The Big Three
Part I
If you were to draw from your past memories and fill in the blank of “The Big Three”, what would come to mind? Depending on your age and other factors, you might include some of these answers to fill in those three slots:
Roosevelt--Churchill--Stalin
Chevrolet--Ford--Chrysler
ABC--NBC--CBS
Larry--Curly--Moe
Dean--McQueen--Eastwood
Father Knows Best--Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet--Leave it to Beaver
Linc--Julie--Pete
Kelly--Sabrina--Jill
Batman--Superman--Wonder Woman
Harvard--Princeton--Yale
Mrs. Partridge--Mrs. C--Mrs Brady
Spidey--Hulk--Wolverine
Star Wars--The Empire Strikes Back--Return of the Jedi
Ft. Gordon--Camp Pickett--Ft. Jackson
Blackstone--Crewe--Burkeville
This Is Us
And the choices go on and on.
If we were to spin the chronological dial to 2020 - what would your Big Three be now?
For me, I would base my prediction on three things we all know about, but may not have thought about their cumulative impact. I think this combined impact will become more profound as these events further merge and form a potentially catastrophic ball of confusion, discontent and ultimately intolerance that these United States may have not seen since the Civil War.
The first of this Big Three clearly would be the pandemic: the COVID-19 virus and all the ensuing deaths and economic devastation and disastrous disruption of so many necessary functions but also the health of our economy.
Second of the Big Three is undoubtedly the devastating and despicable death of George Floyd, which unleashed an underground seismic display of unresolved racial strife. This has made the Watts Riot of 1965 and the political unrest on the streets of Chicago in 1968 during our national Democratic Convention look like a walk in the park. A movement of “Black Lives Matter,” to a movement of “All Lives Matter”, to the infusion of militant and radical bands of pillagers and anarchists, have led legitimate and lawless protesters by the thousands upon thousands of both Americans and unAmerican subversives, all converging on our streets and cities to rightfully protest and to do devilment.
Now, to paraphrase the former President Bill Clinton's crime bill introduced in the 1990s, “Three Strikes and You're Out”, the concept seems ominously hanging over our country much like the ash and the debris from the eruption of Mount Saint Helen Back in 2008, or the choking haze of the current raging fires in our Pacific coast states!
I see America at bat with two strikes. In this version of our national pastime, if you will, there will be more than just balls being thrown--but no batter has yet to make contact and hit the winning run. At this point, all I can see is a national strike-out. The third ball being pitched will not only produce that gigantic national strike-out but a national call-to-arms as our new president will unleash untold amounts of celebratory energy that will be countered by an equal amount of energy of pure loathing, disgust and revenge of the most unChristian kind! No matter who is ushered into our White House for the next four years, the losing political side will dub it the House of Whitewash!
The way I see it, the country as it is poised right now will be unable to produce a winner at the “world series” Election Day—number three in this Big Three. In great measure, our mindset will not allow it! In the 2020 election, there will be no voters left in the bleachers! Like Dr. Seuss’ “Sneetches” who always wanted to be different, to gather their group together and become the exclusive “in” party, the other party was simply left out in the cold--booed, ballyhooed, badgered and treated with belligerence. No in-between! You have to be all or nothing! If you ain’t got no Star on your belly, you are simply a loser!
As far as one party even listening to the other party again, (Star-Belly to Blank-Belly), it will be near impossible. Again from Dr. Seuss’, for one of the opposing party members to listen to the other would be like one Sneetch saying to the other, different, Sneetch, “I will not listen in a house! I will not listen with a mouse! I will not listen in a box or with a fox! I will not listen here nor there!” Or anywhere! And I won’t have anything to do with whatever they want to say to me!
Because in their view of America, to interact with their words, like green eggs and ham (much less digest them and consider them), would simply be unacceptable, untenable and most significantly, un-American! The opposition folk are not just secondhand and second-class citizens, they are of the type that, if you don't like my America when my guy wins, then just hit the road Jack and don't you come back! So in a sense, we have denigrated back down to the Hatfields and the McCoys, “Yore either fer me or yore agin me!”
