The Obelisks of Jeremiah

Last Saturday night as I sat with a group of people at the top of a dune by the shore of Lake Michigan, watching a beautiful sunset and the bright orange glow that later spread across the horizon of the lake, I pondered how it is possible for anyone to witness the same without wanting to worship the Designer and Creator. Yes, I know that there was a time when I did not have a personal relationship with the Lord, and my small brain could not even begin to grasp the possibility of God. But know I see Him in everything, and the beauty and order and complexity of it all screams out to me in the sunset; "I am! I know you! I love you! I have a plan for your life! Your life is designed and has purpose, just like the sunset!"

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Someone had remarked earlier that evening that the great author Hemmingway described the town he came from as having wide lawns but narrow minds, but now that town was known as having narrow lawns but wide minds. I didn't say anything, but it occurred to me that Hemmingway put a loaded shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, and what became a really wide mind didn't bring him any closer to the One who designed us in His creative image. Talk also turned to the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who also came from that same town. An uncle of mine knew someone who had a relative that commissioned Wright to design a house for them, but never went through with the project because Wright wanted everything done exactly as he designed it, and was not flexible to make any changes. My uncle recently visited a place that displayed plans of everything designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, and on one of those plans was the name of that particular person. The plans and the buildings are a testament to the genius of a person who was instrumental in introducing a new style of architecture, and who was noted for incorporating the character of the site and the use of local materials into his designs. I am in awe of the genius of men like Frank Lloyd Wright, but his abilities came from, and are a reflection of the Master Architect.

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God has a plan for the Hebrew people and their nation, but with few exceptions the people always decide to follow designs of their own making. Many from each generation would follow after false gods and were not obedient to the instructions that God gave them through Moses and the prophets. And the nation never strove to possess anthing close to the extent of land that God promised to Abraham and his descendants. The greatest extent came during the time of Solomon. But after he died the nation became split into a northern kingdom, called Israel, and a southern kingdom, called Judea. Eventually the northern kindgom was conquered and the people were deported. The prophet Jeremiah lived just prior to the conquering many years later of the southern kinddom of Judea by the Babylonians, and into the immediate time after. When the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and either kiled or deported everyone considered high or middle class, they left the poor in the land to take possession of what was left. The Babylonian king appointged a puppet governor over the people, and he let Jeremiah remain in Judea.

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There remained in the land armed groups of Jewish rebels who hid out in the countryside. The leader of one of those groups killed the puppet governor, and then all of the commanders of the rebel forces as well as their followers came to Jeremiah, saying; "Please let our petition come before you, and pray for us to the Lord your God, that is for all this remnant; because we are left but a few out of many, as your own eyes now see us, that the Lord your God may tell us the way in which we should walk and the thing that we should do . . . May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us, if we do not act in accordance to the whole message with which the Lord your God will send you to us . . . Whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, we will listen to the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, in order that it may go well with us when we listen to the voice of the Lord our God." (Jeremiah 42: 2-6)

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What a great speech they gave to Jeremiah, and through him to God. Over and over God had used Jeremiah to warn the Jewish inhabitants before the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem that the Babylonians were God's chosen instrument to punish them, but if they would surrender, the city of Jerusalem and their own lives would be spared. Instead, the ruling powers listened to the voice of the false prophets who advised alliances, and had Jeremiah beaten and imprisoned.Now the remnant were saying that they would listen to the word of the Lord as given by Jeremiah, and would do everything that the Lord told them. God honored that, and replied; "If you will indeed stay in this land, then I will build you up, and not tear you down, and will plant you and not uproot you, for I shall relent concerning the calamity that I have inflicted on you. Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you are now fearing; do not be afraid of him, declares the Lord, for I am with you to save you and deliver you from his hand. I will also show you compassion, so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to your own soil." (Jeremiah 42: 10-12)

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But the true desire of the people was not to trust in the Lord. They had their own plan, and that was to escape to the safety of Egypt. The people replied to Jeremiah; "As for the message that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you! but rather we will certainly carry out every word that proceeded from our mouths, by burning sacrifies to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem". (Jer. 44: 16-18) God told them that if they indeed fled to Egypt; "Behold, I am going to send and get Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon . . . He will also come and strike the land of Egypt; those who are meant for death will be given over to death, and those for capitivity to capitivity, and those for the sword for the sword . . . he will burn the temples of the gods of Egypt . . . He will also shatter the obelisks of Heliopolis, which is in the land of Egypt." (Jeremiah 43: 10-13)

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The word "Heliopolis" means "house of the sun". The obelisks were coated with a combination of 1 part silver and 4 parts gold, and these mammoth 69'6" tall structures were aligned with the sun so that their effect would be truly inspiring. The Jewish remnant would leave the land, even after a promise by God that He would deliver them from both oppression and famine. They would flee to Egypt and adopt the Egyptian gods, and trust in them. But Nebuchadnezzar did come and built his headquarters at Heliopolis, the fate of those Jews was as God promised, and the obelisks were knocked down. A funny thing happened to three of those obelisks thousands of years later. One ended up in Paris, one ended up in London, and one ended up in New York City Central Park. The silver and the gold had long since disappeared, but I believe those large stone needles are where they are today as a visible sign and reminder to the Jewish population living those countries.

