“The Shift” a Sci-Fi Thriller based on the Book of Job!

“The Shift” is an incredibly well written movie set in modern times but based on the story of Job in the Bible. This movie will have you sitting on the edge of your seat. The relationships of the characters are very authentic and most will identify with one or more of the characters at different times in your life.

This movie brings the supernatural to a new level of thinking for most Christians and will definitely grab the attention of the sci-fi fans as well. When Kevin Garner meets The Benefactor he is carried to the multiverse and the struggle between good and evil begins.

The very emotions that you can imagine that Job must have experienced comes to life on the big screen in epic proportions! In the movie Kevin’s personal life is under attack and his faith is questioned. He is carried thru the multiverse thru time and space. He even fights with himself! He meets many people along this journey some good and some not so good! Just like real life.

When watching “The Shift” you will feel all the struggle Kevin feels and will see the many temptations “The Benefactor” brings to try and break Kevin.

This is masterfully done and I believe it will appeal to todays audience whether Christian or not. I am purposefully being a bit vague because I do not want to spoil it in any way for you.

The cast is incredible with: Neal McDonough(Band of Brothers), Sean Astin(Lord of the Rings/Rudy), Kristopher Polaha(Wonder Woman 1984), Rose Reid(Finding You), John Billingsley(Star Trek: Enterprise), Emily Rose(Haven) and from (The Chosen) Liz Tabish, Paras Patel and Jorden Walker Ross.

This movie also has discussion guides prepared for your use as well as a five day reading plan that can be accessed in the website.

We are being blessed with another Angel Studio’s movie that is highly entertaining and very powerful! “The Shift” will touch lives that tradition will not. Now is the time for churches to embrace this as a great opportunity to reach the lost and offer hope to many who may never enter their church!

To learn more and get advanced tickets : Click Here

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CHAPTER 3 BECOMING A VESSEL OF HONOUR

 

By: Pastor Joshua Gwara Omolo, Kenya, Africa


2Timothy 2: 20: – But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of
wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purges
himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the master’s use,
and prepared unto every good work
Definition of a vessel
The word vessel is often used in the Bible, and in English terms it translates to be either a
container such as a bowl or a jug, or either a ship or a boat. The Biblical meaning denotes a
person whom God calls and uses as a vessel.
God’s plan to all mankind is to use men for a special purpose and special calling to fulfill the
purposes of God. The primary purpose of God to all men is to worship God in truth and in the
Spirit.There are also numerous advantages and blessings that accompany the when an
individual accepts to be used by God as a vessel, there is a special level of honour and favor that
manifest when a believer choses to obey God’s command to be used by Him and those
blessings comes in handy to remove the shortcomings in the life of the carrier of the grace of
honour.
The power of being a vessel of honour
Some challenges can only persist in your life simply because you are yet to yield to the calling of
God. Becoming a vessel of honour is a choice in life. A person who has chosen to accept God’s
calling has the opportunity to undergo divine transformation process that leads to experience
of honour and favour from God. Greatness in life can only manifest in the life of a man who is
able to accommodate the process of sanctification and transformation that comes from God.
The call of Simon Peter by Jesus is what led him to be transformed from being a fisherman to
being an Apostle (fishers of men), “a chosen vessel.” The word “chosen” implies that he was
special, precious, valued and prized. Even before Peter started serving God he was special in
the eyes of the Lord.. Jesus is on record telling Peter, “follow me and I will make you fishers of
men” (Mark 1:16-20) and that comes with honour. All of us are very special to the Lord. All of us
have great value to God. We possess certain uniqueness in us different from the other people
around us.

The Purpose Driven Life
The purpose as to why God created man is to serve God. Our worship to God is the number one
assignment in life. Our God the father of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ is very categorical in
His word when He says in the book of John 4:23 – Yet a time is coming and now has come when
the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of
worshippers the Father seeks. God is looking for true worshipers whose hearts are inclined to
the word of God, this therefore calls for mankind to offer himself as a living sacrifice.
Our worship to God is always hindered due to the fallen nature of mankind. There are many
things in our life that requires purging for God to use us as vessels of honour; for us to become
carriers of the divine power of God it requires total sacrifice where we should purpose to live
selfless life fully dedicated to the master’s need. The need for us to purge ourselves from the
carnal desires is extremely important in order to create sufficient space for the Spirit of God to
sanctify us in readiness for the work of God.
Learn to purge yourself by choosing to live a holy life
Holiness is a choice and not a chance in life. The reward that comes with it is beyond
imagination. Holiness is the pillar on which God’s divine promises to successful life is pegged
on. The Bible says without holiness it is impossible to please God. We can engage in so many
activities in life but without holiness then all that we are doing is exercise in futility. There is
need for our value systems to go through serious purging process for us to be transformed to
be like Christ.
We carry a lot of dry bones within us after the fall of man and the process of sanctification is
inevitable for the purpose of our transformation.
The old nature which was the nature of the sinful man cannot qualify to become a vessel of
honour that can be entrusted by God to carry his glory. True believers must purpose to become
intentional faithful worshippers and deliberately invest serious capital in quality work of
spiritual development in order to acquire the gold status in the kingdom of God (Phil 2:12 –
work out your salvation with fear and trembling).
Kingdom of God operates on reward system
Salvation is purely by grace but the rewards from God are based on the good works. The
faithful followers of Christ must desire to live a life like Christ himself. Purging process is that
step of choosing to say no to ungodly behaviors and to say yes to those things that glorifies
God. Our salvation requires quality investment on character development. We need to be
accountable to one another, the church needs to develop the habit of reading and studying the

Bible. Application of the word in our day to day walk with Christ is the main proof of a new life
in Christ Jesus. Let every believer in Christ Jesus learn to not only hear the word but also
become doers of the word; meditating on the word day and night in order to make the word of
God dwell in us richly is key to spiritual development. Every level in our spiritual walk with God
attracts a given measure of favor commensurate to that level and every believer has an
opportunity to choose the level they want to belong.
It is important to remember that everyone shall be rewarded according to their works. The
quality of your investment and the value of the materials invested. In Genesis 5:24 – Enoch
walked with God and he was no more seen; for God took him away. Enoch simply allowed God
to increase in him till there was nothing left of him that death could claim. We need to learn to
reduce so that God may increase in us on daily basis. Quality work on our personality and
interest’s that conflicts against the intentions of God must be purged for the Spirit of God to
sanctify us in preparation for the next level. We must learn to sacrifice our time, finances and
energy by giving them fully to the Lord’s service then we will increase in the knowledge of God.
Four levels of vessels/workers in the kingdom of God: –

  1. Gold
  2. Silver
  3. Wood and
  4. Clay
    5 Kingdom Principles to becoming a vessel of honour
  5. Arm your soul with the power of love – Mark 12:30-31 – Love the Lord your God with all
    your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…
  6. Guard your soul/heart – Proverbs 4:23 – Above all else, guard your heart, for everything
    you do flows from it
  7. Purge yourself – 2Tim 2:21 – those who cleanse themselves from the latter.., James
    5:16:- confess your faults one to another
  8. Avail yourself for God – Isaiah 6:8 – whom shall I send and who will go for us. (Mathew
    24:38-39 – For as in the days that were before the flood…)
    -Mathew 9:37-38 – The harvest is plenty but the laborers are few…
  9. Build Trust – Luke 16:10 -Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted
    with much.
    Love covers a multitude of sin. – Mark 12:30-31 – Love the Lord your God with all your
    heart….

Love is a person and it is the person of God. Love determines the wellness of the condition of
your soul. When your soul is sick then you suffer acute limitations in living a purpose driven life.
Lack of love creates a high level deficiency of passion to please God in everything you do hence
leading to boredom. When you hear people say that they don’t find a meaning in life the reason
behind is that love of God is not present in that person. Many people who commit suicide fall in
this category where they try to substitute the love of God with other substances which doesn’t
work at all. Love is a force of God, it has power over hate.
Two forces govern this world: the force of hate and the power of love. John 3:16 – for God so
loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in Him shall not
perish but have an everlasting love. Jesus was full of love and the Bible says he did good in
every place he went. Vessels of honour worthy to be used by God are supposed to be agents
and carriers of the love of God. The easiest way to defeat evil in the present world is to show
love even to your enemy.
We steal and cheat because we do not love. We commit immorality because we do not love.
Sex outside marriage destroys both parties involved. Government leaders embezzle public
resources because they do not love. In fact man sinned and channeled all evil into the world
because he chose to let go of God’s love. God is calling all men back to the first love through
effective repentance. Revelation 2:1-2 – Nevertheless I have this against you, that you left your
first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first work.. God
is raising case against the church in Ephesus about the lost love. Love is a force from God and
hate is a force from Satan (1John 4:7). You live in the light when you carry love. Just as light has
power over darkness so love has power over hate.
In the book of Hebrews 10:32, says “When the people were in the bloom of their first love,
were they enthusiastic! They put everything into their relationship. They yielded themselves to
God” The love for God surpasses everything in life because it is the core foundation of the
reason for our living. We are blessed the way we are today because of the great love God has
for us, and if we are indeed the children of God then we need to exhibit the same of the father
to the world. Ephesians 2:4-5 – But because of His great love for us , God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have
been saved.
Many wars and rumors of war happening in the world today are orchestrated by hate because
love is absent. Many families have become dysfunctional because there is no love. The
shootings in our public schools are happening because of hate. God is calling all men to
embrace His love by accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and savior over our life for us to experience
the true love of God, it is impossible to share the love of God without the salvation of Jesus
Christ. When we receive Christ Jesus then we can become a vessel of honour.

Guard your soul/heart – Proverbs 4:23 – above all else guard your hearts………
Self-preservation is the enemy number one to spiritual prosperity. When we quit thinking about
ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of
consciousness ( By Joseph campell). Self-sacrifice is the heavenly language and the truest
weapon to guard our heart. The Bible says in Mathew 16:25 – “For whoever wants to save his
life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it” We must learn to carry our
cross daily and follow Christ.
The heart of a man is the center piece of his/her personality. Every bit of the destruction of a
man begins at the point when the heart is corrupted through perversion. Proverbs 4:23 –
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Keep your mouth free
from perversity; keep corrupt talks far from your lips, let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your
gaze directly before you. The most effective way to guard your heart is by ensuring that the
four main gates in your body are properly manned. The two gates in human body are the eyes
and the mouth
Guarding your heart is essential in the context of sin because it helps you protect your inner
most self from the deceptive allure of sinful temptations. It involves making choices that align
with your moral and spiritual values, avoiding harmful influences, and striving for a pure heart.
In the Bible the heart is considered the seat of life or strength. Hence it means mind, soul, spirit,
or one’s full emotional nature and understanding.
Guarding your heart involves energizing your life with the transforming truth of God’s love and
God’s word. Never treat scripture like a collection of facts. Pay attention to all the instructions
given by God in His word. The servant of God Joshua was told by God himself to ensure to
mediate the word of God day and night and to observe to do all that is written in the word and
then God will prosper you together with your children. Listen closely to the word of God.
Engage in a routine spiritual service to clean your heart on regular basis by reading the word of
God which is the Bible and meditate on the word. Our character tends to follow the path of
what we constantly meditate about whether good or bad. When you form a habit of meditating
on the word of God then this will positively build high self-esteem. People who suffer low self-
esteem cannot perform to the expectation of their masters, as the Bible says in the book of
Proverbs 23:7 – As a man thinketh, so is he. This expression means that what someone says or
does is directly proportionate to what he thinks. The mind here becomes the primary breeding
ground for who we become.
The consequences of unguarded heart can manifest in so many ways for instance poor choices,
broken relationships, hurt and disappointments. But remember when we mess up and are not

the best version of ourselves, God is faithful to forgive and restore. The desire to press on and
walk closer to the Lord is all we need.
Purge yourself – 2Tim 2:21 – If a man therefore purges himself…….
Confession of our sins to God and one to another is the primary foundation means to purging
ourselves from sinful desires. You must make concrete and even extreme choices against that
which you have sinfully desired. There needs to come a time when you need to take a break
and move to a solitary place and call yourself to a meeting room where you dialogue with your
spirit, you need to reach a point where you take a vote on issues that matters not only in this
temporal life here on earth but also on matters regarding eternity. Self-assessment based on
the truth of the word of God is extremely important when you start evaluating your
performance in life. It is at this point that you can make independent decision which is devoid
of any human influence as the third party.
Vessels of honour are costly to make and they take time and a lot of sacrifice to produce. The
same principle applies when you reach a point where you must let go and let God have his will
and way in your life. Sometimes it will cost you to separate from some of the friends you value
so much. In some instances it will cost you to reject certain offers for the sake of Christ, but in
all these it’s worth paying the price for the sake of the prize ahead. I want to just remind us that
there is a crown awaiting those that will overcome in heaven, so there is need to keep
reminding ourselves this fact in order to make the wise decision to glorify God in all that we do.
I hope you believe in the say that goes, “in life no pain no gain”
Guarding your heart in essential in the context of sin because it helps you protect your
innermost self from the deceptive allure of sinful temptations. It involves making choices that
align with your moral and spiritual values, avoiding harmful influences and striving for a pure
heart. The reason David sang to the Lord saying, “Create in me a clean heart and renew your
right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). Only God can create in you a clean heart, all other human
efforts cannot achieve anything of this kind.
Allow God to constantly search your heart and show you if there is any evil that needs
attention. Always ensure that you carefully weigh your heart at all times to ensure it remains
pure. Prayerfully you can seek for God’s guidance and protection. Learn to set aside time when
you can dedicate yourself to the reading and meditation of the word of God so that he word
may dwell in you richly, this calls for discipline to overcome the temptation of being glued to
the gadgets and television.
It is prudent to learn to evaluate all information before you consume them. Social media is a
wash of much illicit information that comes with the intention to pollute people’s minds.
Pornographic images and literatures is a deadly poison to the heart.

