Circles of Life & Ending Terrorism Part II

                           Circles of Life

    Life has a funny way of going in circles.  Jesus predicted it would when he prophesied that at the end it would be “as in the days of Noe.” Sooner or later we always end up back where we started.  The Bible foretells that, Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.  The Bible definitely has many circles in it.  Things that happen again and again sometimes may seem like different events, but in reality they just repeat something that has already happened in the past. Last week gave me a good dose of that in my own life.

    It was my privilege to attend the United States Parachuting National Championships in Ottawa, Illinois.  On my very first civilian jump I compressed my back.  That ended what had promised to be a real exciting part of my life. A close friend who I taught to jump had offered me a partnership with him in a parachute center he had started.  It did not mean I lost interest in jumping, just that I was not able to participate as I had in the past.  The first people I ran into at the Nationals were a group of riggers, which, was my job in the military.  Things had definitely changed over the last thirty five years, but the basic methods were much the same. The highlight of the event for me anyhow was getting my picture taken with the Golden Knights completing a circle in my life. and meeting the All Woman Eight Person Team from Perris, California who finished first in their class. Perris Moxie Team. 

Sorry guys its Ladies First. The picture is not the best,but I hope to get another chance

                              These guys made an old man feel young again.
                         Or wish I was. Hope to meet some of them at Ft. Bragg
                              for the Skydiving Museum Celebration Weekend

    From there I went to a meeting of the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVoA).  On the way I stopped for breakfast at a McDonalds and met a man who had been stationed at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky at the same time I had back in 1966.  At the VVoA I was in a tent selling memorabilia and started talking to the guy across the table from me. We established that we had both served in Phan Rang, Vietnam at the same time in 1967. There was a bit of irony to it. He was in the Air Force and I was in the Army. I spent 90 days living in a sandbag bunker guarding the pumps that sent water to the Air Force base.  So that he and his fellow airmen could take hot showers and do laundry while living in air conditioned barracks. Where I lived was in the bunker below, but I got to go swimming twice a day in the nearby river to get the sand odd from filling sandbags for the new bunkers.  We built seven reinforced bunkers that took about 4,000 bags each and a command bunker that took 11,000. Oh yeah and the mortar pit which I don't have a clue how many it took.

HOME SWEET HOME

for 3 months of my life

     The issue of circles has been showing up a lot in my life lately.  If you would like some interesting Biblical revelations use a concordance and find the references to four hundred and thirty years and seventy years.  In Ezekiel the number appears in chapter 4 where it is broken down into two periods.  One period is 390 years and the other if 40 years which total 430 years.  You should find these time periods at least three times in the Old Testament.  The 430 year periods are followed by 70 year periods.  Type those words in the search bar on my blog and they will take you to several of my blogs that explain the significance of those numbers.

    When my daughter Angel was in high school and doing a paper for school she chose Martin Luther as her subject.  In the course of helping her I noticed that from the time Martin Luther nailed his treatise on the door to Israel becoming a state again was 430 years.  Just a coincidence I am sure, except the Word of God says In Daniel that there will be an explosion of knowledge and understanding.  I find it strange that at about the same time the printing press was invented.  Leonardo Da Vince, Michelangelo, Columbus and Galileo were some of his contemporaries.  It was an explosion which opened the whole world up to the Bible which was predicted many times in the Bible.

     For the last couple months I have been stuck in the Book of Jeremiah which predicts more end time events than about any book.   Isaiah and Ezekiel do some pretty powerful end time messages also.  Chapter 16 is really an eye opener as it predicts two things.  It predicts they the Jews will be bought back into the land from all over the earth and it predicts they will be punished double for their iniquity.  The Lord punished them when he took them out of the land.  Then he punished them before he bought them back. That came to me as an answer to a prayer of how could a kind and loving God allow what happened to the Jews, his chosen people, to happen.  He simply did what His Word said he would do.

      That is what a lot of people miss. God is doing and will continue to do what His Word says until it is all fulfilled.  Every jot and tittle as the Bible says.  People tend to pick and choose what they like from the Bible and leave the rest. It says a man should not trim the corners of his beard.  How do you shave it off without doing so?  Shaving is a military thing and definitely an unchristian thing.  Leviticus speaks to things that are common in this day and age. Especially 19:27-28 which I take to mean tattoo, I have one so I am dropping my stone on that one.  We are to love our enemies also.

       Matthew 6:15 makes it clear to be forgiven, we must first forgive and that is one of the things that is tearing the Middle East apart, Islam professes to believe in the prophets, but unfortunately that does not extend to what they say.  When all the religions that claim to be the Sons of Abraham forgive and accept each other, then there will be chance of ending terrorism.

      It can happen because I saw a man on TV who went by Mubin Shaikh and was a former terrorist.  He said he became involved with true followers of Islam who showed him the error of his ways and how terrorism was and is twisting the teachings of Islam for their own benefit. Hatred is taught.  I saw it once in my own life.  A friend of mine I was visiting went to the store. While he was in the store getting what he needed I watched his wife teaching his son to say “Nigger.” He could barely walk, let alone talk, but what he was being taught was to hate people because of the color of their skin. Both of this child’s parents claimed to Christians, but in the 60’s there was a wide divide between the Truth of the Word and what was practiced in America.  I certainly never thought I would see a black man as President of America in my lifetime.  What scares me about it is that from my time of studying the Bible, I realize it is just a sign as it was in the Old Testament.

     One thing I noticed in my Bible studies was that all of the 430 year periods at some point went to or came out of Africa.  Which makes the significance of the events at the time of Martin Luther important as they allowed the Word of God to truly reach the entire world. Probably one of the best written books I have read lately is a book called Power, Faith and Fantasy by Michael B. Oren which explains America’s ties to the Middle East.  America would not even have a Constitution if it was not for events in the Middle East.  The verse in the Marine Corps hymn is not just a verse in a song,  It is a statement about our history.  Tripoli was one of our first Naval engagements. Originally America had the Articles of Confederation, but they did not give power to a central government.  The Constitution was written to overcome that shortcoming and raise a Navy to protect our shipping.  After the Revolutionary War our ships were no longer protected by Britain. That was one of the costs of Independence and why we needed a Constitution.

    Over many years of reading I have seen the circles in the Bible.  Now I can see the circles in my life becoming full circles. Whether it is the end of me or the end of time is really irrelevant.  What is relevant is that God’s Word will be fulfilled because he said so. With that being said another piece of the circle just closed for me with a call I just received while writing this.