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There are 13.3 million Jewish people living in the world today. The Jewish population of Israel, which only became a country again after almost 2 thousand years, is 4.9 million. In the United States and Canada there are about 7 million Jews, 1.8 million of them living in New York City. The country with the next largest Jewish population is France, with over 600,000, and then comes the UK with 275.000. There is a time coming, and I believe it is sooner rather than later, that God will be clearly calling His chosen people to go back to the land of Israel. But many will be reluctant to leave what they see as the comforts and safety of their own countries. Those obelisks are a sign that they should not trust in the governments of France, Britain, or even the United States to care for and protect them. And they are certainly not to follow after false gods, even if signs in the heavens lead the rest to the world to clamor after the queen of heaven. Just as it has always been, they are called to trust only in the Lord their maker, the Master Designer, who will protect them in the midst of the fiery furnace that is to come.

The Long Coal Train

Everyday, sometimes twice a day, a very long train passes through our town. Each car is heaped with as much coal as it can carry, the top few black feet clearly visible from the lower vantage point of my waiting automobile. This train is heading to a power plant about 12 miles north and I marvel at the ability of the two or three engines to move so much weight. Some of the times when I am lucky enough to be held up for the ten minutes it takes for the train to rumble by I think about something related to me by a guy who once worked for the utility, driving a large bulldozer that moved all that coal around. Noting the immense volume consumed each day he asked his superiors if we would soon run out of coal and was told that our country has enough for hundreds of years more. This made me reflect how all of that coal came to be.

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You would think that is the type of question that any school child seeing the same train would ask. And you would think that there would be an answer that seemed logical to anyone really interested in the origin of coal. The problem is that you can get a text book answer as to how coal is made by natural processes over time but the answer is only theory because there is not any place on earth today where seams of coal are in the process of being formed. Peat is being produced by natural processes and the text books tell us that peat turns into coal. Peat has to somehow get buried with enough of the right covering to create the pressure needed to convert it into coal. But that has not been observed by man in the present or in the recorded past.

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Coal comes from vegetable matter such as plants and trees. In growing these living things convert energy from the sun with molecules from the soil and water and the structure is made up of carbon atoms drawn from those sources. When a plant dies oxygen works to break down the atomic structure and everything gets recycled. Dead plants on the ground eventually disappear. I live in a woods and each fall I rake the large amount of dead leaves into the wooded areas just past my lawn. The old leaves are several inches thick but the volume does not increase because the leaves of two years ago have disappeared.

Just like my woods the ocean floor is not mucky with dead vegetation or dead marine animals (the source material for oil). In our current world if vegetation dies in a swampy area where the water is oxygen poor the old matter will grow thicker and peat may form. But coal requires a large mass of vegetation to be rapidly buried, the burying material shielding it from further contact with oxygen. And the burying material has to be in sufficient volume to create the pressure needed to convert the vegetable material into coal.

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The text books tell you that it takes thousands of years for the buried peat to turn into coal.  There are coal seams that span hundreds of square miles. Some seams can be very thick and some have only a few inches. The surrounding material found around ALL coal seams is sedimentary rock (water carried material). Current scientific explanation for the formation of these huge expanses of coal require that in the distant past there were extremely large swamps, multi-state wide in area, covering the western and eastern parts of our country and in many other parts of the world as well. The rotting vegetation in those swamps were quickly covered by sediment brought in by sea water (note: the effect of the extra oxygen brought in by the sea water is not accounted for). The ground then had to rise (this is called an "uplift"), and then the land eventually had to sink again to create another swamp and then rise and sink again and again over hundreds of thousands or millions of years because there are multiple layers of coal seams.

As unlikely as that scenario sounds to me science assures us that it must be true because anything can happen if you allow for millions of years. The presence of rootless trees, some upside down but vertical, that cut through multiple layers of coal seams and sedimentary strata (or millions of years of time) are unexplained as are the existence of boulders in the seams.

Flood geology says that the fountains of the great deep burst open , and the floodgates of the sky were opened. (Gen. 7:11)  Along with the great rain there was massive volcanic activity throughout the globe expelling with it a tremendous amount of water.  Massive mats of trees and other plants floated on the flood waters.  As the waters receded each tide would deposit this vegetation, cover it with sediment and then repeat the process again forming what would become the coal seams.