Avoid rourmour mongering and spreading of lies and propaganda among your friends. Your
tongue must be bridled if you are to walk right with God. The tongue is a small part of the body
but it can wreak havoc if left unchecked at all time. All these are steps to becoming a vessel of
honour which God can use for noble purposes in the kingdom
Availability for God’s service – Isaiah 6:8 – Whom shall I send……
We are living in a very fast world where everything seems to be on the first lane, this culture
has permeated in the church where we are almost rubbishing the need for fellowship. Almost
everything is going virtual so much so that today many churches are having majority of their
members attending virtually especially after the covid19 effects.
Virtual fellowship is good but physical fellowship is better. We will never reach a point of
satisfaction by substituting our physical presence in the presence of God with gadgets. Jesus
second coming will not be virtual but physical, it’s the reason God wants you physically
regardless of your busy schedule. Hebrews 10:24-25 – And let us consider how we may spur
one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in
the habit of doing, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day
approaching.
God is looking for people whom he can send worldwide. The harvest is plenty but the laborers
are few because not many people are ready to avail themselves to be sent by God. Many
excuses that we keep on advancing cannot hold water at all. Some are waiting to serve when
it’s convenient, others are waiting till they retire then is when they can engage in the ministry.
Elisha was unable to stand mentorship of his master prophet Elijah when he tried to still hold
on to the things of the world and his people. Elijah had to rebuke him sharply that is when
Elisha saw the need to go back and slaughter the oxen then he came back and served Elijah
effectively and finally he got a double portion of his anointing.
You cannot become a vessel of honour till you refuse to remain an average Christian, carrying
average testimony, earning average income and living average life. God’s vision and dream for
you is abundant life (Joh 10:10 – The thief comes not but to steal, to kill and to destroy: I am
come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly). Double portion
anointing which was received by Elisha was as a result of total sacrifice and quality focus on the
things of God. Both your time and money are needed to be available for the Lord/s service.
When you serve God, you grow closer to Him. You learn more about His character and what He
desires for your life. As you draw near him he reveals more of Himself to you and gives you a
greater understanding of His will. Serving God also strengthen your faith and deepens your
trust in Him.

When you become available and serve God, you grow closer to Him and God promises to
establish your plans. You need to commit to Him every day and committing just means giving
your best every day to God. You don’t need to be perfect. Belong to a fellowship where you are
known by the leadership that you are a member. Participate in the programs of your church or
fellowship with the rest of the church members.
One of the best ways to know that you are available to the service of God is when the programs
of your church or fellowship are fairly accommodated in your diary. When you grow to the
point where you can decline certain rising assignment because you have already dedicated that
time to God in your calendar then that will be a sign that indeed you are available and ready for
growth. The only way you can be disciple to grow to maturity in Christ is when you allow your
spiritual mentor to determine a sizable portion of your diary. God through his servants who are
your mentors sometimes can change your personal plans you had already slotted in your diary
and you will not need to struggle so much to accommodate the God given instruction, which is
obedience.
The desire to make more wealth has remained today one of the main obstacle to availability for
God’s service. Many churches are struggling to gather sufficient quorum of congregation
because members are doubling from job employment to other businesses, many working for
over twelve hours a day in order to make the ends meet. Unfortunately the money is never
enough, this trend has turned around God’s plan where now people are serving money instead
of money being the servant to men.
Build Trust – Luke 16:10 -Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with
much.
Trusty deficit is a big challenge today not only among the spouses but also between man and
God. Many businesses have gone under based on lack of trust among the employees. Trust is
the currency that can never experience recession regardless of the season of life. Trust is like
the air we breathe, when it is present nobody notices; when it is absent, everybody notices.
Mistrust begets mistrust; trust begets accomplishment. Many pastor are struggling to accept
the concept of champions table because they are wondering whom they can trust with
sensitive information about them.
Many employees fail to get their promotions at their places of work because of trust deficit.
Majority of spouses have divorced because they suffered trust deficit in their marriage.
Corruption and economic challenges being experienced in many nations across the world can
be directly linked to mistrust among the leaders in government.
God is looking for men who can be entrusted with little so that they can graduate to much.
Always learn to do what you believe is right, even when others disagree, will lead others to

respect your honesty. Interestingly when building trust, you must be willing to upset others in
occasion. Do not be thirsty of affirmation from men if you want to build trust because most of
your decision will not be appealing to the majority around you.
Mathew 3:17 – And a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well
pleased!” This was God’s signature of trust He had on Jesus. Trust is the master key that opens
the strong room of great success that money cannot buy. Risking your heart by trusting
someone else to take care of it takes courage, and that’s the reason why when you choose to
trust another person, you step out of your comfort zone.
The Lord is telling us in Jeremiah 17:7-8 – Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, The man
who puts his decision based on the faith in God. The man whose value system is aligned to the
will of the Lord is that man who is ready to forego anything for the sake of relationship with
God. Abraham was ready to sacrifice his only son Isaac because He trusted in the Lord God.
When he fully obeyed God then it was counted righteousness by faith.
God wants to give you life of abundance, influence, greatness, confidence and balance if only
you trust Him. The journey of faith must begin with first and foremost trusting upon the Lord
Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior of your life. When you trust in the Lord he will give you
power to become the son of God. John 1:12 – But to all who received him, to those who
believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Trust in the Lord is the seed
that begets life eternal in Christ through the washing of the blood of Jesus. You can change your
life today by choosing to become trust worthy in all your relationships. Above all you can be
saved if you choose to trust in the Lord with all your heart, with your entire mind and with all
your spirit
Trust can be built by placing block after the other, and with gradual commitment till it becomes
a powerful tool to make you become a vessel of honour .A vessel that God can use to bring
glory to His name. You should purpose to use every tool given by God which is the application
of the word of God to build trust with God and with the people around you.

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The Iniquity of the Amorites is still Alive Today!

God made a puzzling statement to Abraham while establishing His covenant with the patriarch, linking the time that Israel would sojourn in Egypt to the behavior of one group of people. 

Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” (Genesis 15:13–-16, ESV)

Iniquity is easy enough to understand; it means sin, vice, or immorality. But what did the Amorites do that God found so offensive? Who were these people and where did they come from?

The Amorites first stepped onto the world stage in the middle of the third millennium B.C. The earliest known reference to an Amorite was from the ancient city of Shuruppak, dated to about 2600 B.C. According to the Sumerian King List, Shuruppak, about halfway between modern Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, was the home city of the last Sumerian king before the Flood. That king was either a man named Ubara-Tutu or his son, the hero of the Sumerian flood myth, Ziusudra, the Mesopotamian Noah.

Scholars disagree on the location of the Amorite homeland. There are two main candidates: One is Jebel Bishri, a low mountain range along the west side of the Euphrates River in central Syria. The other is the Diyala River valley, which descends from the Hamrin mountains toward modern Baghdad. This is the traditional border between Iraq and Iran, and between Arab lands to the south and Kurdish territory to the north.

There is evidence for both theories. One of the peaks in the Jebel Bishri range, Jebel Diddi, may be named for an ancient Amorite tribe, the Didanu (or Tidanu, or Tidnum, depending on when and in what language it was written). Or it may be that the tribe was named for the mountain. Either way, the name is important.

Estonian scholar Amar Annus has demonstrated that the name of this ancient Amorite tribe was probably the origin of the name of the old Greek gods, the Titans. That’s significant, because it links the Amorites and their worship of gods connected to the netherworld, such as Molech, Dagan, Baal-Hammon, and the Rephaim, to the sinful angels mentioned by Peter and Jude—the “sons of God” of Genesis 6:1–4, called “Watchers” in Jewish texts of the Second Temple period such as the Book of the Watchers, or what we know now as the first thirty-six chapters of the Book of First Enoch.

Annus also showed that the Watchers were known as apkallu in ancient Mesopotamia long before the Second Temple period. They were considered sages who brought the gifts of civilization to humanity on behalf of Enki, the god of wisdom. That’s similar to the description of the Watchers in Enoch, although the Jewish and early Christian view of “gifts” like weapons, witchcraft, and mating with human women to produce giants was considerably less favorable than in, say, Babylon.

How do Watchers differ from run-of-the-mill angels? Unfortunately for us English speakers, our language lacks the richness of some others. The word “angel,” borrowed from the Greek angelos (“messenger”), hides the fact that there are several classes or categories of angel, such as malakim (“messenger”), cherubim, seraphim, ophanim (the wheels of Ezekiel’s vision), and others. Based on the use of the term in Enoch, it’s clear that Watchers were especially powerful and exercised free will. Their decision to commit what they knew was a sin suggests that they also had knowledge of good and evil.

Not coincidentally, the Bible tells us that these rebellious angels were cast into Tartarus, just like the Titans of the Greeks. Although your Bible probably reads “hell” in 2 Peter 2:4, the original Greek names Tartarus as the prison of these spirits. Tartarus is a separate place from Hades, a sort of maximum-security hell reserved for supernatural threats to the divine order. Yet the Amorites (and their descendants, the Phoenicians), Greeks, and Romans continued to worship the old gods, especially the king of the Titans, Kronos (Saturn to the Romans, Baal-Hammon to the Phoenicians). Their offspring, the demigod heroes such as Perseus and Hercules, were, by definition, Nephilim.

By 2000 B.C., the Tidanu tribe had developed a reputation across the ancient Near East of being mad, bad, and dangerous to know—so dangerous, in fact, that the last Sumerian kings of Mesopotamia ordered a massive public-works project directed at these savage Amorites. The kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur, a mighty city-state in what is now southeastern Iraq, built a wall north of modern Baghdad 175 miles long, from the Euphrates across the Tigris to the Diyala. This wall, which one smart-aleck scholar recently suggested was intended to “make Sumer great again,” was built specifically to keep the Tidanu away. We know this because the Sumerian name of the wall literally translates into English as, “Amorite Wall That Keeps Tidanu Away.”

The problem for Ur was that it didn’t keep Tidanu away. More on that later.

So, the big question for scholars is this: Did the Amorites come from the middle of Syria, or did they come from northeastern Iraq/northwestern Iran? The answer may be “yes” to both.

Some scholars believe that Amorites, specifically the Tidanu/Ditanu, began migrating east from around Jebel Bishri sometime in the middle of the tThird mMillennium B.C., moving through northern Mesopotamia and northwest Iran before descending the Diyala Vvalley and entering Sumer from the north. Evidence suggests that Amorites lived farther east into what is now Iran than previously thought, possibly following their flocks through the mountains or setting up trading posts along routes that connected Sumer to people living east of Mesopotamia. Lapis lazuli, a blue stone prized in the ancient world, is still found mainly in northeast Afghanistan, and it was used in art and jewelry in Egypt as far back as 3700 B.C. Merchants hauling cargo through the mountains needed places to eat, sleep, and care for their donkeys, and it appears that some of those ancient caravan stops on the eastern edge of Mesopotamia may have been staffed by Amorites by the time of Abraham in the early second millennium B.C.

We’re limited in how far back we can trace the Amorites. While it’s clear that the Amorites had their own language, most of what we know about it comes from deciphering Amorite names. Almost all of the early written records from the places they lived are in Sumerian or Akkadian. For example, while the moon-god was called Nanna by Sumerians and Sîn by Akkadians, he was Yarikh to the Amorites. But when Amorites came to power across the Near East after 2000 B.C., government documents were still written in Sumerian or Akkadian, even in diplomatic messages sent to faraway countries like Hatti (the Hittites, who controlled most of modern Turkey) and Egypt. So, piecing together Amorite culture and history from tablets written in Amorite will probably never happen. Tracing their movements is only possible by identifying Amorite names in Akkadian and Sumerian records.

While it can’t be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, evidence suggests that the cult of Kronos, king of the Titans, began where the Amorites were first identified. Stories of the old god did not originate in Greece. Instead, evidence firmly documents the earliest worship of Kronos in northern Mesopotamia (southern Turkey or northern Syria), and older circumstantial evidence points specifically to Jebel Bishri, exactly where the earliest Mesopotamian records place the Amorites.

At the risk of sounding like a television presenter (oh, wait—I am one), I have to ask It’s worth asking at this point: Is it possible that the Titans, called Watchers by the Hebrews, made an infernal bargain with the early Amorites? Was this why the Amorite kings who ruled nearly all the lands of the Bible in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob traced their ancestry back to one Ditana, the legendary founder of the Tidanu/Ditanu tribe? Could this explain the pride of the Amorites who founded Babylon, whose magicians considered themselves masters of occult knowledge received from the spirit realm before the Flood? Is this why Amorite kings as late as the time of the judges in Israel summoned “the council of the Ditanu” from the netherworld through necromancy rituals?

More important: Is the child sacrifice demanded by the old god, Kronos (and his other identities, Saturn and Baal-Hammon), the reason the practice continues even today?

Almost five thousand years after they emerged onto the world stage, the iniquity of the Amorites is still not complete. The bad news is the Watchers/Titans were not the only gods they served.

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E.T. has been here all along!

God has blessed us humans with a marvelous ability to think—to reason, to “search out a matter,” which the Bible tells us “is the glory of kings.” Jesus even told us that we are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, and minds. Yet far too many Christians settle for two out of three, happily swallowing strange ideas based on nothing more than the unsubstantiated claims of dynamic leaders.

We all have a right to believe whatever we want. Just remember that some bad choices have eternal consequences.

God—YHWH, the God of the Bible—made sure that He left behind evidence for the hope we have in Jesus: eyewitness testimonies, archaeologists’ discoveries, and even the activities of demons themselves argue for the truth of the gospel.

Over the centuries, the principalities and powers Paul warned us about have played a long game, cultivating philosophies and doctrines opposed to their Creator. As human understanding of science grew, the Enemy shifted from portraying themselves as the true creators and masters of humanity to convincing the world, especially in the scientific West, that there are no gods, only highly advanced extraterrestrials. And since, per science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” those so-called ETIs have become, by definition, the gods we thought we knew.

Let’s give credit where it’s due: This strategy is brilliant. It appeals to our human vanity. If our gods are gods only because they have better gizmos, then we, too, can someday be as gods.

