me to power it up and log onto some work which needed to be finished before noon. I felt lazy and looked out the window toward the morning lights in Chinatown and the San Francisco Bay.

Then it happened.

A burst of intense light lit up the dreary morning skies. It seemed a thousand times brighter than any flash of lightning I had ever seen. The scorching light temporarily blinded me so I did not witness the mushroom death cloud rising into the air over the city, but I knew it was there. The explosion’s heat caused instant third degree burns on my face and arms.

A nuclear shock wave then spread out from the explosion slamming against our five-story building. The building imploded. Ceilings, I-beams, roof, and debris fell on me. Then, two hundred and thirty mile per hour winds slammed against the building’s carcass and reversed itself. When the winds finally quieted down, little remained of my million dollar condo, plasma TV, and Pottery Barn furniture.

An I-beam and debris covered my hips and legs down to my feet. All feeling was gone below my waist. Although I could move my arms, the weight of the debris was too much to move without leg power. I laid there helpless and scared.

I then drifted in and out of consciousness over the following day or so. During one of my times of lucidity, I discovered the laptop resting next to my head. I powered it up. No internet, but I could at least write my story. Who knows? Maybe somebody will eventually read it and learn how stupid I felt lying here, suffering in pain and waiting to die.

To think that I trusted politicians who cared nothing about me personally and only wanted what I could give them in votes and money was shamefully stupid. My mama taught me better than that. Yet, that’s water over the dam and too late to help me now. Que sera, sera.

If only I had

(Conclusion)

If you are reading this, then I’m dead and will forever remain thirty-four years old.

If you are a searcher, checking through rubble for survivors or their remains, thanks for trying. I appreciate your efforts. If you are a looter who picked up my MacBook Air because you wanted it, consider the laptop a gift from me. I won’t need it anymore. But whatever your reasons, it makes no difference to me because I’m dead and just glad someone is reading my story.

Oh yeah, my name is Jackson Edwards.

Maybe I better get on with it because I’m drifting off more and more because of the pain.

So, it all began when a neighbor rang my doorbell a few weeks ago.

Ring!

I hit pause on the TV remote and stood up. Cubicle chair sciatica kicked in and my back ached so I stretched myself, hoping to work out the kinks before grabbing the doorknob. Halloween passed two weeks before, but I still took no chances and looked through the peephole first. I saw my bearded neighbor, standing there in the hallway and opened the door.

“Monsieur Roberto,” I said in my best lousy French accent.

“Si vou ples, Monsieur Jackson,” he said in his own second rate accent, pointing toward the living room.

“Yeah, come in, my Charismaniac friend.”

He laughed and walked into the living room and sat down on the sectional. I followed and sat across from him on the leather recliner.

“I don’t know where to begin,” he said, rubbing his hands together. His blue eyes dropped to the oak floor where his jogging shoes were. Something bothered him.

“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Don’t you usually start with John 3:16 and work your way through the rest of the Bible when you come here?”

“Hey, man, I’m sorry for smacking you over the head with my Bible.”

“Just yanking your chain, Dr. Bob.”

He sighed.

“Okay, but I still don’t know where to start.”

“Why not at the beginning? It’s only 7 PM and I have all night.”

He nodded and rubbed his forehead with a hand.

“Do you remember four years ago when I told you about a vision a Christian woman had about a gigantic ocean wave hitting Japan? Do you remember that?”

“Vaguely,” I whispered, not being totally honest with him because I remembered the vision story quite well. In fact, I even did some research on Google at the time of the tsunami and discovered numerous other warnings spoken ahead of time.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, this same woman just had a vision of a nuclear blast hitting us here  in San Francisco─ ”

“Really?”

“Yes, and not only that, a prophet friend from Albuquerque called and told us a disaster would soon hit the Bay Area. He recommended that we should pack up and leave now.”

“Hmm,” I said, leaning forward in the recliner. “What are you going to do?”

“Mary and I sold our condo today, furniture and all. We’re moving to an area near Tahoe.”

“What about your medical practice? And your two kids?”

“My two partners bought out my share of the practice and we’ll homeschool our kids.”

Everything moved too fast for me to grab a hold of what he was telling me.

“Well, it’ll take sixty days or so for everything to close, right? So, we’ll have plenty of time to talk in the future.”

I stood up, hoping to bring this uncomfortable conversation to a quick end.

