Tag: pandemic

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Daily Manna Devotionals

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL,’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Last of XII Parts)

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL,’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Last of XII Parts)

The reader must bear in mind that this 12-part series, is based on the book, Great Controversy, entitled “The Impending Conflict,” that deals with specific changes and events of a combined religious and political nature that will gel around a specific religious and moral issue (not abortion nor LGBTQ rights) and morph into a national Christian movement in AMERICA, revealed in prophetic symbology in Revelation 13 as “the beast” that starts out with gentle and peaceful “lamb-like horns” but strangely changes into “one speaking like a dragon.”

What this unifying issue is, was revealed earlier in this extract from the same chapter (emphasis mine):

“As the work of SABBATH REFORM extends, this rejection of the divine law TO AVOID THE CLAIMS OF THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT, will become well nigh universal [the word catholic actually means “universal.”]. . . . Yet this very class [rejecting the law of God] put forth the claim the FAST-SPREADING CORRUPTION is largely attributable to the so called ‘CHRISTIAN SABBATH,’ and that the ENFORCEMENT OF SUNDAY OBSERVANCE would greatly improve the morals of society. THIS CLAIM IS ESPECIALLY URGED IN AMERICA, where the doctrine of the TRUE SABBATH has been most widely preached [since 1840-1844 when the first, second, and third angels’ messages of Rev. 14 began to be proclaimed successively to this very moment. It will soon “swell into the final loud cry of the fourth angel of Rev. 18]”- GC 567.

We end this series with his last paragraph:

“The dignitaries of CHURCH AND STATE WILL UNITE TO BRIBE, PERSUADE, OR COMPEL all classes to honor the Sunday. The lack of divine authority will be supplied by oppressive enactments.

POLITICAL CORRUPTION is destroying love of justice and regard for TRUTH [explains why lying appears to be order of the day everywhere, particularly in the venerated human institutions]; and EVEN IN FREE AMERICA rulers and legislators, in order to secure PUBLIC FAVOR [not the favor of a righteous God], will yield to the POPULAR DEMAND FOR A LAW ENFORCING SUNDAY OBSERVANCE. [Now mark this]: “LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE, which has cost so great a sacrifice, WILL NO LONGER BE RESPECTED.

“In the soon-coming conflict we shall see exemplified the prophet’s words, ‘The dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make WAR with the REMNANT of her seed, which [who] keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.’ Rev. 12:17, KJV.” – Great Controversy, E. G. White, 1911 ed., p. 582.

This ends this series but not our due diligence to study the prophecies in order to properly interpret current events and discern which is genuine or counterfeit to deflect our attention from the path forward laid out in the prophecies of the Bible, not the last-day “soothsayers and magicians” of “Mystery Babylon the Mother of Harlots and the Abominations of the Earth.”
God help us, NMF

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Daily Manna Devotionals

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL,’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part XI)

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL,’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part XI)

As the PROTESTANT CHURCHES reject the clear, scriptural arguments in defense of God’s law [as our consciences convict us to do here in our ministry, in spiritual and doctrinal harmony with faithful Seventh-day Adventists worldwide], they [the once-Protestant churches] will long to SILENCE those whose FAITH THEY CANNOT OVERTHROW BY THE BIBLE. [so they will resort to other non-biblical, unChristlike means and methods].

“Though they BLIND their own eyes to the fact, they are NOW adopting a course which will lead to the PERSECUTION of those who CONSCIENTIOUSLY REFUSE to do what the rest of the CHRISTIAN WORLD are doing [the “majority rule” of the ‘vox populi, vox dei”], and acknowledge the claims of the PAPAL SABBATH.” – E.G. White. Great Controversy, 1911 ed., p. 592.

If by now, we still rely on the natural propensity to simply “follow the crowd” and what is “trending,” and how many more “likes” and “followers” an idea or an influencer (whether religious or secular) has or boasts of, instead of being a “more noble Berean” (Acts 17:11), we are unprepared for what is coming with irreversible certainty, per Bible prophecy!

To be continued. God bless, NMF

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Daily Manna Devotionals

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part X)

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part X)

“And there was war in heaven: MIchael and His angels fought against the dragon, and dragon fought with his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found anymore in heaven.
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceives the whole world : he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Rev. 12: 7-9, KJV.