The principalities and powers, rather than compelling us to accept them as our masters at the point of a sword (or a ray gun), have spooled out line over the centuries, patiently waiting while more and more of us took their bait. Through spiritualists like Swedenborg and the Fox sisters, modern gnostics like Blavatsky and Bailey, occultists like Crowley and Grant, and storytellers from Lovecraft to Roddenberry (and we can add von Däniken and Sitchin to that category), a compelling message has been spread throughout the technologically advanced Western world: The spirit realm is real; we know who created you and where you go when you die; and your mission until then is to “work in the light.”

In other words, the spirits behind this movement have created a science-fiction religion. How do we know this? It’s a faith that promises to answer the Big Questions: Where do we come from, why are we here, and what happens to us when we die?

Remember, people who believe ETIs are visiting the earth outnumber truly biblical Christians in America three-to-one. The Enemy’s deception is working.

So, the recent fascination with “official disclosure” of the existence of extraterrestrials is something Christians must be prepared to address. The fact that we are not is a testimony to the lack of discernment among the Church today. Not only do we fail to recognize the Enemy, but most Christians in America don’t also even acknowledge the Enemy’s existence.

Knowingly or otherwise, the Enemy’s plans have been aided and abetted by the United States government, or at least by elements within it. The intelligence community’s use of UFOs as a convenient cover story is a matter of public record. Evidence for the IC’s role in famous cases like the Roswell crash or the non-existent underground base at Dulce, New Mexico (the Paul Bennewitz affair), to pick the most obvious, and the highly improbable links between people connected to early UFO sightings and the assassination of John F. Kennedy make it clear that critical thinkers should ask whether “official disclosure” might also be a intelligence op. Especially since we know that the U.S. military command specifically tasked with creating convincing deceptions, Joint Security Control, has been positively linked to the UFO phenomenon.

Next, we should ask why the UFO investigation community has been hijacked by hoaxers and New Agers. Why have serious researchers been pushed out of the way by those who don’t even try to hide their pro-ETI bias?

The big question, of course, is cui bono—who benefits? Who wins when the public buys into the idea that our gods are ETIs and that they’re coming back, if not here already?

If you have a supernatural worldview, which you should if you’re a Christian, the answer to that question should be obvious.

The issue here is that the ETIs aren’t coming back. They’re already here. They never left. The UFO research community, which has a black hole where critical thinking should be, more or less accepts the existence of aliens as a good thing. Why? The Age of Discovery, which was named by Europeans who did the discovering, didn’t work out well for the native peoples who were discovered. Why should we expect first contact to be like E.T. when it might be more like War of the Worlds or Independence Day?

For that matter, why do contactees believe what they’re told by these so-called ETIs? Assuming the channelers in touch with The Nine, Ashtar Command, and Ramtha the Enlightened One are hearing from something and not just playing us for fools, why do they think these entities are telling the truth? If they are hostile, would they tell us?

And if they’re friendly, why are they so coy? They’ve allegedly crossed interstellar space to get here. Don’t they have a radio? Webcam? Flare gun? Can’t they flash their headlights at us? Why do those who eagerly await “official disclosure” ignore basic, common-sense questions?

As Christians, we are commanded to test the spirits. Given the motives of the rebellious denizens of the unseen realm, the “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,” then a PSYOP like this is exactly the kind of thing we should expect. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

Beware, you “lightworkers” who serve the Ashtar Command. You know not what you do.

This gets to the heart of the matter. When we look at the evolution of ideas that form the core doctrines of the people pushing for official disclosure, the picture that emerges is much darker than they realize. For all their claims to spiritual enlightenment, the New Agers who dominate the official disclosure movement are mostly ignorant of the roots of their doctrines, a condition one scholar calls “source amnesia.”

It is no accident that the communications contactees have received from alleged ETIs have come through channelers instead of radios, telephones, or video screens. It is not a coincidence that the accounts of “alien” abductees are very similar to those of victims of satanic ritual abuse.

It is also relevant that Aleister Crowley, his successor Kenneth Grant, and the Round Table of CIA asset Andrija Puharich believed they were hearing from gods worshipped in Egypt three thousand years ago—and specifically, in the case of Crowley and Grant, the Egyptian god of chaos, Set.

Consider this: The gods of the ancient world are real. That’s not a guess, that’s biblical—and they’re under a death sentence. God has also decreed that those who put their faith in Jesus Christ will one day judge the angels. The only thing left for the rebellious elohim, the fallen angels who dared to rebel against their Creator, is to drag as much of His creation as they can into the Lake of Fire with them when they go.

And the conflict between the Creator and Chaos has been ongoing since before the creation of the Garden of Eden. Genesis 1:2 tells us the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters—waters that contained “the deep,” the abyss, tehom, or Tiamat, the Sumerian chaos-dragon. That’s the entity named Leviathan in the Bible.

Remember that occultist Kenneth Grant believed the god he channeled was Set, Egypt’s dark lord of chaos. Set was called Typhon by the Greeks, hence Grant’s religion, the Typhonian Order.

Grant further believed that horror author H. P. Lovecraft had tapped into that same spirit. And as bizarre as it sounds, it was Lovecraft’s fiction, and thus the spirit(s) behind it, that inspired Erich von Däniken to write the book that launched the Ancient Astronaut Theory, Chariots of the Gods.

In short, our culture’s fascination with ancient aliens may be a supernatural PSYOP in the long war between the god of chaos, Leviathan, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

While YHWH defeated Leviathan before creating humanity by crushing its heads, it is not dead. Its future destruction is guaranteed, however. On the Day of the Lord, “He will slay the dragon that is in the sea” and when He creates the new heaven and the new earth, the sea—chaos—will be no more.

Here’s the takeaway: Our God spoke the universe into existence and all that is in it, including the small-G gods who rage and plot against Him and His creation—meaning us. We shouldn’t be afraid to address the question of whether we’re being visited by ETIs or how to respond to a future announcement that aliens have just landed in front of the United Nations building.

Based on the evidence that’s been made public, and the chain of ideas leading from ancient Greek philosophers to the modern UFO/UAP phenomenon, we don’t believe ET has come calling. Ever. True believers in the existence of ETIs have been duped by smoke and shadows, buying into a spiritual deception wrapped in a pseudoscientific veneer.

It’s a pity. They’ve sided with the JV team. Our God not only created them, He created the stuff He made them with. That’s the God who captains our army. And you, dear reader, were created as His “imager”—His moral agent on Earth. And no matter what happens to you or to the world, that’s a job title you never lose, even if a genuine ETI lands a spaceship on the White House lawn.

Ancient astronaut theorists, New Agers, and atheists longing for answers to the Big Questions that don’t involve the God of the Bible will keep pushing the governments of the world to disclose what they know about extraterrestrial intelligences. The principalities and powers behind the thrones of this world may oblige them someday with an event that looks like official disclosure.

Just remember: You are created in the image of God. You are His image bearer on Earth. That’s a specific set of attributes inherent in, unique to, and inseparable from the human race. The arrival of something claiming to be from Zeta Reticuli does not change your status. It does not change the need for a Savior or the plan of salvation. It doesn’t change who Jesus is or why he died, and it sure doesn’t change the established historical fact of his resurrection and the victory it achieved over the Fallen.

In short, although we don’t think this will ever happen, the legitimate discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence should have no impact whatsoever on your Christian faith.

The disclosure of ETIs, ancient astronaut theory, and the old lie that is the New Age are just tactics by the small-G gods to lure unsuspecting and undiscerning humans to destruction. They deny the authority, identity, or existence of God, and offer instead the false promise they first rolled out in the Garden: Ye shall be as gods.

So, when you encounter the topic of Official Disclosure, please remember: We follow the One who created everything. Christian doctrine, and your worldview, is big enough to handle the “what ifs.”

After all, God gave us the definitive Book on the supernatural. The answers are in there if we just look.

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Building a Healthy Destiny Social Life

By: Pastor Joshua Gwara Omolo, Kenya, Africa

Definition of social life
Three words are important here; Society, social life and relationship. A society is a group of
people that have common factors of life, and are therefore able to, not only co-exist, but also to
live together. The predominant factor of life they share here being culture. The fact that they
share the same culture empowers them to live in harmony in almost every aspect of life. That is
society. Many pastors are living in loneliness detached from the society and unable to feel the
Social life around them hence the reason All propastors international is addressing this
challenge by encouraging pastors to form champions table where they can defeat loneliness;
this is meant to empower them to master the individual’s manner of integration into the
society. Every man needs to understand and create an inbuilt capacity to correlate with each
member of the society and experience mutual benefit from the relationship
The perfect Relationship
Relationship on the other hand can be defined as, “the way in which two or more people or
groups regard and behave towards each other, and it is the state of being connected. God
never intended that any man should live in silos as it is the norm in many societies today
especially in the cities around the world. The book of psalm 133 clearly demonstrates the divine
benefits that can be achieved when people live together in unity, God pours his unprecedented
blessings in such kind of a fellowship beyond anyone’s’ imagination Allow me to say at this
point that the vast majority of the human population today is faced with the big problem of
broken relationship not only with fellow men but also with God the creator of Heaven and the
Earth.
The society we are living in today has become largely dysfunctional due to multiple systemic
failures which can be attributed to the broken relationship between man and God. When God
created the first man Adam he said it is not good for man to be alone then Eve was created to
complement and social life of Adam in order to solve the challenge of loneliness by providing an
effective companionship and to enable them to reproduce
Every level of relationship in life has a specific mutual benefit which should be realized by both
parties involved. The intention of God the author of the perfect relationship was to empower
mankind to develop an effective social life which is also dependent on God’s divine
supernatural relation with Him God the father. Many failures in the life of mankind today can be directly or indirectly attributed to the broken relationship between man and God; it is for
this reason that Jesus the son of God came and died on the cross in order to restore back the
original relationship between man and God. Jesus died for us to show God’s greatest love for
mankind and to restore our relationship with Him (John 15:13). In Jesus, God has shown us how
much He loves us, even while we are still sinners. In Christ we are assured of His constant love
that will never fail; this is the solid foundation for our relationship with God
Four Steps to Redeem our Relationship with God

  1. Receive the Gift of God who is Jesus
    Our spiritual birth is the perfect point of mending our relationship with God the father (John
    3:3-8). We need to believe in our heart that Jesus son of God died on the cross for our sins and
    on the third day he resurrected from the dead, then confess with our mouth that Jesus is our
    lord then we receive salvation immediately (Romans 10:9-10). Our restored relationship with
    God is the beginning of our ongoing transformation into Christ likeness (2Cor 5:17). The perfect
    relationship with God leads to perfect relationship with men.
    Only God can redefine our dysfunctional relationships in the society today. Embracing other
    items in an attempt to fill the void of the broken relationship cannot suffice at all. Many people
    have chosen to fellowship with gadgets instead of fellow men, but still the void of loneliness
    remains. God is the author of perfect relationship and we must admit that He is the only one
    who can restore this broken relationship.
    Many other things like pets too cannot substitute the place of effective relationship with fellow
    men. There is nothing wrong keeping these animals but God’s original plan was for men to
    relate with fellow men in accordance to the Patten and guidelines given by the scriptures in the
    Bible. The ultimate goal in the whole mix of relationship is to establish eternal relationship with
    God, relationship that knows no barrier so much so that even death cannot conquer it.
    Definition of social life
    Social life is a relational ability with fellow man. Healthy social life is the ability to build a
    healthy relationship with fellow man. You build the kind of relationship that enhances the well-
    being of each party involved. Your relationship with fellow man is built in such a way that each
    party involved draws optimal destiny benefits. It is a relationship that enhances mutual benefit
    for everyone involved. That is a healthy relationship.
    Not all relationships carry mutual benefit. Many relationships we form with fellow men are
    platforms of being used, in the end, only the user benefits. Some are platforms of being abused.
    Abuse is abnormal use. And at times the relationships are platforms on which people use us for very wrong things. You meet a house wife whose husband has turned her into a punching bag.