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I checked into coal formation on a Google search and found a site which gives school teachers an experiment to demonstrate how coal comes to be. First you get an empty aquarium tank, place a layer of sand on the bottom, fill it with water, place vegetable matter in the water, wait for the vegetable matter to sink to the bottom, place another layer of sand into the tank to cover the rotting vegetable matter, put the tank in a well ventilated area because it will stink - and if you do this after several days you will give the students a visible picture as to how coal is formed. The experiment does not actually produce coal or peat for that matter. All it does is provide a picture, or an icon, of the theory of coal production. And years later the kids will remember this icon satisfied that Mr. Smith could demonstrate the slow formation of coal over endless centuries.

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A while after I became a believer at the age of 22 I had to come to grips with how to understand some scriptures that conflicted with what I had learned in high school and college. I believe that scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit and that every part of it has meaning and purpose. That meant that the accounts of creation and the flood were much more than stories related by ancient monotheistic peoples. And I believe that scripture was meant to be taken literally unless the obvious rendering shows types and examples. Something like the age of the earth or the timing of the flood can be understood literally with different interpretations.

But as I see it there had to be a literal first man and woman (Adam and Eve) and they had to have been created without sin and then sinned for it to make any sense for Jesus (the second Adam) to have to come and die on the cross for the sins of man. And for various reasons, one being that Jesus is very specific about it, there had to a a Noah, there had to be a universal flood, just as there will be a universal judgment coming upon the whole earth.

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My convictions came through faith. I jumped into the arms of an invisible God and when He caught me He showed Himself to me. And when I began to trust that His word was true He began to show me how faith does not conflict with science. The physical evidence for all of what scripture says is there but many cannot or will not interpret it correctly because they are brought up in a society that has an outright antagonism toward faith and scripture, blinding them from considering their Creator.

Our kids are taught in school and the secular press eagerly confirms that scientists and the scientific method have no bias. But in truth most scientists start with an atheistic assumption that everything in the universe has a purely mechanical origin, it is running a mechanical path, at a fixed pace, and will end with a mechanical implosion. They have to believe in an evolutionary process and long time frames to make it work. And that skews what they are looking for and the way then interpret all data. We must remember that even the greatest scientists are still people with an immortal soul who are struggling against a powerful enemy they cannot see and do not believe in.

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My faith freed me to look at evidence and to approach firmly held beliefs from a different perspective. One of the first books that provided me with another viewpoint toward a universal flood was - Earth's Most Challenging Mysteries (1972), by Reginald Daly, a Ph.D. in geology who had taught at Harvard. He made me aware how many of the features of the earth, from the ice caps to the Grand Canyon, can be best understood in the context of an earth wide catastrophic flood. In the book he talks about coal and oil formation and how the geology of the earth in relation to the settling of the flood waters can even point to the location of coal seams and oil and gas deposits.

 Sadly over 40 years later there is not any serious debate in the scientific community concerning even the possibility of a universal flood. It is not because they have solid counter arguments concerning the evidence. Their atheistic viewpoint does not even allow them to consider a Noah's Flood and their response to any theories suggesting such is always ridicule, scorn, dismissal, and misrepresentation of the viewpoint. And yet day after day the long coal train makes it's way through our town. And it reminds me that even in judgment God was designing and creating something beneficial for man and that He is awesome beyond my imagination.

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"Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, 'Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation'. For when they maintain this it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But the present heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men." (2 Peter 3: 3-6)

Delivered From The Wrath To Come

"For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit . . . You became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit . . . For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you . . . in every place your faith toward God has gone forth . . . (so) wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come." (1 Thessalonians 1: 5-10)

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I saw a show today about earthquakes and the tsunamis they create. Our nation's entire West Coast is just east of something called the ring of fire, where tectonic plates collide and subduct, building up incredible pressure until released, the ensuing pressure waves having the potential to cause massive damage to cities like Seattle, Washington. Recent research has surprised scientists who are trying to see if these magnitude 9+ earthquakes can be predicted, showing them that there is a pattern of buildup and slow release. The odds of "the big one" coming will increase dramatically during one of the two week long release periods. My thoughts turned to the Minneapolis bridge collapse. Perhaps it will be shown that there were continual increase of load, causing a series a unnoticed internal failures, finally resulting in the whole structure giving way in just a few seconds. There is no way that anyone could have predicted the day of the failure, just as guesswork is involved in earthquake prediction. Yet, "the big one" is coming, and those who might be affected should do everything they can to be prepared.