“Satan’s policy in this final conflict with God’s people is THE SAME that he employed in the opening of the great conflict IN HEAVEN. He professed to be seeking to PROMOTE THE STABILITY OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT, while secretly bending every effort to secure its OVERTHROW.”

NOTE: All revolutions to overthrow secular governments throughout mankind’s history, no matter how successfully historians (both real and those with a hidden revisionist mission to alter the truth) may glorify its cause, justify the devastation and human toll as “collateral damage” in the pursuit of a “more sublime goal,” hail its leaders as “heroes,” and those who died fighting for this “cause” as “martyrs”—-are not divine in origin in both aspiration and actions undertaken, but satanic, as the opening verses in Revelation cited above clearly reveal.

“And the very work which he [Lucifer] was thus endeavoring to accomplish, HE CHARGED UPON THE LOYAL ANGELS.

NOTE: The two-thirds of the angels who chose to remain loyal, and thus are in the majority, whom the Bible describes as “mighty angels” excelling in strength, are the very “ministering spirits” guarding God’s people against their once former fellow-angels-turned-into-demons and evil spirits. If only our eyes could be opened to see the spirit world surrounding us and the earth (Satan is also described as “the prince of the power of the air,” Eph. 2:2), we would see the battle raging non-stop between them since the fall, but “ten times” more intense in these last days (“Satan knows his time is short.” Rev.___) for the control of the hearts and consciences of mankind. It is as real yet far greater than the wars taking place on earth’s battlefields and warfronts, whether against nations or in the cities and neighborhoods.

“The same policy of deception has marked THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN [not Christian’] CHURCH [which we are tracking in our simultaneous, ongoing text-message series].It has professed to be the VICEGERENT OF HEAVEN, while seeking to exalt itself ABOVE GOD, AND TO CHANGE HIS LAW. Under the rule of Rome, those who suffered death for THEIR FIDELITY TO THS GOSPEL were denounced as evil-doers; they were declared to be IN LEAGUE WITH SATAN; and every possible means was employed to cover them with reproach, to cause them to appear, in the eyes of the people, and even to themselves [this is what “gaslighting” means], as the vilest of criminals.

“SO WILL IT BE NOW. While Satan seeks to destroy those who honor God’s law, he will cause them to be accused as LAWBREAKERS, as men who are dishonoring God, and BRINGING JUDGMENTS UPON THE WORLD.” – E. G. White, Great Controversy, 1911 ed., p. 391.

To be continued. Bless all, NMF

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Daily Manna Devotionals

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part IX)

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part IX)

So here’s what “the Spirt of prophecy, which is the Testimony of Jesus,” reveals in language a child can understand of what the prophecies already revealed, in their appointed time but in prophetic symbology and language that are “spiritually discerned” but not by the “carnally-minded.”

Resuming where we left off earlier, describing that all manner of calamities and disasters, actually as “visitations that will become more and more frequent and disastrous….because they have transgressed God’s law and broken the everlasting covenant,” here’s what follows:

“And then the great deceiver [Satan, the yet-invisible master mind, working through unnumbered known and obvious, as well as camouflaged and working in secret agencies, individual and institutional] will persuade men that THOSE WHO SERVE GOD are causing these evils!

The class that PROVOKED the displeasure of Heaven, will CHARGE all their troubles upon those whose OBEDIENCE to God’s commandments is a PERPETUAL REPROOF to transgressors.

“It will be declared that men are offending God by the VIOLATION OF THE SUNDAY-SABBATH; that this sin has brought CALAMITIES WHICH WILL NOT CEASE UNTIL SUNDAY OBSERVANCE SHAlLL BE STRICTLY ENFORCED; and that THOSE WHO PRESENT THE CLAIMS OF THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT, thus destroying the reverence for Sunday, are TROUBLERS OF THE PEOPLE, PREVENTING THEIR RESTORATION TO DIVINE FAVOR and TEMPORAL PROSPERITY [mark! temporal prosperity!].