That is abuse. And that is not a healthy relationship.
Giving as a building block towards a healthy relationship
God has provided a very elaborate and well detailed protocol on how to engage and build a
healthy relationship through the principle of giving. The culture of giving is the master key to
almost every success. One story share by all those deemed to be successful in the world today
and this cuts across the divide is giving.
Offer your body as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing unto God. This is your spiritual act of
worship. Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind (Romans 12:1). Since our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, God is
placing this non-negotiable terms and condition that His friends must surrender their bodies to
be owned and utilized for worship. Holiness is the act of individuals decision to separate
him/her self from any form of sinful indulgence, it is a choice deliberately made by the man of
faith to honor God with his body. The man of faith must learn to live according to the covenant
of the word. Failure to take this action of living a life full of sanctity is what is referred to
engaging in the patterns of the world. The world has its own culture and ways of doing thing.
Quiet often, the patterns of the worldly life is offensive to God because they are contrary to the
kingdom principles of living right with God.
The word of God says it more blessed to give than to receive. Acts 20:35 – In everything I did, I
showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the word of the
Lord Jesus himself said; “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” But the hard reality today is
that the culture of giving is diminishing by the day in every culture.
America became a great Nation based on the platform of giving, but the culture is diminishing
each and every day and no wonder some other the Tigger nations are emerging with such a
great challenge to the economy of the USA. The newly formed BRICS alliance has but one
agenda to sideline the US Dollar in order to bring down the US economy.
The great funding for missionary works that used to flow from America to Africa has reduced
significantly and the many churches activities in the outreach ministries in African has also
reduced marginally, seminary colleges that used to sponsor theology courses are turning into
commercial training institutions in order to remain a float. The Bible is saying that we should
not grow tired in doing good because it will soon flow back to us (Ecclesiastes 11:1 – cast thy
bread in many waters: for thou shall find it after many days)
All these changes are sponsored by the new emerging trend of the culture of materialism
where people would want to be defined by the wealth they own instead of the God they

worship, hence this has broaden the gap between the rich and the poor. Many economies in
African countries today project a grim picture of inequality; a quick profile of a society where
1% of the population owns the 99% of the wealth in the land while the 99% population are left
to survive on 1% of the wealth in the country, what a big shame and what a negative contrast.
Healthy relationship can never exist in such unequal society where majority of people die of
hunger instead of disease. A healthy relationship is a platform for sustainable peace. Peace is a
relational state of being. It is a state in which conflict has no power to access and shake your
relationship. A relationship that is attaining the state of peace manifests in conflicts being less
frequent. But the intensity of the conflict is also less and less. It takes longer to experience the
next conflict.
A healthy relationship has friendship. The Greek word ‘philos’ from which we obtain the word
‘friend’ means associate.
Friendship as a building block towards a perfect relationship
A friend is someone you associate with. When couples are friends, they tend to always
associate with each other. They keep each other’s company. Not only do you associate
physically, you also do so internally. You easily divulge the secrets of your hearts to each other.
The purpose of champion’s table initiative by the All propastors international (APPI) is to enable
pastors to embrace this intimate level of fellowship of sharing the burdens with one another
just the way Jesus did with Peter, James and John. Learning to be compassionate and caring; is
quite a challenge but its rewarding.
This is what we see in John 15:15-16. In the beginning of this Scripture our Lord Jesus
announces to his disciples that he is the true vine and they are the branches. Then he speaks of
the need for the branches to abide in the vine. In vs 13 he says, “Greater love has no-one than
this, that he lay down his life for his friends” Then in this portion of scripture, he says,
I no-longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead I
have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my father I have made known to you.
You did not chose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit”
Abraham became a friend of God and he was accounted as righteous in the eyes of God. The
tag of friendship comes along with unmatched favor that opens many doors in life. Our Gog the
father of our Lord Jesus Christ is very much alive to this kingdom principle of friendship. And the
scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for
righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God (James 2:21=23). There are many gates
that God is will open in your life if only you cultivate and appreciate this kingdom principle. The
friendship pillar requires one to be sensitive of the need of the other party.

Friends will be careful not to venture into areas that can easily offend their counterparts.
Friendship requires serious investment of quality time and support; using every relevant
material that can add value to ensure that it remains sustainable. God is calling for effective
worship done in truth and in the spirit. You don’t need to be perfect to engage friendship with
God; God is the one who will make you perfect through sanctification. God does not call the
qualified but he qualifies the called ones and you can be a part of the called ones only by having
faith in God as earlier mentioned.
Affirmation as a building block towards effective relationship
True friends celebrate one another whenever there is achievement. Acknowledging the
strength in your friend is a key to winning confidence of that friend. Affirmation is one of the
good mannerisms in building friendship in a relationship that can stand the test of time.
Celebrate your fellow pastor by pointing out to him the area of his strength even as you
cultivate friendship in you champion’s table. Spouse need to learn to acknowledge the strength
in their partners and that will remain as a pillar of trust in their holy matrimony. Leaders need
to learn how to commend their followers in the areas where their performance has exceeded
expectation.
Many parents have lost control of their children simply because they have never affirmed the
strength in their sons and daughters. In Mathew 3:17 – And a voice from heaven said, “This is
my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” This was a land mark statement loud enough to
erase any fear of doubt or contradiction about the identity of Jesus and his relationship with
God the father. God himself spoke expressly without using any messenger to send a very strong
message to the world that Jesus is the son of God and that God id well pleased with him. Our
sons and daughters are in need of similar affirmation for them to manifest and project their
strength effective in their generation.
Every man on the planet is born with a special talent and unique gifting. The challenge we have
in the society is that people are trying to compare and compete with each other instead of
complementing one another. Often many people have been broken and their self-esteem
destroyed because this same mistake of unhealthy competition. God’s plan was to ensure that
his strength is revealed in our weakness and this is the reason why we need to learn on how
depend on God at all times. Spouses can only walk the long journey of marriage successfully
when they learn to discover and appreciate the strength in their partners. The culture of blame
game and finger pointing which is common in many marriages is one of the main factors that
have led to collapse in many marriage institutions.

Effective communication as a building block towards healthy relationship
Dialogue is a key factor in enhancing effective relationship because dispute and disagreement is
bound to occur where there are two or more people. Proper communication channels and
communication tools must be put in place to facilitate this process. Effective communication
must ensure that that there is feedback as a confirmation that the message has been received
properly. The language involved must be made simple and understandable by the parties
involved, it must also be structured in a manner that is should contain elements of respect to
the consumer or receiver. Some of the other extraneous factors that can hinder effective
communication may include environmental stress factor like illiteracy, hunger, diseases,
insecurity and uncontrolled external information.
Jesus warned his disciples to be weary of the dangers the disciples were to encounter. In
Mathew 10:16 – Behold, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; therefore be as
shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. The message here was to prepare the disciples
psychologically so that they can be made ready for tough times ahead; it also contains
measures that the disciples were to apply in order to overcome the difficult situations they
were to encounter. The symbols used in the message (sheep, wolf, dove and snake) are to
create a clear and simple understanding of the hostility that would come their way.
The world around us is today has become more hostile to the people of God and the situation is
not going to get any better. The anti-Christ movements are now come out in the open to
declare that they do not want God. We believers must therefore come alive to this fact that we
need to engage the strategies of communications that were shared by Christ himself. We must
begin by establishing clear channels of communications in our households then escalate it to
the outer most parts of the world.
A good communicator must also learn first to be a good listener. Failure to listen to the
feedback can destroy a relationship. Believers often find themselves in this league where we
only want to speak to God all our thoughts and once we are done then we leave God’s presence
thinking that we are done with our prayers. Effective prayers must include listening to what
God is telling with regards to the petitions made before him. God is the one to determine the
final answer to our petitions hence the need to want to hear from Him. Parents must learn to
listen to their kids. The habit of treating kids like they must only follow what they have been
told to do without being given an opportunity to share their take is an outdated approach is
positive parenting.

  1. Admit that we are sinners
    The first step to restoration of the perfect relationship between men and Go is to admit that
    the life we are living is headed in the wrong direction. We must accept responsibility because of
    the bad choices we keep on making on daily basis. In the book of Luke 15:11-17, the prodigal
    son made a choice to detach himself from the father; we need to acknowledge the sins that
    separates us from God the father (Romans 3:23) and its penalty of death. But for many of us it
    is very difficult to come to this conclusion of admitting our sins, and we tend to hide or blame
    others for our sins as did Adam. We still try to convince ourselves that life is good even on the
    face of this massive failure we can see in our society today. Admitting our mistakes like the
    prodigal son is the first step to restoration of our relationship with God.
  2. Return to God in repentance
    We need to climb down from our ivory towers with a repentant, humble attitude rather than
    hiding and covering (Acts 3:19; Genesis 3:10; Isaiah 59:2). Returning to God through confession
    and asking for forgiveness of our sins removes the sin that blocks our relationship with Him.
    When we confess our sins before God he promises to forgive us (John 1:9), and forgiveness is
    what restores relationship that has been broken. The prodigal son did not just plan to get his
    relationship right with his father but he practically took a step and returned back to the father.
    Many people keep on with procrastination of their step to returning to God by harboring many
    unnecessary excuses. God is saying in the book of 2Corinthians 6:2 – “In acceptable time I have
    heard you, And in the day of salvation I have helped you,” Behold, now is the accepted time;
    behold now. The prodigal son humbly acknowledged, “I am not worthy to be called your son”
    (Luke 15:19). He was simply acknowledging that he did not deserve anything from the father.
    This is the kind of spirit that we need to wear for us to return back to God
  3. Recognize that God will lovingly welcome us home
    No matter how far we have gone, our loving God the father of our Lord Jesus Christ welcomes
    us home. There are seven things that the father does in the story of the prodigal son – looking,
    running, kissing, giving clothing and ring and sandals, and throwing a feast (Luke 15:20-24).

These acts are a clear illustration of the heavenly father’s love for sinners. The story of the prodigal son gives us a clear picture of our heavenly father who is always ready to forgive all sins no matter how deep they may seem to be. In Isaiah 1:8 – God says, “Come now, let us
reason together,” says the Lord though your sin are like scarlet, they will be as white as snow.
He is a compassionate and loving father who runs towards us to give us a hug. Let us embrace
this unmatched love. Let each one of us consider this outpouring love of God so that we may
receive of His great salvation.

  1. Receive the Gift of God who is Jesus
    Our spiritual birth is the perfect point of mending our relationship with God the father (John
    3:3-8). We need to believe in our heart that Jesus son of God died on the cross for our sins and
    on the third day he resurrected from the dead, then confess with our mouth that Jesus is our
    lord then we receive salvation immediately (Romans 10:9-10). Our restored relationship with
    God is the beginning of our ongoing transformation into Christ likeness (2Cor 5:17). The perfect
    relationship with God leads to perfect relationship with men.
    Only God can redefine our dysfunctional relationships in the society today. Embracing other
    items in an attempt to fill the void of the broken relationship cannot suffice at all. Many people
    have chosen to fellowship with gadgets instead of fellow men, but still the void of loneliness
    remains. God is the author of perfect relationship and we must admit that He is the only one
    who can restore this broken relationship.
    Many other things like pets too cannot substitute the place of effective relationship with fellow
    men. There is nothing wrong keeping these animals but God’s original plan was for men to
    relate with fellow men in accordance to the Patten and guidelines given by the scriptures in the
    Bible. The ultimate goal in the whole mix of relationship is to establish eternal relationship with
    God, relationship that knows no barrier so much so that even death cannot conquer it.
    Definition of social life
    Social life is a relational ability with fellow man. Healthy social life is the ability to build a
    healthy relationship with fellow man. You build the kind of relationship that enhances the well-
    being of each party involved. Your relationship with fellow man is built in such a way that each
    party involved draws optimal destiny benefits. It is a relationship that enhances mutual benefit
    for everyone involved. That is a healthy relationship.
    Not all relationships carry mutual benefit. Many relationships we form with fellow men are
    platforms of being used, in the end, only the user benefits. Some are platforms of being abused.
    Abuse is abnormal use. And at times the relationships are platforms on which people use us for very wrong things. You meet a house wife whose husband has turned her into a punching bag.

That is abuse. And that is not a healthy relationship.
Giving as a building block towards a healthy relationship
God has provided a very elaborate and well detailed protocol on how to engage and build a
healthy relationship through the principle of giving. The culture of giving is the master key to
almost every success. One story share by all those deemed to be successful in the world today
and this cuts across the divide is giving.
Offer your body as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing unto God. This is your spiritual act of
worship. Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind (Romans 12:1). Since our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, God is
placing this non-negotiable terms and condition that His friends must surrender their bodies to
be owned and utilized for worship. Holiness is the act of individuals decision to separate
him/her self from any form of sinful indulgence, it is a choice deliberately made by the man of
faith to honor God with his body. The man of faith must learn to live according to the covenant
of the word. Failure to take this action of living a life full of sanctity is what is referred to
engaging in the patterns of the world. The world has its own culture and ways of doing thing.
Quiet often, the patterns of the worldly life is offensive to God because they are contrary to the
kingdom principles of living right with God.
The word of God says it more blessed to give than to receive. Acts 20:35 – In everything I did, I
showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the word of the
Lord Jesus himself said; “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” But the hard reality today is
that the culture of giving is diminishing by the day in every culture.
America became a great Nation based on the platform of giving, but the culture is diminishing
each and every day and no wonder some other the Tigger nations are emerging with such a
great challenge to the economy of the USA. The newly formed BRICS alliance has but one
agenda to sideline the US Dollar in order to bring down the US economy.
The great funding for missionary works that used to flow from America to Africa has reduced
significantly and the many churches activities in the outreach ministries in African has also
reduced marginally, seminary colleges that used to sponsor theology courses are turning into
commercial training institutions in order to remain a float. The Bible is saying that we should
not grow tired in doing good because it will soon flow back to us (Ecclesiastes 11:1 – cast thy
bread in many waters: for thou shall find it after many days)
All these changes are sponsored by the new emerging trend of the culture of materialism
where people would want to be defined by the wealth they own instead of the God they

worship, hence this has broaden the gap between the rich and the poor. Many economies in
African countries today project a grim picture of inequality; a quick profile of a society where
1% of the population owns the 99% of the wealth in the land while the 99% population are left
to survive on 1% of the wealth in the country, what a big shame and what a negative contrast.
Healthy relationship can never exist in such unequal society where majority of people die of
hunger instead of disease. A healthy relationship is a platform for sustainable peace. Peace is a
relational state of being. It is a state in which conflict has no power to access and shake your
relationship. A relationship that is attaining the state of peace manifests in conflicts being less
frequent. But the intensity of the conflict is also less and less. It takes longer to experience the
next conflict.
A healthy relationship has friendship. The Greek word ‘philos’ from which we obtain the word
‘friend’ means associate.
Friendship as a building block towards a perfect relationship
A friend is someone you associate with. When couples are friends, they tend to always
associate with each other. They keep each other’s company. Not only do you associate
physically, you also do so internally. You easily divulge the secrets of your hearts to each other.
The purpose of champion’s table initiative by the All propastors international (APPI) is to enable
pastors to embrace this intimate level of fellowship of sharing the burdens with one another
just the way Jesus did with Peter, James and John. Learning to be compassionate and caring; is
quite a challenge but its rewarding.
This is what we see in John 15:15-16. In the beginning of this Scripture our Lord Jesus
announces to his disciples that he is the true vine and they are the branches. Then he speaks of
the need for the branches to abide in the vine. In vs 13 he says, “Greater love has no-one than
this, that he lay down his life for his friends” Then in this portion of scripture, he says,
I no-longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead I
have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my father I have made known to you.
You did not chose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit”
Abraham became a friend of God and he was accounted as righteous in the eyes of God. The
tag of friendship comes along with unmatched favor that opens many doors in life. Our Gog the
father of our Lord Jesus Christ is very much alive to this kingdom principle of friendship. And the
scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for
righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God (James 2:21=23). There are many gates
that God is will open in your life if only you cultivate and appreciate this kingdom principle. The
friendship pillar requires one to be sensitive of the need of the other party.