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We live in a world that has been in the process of rebelling against God since the time of Adam. God wiped out the entire human race, save 8 people, and completely destroyed all human achievements, and in the process, He remade the physical map of the earth. God promised Noah that He would not destroy the earth again by water. But scripture is clear that there is another judgment coming. No rebels will survive to repopulate the land, and the geography will once again be quite different. Even though our lifespans are short compared to the overall history of man, and living in relative comfort has given us a false sense of security, we should not ignor that history is quickly drawing to this major climax, where God will defeat the spiritual and human forces of rebellion. Periods of crisis and tribulations have come and gone, but they have left internal fractures that have weakened the overall structure. The United States has been a brace that has helped stabilize the dynamics in the world, but rust is corroding this brace, and the world is about to collapse. It should give us pause to think that prophecy reveals that this next judgment, although it encompasses the whole world, is centered around Israel and Jerusalem, and that Israel only became a nation again in 1948, regaining rights to the holy places in 1967, and that America is currently engaged in a war in the Mid-East. Pressure is building and a terrible time is coming. God gives us encouagement to sound forth the word through our world, so that many can become reborn and part of His family. And He comforts us with the assurance that He will remove His family from the earth before this time of trouble.

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The apostle Paul was shown by the Spirit a mystery concerning what would happen before Jesus returned to set up His kingdom on earth. It was clear from the Old Testament that a messiah would sit on the throne of David and rule the nations from there. "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I shall raise up for David a righteous Branch; And He will reign as king and act wisely, and do justice and righteousness in the land. In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely. and this is the name by which He will be called. The Lord our righteousness". (Jeremiah 23: 5-6) Jesus is the messiah, and the context of His rule is as a Jew, ruling from a Jewish throne. Scripture is also clear that there would be great tribulation just prior to the coming of the messiah. There are two reasons for this tribulation. God would be judging the Jewish nation for putting false gods before Him, for not honoring Him by being obedient to the plan He gave them by the prophets, and for not trusting Him as deliver. The ultimate purpose for this judgment was to cleanse the nation of all rebels, and to cleanse and prepare the land for the coming of messiah. The second reason for the tribulation was to judge the Gentile nations as well, both for apostasy, and for the manner in which they treated the nation of Israel and the Jewish people.

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The early church was composed exclusively of people who were Jewish. When Jesus ascended into heaven He promised them that He would one day return, coming down from the clouds to Jerusalem. The early believers expected Jesus to return at any time to set up His earthly, Jewish, kingdom. They knew there would be a gap in time from the ascension to the second coming, but they had no idea how long that gap was. Eventually the Spirit sent Peter to the household of Cornelius, beginning the ingrafting of Gentile believers into the Jewish trunk. The Holy Spirit gave Paul a deeper understanding of this thing that was a mystery to the prophets of the Old Testament. Salvation was not just for the Jew, but included all who would approach God in faith and call on Jesus as Lord and Savior. Ths group of redeemed people, both Jew and Gentile, from the resurrection of Jesus until His return, would comprise a special group. We call this group The Church, or the Body of Christ. But we need to also understand this group as people who have been born into the family of God through the rebirth of their spirits by the
Spirit of Christ.

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The Spirit showed Paul another mystery as well, concerning God's plan for the church before the time period known as the seventh week of Daniel, which we usually call The Tribulation. In the 24th chapter of Matthew Jesus tells His disciples the events that would happen prior to His second coming. He talked about false christs and false prophets, wars and famines, and great tribulations. He mentioned the appearance of the "Abomination of Desolation" that Daniel prophesied. And then He said; "But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather the elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other". The Spirit showed Paul that there was something that preceeded this. There would be a bodily resurrection of the dead in Christ, as well as a bodily ascension of the alive in Christ, at a time before the tribulation spoken of in Matthew. Thus the "elect" who are gathered immediately after the tribulation of those days cannot be you or I, who are part of the church. They will be people who became believers during that time and were not martyred, and they go on into the new millennial age to repopulate the earth. The living who are "taken" in verses 40-41 then, are the non redeemed, who are removed to a judgment. In this scripture, the ones "left behind", are the believers.

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The Thessalonians understood that Jesus could return at any time, but they were confused because they were enduring great persecusion, and because some had died, when they had expected the Lord to return before that happened. Paul told them that although they were enduring trials, there would be coming a special time of great tribulation, but they would be "caught up" (in Latin "rapere", from which we get the word "rapture") to meet the Lord in the air before that time. Paul assures them that whether alive, or "asleep", all were part of the same family in Christ, and all would be removed from the coming judgment.

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The other night I dreamed that my little two year old granddaughter, Mallory, was a bit too high up on some playground equipment. "Come over here and sit on the floor next to your grandpa" I told her, and she got her little blankee and snuggled up next to me. Later that night I dreamed that she was riding on a two wheel bike (in dreams very young girls can do that), and I was instantly worried that she didn't have the ability to stay out of the traffic, so I ran over to steady the bike. Like Mallory, we all live in a world where bad things can happen. But we have God as our heavenly Father, and He loves His children with a greater emotion than I feel for my family. The wrath of God is coming to the world, but we were not destined for wrath.