“Thus the ACCUSATION urged of old [the past ages and dispensations] AGAINST THE SERVANT OF GOD WILL BE REPEATED, and upon grounds equally well established. [nothing new: history of prophecy fulfilled, will repeat itself as prophecy soon-to-be fulfilled]. (Here’s where the compounded Elijah-John the Baptist Experience will play out, antitypically):

“And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but THOU and thy father’s house, in that YE HAVE FORSAKEN THE COMMANDMENTS of the Lord, and thou hast followed BAALIM.” 1 Kings 18: 17, 18, KJV. (Baalim of Baal, was the SUN-GOD of the grossly -idolatrous ancient Phoenicians).

“As the WRATH of the people shall be excited by FALSE CHARGES, they will pursue a course toward God’s ambassadors VERY SIMILAR to that which APOSTATE ISRAEL pursued toward Elijah.” – Great Controversy, Ellen G. White, 1911 ed., p. 590.

To be continued. Bless all, NMF

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Daily Manna Devotionals

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part VIII)

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part VIII)

“I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Rev. 19:10, KJV. “And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Rev. 12:17. “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they who keep the commandments of God, have the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12.

From these three verses alone, all pointing to the last of the seven stages of the church since after Pentecost(Rev. 2, 3), clearly says that the church and people who are identified as keeping the commandments of God (not man) and have the faith of Jesus (not their “own faith”) are the “remnant of the church’s “seed,” therefore the remnant of the original church the 12 apostles founded with Christ, not Peter, as it’s Corner stone. The Rock of ages.

How but natural, proper and true to form and substance, that it is to this remnant of the original that Jesus Himself entrusted, as a divine bestowal, the last gift of prophecy, especially qualified as equal to the demand for the closing messages and work of the final revival and reformation to prepare the literal spiritual final generation of the church as well as warn the world of the close of probation, followed by the second advent of Christ. It is called “the Spirit of prophecy, which is the Testimony of Jesus.”

I share with countless sincere, diligent, prayerful seekers of the advancing light of “the present, testing truths” “as it is in Jesus,” the well-studied, proven-beyond doubt, experimental knowledge (still in full progress) that this last gift of the Spirit of PROPHECY, which is the TESTIMONY of Jesus was given to and through a humble, simple, grade 3 educated, sickly woman, when two apparently much more older, educated, and qualified men, one black the other white, declined the calling—-again, as the last of the special line of messenger-prophets (not in the class of the minor or major prophets, and certainly not in the line of the godly Protestant reformers of the Reformation whose main work was to fulfill Christ’s own prophecy recorded in His own mini apocalypse in Matt. 24.

Verses 21, 22 reveals “the great tribulation,”’ (not to be mistaken for the “times of trouble” in Revelation) would be “shortened for the elect’s sake lest there be no flesh saved.”

The Reformation in the 16th century brought the bloody Dark Ages of the papal rule over the world about 5o years before it ended, according to the 1260-day prophecy with the capture and imprisonment of Pope Pius VI by Berthier, general of Napoleon’s French Republican army.

To be continued as to what the Spirit of prophecy says His people should expect, prepare for, and not be blind-sided again, as the Covid pandemic shamefully revealed, exposing our lack of knowledge of God’s word, and the consequent faithless faith! Bless all, NMF

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Daily Manna Devotionals

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL,’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS?

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL,’ IF AND WHEN THE COVID PANDEMIC ENDS?

The end-time, line of prophecy, combined Elijah-and-John- the-Baptist messages and work, in their respective dispensations, generations, times and places, one following and building up on the former, are the cumulative, prophesied magnified content and burden of the worldwide closing messages and work of the Third angel of Revelation 14 for these last days.

Their messages and combination work of revival and reformation, either as a last attempt to “snatch” Israel (of the ten northern tribes) from the brink of their terminal-stage apostasy, or to warn the Jewish nation, the chosen people, whose religious leaders were called a “generation of vipers” (deadly venomous snakes). John the Baptist “warned to flee the wrath to come,” by bringing forth fruit meet (worthy) of repentance.” This was the necessary preparation for the promised-by-way-of-prophecy Messiah to come.

