I really had no interest in animals, but I found myself watching a National Geographic week-long series with a friend.
The first segment was the story of a lioness that a researcher had followed for some time. I watched as she gave birth to two cubs, and followed them through their daily search for food. It was as though I really got to “know” the lioness, and when one of her cubs was killed, I was so touched at the emotion of the mother and the remaining cub that it brought tears to my eyes. I had to admit, this was a beautiful animal and after several episodes I was falling in love with her.
The next segment was about exotic fish that swim near the bottom of the ocean. The colors of the fish and the flora were stunning, and I was amazed at the thought that only in this century had technology developed to the point where a human could descend to these depths and photograph the beautiful world down there which until now had remained unseen by human eye. I was fascinated.
After that, I watched as they focused on beautiful birds in faraway places, so beautiful that they evoke a gasp at first sight. I had never seen any like this before, and was really humbled at the thought of the beauty in the world of which I hadn’t had a clue.
But my awe turned to horror one evening when they turned to the warthog. Yes, wart-hog, and it is aptly named! There is no mitigating quality, not a nice word that could be said about the warthog - it is an UGLY and repulsive animal! It began with the birth of the warthog and I remarked that this is the first time that I’ve seen the young of any species that wasn’t endearing. I was appalled, and disappointed that having won my admiration, National Geographic would now insult my sensitivities by showing us this horribly ugly animal. Having seen the majesty of the lion, the beauty of the fish in the depths, and the glorious plumage of exquisite bird life – why on earth would they spend time filming an animal as atrociously ugly as this!
This thought stayed with me though, and the next day as I was out walking I began wondering why God, who could create something as stately as a lion, as beautiful as exotic birds - WOULD create something as repulsive as a warthog? I mulled this over and over. A few days later I found myself coming to realize that the entire creation spans the complete spectrum of beautiful to ugly, and this by the will of the Designer!
We’re creatures of comfort. We love to have our senses pleased. Which of us isn’t spell-bound when happening upon a monarch butterfly? Which of us isn’t delighted when a seagull comes near to take a piece of bread from our hand? I’ve even found myself entertained watching ants build their little houses complete with tunnels.
But a WART-HOG??? It was hard to come up with an excuse for it. Certainly I don’t have to tell the Designer that this animal is the most grotesque thing I’ve ever seen! But why?
In the Bible's "Book of Job," when Job has finished his complaints before God, the Lord answers him with a series of questions in a “who do you think you are?” tone. He begins, “Shall he that contends with the Almighty instruct him? He that reproves God, let him answer!” Then he takes more than two chapters asking Job unanswerable questions such as, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding,” and “By what way is light diffused, or the east wind scattered over the earth?” and “Does the eagle mount up at your command, and make its nest on high?” And of course the point is that our silly opinions are no match against the discretion of him who hung the stars in space.
The more I thought on it, the more I saw this diversity everywhere. It spans the gamut of all that is created. A beautiful sunrise against a terrible hurricane. A rose, against a weed. A pristine coastline dotted with sailboats against a dry and empty desert.
And it is true of us as well. Don’t we perk up when an attractive person speaks, and become bored when an unattractive person walks in? I saw a documentary in which two people were sent out, one fat and not well dressed, and one beautiful without so much as a hair out of place. They both just basically lived one day of ordinary life in a city with their experiences being contrasted. They both spoke to store clerks, they both applied for the same job, and It was eye-opening to say the least, to watch the responses and mannerisms in reaction to the unattractive person and then to the attractive one who was well dressed. And of course the attractive one got the job.
Ah, the human condition! We love the beautiful and reject the ugly. But it should not be so, because the One who created the beautiful is the same One who created the not-so-beautiful, and if we stopped to consider what we do, we’d have to admit the error of our vanity.
I step back and take a look at the people I have loved or admired most in life, and I see that the value in any person I esteemed was in no way related to the physical appearance of the person. In considering successful marriages, I note that among the happiest there is not a preponderance of physical attractiveness, in fact it's often just the opposite. Why then do we respond so quickly to the beautiful and turn away so automatically from the unattractive? It’s human nature. But it isn’t wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to look within, below the surface, and find the beauties that are not obvious but are of equal importance to the One who created them.
