Avalon Chronicles #164: Christmas and the King of Kings was Born and Still Lives!

Resource: December 22, 2024 Preaching/singing by Reverend Keith Craft, Pastor of Elevate Life Church Frisco , Tx. 

Who is our ultimate enemy behind killings in war, murders and all the tragic sufferings of mankind?

King Jesus lived amongst us as the Son of a carpenter. He was born the King of Kings as an infant. Who then would have known He would someday die for our sins and set us sinners free? Kings are born into royal families with great fanfare and celebration. Fireworks are set off and cannon boom. Jesus was born in simplicity in a manger. His parents had to flee to Egypt because the earthly King Herod ordered the death of all the male children, who might someday threaten his power. Jesus lived and for three years in the Promised Land he preached of a new life for those that believed in Him. Since then two thousand years have come and gone. Empires have been built and fallen. Nations have fought nations and brother has fought brother. Men have become so filled with hatred. And half the would is starving. 

Blood has run in streams on battlefields. Our cemeteries are filled with the men and women, who answered their nation's call to fight the "enemy." Limbs have been cut off (like my two from Vietnam). Condition of the Heart has plagued warriors since Cain killed Abel and collateral damage is suffered by the families, who waited at home for the warriors to return. Today the lingering emotional and mental injury is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We debate over disarmament and yet the men on the front lines suffer decades after decades. As pastor Craft sang his song of the world after the King was born, a new revelation came upon me. 

In bayonet practice at West Point we were told to yell out, "Kill" as we drove our bayonets through the dummies. Combatants must be motivated to confront our enemies and remove them as a menace to our beliefs. We must be taught to kill the enemy and be motivated to march over hill and dale to win a victory over our enemies. In Old Testament times it was the giants in Canaan. In more recent history it has been Yankees versus Confederates, the Hun, the Japs, the Germans, the gooks, the chinks, the VC, the Russians, the Taliban, and next year there will be a new enemy, perhaps the "aliens" from another galaxy in the universe.

In that service as Pastor Craft sang, for the FIRST time something clicked for me. Satan left Heaven with his one third of the angels. They are not just sitting around campfires on earth. They are actively engaged as the forces of evil led by Satan working his devious goals to keep things stirred up down here on earth. On the battlefields we mere earthlings on both sides of front lines are merely doing the tactical things done in warfare. Way back up the strategic routes, there are Kaisers, Stalins, Hitlers, Tojos, Mao Tse Tungs, Ho Chi Minhs, all intent on achieving power and earthly riches.

They are not the REAL enemy. The Real enemy is Satan, who does not want the King of Kings to prevail, by winning humanity over to Him. The bottom line is we need to pray that demon spirits will be removed from the hearts of the evil leaders of the world. Only then can a true peace be possible on earth. Until the Second Coming we will kill each other and the blood will continue to flow! 

Avalon Chronicles #163: "If I were to be asked..." Part Two

                                                      Faith, Prayer and Forgiveness

     The Bible covers every important aspect in life as to behavior. It serves us all well to learn and follow its teachings. Our Creator births us all for an Eternal Life. It is wise to grasp that how we live our lives will determine which direction we go after death. We live on and I believe in the ongoing existence upon my death of my final existence in Heaven. I have heard enough about Heaven and hell and I choose ascending to Heaven. The fires of hell are not appealing to me. 

FAITH: This is the most critical aspect of each of our lives. If we believe in Jesus the Christ, Who came to earth in human form, that He died on the Cross so that our sins may be forgiven, and that He rose from the grave, then, to be saved for eternity in Heaven, we must proclaim by verbal declaration that his crucifixion actually happened and therefore in a very simplistic manner, we will ascend to Heaven. 

A righteous (good, virtuous, upright, upstanding, upright, decent, ethical) life will be required us. It is not this righteous life that ensures our entry to Heaven, but it is by our faith. When we are faithful, then righteous behavior follows and we live with a clear conscience. That ensures a special ongoing peace in our lives. In all candor this is our daily challenge. When we do not uphold righteousness in our behavior, then we must HUMBLY ASK THE FATHER TO BESTOW MERCY UPON US. 

PRAYER: It is written that He answers prayers and we all need them answered constantly in our lives. But, there is a major criteria that must be satisfied. You must confess ALL your sins on an ongoing basis AND you must forgive all others. It is written in 1 John 3:22: "You know that your prayers are answered because you obey His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight." The Ten Commandments are very evident and historical, but we should remind ourselves often about the standards contained in them. It was in my forties before I caught on to this scripture and I have always been aware since then of the "things that are pleasing in His sight." That phrase keeps me on edge and I try mightily to satisfy that behavioral standard. 

