Our Amour and Protection: Devotion for March 16, 2012

Text: Psalm 91:4 – He will shield you with His wings. He will shelter you with His feathers. His faithful promises are your amour and protection (New Living Translation).

A shield is a large piece of metal carried by soldiers to protect their body while shelter is a place to stay or a protection from rain, danger, or attack. God promised us the real Israelites of today, His protection. The Psalmist knows this and he gives us the assurance that God will provide them for us because we are special to Him (Deuteronomy 33:29). How can we be special people unto God?

We may not directly be involved in physical combat with the devil today but the unseen battles we fight are more severe than 1990 Operation Desert Storm. On daily basis we go through many unseen battles. We can only know when God reveals them to us.  However, in all these, God protects us. Your protection is not in that charm from India or that native doctor, not even the number of police and security agents at our disposal. None of these guarantee protection. Trust God and He will shield and shelter you because He has faithfully promised us His amour and protection.

The Treasury of David Commentary sums it up that “As a hen covereth her chickens so doth the Lord protects the souls which dwell in him; let us cower down beneath him for comfort and for safety. Hawks in the sky and snares in the field are equally harmless when we nestle so near the Lord.” When you take this to heart and cower down under Him, not harm will indeed befall you.

FFT: When the enemies are determined to attack, can you stop them? 

Prayer Points:

1) Thank God, our amour and protector.

2) Pray for God’s protection against all forms of attacks from the enemy.

3) Pray for the spirit of obedience in order to attract faithfulness of God.

         According to the the “experts” on ancient alien encounters, when the Israelites were in the wilderness, found in Exodus, they had a manna machine. This machine would make manna out of the moisture in the air, and certain types of algae. It would use a type of laser and heat to make the algae and moister merge, and age faster.

        This picture is of a re-creation of the “manna machine” they believe the Israelites had. They say the power supply would have been stored in the arc of the covenant. According to them, this would explain why people often died when they touched the arc, because the power supply would have been radioactive. ”Ancient Aliens” claims this machine would have been given to the Israelites as a gift by extraterrestrials, or that it was stolen from the Egyptians when they left.

        These stories seem a little far fetched, and are made just to explain why it might be possible, for these amazing events in history, to have happened without divine intervention.

         ”Ancient Aliens” often challenges Christianity, and Christian beliefs, to learn more click here.

Consequences of Sin

“Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day; and for our iniquities have we, our kings, and our priests, been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, and to a spoil, and to confusion of face, as it is this day.” (Ezra 9:7)

Ezra is confessing the sins of the people. In the confession he tells what sin did to the people. He gives four distinct consequences of sin which come upon people in every age. They are the sword, slavery, spoil, and shame.

Sword. “To the sword.” The sword devoured many Israelites because of their sin. The sword speaks of death. Sin kills. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Sin promises to be the life of the party, but nothing is a greater kill-joy than sin.

Slavery. “To captivity.” The Israelites were delivered into the hands of foreign nations and taken captive by these nations because of their sins. Captivity speaks of slavery. Sin always enslaves. It does not bring freedom. It is a pitiful sight to see people enslaved by evil habits from drink to drugs to gambling and pornography addiction. Many sinners claim they are free to do whatever they want and are not restricted as they think and say Christians are. But sinners are the ones who are bound. They are enslaved by sin.

Spoil. “To a spoil.” The word spoil here means the booty which an army takes from an enemy it has defeated. Israel had been stripped of its wealth and possessions by the enemy because of sin. The application here is that sin takes the things of value from the sinner. Sin leaves us barren of good; it empties us of worth. It takes away valuable character. It takes away spiritual blessings. Sin promises great gain but it only robs you; it especially makes you barren for eternity.

Shame. “To confusion of face.” The word translated “confusion” means shame. Sin caused Israel to be greatly shamed by being defeated and removed from their land. Sin shames the sinner. It promises glory and honor, but it brings dishonor instead. The worst shame from sin is the shame the sinner will experience before God’s judgment throne.

Daily Bible Reading: Sermonettes #1.