In our lowly humanity we must miss so much of value because of our quickness to turn away when the outward appearance is not pleasing to the eye. How much richer would we be if we would only linger a bit and take another look. The first person to discover the pearl was the one who probed deeper than the ordinariness of the shell.
If you want to see a miracle, consider the following. If I were not a believer, this alone would be enough to persuade me. The following verse in Isaiah 43 shows whom the Lord is speaking to: But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, and he who formed you, O Israel... Isaiah 43:1 The Lord is speaking to Israel. Here is one of the greatest prophecies about the regathering of the Jewish people from every place on earth to which they had been scattered: "Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your descendants from the east, and gather you from the west; I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not keep them back,’ bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth..." Isaiah 43:5-6 In the year 70 AD, Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the Jews were scattered to the ends of the earth, to every continent and to every country, and there they remained for more than 2,000 years. The first miracle was their preservation during two millenia of dwelling in every country on earth. Never before has a conquered people remained intact. Conquered people usually are absorbed into the conquering country, and after several generations they show no affinity to their original country. I am descended from the French people, all four of my grandparents were French. But after a few hundred years away from my forefathers leaving France, I know virtually nothing about France, I don't speak French, and I have no desire to move to France. My family has been assimilated into America. I am American through and through. It wasn't a few hundred years for the Jewish people. It was two THOUSAND years having been scattered to every nation on earth. Several hundred years before Israel was dispersed to all the world, the Old Testament prophet Isaiah foretold that "in the last days" God would bring them back to the land he gave to them in an everlasting covenant with Abraham, his son Isaac, and his son Jacob and his descendants - the Jews. We are in the generation which has witnessed the great and awesome fulfillment of that prophecy - a prophecy that was also uttered by many of the other prophets in the Scriptures. In 1948 the nation of Israel was re-established in its original place, speaking its original language which had long been forgotten except in religious rituals. The Hebrew language is now the national language of the people of Israel. But ...Israel is surrounded by scores of Arab nations bent on destroying her. What they don't know is that Israel CANNOT be destroyed. "I will BRING BACK the captives of my people Israel. They shall build the waste cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them; they shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them. I will plant them in their land, AND NEVER AGAIN SHALL THEY BE PULLED UP from the land I have given them,” says the Lord your God." Amos 9:14-15 Since 1948 God has preserved the nation through several wars which they had no chance of winning, truly a David and Goliath picture if ever there was one. God did the impossible. Israel's victories in those wars were nothing less than God's fulfillment of Bible prophecy. These fulfilled prophecies can only be supernatural. A century ago, teachers studying "the last days" said that the prophecies of Israel's return to the very land they left 2,000 years before - must be symbolic because the idea that they would be physically returned to ancient Israel, in the midst of long-standing Arab countries - was impossible. And surely, it WAS impossible. But … "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.” Luke 18:27 Truly the Lord has done the impossible, and if my faith were low, this true story would be enough to renew me. The Lord has given several more prophecies about Israel's future and you can be sure that every word he has spoken about it and every prophecy he has given about it will most certainly come to pass and there is no devil in hell that can stop it. In the fulfillment of those prophecies God will show himself the great and only God, the God of Israel. His holy Name will be praised forever. MORE: Israel's Covenant The Messiah And His Land:
"Then the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the people of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; and they forsook the Lord and did not serve him." Judges 10:6 Israel had a relationship with God that was unlike any other among the peoples on earth. God established his covenant with them. The covenant was everlasting, but he warned them that judgment would fall if they forsook him. It's like belonging to a family. If a child does evil, his father will discipline him, but belonging to the family is never in question. And so, God brought heavy judgment upon Israel because they forsook him and accepted the gods of the lands around them. vs 7: "So the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines and into the hands of the people of Ammon. From that year they harassed and oppressed the children of Israel for eighteen years..." America has a