Friends will be careful not to venture into areas that can easily offend their counterparts.
Friendship requires serious investment of quality time and support; using every relevant
material that can add value to ensure that it remains sustainable. God is calling for effective
worship done in truth and in the spirit. You don’t need to be perfect to engage friendship with
God; God is the one who will make you perfect through sanctification. God does not call the
qualified but he qualifies the called ones and you can be a part of the called ones only by having
faith in God as earlier mentioned.
Affirmation as a building block towards effective relationship
True friends celebrate one another whenever there is achievement. Acknowledging the
strength in your friend is a key to winning confidence of that friend. Affirmation is one of the
good mannerisms in building friendship in a relationship that can stand the test of time.
Celebrate your fellow pastor by pointing out to him the area of his strength even as you
cultivate friendship in you champion’s table. Spouse need to learn to acknowledge the strength
in their partners and that will remain as a pillar of trust in their holy matrimony. Leaders need
to learn how to commend their followers in the areas where their performance has exceeded
expectation.
Many parents have lost control of their children simply because they have never affirmed the
strength in their sons and daughters. In Mathew 3:17 – And a voice from heaven said, “This is
my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” This was a land mark statement loud enough to
erase any fear of doubt or contradiction about the identity of Jesus and his relationship with
God the father. God himself spoke expressly without using any messenger to send a very strong
message to the world that Jesus is the son of God and that God id well pleased with him. Our
sons and daughters are in need of similar affirmation for them to manifest and project their
strength effective in their generation.
Every man on the planet is born with a special talent and unique gifting. The challenge we have
in the society is that people are trying to compare and compete with each other instead of
complementing one another. Often many people have been broken and their self-esteem
destroyed because this same mistake of unhealthy competition. God’s plan was to ensure that
his strength is revealed in our weakness and this is the reason why we need to learn on how
depend on God at all times. Spouses can only walk the long journey of marriage successfully
when they learn to discover and appreciate the strength in their partners. The culture of blame
game and finger pointing which is common in many marriages is one of the main factors that
have led to collapse in many marriage institutions.

Effective communication as a building block towards healthy relationship
Dialogue is a key factor in enhancing effective relationship because dispute and disagreement is
bound to occur where there are two or more people. Proper communication channels and
communication tools must be put in place to facilitate this process. Effective communication
must ensure that that there is feedback as a confirmation that the message has been received
properly. The language involved must be made simple and understandable by the parties
involved, it must also be structured in a manner that is should contain elements of respect to
the consumer or receiver. Some of the other extraneous factors that can hinder effective
communication may include environmental stress factor like illiteracy, hunger, diseases,
insecurity and uncontrolled external information.
Jesus warned his disciples to be weary of the dangers the disciples were to encounter. In
Mathew 10:16 – Behold, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; therefore be as
shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. The message here was to prepare the disciples
psychologically so that they can be made ready for tough times ahead; it also contains
measures that the disciples were to apply in order to overcome the difficult situations they
were to encounter. The symbols used in the message (sheep, wolf, dove and snake) are to
create a clear and simple understanding of the hostility that would come their way.
The world around us is today has become more hostile to the people of God and the situation is
not going to get any better. The anti-Christ movements are now come out in the open to
declare that they do not want God. We believers must therefore come alive to this fact that we
need to engage the strategies of communications that were shared by Christ himself. We must
begin by establishing clear channels of communications in our households then escalate it to
the outer most parts of the world.
A good communicator must also learn first to be a good listener. Failure to listen to the
feedback can destroy a relationship. Believers often find themselves in this league where we
only want to speak to God all our thoughts and once we are done then we leave God’s presence
thinking that we are done with our prayers. Effective prayers must include listening to what
God is telling with regards to the petitions made before him. God is the one to determine the
final answer to our petitions hence the need to want to hear from Him. Parents must learn to
listen to their kids. The habit of treating kids like they must only follow what they have been
told to do without being given an opportunity to share their take is an outdated approach is
positive parenting.

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Asymmetrical War at its Best

By: US Army Colonel (Ret) David J. Giammona

In my tour of duty in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan, I saw first-hand how our military operates in what it calls asymmetrical warfare, or what it calls “hearts and minds” operations. At its very root, asymmetrical warfare, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “is between opposing forces which differ greatly in military power and that typically involves the use of unconventional weapons and tactics (such as those associated with guerrilla warfare and terrorist attacks.”   

Without a doubt, the years we spent in Iraq and Afghanistan would be called asymmetrical, meaning it is not linear like in World War I or II. In those wars, there were front and rear lines of demarcation; in other words, at the front line, combat operations were taking place, and in the rear, supply lines, rest, and recuperation were taking place. Not so any longer. In asymmetrical war, combat is all around, and many times, it is hard to distinguish between the enemy and friendly. 

Asymmetrical also means that combat takes many forms and does not always include weapons and firepower, such as in the case of the “hearts and minds” operations. The Army used those types of operations in Vietnam to great success, and I was part of those types of operations in Afghanistan. 

What are “hearts and minds” operations? They are simply tactics to win over the population by giving them much-needed supplies such as food, shelter, clothing, and protection from the enemy. An example of that is when we went out to the tribes in Afghanistan and distributed warm clothes and food in winter. The tribal leaders were indeed grateful to us for helping them and their families. We did this on a regular basis, and this won over their “hearts and minds.” This opposed the Taliban, which used brute force, fear, and hardcore military tactics to force them into submission.

The United States military and government know how to use the media and other social media platforms for their own propaganda purposes to influence the American population as well. The CIA has been embedded in Hollywood for years to target certain segments of the population. It is a well-known fact that the Uncle Sam ads during World War II brought in hundreds of millions of dollars to the war effort along with millions of recruits and needed resources such as rubber, steel, and other war materials. 

In our book, The Military Guide to Disarming Deception, Troy Anderson and I have an entire chapter called “The Hollywood Deception,” in which we write about how we are all being groomed by the media to accept a one-world government, digital currency, the end of the world, possible alien invasions, and host of other events coming upon the planet. Do not underestimate the power of the media to persuade people to accept the new norms of culture. Just look at that influence in the last pandemic and then think about how it will be in the future as they “program” us to group think as in George Orwell’s book 1984. 

We, as believers, must understand that the spiritual and cultural wars we find ourselves in are asymmetrical; that is, they are all around us shooting at us from every direction. That is why it is imperative that we become battle-ready and prepare not only ourselves but those we serve in our congregations. I once interviewed Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of 1st Baptist Church of Dallas, TX. I asked him this question: “What do you think of pastors who are not preparing their people for these end times and the spiritual warfare that surrounds us?” His answer was extraordinary: “Colonel, I say they should be sued for spiritual malpractice.” 

I firmly believe that we have time, however brief it may be, in order to teach, preach, exhort, and educate our people through the Word of God to understand and prepare for the events that will surely take place. 

David J Giammona

President Battle Ready Ministries                                 

Cell: 931-249-9206                          

US Army Colonel, Retired Author/Speaker                     

https://facebook.com/giammonadavid

Web: https://davidjgiammona.com/

Web: https://battle-ready.org/ 

Twitter: DavidGiammona@GiammonaDavid

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A Journey into Our Judeo Christian Roots!

In our day where technology seems to take us almost anywhere by the click of a button. We want to invite you to an extraordinary event that will take you back in time to a bigger than life experience. On September 18 and 19th the full length feature movie “Route 60, The Biblical Highway” opens in theaters all across America.

Seeing this beautifully produced movie in Israel by TBN on the big screen is second to only being there in person. Linda and I have been to Israel and “Route 60” takes us on a journey where few are able to visit. With our hosts Mike Pompeo and David Friedman we are able to travel on the screen to places as special guests of Israel. All of these locations are rich in the history of our Judeo Christian heritage.

As I was watching the screening we were honored to see, it actually brought clarity to me about locations that we read about in the Bible. This movie brings to life where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and many of our heroes and prophets walked. We go with them to where Jesus lived and ministered to the masses. Mike Pompeo and David Friedman bring together the connection of Jews and Christians and how we are blessed to have such a common history.

The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and you will feel as if you are right beside them. Stepping into the past has never been easier and we are certain that even if you have visited Israel many times “Route 60, The Biblical Highway” will take you places and share some history you have never seen.

David Friedman as our former Ambassador to Israel and Mike Pompeo as a former Secretary of State were given this special opportunity to travel and see these historic landmarks and thanks to TBN and Mathew and Laurie Crouch we are able to join them.

Let us encourage you get your tickets early as we expect it to sell out everywhere.

Click Here to watch the Trailer!

Special Note: Our APPI Team wrote all of the Study Resources for “Route 60, The Biblical Highway”

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Chaos and Creation

The account of chaos—Leviathan—in Psalm 74 is a bit different from that in Genesis 1. We learn God is from old, working salvation in the midst of the earth (which again, at the beginning would have been only water). Then we learn God divides the seas (which, in Genesis, occurs in Genesis 1:6) and breaks the heads of the sea monsters, along with crushing the heads of Leviathan. Later, we learn God establishes the heavenly lights and the sun (which, in Genesis, doesn’t occur until the fourth day, described in Genesis 1:14–19).

            It is generally believed among biblical scholars Psalm 74 and Genesis 1 are likely polemics of the Baal Cycle. That is to say, they are attempts to take credit away from Baal for subduing chaos (Leviathan) and giving proper credit to YHWH for this and for creation itself. It is known from tablets found in Syria over the last 150 years that the Semites of western Mesopotamia, the Amorites and Canaanites, believed that it was their storm-god Baal who had subdued the chaos monster.

Thus says Adad, I brought you back to the throne of your father, I brought you back. The weapons with which I fought Tiamat I gave to you. With the oil of my bitter victory I anointed you, and no one before you could stand.[1]

            Adad is the actual name of the west Semitic storm-god we know in the Bible as Baal. (“Baal” is a title that means “lord,” not a proper name.) The excerpt above is from a letter from Adad through his prophet, Abiya, to the king of Mari, Zimrī-Līm. The god was apparently reminding Zimrī-Līm that the king had been restored to power by his divine favor, which included sending to Zimrī-Līm the clubs he’d used to defeat Tiamat!

            Another tablet found at Mari, which was located on the Euphrates River near the modern border between Syria and Iraq, confirms that the clubs had been sent from Aleppo, which was known as the “city of Adad,” to the temple of Dagan (the earlier spelling of the Philistine god Dagon) at the town of Terqa, south of Mari.

            While that’s a fascinating bit of history—think about that: the divine clubs of Baal were physical objects!—the point is that Zimrī-Līm ruled at the same time as Hammurabi the Great of Babylon, which is about the time scholars believe the Enuma Elish was composed, and at least four hundred years before the Baal Cycle. So, it appears that even between Baal and Marduk there was competition over just who defeated the monstrous god of chaos.

            We must remember, people in the ancient Near East would not have the type of scientific, literal, and material point of view we have today in the western world. Rather, their view would have been more symbolic. This doesn’t mean it is any less real or true, it is merely a different way of looking at the world. When we look at the sea, we think of ocean currents and marine biology. When they looked at it, they thought of Leviathan/Tiamat/Litanu, chaos, and death. Therefore, what we have in Genesis 1 and Psalm 74 is not a scientific description of how everything was created, but a symbolic polemic describing who gets the credit for creating everything. According to the Bible, it’s not Baal. It’s not Marduk. It is YHWH.

            One might wonder, if it is a polemic, where is the battle? It is true, we do not see an epic battle in Genesis 1. There is a description of a defeat in Psalm 74, but it is still quite different when compared against the Baal Cycle. The idea conveyed by the biblical writers is when YHWH of Israel started creation, these chaotic forces were already held in check. There was no need for a battle; Leviathan was already bound because the one true God didn’t need to fight.

This would have been considered a slap in the face to Canaanite religion and the inferior god Baal. It was saying YHWH is the God who is truly in control and always has been. YHWH restricts chaos, not Baal. If a Canaanite living at that time were to read the Genesis account of creation, he would understand instantly what the text was doing. It’s busting down Baal and lifting up YHWH as supreme.

            We see this same sort of thing in Psalm 89:

You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, you still them. You crushed Rahab like a carcass; you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm. The heavens are yours; the earth also is yours; the world and all that is in it, you have founded them. (Psalm 89:9–11, ESV)

This idea is repeated as an apocalyptic idea by the prophet Isaiah 27:

In that day the LORD with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea. (Isaiah 27:1, ESV)

In Psalm 89, Rahab is a name for Egypt but is also equated with the sea beast Leviathan. In Isaiah 27, we read of a time in the future where chaos is not simply subdued but is destroyed forever. Consider what John N. Oswalt’s commentary on the book of Isaiah says about this:

Most scholars today are in agreement that while the exodus events are in the center of the writer’s thinking, they are not by any means all that is there. Rahab is clearly a term for Egypt (cf. 30:7; and Ps. 87:4, where Rahab and Babylon are paired); so also the monster (or “dragon”) is a term for Pharaoh (Ezek. 29:3). But it is also clear that those terms are not limited to those historical referents. As is known from Ugaritic studies, the twisting monster is a figure in the struggles of Baal with the god of the sea, Yam, as is “Leviathan,” which is equated with the monster in Isa. 27:1. Given these facts, and the evidence that the myth of the struggle of the gods with the sea monster was known in one form or another all over the ancient Near East, one has reason to believe that Isaiah is here, as in 27:1, utilizing this acquaintance among the people for his own purposes. It is important to note that the allusions to Near Eastern myths in the Bible all occur after 750 B.C., long after the basic antimythic character of biblical faith had been established. Thus there is an appeal here neither to some current Hebrew myth nor to some original one, now dead. Rather, just as a contemporary poet might allude to the Iliad or the Odyssey, utilizing imagery familiar to his hearers but that is hardly part of their belief system, so Isaiah uses the imagery of the well-known stories of creation to make his point. It was not Baal or Marduk or Ashur who had any claim to being the Creator—it was the Lord alone.[2]

            The idea coming out of this comparison of Psalm 74 and Genesis 1 is that by the time the actual creation starts, Leviathan/Chaos is already subdued. This would seem to indicate in the text, at least in the mind of the writers of these passages, there is a lot more going on with Genesis 1:1-3 than what we are typically taught in Sunday school. We learn in the very first verse God created the heavens and the earth. However, what was that process like? What were the conditions? How long did it take? We are not told specifically, but we are given clues if we think of this as a polemic on ancient Canaanite religion.