To me, in my cheesy model continuing to borrow from Seuss et al., we are currently looking at two parties--one representing north-going Zax and the other party representing a south-going Zax. Two fictitious characters, yet immobile and set in stone regarding their right to move forward with consideration for NO other counterforce that may get in their way! In our world these two forces are not only going to collide but in the wake of their Titanic struggle, there will be a tsunami of rioting, rebelling, and revolting that will, I believe, be unprecedented and unseen since the revolution that started our country to begin with!
I think this November 3 is such an appropriate day warranting a warning, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
In truth, I see it as a day of potential victory, not for a particular party but for a peculiar people.
For just a moment, I would like to deviate from this trajectory to a totally different plane, another place and realm of reality. A group called MercyMe released a song in 1999 that placed not a party but a person in an environment in which everything he was created to do on this planet was completed. In this song, Bart Millard was simply in awe as he imagined out loud in the song what it would be like for him to be in the presence of his Almighty Savior and Lord. As a Christian, he knew that at every single juncture in his life he had an opportunity to express his faith, love and obedience to his Jesus. He knew that he certainly was not perfect but he tried valiantly to redeem his time on Earth and make his Heavenly Father proud of him. He did his best to apply his faith and love and his obedience to whatever cause and purpose the Father led him to.
This blog entry is written from my heart and it is written to the believer to seriously hear out what I am going to ask each one of you to consider. If it makes sense to you, consider it an act of obedience out of your love for Jesus.
Back to the up-and-coming elections, I find myself writing this blog as a type of watchman on the wall, warning those who have an ear to hear, those who possess a heart that can discern and a spirit that can be convicted, to do two things. I ask only these two things to be considered: to fast and to pray.
To whatever degree and for whatever duration is up to each one of you. But with the coming action of voting for the next president of these United States, each vote will in fact act like a miniature “Little Boy” Hiroshima bomb on all the citizenry of our great country. The electoral votes will sweep in the victor and sweep away the defeated one! However, the ripping, the tearing, the division, the separation and the violence will very quickly rear its ugly head to produce something that none of us really want to happen, chaos in these orderly and law-abiding states; state that were once united but clearly are not now and certainly will not be after the elections, no matter which party and presidential candidate will be ushered in!
Both celebration and devastation will occur simultaneously. Both sides will dig in and fortify. I believe a type of war is coming. If not a war, at least a battle--not of blue and gray but of blue and red! In my spirit I feel that the beginning of the Great Divide will appear in these United States. It will make the Civil War and the Continental Divide of the Americas look like the line in the sand that Colonel William Barret Travis Drew at the Alamo, which divided those who were to leave and those who had decided to stay, fight and die.
Why prayer and fasting? Simple! Because what has been allowed to flourish in our United States and in our political system at its worst is an unseen hand of stealing, killing and destroying the lives of our citizens of this great Republic. Regardless of color, nationality, ethnic background, political alliance, historic religious affiliations, socioeconomic status, educational achievements, business acumen or levels of accumulated wealth, spiritual warfare has been in play for a very, very long time in the United States of America.
Only two individuals operate at this level, the Creator and His highest created angelic being ever formed, Lucifer. The name Lucifer means light-bearer. We know him is Satan or as the devil. In John 10:10, Jesus tells us that Satan comes only to steal, kill and to destroy. So, it's not that we have a divided country because we have fundamentally different and opposing viewpoints, differing opinions and interpretations of our Constitution or Bill of Rights or of our Declaration of Independence or any other particular variance on a single law or laws. We are at war with each other because some lack understanding, lack belief, and some simply denigrate spirituality as hocus-pocus, ghosts, myths and fairy tales, figments of deluded spiritual minds and hearts, or any other type of sacreligious dismissal that there is not actually a God who exists and rules this universe.
The truth is, Jesus has always existed. He is the Lamb of God who graciously, lovingly, obediently sacrificed His life and voluntarily died for us in our place--a vicious, butchering death on the cross that each rebellious human being deserved to experience for their own payment for disobedience. He paid our sin debt with His sinless blood. He became the propitiation for all of us and became our payment for sin, as we could not pay ourselves. He is the great Shepherd who wants to guide us home to the heaven that MercyMe sang about, to be with God forever! Jesus is outside of time and He knows everything because He is omniscient, He is omnipresent and He is omnipotent. We on the other hand, do not know for certain of one second in front of the other.