FORGIVENESS:  A classic example of this was brought to my attention years ago, when I had a conversation with the man, who provided my lawn care. He commented on my disability as a double leg amputee walking with prostheses. I asked him if he had any health issues he desired my prayer. He said yes. Then I indicated that to receive answers to prayer for healing, he would have to forgive all others, who had offended him. I will never forget his response, "I am not sure I can do that." It is written in John 8: 1-11, "If you forgive others their trespasses, you will be forgiven, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, YOU WILL NOT BE FORGIVEN."

Our Creator births us all for an Eternal Life. Most of us do not realize after our earthly bodily life, that there are two directions for us as to travel. I prefer up to Heaven, not down to hell!

Avalon Chronicles #162" "If I were to be asked..." Part One

      At 82 years of age, "...what would you impart to young people as to what you have learned?" I would discuss several arenas: Wisdom Insight Discernment Knowledge Maturity. WIDKM for short. It is these I ask for each day. I pray to my Father, "I pray I would be bound to the Mind of Christ and have imparted to me WIDKM as I encounter decisions and issues every day" If I listen, I do believe I get answers.

     I am in advanced practical application phase of life, even though I know God is not finished with me in my basic faith walk. I have heard thousands of sermons and read hundreds of books, but I will never reach the depths of the deepest trench in the Pacific as to what I need to finish strong! Humbly, I continue to ask my Lord for His mercy. However, I never stop attempting to learn God's ways and live by those rather than my own ways. I will begin with Garden of Eden. I have been to a man's war in Vietnam, a secular conflict that cost lives and blood and pain and for me two limbs. But, the Garden experience set up up the ultimate strategic never-ending war of all time, that of Satan versus God, the Creator of our little planet earth and all the galaxies in space. Satan discovered that there would be established a human blood line that would provide a Christ that would establish a way out of the trials and tribulations of earthly existence. Since then to this very day there would be a spiritual battle for good versus evil in its simplest definition. There was Noah's Flood approximately 4344 years ago and only eight humans survived! Why did God wipe out humanity and start over? It takes a deep dive into Scripture and a tiptoeing into the Bible in obscure extra-Biblical writings in the Apocrypha to understand it all.

     After the Fall of Satan and one third of the angels, who rebelled with him, a group of those angels, as it is postulated, decided they liked the feminine beauties on earth and came down and mated with them. This produced the Nephilim, giants, whose ferocity, evil, killing and violence produced chaos. It was a major attempt by Satan to cut off the DNA of humanity to stop the birth of Jesus. The ever and always totally powerful God put an end to that disgrace for the population of the earth He originally created and He repopulated after drowning all those big and bad giant "dudes."

     Ever since, the history of the world has been one of constant conflict, wars and rumors of wars. I suffered in one of those! Even though the original Nephilim drowned and their giant skeletons are found ever so often, their DNA probably was carried by Ham's wife and they reappeared in force in what became the land God ordained for the Promised Land, current day Israel. Early Old Testament writings document the destruction of most of the post-flood "giants" under the leadership of that magnificent brave warrior Joshua. But, some survived, because God's orders to "kill them all" were disobeyed. Even though most were drowned in the Flood or killed in Canaan, their spirits lived on. Very simply put, "It is those spirits today that are within humans guiding, controlling and directing the forces of evil today to bring again the ferocity, sin, killing and violence we have suffered through the millenia. 

     Undeniably, Jesus Christ the Son of God came to earth to show us the way to live in peace and forever by faith in His sacrifice on the cross so we may enter Heaven as our final address.

 

 

Avalon Chronicles #161: Champions of the Faith; Charles Finney (1792-1875)

 Reference; Miller, Basil. Charles Finney The evangelist who sparked one of America's greatest revivals. Bethany House Publishers. Minneapolis, MN. 1941.

     The prior two Champions about whom I have written, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, were instrumental in revivals of the First Great Awakening in the period prior to our American Revolution. Our Lord moved another Champion of the Faith, Charles Finney, to move on America in our nation's Second Great Awakening in the 1800s. The extent of his influence for Christ was that "under his ministry a half million souls yielded themselves to his Master's touch." His thrust was to call people to repentance. Multitudes of individuals go about their daily lives not knowing or caring how they live each day. God requires us to repent of our sins. One of the major benefits of a life lived by God's will is to follow the Ten Commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. When I first became aware of this requirement to have my prayers met, the "pleasing in his sight" was somewhat mysterious and I needed to work on that subject. This is the requirement that is subject to review in each of our lives.