            Whether taken as literal or symbolic, the texts indicate a creation story unlike anything most of us were taught in the Church, but it’s one that biblical scholars are very familiar with. The sea represents chaos, yet as we see in Genesis 1:2, chaos is already subdued by the Spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters. The battle was over before it began. Whether Leviathan is meant to be understood as a literal sea beast existing somewhere in spiritual existence or as a symbol for the very real chaos of nature is unknown. Perhaps it is both. In any event, the text allows us a little more freedom in understanding creation than what we may have previously been taught.

            There are other interesting things to pull from this idea as well. In Genesis, once the water was still and chaos subdued, God started to create order from disorder. This idea, order from disorder, is common throughout ancient near-eastern religious texts, yet the writer of Genesis gives proper credit to YHWH, the God of Israel. To the writer of Genesis, the other, lesser gods tried to usurp YHWH’s accomplishments and attributes, so he wishes to set the record straight.

            The main reason for reiterating this point is because there are occult/pagan circles today who follow doctrines related to “order out of chaos,” “as above, so below,” and others. Since, in our culture today, those are recognized as doctrines outside of Christianity, it is worth repeating the point of polemics here. It seems the writer of Genesis was dealing with a similar thing in his day, so to set the record straight, he gave credit to YHWH for these things instead of allowing the lesser gods to usurp and defile them.

[1] “A Prophetic Letter of Adad to Zimrī-Līm” (A.1968). English translations in J. J. M. Roberts, The Bible and the Ancient Near East. Collected Essays (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), ch. 14, pp. 157-253, “The Mari Prophetic Texts in Transliteration and English Translation,” and in M. Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East, with contributions by C. L. Seow and R. K. Ritner (ed. P. Machinist; Writings from the Ancient World, 12; Atlanta, GA., Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), pp. 21-22 (A. 1968).

[2] John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 341-42.

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Redeeming the Dry Bones

(Rev Joshua Omolo)

Ezekiel 37:1-4 – The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and he set me in the middle of a valley, it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, “son of man, can these bones live?”

The hand of the Lord was upon prophet Ezekiel and carried him in the spirit of the Lord and set him in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused him to pass by them around about. The bones were very many and very dry. Then the Lord spoke to Ezekiel asking, “Son of man can these bones live? Then Ezekiel answered, “Oh Lord God, you know”

Every life consists of dry bones in one way or the other. The many questions in our life which we do not have answer to is an indication of dry bones. Many times we find ourselves embroiled in certain complex challenges which we can’t establish solutions to them, this is a sign of dry bones that only God can provide the right prescription to solve the paradox. You could be walking through the top of the mountain of your life and you are wondering what this pastor is talking about with regards to the valley of dry bones, but I can tell you that at the end of every mountain there is always a valley. 

Your dry bones could be your dysfunctional marriage; it could be your son who is going through drug addiction or your endless cycle of financial challenges while to some it could be the spiritual instability. All these are signs of dry bones. God’s plan is to give life to these dry bones regardless of how big and complex they may seem to be; the truth is that they can experience breath of heaven and live again in Jesus name. The spoken word of life from a prophet of God is able to restore back to life any dream even from the grave yard in Jesus name.

The answer to God’s question to prophet Ezekiel was yes, the dry bones can live again and the answer God is giving you today is, “yes the dry bones in your life can come back to life if only you believe in Jesus”. Can you locate the dry bones in your life today? There is a need for you to identify the dry bones that needs to encounter divine prophetic utterance for them to experience restoration of life. In Africa, God is causing divine restoration of life in many faculties of our political governance and spiritual leadership systems so much so that the final face of revival across the globe is expected to come from Africa and this will impact the entire world. The church therefore needs to embrace global vision in order to hear clearly the prophetic voice of God in this age and time. 

Many Nations across the world will come to Africa to seek for solutions because God is already in the business of sending his true messengers with the special prophetic anointing to pronounce the end time blessing upon God’s people. Part of the reason why there seems to be an upsurge in the second scrambles for Africa by the western powers and the tiger nations is a confirmation the fact that God is lifting up the countenance of the dark continent.

 The current wide spread corruption in many countries in the continent of Africa will soon come to an end since God is raising a Joseph generation who are going to restore proper governance structure across the continent. The new breed of leaders will consist of visionary leaders both in the corporate and religious sector whose agenda will be to cause exponential economic growth. The new crop of leaders will be filled with the spirit of servanthood and they will no longer be lovers of themselves.

 The church needs to position herself for the great paradigm shift which is about to take off both from the economic and spiritual perspective. God is going to cause divine transfer of wealth to the house of God in a manner that has never been witnessed before. The continent of Africa which for a long time has been referred to as the third world will soon draw such a great attention and cause unprecedented level of huge investment from across the world. The global powers are soon going to develop such deep interest towards Africa simply because the so called Dark Continent has become a city on the hill. The church should not be left behind so far as this paradigm shift of interest is concerned. 

The dry bones in the valley were a sign of the sting of death, but now we have every reason to bless God because one of the primary goal and objective why Jesus Christ came to the Earth was to conquer death so that mankind can experience abundant life and receive life eternal, it is for this reason that we have come to discover the need to live above the limitation and threat of death. Many people today are going through serious limitations because they are dead even though they are still alive physically. Some have been told by their doctor’s report that they are suffering from terminal illness and that they are soon going to die. Some have suffered multiple divorce and they aren’t sure whether their marriage life will ever work. The time for the redemption of the dry bones of dead marriages has come to you today. 

I have a good news for you  from the Lord of Lords whose name is Jesus of Nazareth , the Bible says with God all things are possible (Mathew 19:26 – Jesus looked at them and said, “with man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”) Some doctors go to an extent of prescribing the number of days left for the patient to die. Diseases like cancer can be healed because all things are possible with God, premature death is defeated on the cross and now men can live to the fullest because Jesus has conquered death. The world can now celebrate victory over death by coming to Jesus and receiving him as Lord and savior in their life in order to experience abundant life through Christ Jesus, Hallelujah to the lamb.

Death is more spiritual than physical

Origin of death can be traced back in the Garden of Eden where the first man sinned against God and that marked the beginning of both physical and spiritual death. The spiritual death is the spiritual separation between man and God while the physical death is separation of life from the physical body. If you take a critical look at our moral decay today you are left to wonder where we dropped the ball of our value system as the body of Christ. We as a people are totally dead morally, living in a society whose value system is rotten. The practice of homosexuality and legalization of abortion is just but a tip of the iceberg. Our God is asking from heaven whether these dry bones can live again.

The spiritual challenges in life requires spiritual solution which subsequently leads to physical solution .The first spiritual death occurred when Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:17 – But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat therefore you shall surely die), this marked the beginning of the spiritual death which also gave birth to the physical death. The first person to experience physical death was Abel at the hands of his brother Cain. The incident of this death also marks the first time of the mention of the blood in the Bible (Genesis 4:10-11). In the same breath that the first occurrence of death led to the first mention of blood in the Bible so it is that through the blood of Jesus on the cross men have conquered death.

The cause of death begins in the spiritual realm before it manifests in the physical realm. Human beings need therefore to master the spiritual power from God that is able to provide abundant life that leads to eternity with God. The book of John 10:10 – The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, I have come that they may have life and have it in all its fullness

Death can also kill your name and that is the reason today some are called barren because they are carrying dead wombs, others are called orphans because they lost their parents, some are called widow because they lost their husbands. The story of the lame man from his birth who was sited at the beautiful gate paints a clear picture how death can swallow the real name of a person (Acts 3:11). The bible only refers to him as lame from birth. In the book of Joel 3:10 – Bible says, “let the weak say I am strong” God is simply giving us instruction to give ourselves the right name because that comes with power.

 I want to call upon you to make a choice from now on to refuse to lose your name because of the dead portion of your life. You could be suffering economic death till you are being called a poor man or a beggar, but the Lord is saying let the poor say I am rich. I decree and declare that you are rich in Jesus name; I decree and declare that you are healed in Jesus name. The situation you are in is just but a condition, but greater is he that is in you than him who is in the world. 

Your true name should not be determined by the environmental events or circumstances instead it should be determined by the great I am who dwells in the inside of you whose name is Jesus Christ of Nazareth. Jesus has the power of resurrection to bring back to life every vital dead part of your being. Every dry bone in the valley which God revealed to Ezekiel came back to life through the same power of God through divine prophetic utterance of Rhemah word by prophet Ezekiel. God has given every believer in Jesus Christ the power to exercise prophetic utterance over situations and circumstances. 

 The choice lies with an individual to decide either to speak life or death. Every believer in Jesus Christ has the power to prophesy over the dead bones in their closet and the Lord of resurrection will cause restoration of life to come into that situation in Jesus name. Broken families can be restored back to life through prophetic utterance. Only God understands the secret on how to win this battle against death. Deut 29:29 – Secret things belongs to God, But those things which are revealed belongs to us and our children forever. Death has robbed many people’s destiny due to ignorance and lack of knowledge. 

When the people of Africa were told that Africa is a dark continent, then the  great grandparents gladly accepted and till today the continent is still lagging behind despite the fact that its in Africa alone that we find the greatest deposits of natural mineral resources than any other continent in the world. Many of our political leaders also accepted the tag with gladness in order for them to use that as a bargaining chip to ask for aid and loans with greater chunks of it goes into their individual pockets.

 Africa has remained dead economically till today, our prayer now is that God is raising  a prophetic voice that is going to reclaim the glory from the grave yards and that is the reason we are saying that the dry bones shall live again. The church is moving to the next level where it’s going to operate in both priestly and kingly anointing in order to take dominion in the line of economic and spiritual investment.

5 Steps to conquer DEATH

  1. Receiving Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior of your life – John10:10 

Jesus Christ came on earth to die for mankind so that anyone who receives him as Lord and savior may experience eternal life which is full of abundance. When we receive Jesus Christ we get admitted into the family of God through adoption and become the sons of God. All sons of God have the gift of eternal life as one of the main inheritance and promises that God has given to his people. Believing in Christ brings legitimacy to becoming a member of the family of God, Jesus being the first born among many. 

When we get born again we receive the DNA of God the father who is also the creator of the whole universe, we then share with God the nature of immortality because our God who is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ is immortal. Yet to all who received Christ, to those who believed in his name he gave the right to become the children of God (John 1:12). Abundant life comes from Jesus Christ because he is the way the truth and the life… (John 14:6 – Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me). You can defeat the spirit of death by allowing Jesus to come into your life right now. One simple step to salvation is by making a prayer of repentance by asking Jesus to come into your life and save you. If you accept this message and you would like to accept Jesus now as Lord and savior over your life then you can make this simple prayer of repentance after me, say, “Lord Jesus, I come to you today. I acknowledge that I am a sinner. I have heard your word and now open my heart that you may come into my life as Lord and savior. Forgive me my sins and write my name in the lambs’ book of life. Thank you Lord for saving me, in Jesus name I pray. Amen”

Praise the Lord, now you are born again and you have become a member in the family of God

  1. Exercise prophetic anointing – Ezekiel 1:4 

All those who are born again  are endowed with the divine supernatural prophetic power in their life When you receive Christ then you become ordained by God to undertake divine calling and accomplish the will of God here on earth on behalf of the kingdom as an ambassador of Christ. The power of God operating in you elevates you to an extent that you no longer belong to yourself but you become a representative of the kingdom of God in all things that you do.

God commanded Ezekiel to prophesy to the dry bones so that they may come back to life. The great revelation from this scripture indicates that everything remained constant in the valley of dry bones until the time Prophet Ezekiel obeyed the instruction to prophesy. Your prophetic word has power to cause resurrection. God has given us the word in the Bible (logos) which is the letter of the law. In the book of 2Corinthians 3:6 – He has qualified us (making us sufficient) as ministers of a new covenant (of salvation through Christ), not of the letter (of written code) but of the spirit; for the letter (of the law) kills, but the spirit gives life. 

The spoken prophetic word translates the logos (law) into rhema (life) which means from law to life. Rhema is an inspired word birthed within your own spirit, a whisper from the Holy Spirit like the still small voice that spoke to Elijah in the cave. You need to prophesy to your condition of the dry bones in your life. Your circumstance has ears and it can listen to that prophetic word of God in your mouth. You have known for a long time that God can heal but now God is calling upon you to prophesy healing to your sick body in order to get healed in Jesus name. That troublesome boss at the work place does not need to hear a piece of your mind; he needs to hear a prophetic Rhema word of God for him to start seeing you from God’s lenses.

 Moses took the Rhema word to Pharaoh and God was able to back up every single Rhema word with the miracle working power. The power of spoken word can be traced back into the Garden of Eden during the time the time of creation in the book of Genesis 1:3-5 – And God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. God saw that the light was good…. When you carry the DNA of God then you have the capacity to speak the Rhema word. 

  1. Sacrificial Giving to God – (Romans 12:1)

Therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God – this is your true and proper worship

Men ought to serve God with their substance, wealth, talent and every resource that God has provided in their life. They need to demystify a certain notion that giving should be left to the rich amongst us. There isn’t any single person on earth who is too poor to give to God. The church must go back to the drawing board and rediscover her strength and take advantage of that same strength to serve God through giving. Peter and John while walking to the temple during the hour of prayer, they came across a lame man at the beautiful gate asking for money. But the two men responded to the lame man saying, “silver and Gold we have non, but that which we have we give unto you , in the name of Jesus rise up and walk and the man got healed instantly” They simply gave what they had and the man received his miracle.