Yet Christ wants us to be obedient. He wants us to listen to Him. He wants us to be prepared to do what He wants, when He wants and the way He wants it done. One thing I do know, God always has a remnant and always has a witness. Whatever will transpire in our future, Christ will have His people representing Him, the Truth, the Way and the Life in the manner He intends it to be lived out.
Scripture tells us that the just shall live by faith and without faith it is impossible to please God. Yes, we are going to be in a fight, a brawl of unknown proportions! But remember brothers and sisters, in Christ our weapons in this ball of confusion are not carnal. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 10:4, “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”
Frank Capra, in his film It's a Wonderful Life, depicted Americans of all walks of life entering in their respective houses of worship quote weeping and praying" on V-E day and then again on V-J Day. I am convinced that Christians in 2020 might very well anticipate and even envision themselves entering their house of worship or prayer closet to begin to pray in unison over the possibility of a national crisis that might just be averted or at least severely hindered by the prayers of God's faithful! And pray not just for a halting of all hostilities but so much more!
Please pray for an opening, a national receptivity of the wooing of the Holy Spirit to thousands of Americans who want God’s peace and God’s promises. All around us, people are directionless or discontented, but not hungry enough or humble enough to bow down to their Creator God and ask Him forgive them of their sins and to come into their lives and to lead them through the rest of it and eventually to take them home according to His will.
Pray for self-reflection on each person's own position and standing with their Creator and Lord.
Let us pray for a reawakening, a Great Awakening--maybe even the much sought-after and prayed for Third Great Awakening in our history, that only the Eternal God of all things could possibly usher into being.
Will you join me in prayer and fasting? Will you pray that the seeds of the Gospel--those already planted as well as those that will be planted from this moment till November and beyond--will be watered by our prayers and tears and come to fruition?
In 2nd Corinthians, chapter 5, verses 17 through 20, Paul writes: “All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. But God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And He committed us to the ministry of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We employ you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God!”
Just as each one of us has the privilege and honor to vote in an uncoerced manner, I pray that each believer will vote their conviction on who they think should be our next president. BUT ALSO pray that the Holy Spirit might have His way as we pray for our fellow countrymen to be wooed, convicted, and surrendered to Christ to receive eternal salvation of their souls.
In Paul’s day and in our day, there was and still is only one message that will change our country. Only a true movement of God will change things here. No great political reforms, no new social formulas, no new rhetoric, no fix, quick or otherwise. Not slogans, no ultimate videos, no product or products, no wisdom from this earth or as James so pointedly says in Chapter Three, verses 14 through 16, no wisdom from below (the territory of the demonic) but ONLY from wisdom from above!
Please render to Caesar what belongs to him, your vote for who you believe would be the person you think and believe would best be suited for the daunting task ahead. Along that same line, do not forget to render to Christ what belongs to Christ.
Your readiness in this up-and-coming spiritual free-for-all will be absolutely essential for the work each believer will be called upon to be involved in. For now, prayer is the essential word for His troops, praying for a personal emptying of self and confession of sin, and preparing for being light and salt in an up and coming frenzy of emotion and action that will neither be edifying nor constructive! To understand that very soon, the role of the agent, the representative, the priest, the ambassador of Christ and of His Kingdom will be demanded of all who call Jesus both Lord and King and who call themselves faithful followers and members of that Kingdom.
Taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth, for us Americans, starts here in these United States. Let us join together in prayer and fasting, seeking, asking and knocking to hear from the Shepherd of our souls, to do the work of the ministry, to do the work of the Gospel.
This is just a blog entry from a guy who happens to love Christ and who thinks what he is writing about is seriously what he should communicate to his friends and fellow Christian brothers and sisters.
As a diabetic, I have learned that fasting is not just about modifying one’s food intake, it can be anything that one can deny in their life that they usually participate in that for a time is omitted that something much more significant can take its place, allowing yourself the stillness to hear His the very voice of God in whatever manner He chooses to communicate to you. In this case, the time doing a certain thing is now redirected to the intent of listening to the Lord with much more singularity, attentiveness and anticipation of what He might be wanting to say to each one of us if we only become still enough and mindful enough to listen.
What I do know is this:
Regardless of the times, but especially in these times, let us do good to all people---
Especially to the people of God.