similar relationship to God. On the day George Washington was inaugurated, in his inauguration speech George Washington dedicated America to God. Then he and his cabinet walked down to Saint Paul's chapel and held a service in which America was dedicated to God. Saint Paul's chapel is located on the corner of what now is called "ground zero." It withstood 9/11 and is still standing today. America became great in the Lord's hands, many people fleeing persecution came to America and found safe haven here. America raised up great seminaries, indeed most of her "Ivy League" colleges of today began as seminaries for training ministers in the propagation of the Word of God. America sent missionaries around the world to bring the Gospel to the masses. America established laws against all manner of evil, and continued in those laws up until the current generation. Her laws were based on the Word of God, the "Judeo-Christian ethic." As long as America stayed in the will of God, America prospered more than any other country on the face of the earth, indeed, more than any other country in all of history. But things began to change in America. It began in the 1960's when Madalyn Murray O'Hair succeeded in having prayer banned in all public schools. Then in the 1970's the Supreme Court banned the laws that protected human children in the wombs of their mothers, and now protected instead those who would murder them. From then on, immorality took over the country little by little. The people became DESENSITIZED by the gradualness of the decline, much as the frog in the pot heating up slowly didn't notice it until it was too late. Adultery, which was at one time against the law, became accepted. Homosexuality, once considered a horrendous perversion now became not only accepted but promoted in terrible and ungodly parades in her streets. America turned away from God and refused all restraints that the Word of God prescribes, to the point where today, a minister preaching against sin can now be punished. Imagine, a minister of the Gospel punished for preaching the Gospel! God sent judgments. On September 11, 2001 the twin towers which represented America's prosperity were totally destroyed, skyscrapers falling to the ground with nothing left of them. In 2005, during a planned "Southern Decadence" event of homosexuals partying and defiantly flaunting their decadence in New Orleans, Louisiana - the country's greatest record-breaking hurricane hit that city and totally flooded it, reminiscent of Noah's flood which was sent for the same reason. Since then God has sent more "record breaking" hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, earthquakes - judgments of all kinds on rebellious America and America's response has been to shake her fist at God and bring on even more depravity. God raised up men with great insight and wisdom and sent them to warn America that should she continue, her doom is all but written, but America mocks them. God has sent signs in the heavens, solar eclipses, lunar "red moon" eclipses, ALL falling only on Biblical feast days, and many other such signs openly and clearly declaring the coming judgment, but America has closed her ears and shut down her heart because she wants to be free from all accountability to the Word of God. The men of God who had been solemnly warning America have stated that America has stepped over the line into the place of no return, and her destiny is sealed. The judgment of God is falling, and few recognize it. One thing God does when he means to bring judgment on a nation is to put evil men as their leaders. That became so obvious with the installment of Barack Obama who unleashed all that is evil upon the people. America will go down. And her fall will be terrible. Millions upon millions will die. And go to hell. But until that day comes, or until the Lord removes his believers from this earth, we must not cease to reach out to America pleading with the people, if there be any left who can hear, "be reconciled to God that you may not partake in the terrible judgments coming (2nd Corinthians 5:20)." Noah preached this message throughout the time it took him to build the ark but in the end, they all perished except Noah himself and his family. The entire population of earth - all perished. They all died. Noah couldn't reach their hearts because they were hardened. So they all were destroyed. And the very rainbow that God placed in the sky afterwards, the sign of his covenant, is now usurped by the sodomists to defiantly declare their pride in their sin. America - will all die? Will all perish in what is to come? The United Nations is preparing Agenda 30, their goals for the global "New World Order." The agenda is to preserve the earth from "useless eaters" who are "consuming the earth's resources." The goal of Agenda 30 is to depopulate the earth. They intend to reduce the population of the earth by 90%. More than 6 billion people will die through government-engendered disease, "re-education camps," and the plans for this depopulation that we are witnessing right now, even though multitudes don't recognize it for what it is. Does this not sound like the judgment in the time of Noah when all perished? Will all perish in the judgments that are surely coming? If the Rapture were to happen now, is there any sinner left who might be saved? Or are all going to perish?