     Charles Finney was born in 1792. The Lord guided his early years for his calling as an evangelist by preparing him in educational endeavors. Intense Bible study brought him to the conclusion that the Book was truly the word of God and that prayers must be prayed in faith. A major turning point in his faith walk was when he grasped the "doctrine of justification by faith" This is how he defined a new state of his deepened faith. "I could now see and understand what was meant by the passage, 'Being justified by faith, we have peace with God...' I could see the moment I believed while up in the woods all sense of condemnation had entirely dropped out of my mind; and from that moment I could not feel a sense of guilt or condemnation...My sense of guilt was gone; my sins were gone...I felt justified by faith...I was in a state in which I did not sin. My heart was so full of love that it ran over." He got the big picture! That is what he based his life's work on. That is a key for us all. 

     A 1970 movie Love Story had a line in it, "Love means never having to say you are sorry." In a secular setting this means loving someone to such a degree in a relationship that you never hurt their feelings or commit an unpleasant or mean action against them. Finney would indicate that his love for our Lord was so deep and strong that his life was one of sinlessness to such a degree that he need not repent because he did not sin!

     "His style of preparation was as he went among the people 'to learn their wants. Then in light of the Holy Spirit I take the subject that I think will meet their present necessities...I pray much over the subject and then go and pour it out to the people.'" Finney was strongly convicted that his success was due to his baptism in the Holy Ghost, "...which is indispensable to ministerial success." One student of his at Oberlin College in his latter years said of him, "God had His giant at last."

     "Springing from the inner fount of his own life, he heralded from the pulpit, the lecture room and the press 'that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.' This was his life-long theme song, this his white-hot passion." This he proclaimed until August 16, 1875. We need more heralds such as was he.! 

Avalon Chronicles #160: Champions of the Faith-The Historic Legacy of George Whitefield

 Reference; Mansfield, Stephen, Forgotten Founding Father. Highland Books Cumberland House. Nashville, TN: 2001. 

     At my 50th high school reunion in 2010 at the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire I was walking near my hotel on the main campus of Front Street, viewed a low marble monument and became captivated by the life of evangelist George Whitefield. The monument indicated that on Sep. 29, 1770 Rev. George Whitefield preached his last sermon of perhaps a stunning total 18,000 sermons in his life time at this exact spot in Exeter. He spoke, "Works! Works! A man get to heaven by works! I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of sand." He preached a very simple message of salvation through grace, the unmerited favor of God. When he finished, he rode his horse to Newburyport, Massachusetts and died that night!

     Whitefield had been born in Gloucester, England in 1714 in Bell's Inn, preached his first sermon at St. Mary de Crypt Church a few blocks away and attended Pembroke College at Oxford. We walked past all three sites on a trip to England. Whitefield's teaching and preaching was needed in England and the American colonies. Darkness had covered England in the decades prior to his birth. Mansfield wrote, "In 1662 an anti-Puritan Parliament ejected more than two thousand Puritan ministers from their pulpits...rationalism...and Deism, transformed God into an absentee landlord, Jesus, into a deluded fool, and the Bible into a collection of empty myths." England had begun a period of newfound wealth "with all the soul-numbing entanglements of materialism in tow." England had become "a land of spreading spiritual darkness." Into this environment our Lord brought George Whitefield to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus all across England.

     Then he began several trips by ship across the Atlantic and Whitefield's preaching in the colonies was of such importance and impactful that he became "the most famous man in the world." He had been the principal representative of the Christian faith and "...had led the great revival from Georgia to New England . Tens of thousands had flocked to hear him as he roared the glories of the risen Christ." Five years after his death the stirrings of freedom were beginning to be heard in America and the United States of America was birthed. George Whitefield had become a "Forgotten Founding Father." He had been a major reason the colonists had risen up to break the chains of the British rule.

     Author Stephen Mansfield, with whom I had visited by phone once, wrote that freedom for Americans and our War of Independence "...grew in large part from the truth he preached. He was their spiritual father, the man who called them to Christ and Christ's purpose for their land. It was his vision of freedom for both soul and society..." that we revolutionaries fought to defend and achieve. George Whitefield with "...a preacher's courageous heart for God,..." began the fires of revival for a land that became a beacon of light proclaiming freedom from oppression of a secular empire. His preaching taught that freedom from oppression of sin and unforgiveness brought freedom from the shackles of the evils of the material world. A great privilege of my life was to have "stumbled across" a monument near where I had attended school for the eleventh grade of my education.