Part II
In I Peter 2:9 we are identified as the:
People of God
A chosen people
A royal priesthood
A holy nation
God’s special possession
That we might declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light!
So I thought I would continue to add to this identification in some manner, to increase the awareness of our responsibilities as believers, especially in the days ahead.
For me, anyway, these descriptive terms make me even more aware and focused on our role as members of the family of God:
AGENTS
AMBASSADORS
REPRESENTATIVES
EMISSARIES
INSTRUMENTS
VEHICLES
TRUSTEES
LIAISONS
SPOKESPERSONS
GO-BETWEENS
WITNESSES
ENVOYS
PROXIES
DELEGATES
MOUTHPIECES
LIGHTS
AND SALT-SHAKERS
Paul speaks of why he feels he must represent God in Christ in all situations and circumstances in I Cor. 9 vv. 22b and 23. “I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the Gospel, that I may share in its blessings.”
In truth, he was like a negotiator, trying to obtain or bring about a discussion (Gospel) by the power, presence and wooing of the Holy Spirit, to find a way or move through an obstacle, disagreement, or difficult path to be able to share the Good News.
I feel that we are to do likewise. We must know ahead of time, who we are (ambassadors), and Whom we represent: the eternal God Almighty. We are to be able to share in our own words and through our own unique personality about God and His purposes. To communicate to the spiritually lost why God created us in the first place and why He sent Christ Jesus to this earth for us and what was the message that Jesus brought from His heavenly Father that was so important.
So, if you truly know His Son Jesus and claim to be a follower and a Christian, then you should know about His message, the Gospel, and know how to share it, communicate it, articulate it with anyone who simply knows of or about Christ, but does not yet know Him personally. It’s called sharing the Gospel or sharing the Good News of God’s love for all humanity.
If you are experienced in sharing your faith, how you left the kingdom of this world and entered into the Kingdom of God by faith in Jesus and what He did for you, then you can certainly enjoy moving from being a disciple of Christ to being a discipler for Christ and assist other new believers in sharing their faith as well.
Often, you are given favor by the Lord and are allowed to speak into the listening ear of a non-believer and share with them your experience of becoming a Christian. To be able to share your own journey, your own story, your own testimony is extremely helpful to let the listener understand that everyone has lived their lives at some points and places that they are not happy about, even ashamed of. By laying down your life before Christ, your own faith experience coming to Christ and how your new life has been forever changed and enlightened is a powerful lead-in to a Gospel presentation.
People need to understand that they have always been spiritually lost until at some point in their lives they hear the Gospel and act upon it by faith, just like you did when you heard it and acted upon the message. Expressing the need for every person who wants their sins forgiven and to be adopted into the family of God is to let them know that they will have to put their entire faith into the Person of Christ and into His claims of being God, Savior and Lord. They must understand that there is no human way to pay or atone for all the sin and rebellion that they have lived out during their lifetime against a holy and righteous God. They must hear about Christ’s sacrificial and atoning death on the cross and how Jesus paid the penalty of eternal death for us by dying in our place for us so we would not have to die. New believers must be admonished to trust in His living Word that it is from God’s very mind and useful for every aspect of their lives.
Friends, it is time to consider doing the praying and fasting that I have asked you to consider; time to prepare for your Lord to use you in any manner of His choosing. He has work for all of us to do, and wants us to be ready when members of the kingdom of darkness will blindly and unknowingly be used by the ruler of this world to be his instruments of stealing, killing and destroying.
Romans Chapter 10, verses 14 and 15, doesn’t say it all, but it says a whole lot!
14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15 And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!
Even if the days of the Great Divide do come and our rebellious national spirit flows over into all our land and the hand of God allows the destruction to come as in the days of the death angel striking down the children of Israel as found in 2 Samuel 24: 17, we can still pray to the LORD that He might withhold His hand of allowing destruction and move His hand toward mercy, peace, healing and restoration.
Isaiah 41:10
“Fear not, for I am with you, be not dismayed, for I am your God:
I will uphold you, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”
Matthew 28:20b
“And surely I am with you always, even til the end of the age.”
Oh, yeah. The true Big Three?
Actually, He is the Big Three in ONE.