Sacrificial giving was the first step that was taken by God in order to redeem mankind from eternal damnation. God gave his son Jesus to die on the cross with expectation that men may also give their life to Jesus in accomplishing this divine exchange. The death of Jesus on the cross took away our punishment of death which was brought about by the sin of the first man Adam in the Garden of Eden.  Our bodies are the temple of God where the Holy Spirit dwells. Every believer in Christ Jesus is therefore expected to stop living in sin after receiving salvation through Christ Jesus.

The world around us today has normalized immorality and it’s unfortunate that those who condemn immorality are the ones who are being vilified and are seen like they have lost touch with the normal trend of life. Legalization of abortion is now becoming a wide spread practice in many countries around the world, but it still remain to be a sinful practice because its’ murder. Life is sacrosanct at any given stage whether its’  a day old or a hundred years old, only God has the power to take it away since he is the creator of the same life. No one is allowed to terminate life in form of abortion in the name of human rights.

When we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice then we will learn ways on how to embrace moral and ethical standards according to the values of the kingdom of God. The Lord has promised that we will receive a helper in the name of the Holy Spirit whose mandate is to comfort us and to guide us along the journey of faith. When you learn to listen to the Holy Spirit of God in you then you will always live a holy life worthy and acceptable to God.

Always remember that you have a divine resident in your body who is the Holy Spirit. The challenge is that the stay of this resident can only be assured when we choose to handle our bodies in a manner that gives glory to God. As an ambassador of the kingdom of God, you need to learn to discover the culture of the kingdom that you represent.

  1. Discover the power of RESURRECTION – Phil 3:10 – I want to know Christ and experience the power that raised him from the DEAD

Experiencing the power of Christ’s resurrection should become your life style. One thing that is standing out, is that the power of resurrection is not a common experience with everyone except those filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. When God rose Jesus from the dead, men ought to learn certain things and one of them is that God is unlimited and he is all powerful so much so that even death cannot obstruct him from accomplishing his perfect will.

Lifespan of many areas of your life could be dead as we speak and buried in the grave yard. May be to some they could be going through dead vision, dead business, dead careers or even dead ministry. One thing you need to experience is to discover the power of resurrection that raised Jesus from the dead. The only way to discover this power is through Jesus Christ. Jesus being God himself understands certain things which no man can understand.

I Peter1: 3-4 – He has given us a new Birth into a living Hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Dead. When we get born again in Christ Jesus then we acquire a new identity that gives us an express ticket to heavenly citizenry. A new hope of eternity is created in you such that every faculty of your being that was dead prematurely is brought back to life.

The power of resurrection is so powerful such that no amount of human barrier can stop it. When Jesus resurrected from the dead, the power of God rolled away the stone which was used by the soldiers to cover the tomb. The power of God stuck the soldiers who were guarding the tomb and they all fell down till they lost their consciousness. I pray that God is going to release you to a new season of resurrection in Jesus name. Power in the blood of Jesus is the key to resurrection and divine restoration that you need to experience revival.

  1. Learn to Defeat the orphan spirit – John 14:18 – I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you

The spirit of orphan operates on the platform of premature death; the main objective of the spirit is to deny the carrier the opportunity to enjoy the blessings of helping hand from the destiny helper. Parental figure in life usually are meant to play a crucial role of mentoring their sons by walking sons through paths of many support systems in life. Orphans will therefore find themselves in a tricky position where they cannot have access to these advantages hence exposing them to a lot of disadvantages in their developmental stages leading to stunted growth.

God in his wisdom created these protocols that should make provision for support systems to enable uninterrupted growth into prosperity. When premature death comes into place it robs the sons an opportunity to enjoy the benefits of the parental mentorship. Many servants of God today are serving as lone rangers because the orphan spirit is obstructing them from locating the true spiritual fathers in their life. 

Jesus looked at his disciples and promised that he will not leave them as orphans, but he will send a helper in the form of the Holy Spirit. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to renew our minds to be like that of Jesus. When the filling of the Holy Spirit takes place in a believer it creates such a deeper understanding and releases special supernatural power that enables one to accomplish the divine plans of God without struggle.

Filling of the Holy Spirit – Acts 1:8 –But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the world.

The reason why you will find many Christians claiming today to know God but are unable to witness is because they are in need of this kind of power of the Holy Spirit. Some Christians will tell you that they fear approaching the world with the testimony of Christ, the reason is that they are lacking the filling of the Holy Spirit.

The majority of the disciples of Jesus Christ went into hiding after the crucifixion and subsequent death of Jesus. Peter the Apostle is on record having already denied Jesus three times and now he is suffering from a guilty conscious. Some of them are now back to their fishing career and have given up on everything about ministry.

Immediately on the day of Pentecost there came a great revival and resurrection of hope in Christ Jesus. Acts 2:1 – When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like that of a mighty wind came from heaven and filled the house and each of them spoke in tongues. And after this experience all the apostles came out to preach the gospel in boldness and more than five thousand people gave their life to Jesus. The Bible says they preached the gospel with authority. They did not fear anything because they were filled by the Holy Spirit.

Signs and wonders accompanied their ministration and the early church was born through this revival. The filling of the Holy Spirit will open a new frontier of new level to an extent that you will never lack again.

Spirit filled church is a power packed church. The capacity created through the filling of the Holy Spirit is what the present church requires in order to fulfil her mandate according to the will of God. Soul winning has been thrown to the back seat because the service has become more of a social gathering. God’s plan from the beginning was to raise a church that can impact the world with the power of God through enablement of the Holy Spirit power. 

The absence of the operation of the discernment spirit in the current is a clear testimony that the church needs to crave for the filling of the Holy Spirit. Many churches gathering today are trying to substitute the role of the Holy Spirit with certain human programs but to no avail. The church can only regain her impact by allowing the filling of the Holy Spirit so that effective ministry can be restored towards the end time.

The Lord’s desire is to speak to her bride which is the church; unfortunately the church is unprepared to hear from God because of lack of the filling of the Holy Spirit. The still small voice that carries the message of God can only be realized through enablement of the Holy Ghost. The power of revelation of the mind of God can only be accessed through the language of the Holy Spirit. The Lord of host is about to release the hunger for filling of the Holy Spirit.

Many battles in our lives as believers in Christ are meant to be carried out by the Holy Spirit. Bible says it’s not by might nor by power but by my Spirit says the Lord. Spiritual battles require spiritual intervention, Every time we are tempted to take over and handle the battles according to our understanding. By the end of the season we find ourselves loosing such battles because the Spirit of God has not been given an opportunity.

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Ancient Aliens and the God of Chaos

With popular shows such as Ancient Aliens promoting the belief that ancient gods were just
misidentified extraterrestrials, mistaken for gods by the men who met them, the world is now
very familiar with the Ancient Astronaut Theory. Many ancient texts, especially those from the
ancient near-east, are used to support this claim. Among the most used are ancient Sumerian,
Babylonian, and Jewish texts.
However, there are certain inconsistencies found within those texts which do not seem to
promote Ancient Astronaut Theory. For example, in the creation mythology of Baal, the gods
existed in a watery abode. Ancient Astronaut theorists might be tempted to think of this as a
water-world exoplanet. If this were the case, and if these alien gods communicated with
mankind, we should expect beliefs around those communications to develop within their culture
and religion. Why is it, then, large bodies of water such as the sea were more closely related to
concepts of chaos and death in these belief systems? If alien creator gods came from water-
worlds, shouldn’t the seas of Earth represent life rather than death? A closer look at the ancient
texts themselves can provide us a clearer picture of the whole story.
The Enuma Elish is the Babylonian epic of creation, also known as The Seven Tablets of
Creation. 1 All the tablets containing the creation myth were found at Ashur, Kish, Nineveh,
Sultante, and other excavated sites. The tablets date to about 1100 BC but there are indications
that they’re copies of a much older version of the story. 2 The myth describes the birth of the
gods, the universe, and human beings. In the beginning, according to the story, there was nothing
else except chaotic water everywhere. Out of the movement of the water, the waters divided into
fresh and salt water. The fresh water is identified as the god Apsu while the salt water is
identified as the goddess Tiamat. Through these two entities came the birth of younger gods.
The younger gods were noisy and troubling Apsu, so upon the advice of Mummu, Apsu
decides to kill the younger gods. Tiamat hears of this and warns her eldest son, Enki (sometimes
Ea), so he puts Apsu into a sleep and kills him. Enki then creates his home from Apsu’s remains.
Tiamat becomes angry over Apsu’s death and consults with Quingu, who advises her to bring
war against the younger gods. Tiamat gives Quingu the Tablets of Destiny, which solidifies the
rule of a god. Quingu wears the tablets as a breastplate. Tiamat then summons the forces of chaos
and creates eleven monsters to destroy the younger gods.
Ea/Enki and the other younger gods fight against Tiamat, but are unable to win the battle
until Marduk emerges as a champion among them. Marduk defeats Quingu and kills Tiamat by
shooting her with an arrow, splitting her in two. Marduk creates the heavens and the earth from
Tiamat’s corpse (half to make the heavens, half to make the earth). He then appoints jobs to the
younger gods and binds Tiamat’s eleven monsters to his feet as trophies. He then takes the
Tablets of Destiny from Quingu, thereby solidifying his reign.
Marduk then talks with Ea, recognized as the god of wisdom, and decides to create
human beings. He does this by killing the gods who convinced Tiamat to go to war. Quingu is
found guilty and killed. Ea creates Lullu, the first man, from the blood of Quingu. Lullu’s job is
to help the gods in their task of maintaining order and keeping chaos restrained. The story then
ends with a long praise of Marduk for everything he did. The entire story is about chaos being
subdued by the destruction of a great sea beast.
In other words, the sea beast is a symbol for chaos.
A similar story can be found in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle. Ugarit was an ancient city,
located at what is now Ras Shamra in northern Syria.

In the second millennium BC, the population of Ugarit was Amorite and would have
controlled roughly 2,000 square kilometers on average. 3 During some of its history, Ugarit would
have been directly within, or at least in close proximity to, the Hittite Empire.
Ugarit was destroyed in the early 12th century BC and its location forgotten until 1928
when a peasant accidentally discovered an old tomb. The area of the tomb was found out to be
the necropolis of Ugarit. Excavations have since revealed a city with a prehistory reaching back
to c. 6,000 BC. 4
Archaeologically speaking, Ugarit is considered Canaanite. 5 Arguably, the most important
literary document recovered from Ugarit is the Baal Cycle, which describes the basis for the
belief system surrounding the Canaanite deity Baal. In fact, Ugarit bordered the northern Israelite
kingdom and can be considered the center of ancient Baal worship. Of further importance is the
discovery of the Ugaritic language, which is closer to biblical Hebrew than any other Semitic
language. There are extremely interesting word-for-word parallels between Ugaritic myths and
passages in the Old Testament which show clear polemics (controversial arguments intended as
an attack on a differing belief or idea). As we will explore a bit later, we can read the creation
account in the Bible and see a polemic to the Baal Cycle.
The Baal Cycle isn’t as much about creation as it is a competition between gods to win a
position of rulership with the supreme god El. It describes a battle between Baal (meaning
“lord”) and Yam (meaning “sea”), and another battle between Baal and Mot (meaning “death”).
Yam is also called Nahar (meaning “river”) and is also described as a sea monster with seven
heads named Litanu (the Canaanite word for ‘Leviathan”). In the Baal Cycle, Yam is a symbol
for the sea and the forces of chaos, comparable to Tiamat in the Enuma Elish. Baal defeats Yam
and is declared king of the other gods, yet still under El. He is given the titles “the Rider on the
Clouds,” “Most High,” and is described as having everlasting dominion.
To a person in the ancient Near East, the sea was considered extremely dangerous,
chaotic, and even otherworldly. The sea is untamable, unpredictable, and wild. Sea creatures
themselves were considered symbolic portrayals of the place in which they lived: the sea. This is
the reason we see the symbol of the sea and a great sea beast/monster/dragon repeated in the
religious texts of the ancient near-east. To those people, there was no better representation for
death and chaos. 6 We even see this idea turn up in the Bible.
We are at least two thousand years and half a world removed from the ancient Jewish
culture in which much of the Bible was written. The best way to understand and interpret the
Bible is to put yourself in the ancient writer’s shoes. What was going on at the time of the
writing? What was the writer dealing with in terms of competing theologies? What was the
cultural environment of that time? By asking these questions and looking at the text through
ancient Near Eastern eyes, we can gain a better understanding of the scriptures.
This brings us back to the idea of polemic. As stated briefly earlier, a polemic is a type of
theological jab at a different religion or belief. These show up all over the texts in the Bible. The
idea was not always to give a literal account of something, but to attribute credit to the true God
of Israel, YHWH. For example, we find in the Baal Cycle the term “Rider on the Clouds” is
attributed to Baal. Yet, we read a response to that claim throughout the Bible as YHWH is
referred to in the same way. 7 Even Jesus Christ referred to Himself in this manner. 8 The point was
not to describe the oddity of God riding on clouds; it was to state that Baal was not the one in
charge. It is a deliberate swipe at the belief of Baal having everlasting dominion by taking his
title and attributing it to the true God, YHWH.
This is only one example of a polemic in the Bible. There are many others.