They had to be “purged” by the “fiery baptism of the Holy Spirit or else be reserved to be “burned as chaff with unquenchable fire” in the cleansing fires of the last days as the final reward of unjust and wicked. (Note: both messenger-prophets accomplished their work but those warned, rejected them and their messages, in fact and truth, they rejected God, the Giver of the messages. The few of accepted it, carried forward the lighted candlestick of truth, its flame “a light to the feet and a lamp to the path ahead in march of time).

These two messenger-prophets’ messages-work were so pivotal in the preservation and progress of the plan of redemption in the Old and New Testament dispensations that the they were designated by God himself as “messengers” first, then, prophets, in that order—describing the solemnity, gravity, and time-sensitive nature of their messages and the specific work it entailed in order to accomplish a specified divine purpose.

The Bible repeatedly emphasizes the necessity of establishing the truth “in the mouth of two or three [credible, harmonious] witnesses,” at the very least. These two, in this context, are Elijah followed by John the Baptist. (Note: the New and Old Testaments are also symbolized in apocalyptic prophecy as “two prophets” and “two witnesses” (Rev. 11:1-13 that belong to a distinct and separate line of prophecy within the 2300-days of Dan. 8’:14) and are never to be misapplied to either Moses and Elijah, as the hyperliteralistic Rapture, Premillenial, Zion-centric interpretation teaches, nor to Moses and Elijah (who appeared with Christ at the mount of transfiguration, to reveal to Peter, James, and John, three witnesses and thus to the world through their testimony, a miniature representation of the future kingdom of glory made up of both resurrects and translated saints).

Therefore, following the “two or three witnesses” rule in the continuum of the specific and special messenger-prophet line, who, in these last days, is the third and last of them—-to help prepare a people and warn the world of the events on earth and in heaven, leading up to the close of earth’s probation just prior to Christ glorious second advent?

It is absolutely essential to know who, based on the same Bible and its prophecies, as well as church and denominational history of the advent movement, because it is from this third and last messenger-prophet that we are basing our information and enlightenment as to what to expect and prepare for, post Covid pandemic or simply moving forward from hereon.

To be continued. Bless all, NMF

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Daily Manna Devotionals

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL’ IF AND WHEN THE PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part V)

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

WILL LIFE ‘RETURN TO NORMAL’ IF AND WHEN THE PANDEMIC ENDS? (Part V)

We often forget that Satan is at least six thousand years older than any mortal, was next to Christ in heaven, that is, among the angels who were created before man was. Lucifer was made as a covering cherub of “great white throne” of the invisible Father. Through his unparalleled wisdom, beauty and endowments that somehow got corrupted by “the mystery of iniquity,” he succeeded in convincing, through his consummate cunning and subtlety, one third of the angels IN HEAVEN to join his rebellion against Christ and the law of God.

Cast down to yet-unfallen EARTH after his defeat, Lucifer-now-turned-Satan (“that dragon and serpent of old called the devil”) proceeded to tempt Eve, in her perfect, sinless state in Eden using the same deadly cunning he used on the angels. All too sadly, he succeeded. Since that fateful day of the fall in perfectly beautiful Eden, the history of mankind and the earth fearfully and graphically reveals his work of devastation and ruin, and how man seems to have never learned to this very moment that “the enemy of God and man” is the mastermind and central power, working unseen in the spirit world on earth, working the ruin of man and God’s creation—but only as far as God allows.

We now read a revelation of what God’s commandment-keeping people should expect and be braced for spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically (which the rewards of faithfully practicing the true health and diet reform, will prove invaluable.:

“While appearing to men as a great physician [in his many disguises and impostures wrought through his agencies of both spirits and modern-day counterfeit faith and natural-remedy healers, etc.] who can heal all their maladies, he will bring DISEASE and DISASTER, until POPULOUS CITIES are reduced to ruin and destruction.

“Even NOW he is at work. [How? Where?] In ACCIDENTS (so they are not after all really “accidental] and CALAMITIES BY SEA AND LAND, IN GREAT CONFLAGRATIONS, IN FIERCE TORNADOES AND TERRIFIC HAILSTORMS, IN TEMPESTS, FLOODS, CYCLONES, TIDAL WAVES [tsunamis], AND EARTHQUAKES, IN EVERY PLACE AND IN A THOUSAND FORMS, Satan is exercising his power.