The eternal Godhead manifested in three distinct Persons.
The person of the Father, the person of the Son and the person of the Holy Spirit.
(but the word big will NEVER be able to get anywhere close!)
Yes, the culmination of three monumental events that have occurred and will occur soon do have the potential to cause a seismic separation in our beloved United States.
Yet we must be sober-minded and know who our true enemy is to be able to come against him victoriously. But not in our own strength nor in our own power.
Ephesians 6:12
“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
Romans 8:37-39
“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In the day of Jesus, demonic spirits were in a frenzy. In the late 1960s and 1970s, drugs, the sexual revolution, the false religions and the counterculture were all in high gear. Clearly, in 2020, the intensification of the spirit of this world is also on the rise. Clearly, demonic strongholds are on the increase. But so is the Spirit of God.
It is not a time for pistols, it is a time for prayer. (remember Gethsemane).
It is not a time for knives, it is a time for knees. (remember Gethsemane).
It is not time for self-action, it is a time for selfless surrendering. (remember Gethsemane).
It is not a time for violence, it is a time for a Voice. (to be heard and to be obeyed; remember Gethsemane).
Yes, in the most critical time in the ministry of our Lord, He stayed the course.
He relied upon the wisdom, truth and words of His heavenly Father that He heard in the garden.
When at the cross, He commanded not His angels, but demanded the obedience of His own will to fulfill the will of His Father.
We must do the same. Do we rely on our self, or on the indwelling Spirit of God that will lead God’s own truth?
We must focus our attention to the voice of God spoken through His living Word to know what He expects of us now, and in the future.
Let us not be caught off guard. Let us be prepared. Let us be ready, both in and out of season, to the glory of God!
In considering the Big Three, please do not forget all the other concurrent influences afoot.
All the natural disasters of both fire and water, the increasing of sub-groups natured in all aspects of counter-cultural and counter-Christian positions. These groups run the gambit from political-minded, to conspiracy-minded to sports-minded to weather-minded to militant-minded--but all truly missing the mind of Christ.
The wisdom of this world works against our history, health, harmony, and humanity as God intended us to experience. The wisdom of God is what we must receive and reflect in order to be used by Him for His work of rescuing, reclaiming, restoring, and redeeming His creation.
I for one have not forgotten returning back to the states with my military family in the late 1960’s and being pulled in, along with the rest of the country, to watch the media-drenched coverage of the Manson family and their demonically-inspired butcherings. Those minions of his followed the dictates of a dark and devilish man who surrendered his life to Beelzebub himself. This twisted and warped young American deluded himself to think that he was orchestrating his pack of human animals to steal, kill and destroy in order to incite the citizens of these United States into a race war in which naturally at its conclusion, he would be king and ruler over all the ignorant and worthless dregs of society that would need him to survive and function.
His famous prison mugshot depicted his hero’s symbol on his forehead, the swastika, just like the one his ultimate life hero so powerfully identified with. A symbol of demonic evil in the second to highest order, the first was initially that of the cross, before the Son of God transformed a symbol of His execution the only symbol of salvation, by adding the sinless and salvific blood that flowed from it.
We have more than a symbol. We have a Savior. We have a relationship with the Son of God and it is an eternal one. Remember the words of our Lord, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” We know what we are supposed to do. Share the Gospel. Love one another. Love our enemies. They are blind. We who truly know Christ have seen the marvelous Light. Let us be about our Father’s business.
Let us not forget our own unsaved years of living in this world. God sent someone or many different folks over the years to pray for us and to bring us living water, the living words of eternal life through faith in Christ. Let us not forget those words; others are now needing to hear them as well. Their lives depend on it. Oh, let us remember those precious words!
Let’s also remember the His words, found in the beginning of Jeremiah 33:3 and in Second Chronicles 7:14.
CALL TO ME!
SEEK MY FACE!
“Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”
Again and for the last time, will you call to Him with me?
Will you CALL to our God, seek His face and wait to hear his voice?
II Chronicles 7:14
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
With this turning from sin, we will be free to turn toward our ears, heart, mind, soul and spirit towards Him to listen to His voice and wait for further instructions to obey.
Matthew 5:6
“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.”
Thank you for your time.
I know this has been a long one.
In Christ,
Dallas