God's Last Words

THE OTHER Perspective

Mark 4: 35-41 NRSV

This past week’s events suggest our tragedies, heartbreaks, and difficulties are increasing at a breakneck pace. We search for answers for the evil that men do and know it starts in their hearts and is being encouraged and nurtured by our secular world and it’s willingness to be separated from God.

I think the time has come to finally speak truth as it needs to be spoken and point out things as they are.

There was a situation in a Catholic hospital`s Intensive care ward where patients always died in the same bed on Sunday morning at 11 A. M., regardless of their medical condition. This puzzled the doctors and some even thought that it had something to do with the supernatural. No one could solve the mystery as to why the deaths took place at 11 AM. 

A medical system wide expert team was constituted and they decided to go down to the ward to investigate the cause of the incidents. So on the next Sunday morning, a few minutes before 11 AM, a bunch of medical experts nervously waited outside the ward to see for themselves what the terrible phenomenon was all about. 

Some were holding prayer books and other holy objects to ward off evil. Just when the clock struck 11, Santos, the part-time Sunday janitor, entered the ward and unplugged the life support system and plugged in the vacuum cleaner.

Each of us lives within a certain perspective subject to three orientations that effect our assimilation of information and driving forces within the world whether we admit it or not.

Most of the time we think we live in the natural world, subject to the laws of physics, where gravity and Newton’s Law is observable. Other times, depending on how strong our faith is, we open ourselves up to God’s presence, and profess Jesus’ as resurrected Lord and Savior, and occasionally encounter miracles.  

But how about those times when we encounter things that don’t make sense, give us goose pimples, or set us on edge because there was something just on the fringe we could see, but not explain? Those times when even the laws of nature seem to bend? Those times that seem a little crazy or strange?

Let’s read our Gospel lesson for today from Mark 4: 35-41: On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” 

And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 

He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. 

He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” 

And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

That third thing we deal with, but deny is called the supernatural. We tend to overlook our Scriptures that tell us that we live in a world subject to spiritual forces of good and evil.

Ephesians 6: 12 - “For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.”

Supposedly we have cast off, the “dark ages’ superstition of leprechauns, vampires, werewolves, and demons, for those things we can answer scientifically. We have replaced them with ghosts, UFO’s, and little gray aliens that will help us be better humans.

How many TV shows are on that contain aliens, ufos, ghosts, ESP, vampires, demons, angels and the like. There’s even a show coming this fall called “Lucifer,” where Satan comes to earth and sets up shop to directly sell temptation to humans. 

The sad fact is that people don’t believe in the Holy Spirit but they believe that channeled beings from Alpha Centauri care about our dead Aunt Mabel and her blueberry jam recipe.

People don’t believe in Jesus as Son of God but they watch hours and hours of soap opera vampire TV or shell out $ 15 to learn about ET phoning home.

People who don’t believe in an all-powerful Creator named Elohim are ready for the saucer to land on the White House Lawn and admit they are our long lost ancestors and the scientists who created our DNA to seed the earth so long ago.

Everywhere you look people are begging for answers to the whys of our world and meaning and understanding. People are perishing without love, hope, or eternity.

Look around folks, the world around us is stormy, and our country and US are perishing. The principalities of evil are stirring things up. Look at the number of earthquakes, floods, natural disasters, sinkholes, and unexplained animal and fish kills being recorded around our world. Extreme weather of all types.

Look at the destruction of family, destruction of men, destruction of women, and boys and girls that is happening due to our modern revision of values, traditions, and morals. Look at the intentional casting away of family in our culture.

We are becoming a world of not so polite, government sponsored death – abortions, and government assisted suicides, gender changes, same-sex marriage, the denial of reality and the deception of political correctness as I speak it-not as it really is.

Throw in the rampant drug abuse, increased use of legal medications to alter moods, and the manipulation of truth that is our political and educational systems.

There’s even a new category called “Trans-able” which recognizes that some people are so uncomfortable with their bodies that they can cut that part off. Some have become handicapped without legs or arms in order to live this new “identity” out.

And the devil laughs! Anything that pulls humans away from the created world as God made it. What if those UFOs and little gray men are demons and other created beings, rebelled from God, are engaged in the greatest deception ever staged? All designed to finally destroy the church and any resistance to evil?

Anything that keeps even one person from professing Christ as Savior is worth every piece of supernatural power Satan has to bear on us. And he’s using it.

Even now you are starting to tune me out because I’m using a supernatural cause to explain so-called natural things and that violates our civilized rules. Lock me up – I’ve gone over the hill, all my dogs aren’t barking.

But listen: Jesus tells us in John 3:12:  “If I have told you about things that happen on earth and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about things of heaven?” The Bible gives us plenty of examples of heavenly things on earth.

Luke 24: 1-5 – “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. They went in but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes. So the women were terrified and bowed down to the ground. “Why are you looking for the living among the dead?” asked the men.

Many scriptural passages (Genesis, Numbers, Daniel, Isaiah, Zechariah, among others) talk about angels and other supernaturally created creatures moving in and out of the earthly realms with an amazing correlation to reported UFO encounters.

There’s a lot more to it, including archaeological and eye-witness evidence but I’m not going to dwell on this topic for too long lest your skepticism encourage you to stop listening, and your thinking I’ve finally lost my marbles.

For now, understand this- we humans are being set-up for the greatest attempt at deception ever tried – selling Satan as Jesus Christ and God. And the whole world, for the most part, is buying the narrative, and becoming hostile to God but open to the supernatural.

You as believers, have nothing to worry about if you remember Jesus’ words to His disciples in our passage from Mark 4. Jesus, as the Creator of heaven and earth, and all that are in it, has total power, control, and mastery. He can manipulate any natural law or use any material He so chooses.

He also cares very much if we are perishing. Everything about Him has been for us while everything that is not of God seeks to mislead us.

We must learn to be on our guard, be on watch for the evil manifesting as supernatural incidents like UFOs, ghosts, near-death experiences, new age occultism, and even those who appear as angels of light, that are the wolves in sheep’s clothing we’ve been warned about.

Do you realize that more has been recorded in the scriptures about our times, and the days to come then about Jesus Himself? Prophecy is here for our study.

Jesus taught us to rebuke evil and stand against the coming days. We are going to see things and hear things that will be designed to destroy our faith and trust in God and reliance on the grace of Jesus Christ. BUT NOTHING CAN!

FYI: Did you know that UFOs and supernatural beings disappear when Jesus’ name is mentioned? It is well documented.

We need the words from Ephesians 6:10-13 (HCSB) to resonate in our hearts and minds: “Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the Devil.

For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.

This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand.”

Rebuke evil in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.