For God so loved THE WORLD

About three weeks ago I had a dream that I believe came from God, and in that dream I was with a group of people, we were outside somewhere in the Holland area, and I looked at the sky to the southwest and saw a mushroom cloud. My first reaction was to tell everybody that we had to hurry up and head in the opposite direction. Then I thought that it was strange that I hadn’t noticed a bright flash before seeing the cloud. At that point I woke up and realized that it must have been a nuclear explosion in Chicago, or maybe at the Palasaids power plant, and if something like that happened then I was totally unprepared to take any intelligent action. I know that in our area prevailing winds are from the West, and that would leave everyone in the Holland or Kalamazoo area at great risk from nuclear fallout. Perhaps,I thought, I should prepare an exit plan in advance.

A couple of days later a saw a guy on TV who had written a book saying that a nuclear attack from a terrorist in a major US city was a matter of when, not if. His point was that not only were American citizens not prepared to handle the mass chaos that would follow, but that the church was just as unprepared. Funny how God will confirm a revelation.

I was in grade school during the height of the cold war. We would have drills where in case of a nuclear attack everyone would get underneath their desks and cover their faces to protect themselves from the bright flash and the searing heat. No one told us why the Russians would want to nuke our windmills, but we dutifully practiced. Today we can list reasons why a terrorist would want to set off mass destruction, but we remain complacent, not wanting to admit the threat nor understanding the nature of evil.

And isn’t the nature of evil the first question that an unbeliever will come up with? "If God is love, how can he allow cities to be nuked and little babies to suffer, and the poor to die of malnutrition?" And although we can begin to explain all the stuff about the devil and evil spirits and the selfish and rebellious heart of man, the real answer is: God loves us, He loves the world, and I know this because I experience His love in MY life, and you can too if you would honestly seek Him. We know the verse in the 3rd chapter of John - "For God so loved THE WORLD, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." The unbeliever, knowing their own heart, is really questioning if God could truly love them. v19 "This is the judgment, that the light is come into THE WORLD, and men loved the darkness rather than light, for their deeds were evil."

The mushroom cloud in my dream did not have a bright light and so it may not be a prophecy of things to come, and yet scripture says that there is a true light that has come into the world, and that is Jesus. I first saw that light 34 years ago on a late Novembr Sunday afternoon after confessing my sinfullness, and asking Jesus to come into my heart as Savior and Lord. I went from one moment of not knowing to the next when He filled me with His peace and revelation of Himself. Both have remained ever since.