Some of the most interesting polemics can be found in the creation accounts of the Bible.
The idea of polemic will also help explain some different descriptions between these creation
accounts. For example, we can compare Genesis 1:1-3 with Psalm 74:12-17.
1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void,
and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of
the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Gen. 1:1–3, ESV)
Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea
by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of
Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. You split open springs and
brooks; you dried up ever-flowing streams. Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have
established the heavenly lights and the sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you
have made summer and winter. (Ps. 74:12–17, ESV)
Here, we have two very different sounding accounts. In Genesis, we learn God created the
heavens and the Earth; the Earth was without form and void; there was darkness over the face of
the deep; the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters; and then God began His creation by
creating light.
The account in Genesis establishes the conflict between God and primordial chaos,
represented by the sea and a sea monster, in the very second verse of the Bible. The word
translated “deep” is the Hebrew tehom. That’s a cognate—same word, different language—to the
Akkadian têmtum, which in turn is a variant form of Tiamat, the Sumerian name for the chaos
monster of the sea.
Why did the Spirit of God hover over the waters? Although there is no record here of the
conflict between YHWH and “the deep,” it appears the intent was to restrain something—chaos
itself.

1 All seven tablets, translated to English, can be read here: http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/enuma.htm
2 http://www.ancient.eu/article/225/
3 Pardee, Dennis. “Ugaritic”, in The Ancient Languages of Syria-Palestine and Arabia (2008) (pp. 5–6).
Roger D. Woodard, editor. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-68498-6, ISBN 978-0-521-68498-9
(262 pages).
4 Yon, Marguerite (2006). The City of Ugarit at Tell Ras Shamra. Singapore: Eisenbrauns. p. 15.
ISBN 978-1-57506-029-3. Retrieved 16 May 2015.
5 Tubb, Jonathan N. (1998), “Canaanites” (British Museum People of the Past)
6 For more information on this, refer to the Chaos to Restoration Lecture Series by Dr. Michael S. Heiser
at https://youtu.be/xUspLJjSjqo?list=PL52EgTwZYdvWlIxnSQphmeI8dDgE1mNde
7 Psalm 68:4 and Daniel 7:13, for example.
8 Mark 14:61-62

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Route 60: The Biblical Highway

Linda and I had the privilege to preview the movie Route 60: The Biblical Highway and were so excited to see how this movie brings to life our Judeo Christian history and heritage. Mike Pompeo and David Friedman host this wonderful documentary taking us along the highway in Israel, Route 60 which runs through the middle of the country from north to south.

Linda and I spent about 12 days there a few years ago and loved it however we never heard one word about Route 60 and the remarkable historic sites along this route. After watching the movie we felt like we needed to return to Israel and see it first hand but both of us replied that this movie was almost as good as being there in person.

Mike Pompeo and David Friedman walk through history showing the actual locations where Abraham walked and lived, where Joshua made a great altar, where Jesus walked was born and buried, plus much much more.

The movie brings to life the ancient Hebrew lifestyle and that this was how Jesus lived. It demonstrated the importance of Christians understanding our Jewish roots and ultimately what it means to be grafted in as Paul wrote. It was beautiful to see David Friedman an Orthodox Jew and Mike Pompeo an Evangelical Christian walking together discussing the history and the relationship of these two great religions.

Many people forget that Jesus was a Jew and he actually said to his disciples to reach out to the Jews first with his gospel message. He never said to leave and ignore them. He said to love them and share the good news.

This movie explains and shows where and how to start and that is with relationships! Until you understand your own heritage and history as a Christian, it is very hard to have an honest loving conversation with our Jewish friends and neighbors.

We loved this movie because it takes us right to where Christianity started, Bethlehem in Judea. Route 60, explains so much of the history of Israel before Christ that is essential to understanding Christ as a Jew and some of his teachings. Traveling back in time down Route 60 you actually feel like you are there and a part of something much bigger than you can imagine.

This movie brought a lot of the Old and New Testaments together very clearly and made people and locations real! I would suggest that every Pastor make plans to see this movie and to take the time to teach on the history and relationship of Jews and Christians. Teach on what is happening in Israel today and why the entire world is watching this tiny little country!

Finally, I would suggest if I may, take a group to see Route 60, The Biblical Highway and utilized the study materials that will be made available. Israel is the most watched and contested country on the planet. Jerusalem is the most coveted city on earth. Take the tour with Mike and David and see and hear for yourself why this is still true today. As they were both part of the making of the historic Abraham Accord a few years ago, they cover a lot more in what they say than any tour guide.

Finally, Linda and I pray you will be encouraged to pray for Israel and the Jewish people, and if possible take your own trip down Route 60! It will change your life forever!

Pastors and leaders watch this trailer to get a taste of what you will experience: Route 60

 

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Star Trek and the Nine

Without a doubt, Star Trek has been one of the most influential entertainment franchises
in history. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and others are iconic characters, recognized around
the world. Oddly enough, though, through the series creator Gene Roddenberry, the starship
Enterprise is linked to CIA mind control experiments, a group of “aliens” who claim to be
the creators of humanity, and—believe it or nothere we go again—the assassination of John
F. Kennedy.
Let’s back up to World War 2. During the war, Andrija Puharich, the son of immigrants
from the Balkans, attended Northwestern University outside Chicago where he earned a
bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1942 and his M.D. in 1947. Through an invitation from a
well-off family friend, who’d married into the Borden dairy family, Puharich found himself
in Maine in early 1948, where he established a research institute to pursue his interest in
parapsychology, the Round Table Foundation of Electrobiology, usually shortened to the
Round Table. 1
An early member of the Puharich Round Table was Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New
World and The Doors of Perception, a book about his experiences with mescaline (and the
book that inspired rock singer Jim Morrison to name his band The Doors). Puharich financed
his research with gifts from donors, one of whom was Henry Wallace, who’d been vice
president under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wallace, a 32 nd degree Freemason, persuaded
Roosevelt to add the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States—the pyramid and the all-
seeing eye—to the dollar bill. 2
This book isn’t big enough to hold a full account of what Puharich was up to for the U.S.
Army in the 1950s 3 , but the upshot is that he was apparently researching parapsychology and
chemical substances that might stimulate the human mind to reach into realities beyond those
we can normally perceive with our natural senses. And at one of his gatherings in Maine, on
New Year’s Eve in 1952, Puharich and his Round Table, working with a Hindu channeler
named Dr. D. G. Vinod, conducted a seance that apparently made contact with something
calling itself The Nine. 4 Thus began a truly breathtaking chapter in America’s mostly hidden
programs that searched for ways to weaponize the occult.
Some months later, on June 27, 1953, the night of the full moon, Puharich gathered
around him what was to be a core group of the Round Table Foundation for another
session with Vinod. The membership of this group of nine members—á la The
Nine—is illuminating. Henry Jackson, Georgia Jackson, Alice Bouverie, Marcella Du
Pont, Carl Betz, Vonnie Beck, Arthur Young, Ruth Young, and Andrija Puharich. Dr.
Vinod acted as the medium.
Imagine the Fellowship of the Ring, with government funding and a security
classification that was, well, “cosmic.” 5

This group included old money—very old money. The Du Pont name is obvious, but
some of the others were no less prominent. Alice Bouverie was an Astor—a descendent of
John Jacob Astor and the daughter of Col. John Jacob Astor IV, who built the Astoria Hotel
and went down with the Titanic. Arthur Young was the designer of the Bell helicopter; his
wife had been born Ruth Forbes. Yes, that Forbes.
Ruth’s previous marriage had been to another old money family that traced its roots back
to the early days of the American colonies, George Lyman Paine. Their son, Michael Paine,
married a woman named Ruth Hyde, and in 1963, Michael and Ruth Paine became friends
with a young couple newly arrived from Russia, Lee and Marina Oswald.
Yes, that Lee Oswald. Lee Harvey Oswald.
So. A Du Pont, an Astor, and a Forbes/Paine, in a psychic research group funded by the
U.S. government, communicating with… what?
And what was the monkey god doing there?
Dr. Vinod sat on the floor, the nine members of the group in a circle around him, with
a copper plate on his lap, prayer beads in his hands, and a small statue of “Hanoum,”
a Hindu god that the author believes to be Hanuman, the Monkey King. If this is so, it
is interesting in that Hanuman was a human being, a minister, before becoming divine
due to his devotion and courage. The half-human, half-divine image is one that
becomes more important and more obvious as this study progresses. Another
important aspect of Hanuman is his depiction in much Indian art as holding an entire
mountain in one hand (and a club in the other). When—in the Ramayana and during
the battle of Rama and Ravana—Lakshmana was mortally wounded, Hanuman raced
to a mountain covered with different healing herbs. Not knowing which one
Lakshmana required, Hanuman simply brought the entire mountain. Hanuman—as
well as his fellow monkey-men, the Vanaras of southern India—is often shown with
his hand in front of his mouth, signifying “silence” as well as obedience, in much the
same way western occultists depict Harpocrates. In this sense, replete with silence,
obedience, a club, and a mountain of herbs, Hanuman might easily have been the
patron saint of MK-ULTRA. 6
What an interesting coincidence, if you’re a coincidence theorist. Remember that Aleister
Crowley believed The Book of the Law was dictated to him by Aiwass, the messenger of
Hoor-Paar-Kraat—Harpocrates.
Anyway, The Nine disclosed that they wanted the Round Table to lead a spiritual renewal
on Earth, and eventually revealed that they were extraterrestrials orbiting the planet in a
giant, invisible spacecraft.
It sounds crazy, but remember that the group assembled that night included highly
intelligent, very successful people. And Puharich later wrote, “We took every known

precaution against fraud, and the staff and I became thoroughly convinced that we were
dealing with some kind of an extraordinary extraterrestrial intelligence.” 7 In other words, if
this was a hoax, it worked on some very smart people.
On the other hand, the decades-long career of Andrija Puharich suggests that it may also
have been a case of “leading the witnesses,” in a sense. He appears to have been a seeker
who, like Fox Mulder in The X-Files, really wanted to believe.
But it was more than that. The Nine declared, “God is nobody else than we together, the
Nine Principles of God.” 8
So extraterrestrial and divine. Remember that while the Round Table was hearing from
The Nine, Aleister Crowley’s acolyte Kenneth Grant was developing his occult system based
on an ET god from Sirius.
Dr. Vinod returned to India a short time later and contact with The Nine was interrupted
for more than fifteen years. Then, in 1971, Puharich discovered Israeli psychic Uri Geller.
Geller, best known for his alleged power to bend silverware with his mind, became for a
time the new link to The Nine. Through Geller, The Nine informed Puharich that his life’s
mission was “to alert the world to an imminent mass landing of spaceships that would bring
representatives of The Nine.” 9
Well, that didn’t happen. And Geller decided to move on in 1973, so Puharich had to find
someone else to bridge the gap between Earth and the giant, invisible craft allegedly orbiting
the earth. He eventually connected with former race car driver Sir John Whitmore and
Florida psychic Phyllis Schlemmer, who became the authorized spokesperson for their
contact within The Nine, who identified himself as “Tom.” 10
Puharich, Whitmore and Schlemmer then set up Lab Nine at Puharich’s estate in
Ossining, New York. The Nine’s disciples included multi-millionaire businessmen
(many hiding behind pseudonyms and including members of Canada’s richest family,
the Bronfmans), European nobility, scientists from the Stamford Research Institute
and at least one prominent political figure who was a personal friend of President
Gerald Ford. 11
Also, a member of Lab Nine in 1974 and ’75 was Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry,
who reportedly wrote a screenplay based on The Nine. Some suggest that concepts from the
channeling sessions Roddenberry attended surfaced in the early Star Trek movies and in the
series Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Before Lab Nine folded in 1978, the identities of Tom and the Other Eight were finally
revealed: Tom was Atum, 12 he said, the creator of the Great Ennead, the Egyptian gods
worshipped at Heliopolis, near modern-day Cairo. Besides Atum, the Ennead included his
children Shu and Tefnut; their children Geb and Nut; and their children Osiris, Isis, Set,
Nephthys, and sometimes the son of Osiris and Isis, Horus. 13

Connecting dots between Andrija Puharich, who was almost certainly a CIA asset during
much of the time he conducted parapsychological research, 14 and the volunteers of his Round
Table and Lab Nine, we can link the United States government (and specifically the U.S.
Army and CIA during the period of mind control research projects like BLUEBIRD and
MKULTRA), 15 members of upper class society from the East Coast and Canada, the creator
of the most successful science fiction entertainment franchise in history, extraterrestrials, and
gods. And not just any gods—the pantheon that included the chaos god, Set, who Crowleyite
Kenneth Grant believed was the spirit of the age.
Oh, yes—and the Kennedy assassination.
How do we wrap our heads around this? Considering that Puharich was likely doing this
research for the government and that he led the witnesses, suggesting to Geller and at least
one of his successors while they were under hypnosis that they were being contacted by The
Nine, 16 it appears that this was a long PSYOP to stir up belief in the existence of ETIs and the
return of the old gods.
To what end? For Puharich and his superiors, maybe it was an experiment into group
dynamics, or maybe a test of how people would react to the imminent arrival of
extraterrestrial visitors. Or maybe, as with the Paul Bennewitz case, it was an intelligence op
to misdirect the wealthy members of Lab Nine and their social circles toward an ETI
explanation for any unexplained aerial phenomena and away from secret government
projects.

1 Levenda, Peter (2005). Sinister Forces—The Nine: A Grimoire of American Political Witchcraft. Walterville,
Oregon: TrineDay. Kindle Edition, Kindle Locations 7603-7604.
2 Melanson, Terry (2001). “The All-Seeing Eye, The President, The Secretary and The Guru.”
http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/All_Seeing_Eye.htm, retrieved 8/14/17.
3 For that we recommend Peter Levenda’s Sinister Forces: The Nine.
4 Levenda, op. cit., Kindle Locations 7734-7737.
5 Levenda, op. cit., Kindle Locations 7765-7769.
6 Levenda, op. cit., Kindle Locations 7809-7815.
7 Puharich, A. (1974). Uri; a journal of the mystery of Uri Geller. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, p. 18.
8 Penre, Wes (1999). “The Council of Nine.” Fortean Times. Republished at UriGeller.com:
http://www.urigeller.com/plan-nine-outer-space/. Retrieved 8/22/17.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Christiane., Zivie-Coche, (2004). Gods and men in Egypt : 3000 BCE to 395 CE. Cornell University Press.
14 Penre,

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