“He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and FAMINE AND DISTRESS follow. HE IMPARTS TO THE AIR A DEADLY TAINT, AND THOUSANDS PERISH BY THE PESTILENCE.”

If you think this is terrible news, see what follows:

“The visitations are to BECOME MORE AND MORE FREQUENT AND DISASTROUS. Destruction will be both upon men and beast. ‘The earth mourneth and fadeth away,’ ‘the haughty people…..do languish. The earth is also defiled under the inhabitants thereof, because they have TRANSGRESSED THE LAWS, CHANGED THE ORDINANCES [of God, not of man or the Church], and BROKEN THE EVERLASTING COVENANT [The Ten Commandments, Deut. 4:13]. Isa. 24: 4,5, KJV.”- Great Controversy, E. G. White,(1911 ed.), pp. 589, 590.

To be continued. Bless all, NMF

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Daily Manna Devotionals

THE COVID PANDEMIC, THE INTERNET, AND PRAYER

FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:

THE COVID PANDEMIC, THE INTERNET, AND PRAYER

This is a personal interlude in our running topic, as the title already suggests. It’s definitely not off-tangent nor non sequitur but rather parenthetical to it. Let me lead it off with this quote from Brian Stelter of CNN, which caught my eye as I made my quick morning scan of internet news on my smart phone. He wrote:

“On the internet, everything looks the same….Warping the public discourse, creating less space for the big stories and the big debates that we need to have.”

And I quickly add, “not only warping the public discourse”merely, “but creating less space” for God Almighty’s last merciful warnings of the everlasting gospel, contained in the most comprehensive and all-embracing messages of the Third angel of Revelation to the churches and earth’s inhabitants, before the only door of probation closes forever!

I have a rule which I now follow carefully (and recommend to you) which is based on the Bible principles of how and why we must “eat and digest the manna” of God’s Word, specially the joined-at-the-hip prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. The final edition of the gospel is not in Psalms or Proverbs, or Parables or the synoptic Gospels, not even the he epistles of the New Testament but in Prophecy!

The first angel “flying in the midst of heaven” with his message, meaning covering the whole earth, is introduced as “the EVERLASTING GOSPEL” announcing that “His hour of judgment has come,” imploring and warning all to worship the Creator of heaven and earth, as Adam and Eve worshipped Him on the day He rested from His completed, perfect work of creating. He blessed, sanctified, set apart, and gave this day a proper name, the Sabbath.

This rule is:
Never interpret prophecy by current events (particularly in these last days, as portrayed in the internet and digital platforms). Instead, interpret current events by the Bible’s prophecies (of which you must first be knowledgeable of, through diligent, continuous healing and progressive study, not merely in cadence with the drumbeat of the times, but ahead of it, as it was divinely-designed to precisely do for God’s faithful people).

This is how I have learned to discipline and allow my “feet” to be guided, when scanning the internet for late-breaking news headlines and stories—-which to quickly ignore, or what may be worth the time and effort to check out.

To this moment, I haven’t YET seen any real need to open any social media accounts. I will do so ONLY if and when unmistakably moved by the Holy Spirit, as experience has taught me. How many lies, false narratives, misinformation and disinformation-by-design, wild Bible-contradicting conspiracy theories that shockingly have gained a mysterious, bewitching, strangle-hold on, of all people, politicians, lawyers, law-makers, and worse although also prophesied, church-attending, praying, Bible-reading Christians! God have mercy!

I have resisted from the beginning, suggestions from well-meaning friends to go on social media. Thus far, I am not missing anything essential! And yet grave concerns of responsible members of society are decrying over the long, sinister, corrupting tentacles of another even deadlier “pandemic” that is steadily corralling the minds, actions, and aspirations of both young and old alike, as has never been witnessed before.

Influences and influencers of all stripes are leading unnumbered millions father away from the testing truths for the last days into a dark and bleak spiritual wilderness, another kind of “black hole” on earth, not in deep space, where the silent and unspectacular, yet salvation-giving light and “still small voice” of the Holy Spirit is at once blocked and silenced at the only entrance to the conscience of man.