“No, sadly, we won’t. I made cash deals and sold everything for sixty cents on the dollar.”

I fell backwards into the recliner and shook my head.

“You took a four hundred thousand dollar loss on your condo?”

“I would have given it away if I had to.”

I opened my mouth and closed it. How do you challenge a person who is willing to turn his back on a fabulous way of life? I know I could never have done it because I worked too hard building a career in Silicon Valley to just walk away from it. A million dollar condo on Nob Hill was an impossible dream back in the days of my youth, living in the inner city of Oakland.

“Is this goodbye?” I finally asked.

He nodded and stood up, offering his hand to me. I stood and shook hands with him.

“Listen, Jackson,” he said, “why don’t you come along with us? Mary and I really feel some bad things will happen in San Francisco and we don’t want anything bad to happen to you. We love you.”

“No way, I’ll take my chances here on Nob Hill,” I said, shaking my head. Then I winked my eye and added, “Just remember, my white Charismaniac friend, I’m still one of them jive-talking, hustle-or-die blacks from the inner city. We know how to survive.”

Bob left and I never saw him or Mary again.

(Continued in Part 2)

Even if you are stone-cold atheist, you probably know the words to the Our Father prayer. It’s the most popular prayer in the history of the world and millions pray it everyday.

But have you ever really paid attention to just these seven words: “…on earth as it is in heaven…?”

What was Jesus thinking? Or was He just stirring up the pot with a pie in the sky concept which we can never hope to attain here on earth?

These thoughts ran through my mind recently after I read a post by a blogger friend who wrote about her disagreements with Obamacare, excessive government debt and big government. She tied her opinions to a few scriptures. Although I didn’t necessarily disagree with her opinions,  I did disagree with her choice of scriptures.

Afterward, I thought, “Okay smarty pants! Just what verses would you use for these issues?”

I searched the Bible and found no answers one way or another. I then concluded there are no scriptures which explicitly state it is sinful for a nation to have an all inclusive health care plan or to increase government debt or to even enlarge the government system.

In fact, if you take some of Jesus’ words out of context, you might even be able to make a good case that the Lord supports the three issues for various reasons.

But, of course, what about the seven words – on earth as it is in heaven?

Stay with me now, okay?

Until just the other day, I believed Satan modeled his governmental system, as outlined in Ephesians 6:12, upon what he saw in heaven when he was the anointed cherub. My belief was based totally on logic and figuring that Satan would try to follow a system which he already knew.

Ephesians 6:12 and other scriptures reveal Satan’s government as a hierarchy with Satan at the top, various demonic rulers just below him and then levels of demons below the demonic rulers on down to the least demon. (Think of Satan’s hierarchical government system as a corporate management flow chart from the CEO down to the lowest underlings with management levels in between or as a chain of command for the military.)

To be honest, I really thought heaven was set up in a similar manner. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at the top, various archangels such as Michael, Gabriel, and others just under the Trinity, and then other angels under the archangels, on and on, all the way down to the least angelic beings.

Beware that you do not despise or feel scornful toward or think little of one of these little ones [children], for I tell you that in heaven their angels always are in the presence of and look upon the face of My Father Who is in heaven. (Matthew 18:10 Amplified Bible)

Somehow, the above scripture came to mind as I meditated on scriptures. When it did, I realized the total error of my logic. You see, if a child’s guardian angel does not have to go through a middle management system of angels, then no other angels would have to do so either.

A light blinked on and I realized that God is God. He doesn’t need middle management to help Him out. He Himself can lead and guide every angel from the greatest to the least without ever being overtaxed. After all, angels heed the voice of His word…not another angel’s voice.

So, why didn’t Satan copy God’s government? Satan couldn’t. He is a created being with a certain amount of wisdom, intelligence, and anointing. He is not an all-powerful, all-knowing god like our heavenly Father is.

Therefore, Satan came up with a hierarchical system for his kingdom. Each level watches over the level below them. And because of this, Satan controls his underlings, much like slaves, to do his commands. He is a brutal task master.

God’s government gives freedom and is backed with love. Satan’s government enslaves his underlings and is backed with fear.

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower becomes the lender’s slave. (Proverbs 22:7)

For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15)

Now, look at Obamacare, increasing government debt, and ever-growing government systems and then compare these issues to either God’s government or Satan’s government. Next, you decide whether the three issues offer freedom to America’s citizens or do they enslave them? And what about our children and our grandchildren?