To find our answers, we need to look way back in time, close to the dawning of civilization. When the earliest religions first began popping up in Mesopotamia, China, and all over the Eastern hemisphere, most of them featured some sort of an element of magic. Many of the early Middle Eastern religions believed in Demons. Once you had found a demon’s name, the belief was that you could now control it. You could send it to do your bidding, you could send it to haunt people, to hurt people, to damn people. Calling a demon’s name on someone was tantamount to wishing a death sentence on that person.

Contrary to our common belief, most of the words that we consider curse words are not- the f-word, s-word, b-word, c-word, etc… you get the idea; these are simply obscenities. People are offended by them because of their literal meanings. There is only one real “curse” word left in our society. “Damn”. The funny thing is that to most people, this is the lesser of the evils.

If you were to go to a Eastern country, however, where people still followed one of the very ancient religions, and become frustrated at someone, and in your annoyance yell “God dammit”, there is a likely chance they would run away in fear. They would take this literally as, “I call down my god to damn you”.

In the Biblical book of Exodus, Moses is brought up in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s own home. It is likely that he practiced one of these ancient supernatural religions. He does not know the Israelite God until the LORD speaks to him through a burning bush. When this takes place, and the LORD tells Moses to command Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave, Moses asks the LORD what his name is. Why does he do this? Moses likely believes that if he has this god’s name, then he will be able to use him as a weapon. The LORD replies, I Am who I Am. He does not give Moses a literal name to prove a point: he is not a god who can be commanded.

To this day, this is the reason we put the word “god” in front of “dammit”. This is also the reason “god” is the only part of the word censored on TV. It is not a curseword unless it is preceded by a name.

OUR IDOL HAS FALLEN

In the Bible, the Philistines were always at war with the people of God, the Israelites. The Philistines had their own god, Dagon, and it was a fish god, for which they built a grand temple, without realizing that their god was nothing more than a weak attempt to subvert the worship of the true God.

In our time, here in the United States, we generally don’t have open worship of idols like Dagon, but instead have an acceptance of certain things which we embrace as being the top, or the best, the answer to all. This is a form of idol worship, and it may have come full circle back upon us for disregarding the true One we should adore and worship.

We embrace the system of money, loving it, and showering it with accolades and pomp and ceremony, and falling down to worship its every moment, change, and growth and decline, forgetting from where our real blessings come.

In the scriptures, the Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites in battle, took the Ark to the temple of their god, Dagon, and proceeded to give praise for the Ark’s capture to Dagon.

This has parallels to our time, as we have now given up worship of God, and instead have overwhelmingly embraced the dollar and the stock market, and our capitalist system as being everything to us, without remembering that it is God who blesses us, and He may choose to do so through our monetary systems.

In casting down the true worship of God, we have entered that time, like the Philistines, where God has begun to cast down our idol – stock market crashes, the weak dollar, inflation, etc., because He is trying to get our attention.

In the temple of the Philistines, Dagon was knocked over to get their attention, and they didn’t listen, but instead, stood their idol back up, and continued on. The next night, Dagon was knocked over again, with his head and hands being broken off as another reminder to leave God’s children alone, and that God is the true God.

After this, the Philistines were awakened to the fact of the true God, who had power over their idol, and they sought for ways to send the Ark back to God’s people, the Israelites. But instead of sending the Ark straight back, they sent it to other cities in their kingdom where plagues and sores followed. Finally though, they had enough, and giving gifts and the Ark back they sent it on a cart back to the Israelites.

Idols are anything we worship which is foolhardy, anything which is passing in transit, like our dollar, which changes, which can be burned, which can devalue, which can become worthless, and decays, and tears, etc.

God does not change, and He is forever! We must not forget Him, and we must stop relying on our system, but realize that, our system may be blessed or cursed by Him, because He is the only one who should be worshipped.

Here in America, we are being given that one chance to return to God, to give up relying upon ourselves and our system, to embrace the true devotion of God which is His and His alone! Let’s come back to God, and He will protect us, He will be our God and nothing can happen to us; but if not, then the warnings we are receiving will escalate, leading to our demise as a power and nation. God will not be mocked!