By the spiritual template and testing standard of “the law and the testimony” (Isa. 8:20), the word of truth of the living Word, revealed through the written Word, “It is written, is the only safe way we can negotiate through the hazy maze of Babylonian confusion in these last days.

This includes how to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves” as we move among “wolves in sheep’s clothing,”discerning in alacrity and dispatch how, where, and when to “launch” into the swirling waves of the internet’s ocean of information and disinformation—-lest Eve-like, our eyes be dazzled, ears titillated by countless lilting voices, and our imaginations fired up to activate the brain powers to move the fingers, Ouija board-like, to follow the invisible lead, entranced, mesmerized, and ensnared by Satan’s unnumbered schemes.

Satan, working desperately “knowing his time is short,”’ through his evil spirits and wicked human agencies, working in tandem, knows where, when, and what our weaknesses and vulnerabilities are, even if we think we are doing things under the cloak of secrecy in the darkest part of the night. We forget that “the night has a thousand eyes”closely watching our every move. And they are not high-resolution, military-grade surveillance cameras!

Nehemiah, like Daniel (or vice-versa) knew the science of answered prayer. He followed the principle enunciated where God said He has “a time and place for every purpose.” When faithfully followed, God promises to “make all things beautiful in His and it’s TIME” and His WAY.

I recall our present lesson on how Nehemiah engaged in a LONG PRAYER period. Lasting four months, seeking and ascertaining God’s will, and claiming God’s promises since certain requirements of God had already been complied with. All these were the preparations leading up to the SHORT PRAYER at the precise moment of opportunity, which I call the CRISIS PRAYER OF A COMMANDMENT-KEEPIiNG SAINT.

As prophecy clearly reveals, it is certain that we are facing “more and more calamitous and greater disasters” as we near the final crisis. Instead of cringing in fear, discouragement, self-pity, and murmuring like the Israelites, we should rather take all these in the spirit of the working “faith of Jesus”’and view them as “special opportunities” to upgrade our prayer life and practices by “examining and proving ourselves”—not others “whether we are really in the faith” or just endlessly discussing or even pontificating upon it, to no avail.

Remember that Christ’s life of power was inextricably intertwined with His life of prayer. As the Life giver in the flesh, every breathe He took while on earth—with all the weaknesses and passions but not the pollutions of our fallen human nature—was both a prayer and a breathe of life!

This is what is meant when “He breathed His spirit”’upon the 70 disciples” before His death, resurrection, and ascension whence He sent the Holy Spirit, His “other Comforter” who descended upon the 120 disciples in the upper room, in the appearance not of “burnished-color dove,” but of “cloven tongues of fire.”

The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Godhead or the “Trinity” which is not a Biblical term but used by the churches to describe the Godhead, which is a Biblical term used in the epistles of Paul.

The Holy Spirit is not merely a Spirt “spirit” or “the breathe of Christ” as some who teach the fearful, Holy Spirit-grieving blasphemy that there is only the Father and Son that make up the Godhead!

Christ, our Pattern Man’s life was the quintessential model of a living, walking Prayer itself. Enoch’s life came closest to it; and he was translated to heaven without tasting the first death, as the very special reward for such mortals, even before receiving the “crown” that is eternal life.

Like Daniel, Nehemiah and the righteous men and women of the Bible, who “lived, moved, and had their being” constantly working for God through crisis after crisis, he knew how, when, and what to pray for——LONG periods of prayerful seeking of God’s will, in preparation for both revealed and therefore anticipated crisis to come, or unanticipated and unknown ones, and then the SHORT but “effectual fervent PRAYER of a righteous man that avails much,” at the precise moment of the crisis. This is also the more comprehensive explanation of what it means “to pray without ceasing.”

If for any reason whatsoever you may find yourself unable to pray as you used and ought to do in the morning, before taking on the “evils of the day,” here’s a short one I recommend from the pen of inspiration:

“Take me O Lord, as wholly Thine. I lay all my plans at Thy feet. Use me today in Thy service, Lord. Abide in me and let all my work be wrought in me.” Amen.

To be continued. Bless all, NMF