“…on earth as it is in heaven…”

“Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once.  What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream.” (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791) composed over 600 classical works – symphonies, operas, choral and chamber music, piano etudes and so forth. Yet, unlike most creative geniuses, Mozart’s amazing abilities were recognized during his lifetime. A contemporary of Mozart, Joseph Haydn, who was called the “Father of the symphony,” wrote: “Posterity will not see such a talent again in 100 years.”

Haydn was wrong. So far, 220 years later, no one has stepped forward as an equal to Mozart.

Now, when we consider composers, we usually think of a person sitting at a piano. A pencil in one hand, his other hand playing a few notes, his hair all frazzled and his eyes glazed over from lack of sleep. After a while, the composer turns and quickly jots down notes in his notebook. He then returns to play a few more notes on the piano, shakes his head in disgust, turns to erase what he wrote earlier in his notebook and writes new notes on the paper. His notebook paper resembles a smudged and scribbled kindergarten fire-drill.

The composer continues this tedious process over and over until he has finished the musical work on the piano. If it’s a symphony or chamber music, he then has to arrange the music for other instruments.

Composing is a time consuming, laborious task. That is, unless you’re Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Mozart would sit down, with an ink pen in hand, and write the whole musical piece as if he were copying it from a book. He could carry a conversation or get up and walk away and then return to finish it later. It mattered not if it were a piano solo, a complete symphony or an opera, he wrote it all without a struggle. His first copy was his last copy, no matter how many instruments or arias were involved.

Okay, when it comes to writing, I’d prefer to be a Mozart, but sadly, I’m not. I’m that bedraggled, frazzled composer with glazed over eyes who struggles through every sentence, dangling participle and verb tense.

And when I’m finally done writing my article or novel or whatever, I’d like to finish it off by writing: THE END.  And never, ever look at it again.

Yet, that’s not how God works with me.

After I’ve finished writing, and it’s been rewritten ad nauseum times, along comes a new revelation which forces me to rewrite the whole piece again. Does this happen often?

My novel, Jonah, has been rewritten almost 60 times. New Wind Blowing is nearing 40 times. Then, if you toss in the four other works I’ve been writing and rewriting for years,  you get a good glimpse of who I really am: God’s hack.

Guess what?

I have just received a new revelation which has to be dealt with in a few of my so-called finished works, the ones which I thought were ready to be published. So, it’s back to the keyboard.

I will continue on with Part 7 of You Can’t Go Home Again in late January. See you then, okay?

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

It was noontime and the crowds were scurrying here and there. Some were heading to restaurants. Others had errands to run. The summertime sidewalks of Irvine were filled with people.

But what was strange about this particular lunch hour was the old man with a Chicago Cubs baseball hat on his head, standing directly across the street from where I was sitting. He held a microphone in his right hand. Then, from time to time, he stopped passersby and held the microphone up to their faces. It looked like he was interviewing them.

From my vantage point, sitting outside a Starbucks Coffee Shop, my curiosity was stoked. Could he be a newspaper reporter writing a human interest story for the LA Times? Or better yet, a panhandler with a new angle on shaking down people for money?

Having nothing better to do, I crossed the boulevard to check him out.

As I approached from behind, he turned and looked at me. He motioned with his hand for me to stop

“Would you be so kind as to answer a quick question for me?” he asked

I nodded.

“What do you think is wrong with the American Church system?” he asked.

Then, he held the microphone in front of my face for a response.

My mind went blank. Normally, I am quick witted and respond without much forethought, but his query caught me off guard. What is wrong with churches? I thought.

To be honest, I was not a religious person. My parents were not church goers. So, from early on, I had not given much thought about churches, one way or another. Of course, I had attended a few from time to time for funerals, marriages and visiting with friends. Yet I had never been what you would call a regular member of a church.

As I stood there, I thought over some possibilities. Isn’t church a place where you go and give money to be completely bored? Doesn’t everyone think that it is the longest hour of the week? When you exit a church service, you are no better off than when you came, right? And guess what, the following Sunday, more of the same old, same old will be offered to you with the same results.

Finally, I shrugged my shoulders.

“There’s nothing wrong with the American Church system. It’s the one institution which never seems to change much,” I said.

The man thanked me for my time and I headed back to Starbucks.

This is a short story from the upcoming novel, Deceived Dead And Delivered by Larry Nevenhoven.