PTR December 10, 2010

The debate of who owns the land stems back a long time in History. We could say Rome owns it as they ruled it for a long time. Maybe its owned by the Muslim faith because they ruled it for a while. But lets go further into history. There is no doubt that at some point in History the nation was known as Israel and dwelt in by Israel. But what about before Israel?

If we look at history and a lot of this is taken from the Bible we learn that when Israel went into the land they were up against the Canaanites, Amalekites, sons of Anak and others. According to the Bible they were told to go into the land and get rid of all the inhabitants that lived there. This is exactly what they did, they destroyed so many and took over the land completely. But for the tribe of Dan they did not remove them all and there were also those who sort peace with Israel and became part of the nation. The sons of Anak were not destroyed as they came back later when fighting with the philistines.

According to Deuteronomy God told the Israelites that if they did not do as he said and remove these nations they would come back and destroy them. He says this time and time again throughout the book. If we look at Israel today we see them still struggling with the inhabitants of the land who claim are descendants of the Philistines hence ‘Palestine’ and also the Canaanites.

So who’s land is it really? how long do you need to own something for it to be yours. Turkey no longer claims that Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, and many others to be there land but they seem content with the turkey we know today.

So who’s land is it?

How can one know whether or not they have been manipulated? The only way one can know is to personally investigate everything. The news media cannot be trusted. Some of the news media are working in conjunctions with this movement.

Some of the politicians cannot be trusted either, for it appears that all they care about is being reelected. Therefore, don’t be surprise if you find out that there is a connection with this underground movement.

Examples of manipulation: In taking polls they work at it real hard to design the questions to enable them to get the results they want.

Journalist instead of focusing on things most important to the American people, they leave out certain things in order to keep the American people in the dark.

They will allow politicians to play the American people. For example, the politicians knew about those bonuses, and now they are put on a show. In my humble opinion, they are playing the American people. They knew about this since last year. Not to mention it was a contractual agreement. In addition, it represents less than one percent of the bailout package.

What the media should be doing, is in conjunction with their outrage about the AIG bonuses, is to compare it to the rest of the unnecessary spending in the stimulus package. 

What about the almost 9000 earmarks? What about the 3.5 Trillion dollar stimulus? Why don’t the media report that there are alternatives solutions out there to the present stimulus bill? However, much of that money went to overseas banks?

I don’t like to be played. I am not interested in all of the drama that is going on right now with the Democrats and the Republicans.

As a result of all of this drama to draw the American people away from their failures (Congress), these forks who supposed to receive these bonuses are receiving death threats (at least that is what I am hearing).

Again this is what they do to distract the American people from what is actually is going on.

There are many more examples, just don’t let politicians or the news media shape your thinking for you, or deceive you into believing things that are not true.

Today more and more Americans has become lazy minded. We want everything instantly. Most people won’t spend the time in investigating the truth. We rather spend more time in being entertained. However, it will cost us in the long run. Just like that little convenient store on the corner. You don’t like going to the supermarket because it is inconvenient. However, instead of paying $2.50 for a gallon of milk you end up paying $3.85 for a gallon of milk.

Brainwashing in Religion

Have anyone just stopped and asked themselves this question? Why are there so many different churches in the world with all of it’s different doctrines or creeds?

Before Christianity there was one group during the time of Moses the Israelites. During the time of Christ they were called Jews. Nevertheless, during the time of Moses God gave Moses his instructions concerning that religion. However, when they decided to do that which was not authorized by God, sometimes it ended in death.

Many people today say that they are a Christian, however, they use a prefix in front of Christian. Is Christ divided? If they were following the bible they would be a Christian only without the prefix. The bottom line is, if the same book that they are suppose to be following says not to add or subtract, why are they doing it?

If the bible is the book Christians are going to be judged by, why are some following other doctrines?

Atheist also question Christianity because, to some of them God is being displayed as a Fairy Tale (which they like to use against Christians). They liken God to Santa Claus because he is said to be all knowing, he can be everywhere anytime, and his Elves are liken to that of angels.

The sad news in all of this is many will deny that they have or are being brainwashed. However, this is not unusual. There will always be brainwashers. There will always be Kool-Aid drinkers. Just don’t you be one!