FROM MESS TO MESSAGE 12 FEB 2015

The work I am doing now follows this pattern. And your life can follow it also. The message is how we turn a mess into a victorious message. For instance, the Hebrews were subjected to the worst of slavery, Moses flees for his life, Moses is making mistakes (cf. EX 4:24), and in the end, the story becomes a teaching tool (for instance, EX 22:20, 23:9, & DT 16:11).

PRINCIPLES OF VICTORY. There are principles (general truths of success), and we can learn them by various ways. Many of the same concepts on successful strategies for war can be seen in Biblical history & business history. For instance, the principle of surprise was used by God w/ Gideon by his sneak attack. It was also used by Christ’s death on the cross! Had Satan & his World System known of God’s plan, the Word says they would not have crucified Christ!(1) There are spin-offs from the principle of surprise—the opposite, to forecast our moves, or forewarn an enemy is to set up strong resistance. Likewise, it is good to protect oneself from one’s enemy by knowing his intentions, and his methods of operations. I have noticed the majority of nominal Christians don’t want to learn this, thereby setting themselves up for defeat. Yet the Word admonishes us that we are not ignorant of Satan’s devices.(2) In victorious war, one takes objectives. Being offensive is an attitude, not just actions. The offensive attitude means one has the initiative. One can be offensively defensive. Hitler’s genius general Model did this with the Russian offensive against the outclassed & outnumbered Army Group South. The small German army by staying flexible & hitting at the decisive point at the correct time wiped out vastly superior Russian forces. Hit the decisive pt. at the decisive time & decide the battle. Flexibility also means mobility—movement—a fly can be hard for an elephant to hit. When Christ decisively defeated Satan’s key weapon—sin, Christ cried a shout of victory, “It is finished!” (3)

WATCH OUT FOR DIVERSIONS. In warfare, since ancient times, armies have tried to divert the attention of their opponents. This also applies in martial arts & wrestling & business. An example from Scripture is 2 TIM 2:23-24, “Have nothing to do with stupid, senseless controversies; you know that they breed quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome, but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, forebearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness.”

OUR OPPONENT’S TACTICS. Our opponents will try to paint us with a negative color. Pro-life supporters are labeled “murderers”. Gay activists (who are actually using Mein Kampf for their strategies) call Christians “haters”. Gay activists can publicly call for the eradication of Christians and then claim Christians promote hate crime. Police across the nation (for instance, in CA due to the hate crime law SB 1234 which mandates hate crime training) are being taught that pro-lifers are hate criminals. Those of us who believe in human dignity & human rights are being slanderously mislabeled “radical right”. (They did that to me on Wikipedia. Anyone, who really knows me, knows I don’t believe in either right or left—which is a false dialectic.) It is open season on Christians. Howard Stern can publicly say that he’d march Christians “into the ovens”. Federal Judge Jennifer Coffman ruled the Constitution unconstitutional because it refers to God. She needs to read what it really says (!*!*), “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” WOW…that is exactly the opposite of what they have been doing, forbidding Christian books from schools, forbidding students from reading the Bible on their free time, forbidding prayer and the posting of the Ten Commandments, etc. As I wrote in a previous post, the exact same steps to marginalize and isolate the Jews in Nazi Germany prior to arresting them are being carried out in America & Europe on Christians. God’s people were enslaved in Egypt after Joseph had brought them there and they sinfully wanted to “Let us be like the Egyptians”.(4) This was a situation similar to Christ warning Christians not to lose their unique moral high ground (their “saltiness”) for if the salt is no longer salty it is only worth throwing away.(5) And this takes me to the last principle of warfare…obedience.

OBEDIENCE. All warfare has depended upon the soldiers following the order of their chief. A significant example of this worth highlighting is found in EX 4:24-26. Allow me to take a moment to bring history into focus. Pharoah Ramesses II (the Great) lost his first born son, the crown prince Amun-her-khepesh-ef between 1259-1249 B.C. Solomon’s reign was 962-922 B.C. and Ramesses’ was 1279-1212 B.C. The Word says it was 12 generations between the death of the crown prince (first born) and Solomon’s reign. While the term generation had been debated, and means different things to different people, if we think of the reproductive cycle, every 24-25 yrs. a new generation comes along. With this view, the math lands around 1258 B.C. for the date of Pharoah’s first born dying during God’s plagues to Egypt when Moses & Pharaoh had a contest of wills. This & other circumstantial evidence suggests that red-headed (6) Ramesses II was the Pharaoh that Moses dealt with; for instance, Hebrew words that got adopted by the Egyptians, sort of like we commonly use the word “Taco”. Most Egyptian inscriptions during his reign did not mention Ramesses by name, so it is no surprise he is also not mentioned by name in Exodus but by his title Pharaoh. According to Egyptian inscriptions, he built a new capital Pi-Ramesses using “Aspiru” (Hebrew) slaves, and most of the buildings were built of brick. He was famous for his tyranny & his building projects, incl. his huge temples, his palace & zoo.

THE IMPORTANCE OF OBEDIENCE. So God tells Moses to head for Egypt to confront Pharaoh, the dictator of the World’s superpower. He tells him that current Pharaoh is not to be feared, & Pharaoh Tutmose III who had wanted to kill Moses is dead. Moses now only needs to fear the Lord! As spokesperson/ambassador/ representative of God Almighty Moses is in a high position of responsibility. When we are in a high position, a small misstep can be a great fall. God has chosen the patriarchs of Israel to be foundational…He is the “God of Abraham, Isaac & Jacob”. He has made an eternal covenant with Abraham (7) that He expects Moses to follow. The act of circumcision is a picture of the new birth (circumcision of the heart) and the prophecy that one day hearts would be circumcised is throughout the old testament even in the first books attributed to Moses’ authorship. Moses did circumcise his first born in line with the covenant, but from those who extrapolate from close reading, apparently his wife Zipporah protested over his second son Eliezer. In EX 4:24 we read that after calling Moses to his mission, God decides to kill him over this disobedience. Zipporah realizes her error, & in anger circumcises Eliezer, & calls Moses a “bloody husband”. EX 4:24-26 has therefore been often referred to as the “Bloody Husband” scripture. (So once again, a woman saves Moses!) This passage in EX 4:24 is a good one to show that no one is indispensable. For a man of God to be used in important battles, he (or if a woman…she) must be obedient to their head. This has been taken for granted in the military for all of history, but sometimes Christians forget this, due to the cheap grace and once-saved-always-saved doctrines that convince many that it doesn’t matter what they do. Not only do we need to pay attention to principles but we also need to pay attention to our head! Be blessed my friend. And be victorious!

(1) 1 COR 2:7-8 (2) 2 COR 2:11 also cf. EPH 6:11 (3) JN 19:30 (4) cf. Hosea 5:7 (5) MT 5:13, MK 9:50, LK 13:34 (6) Ramesses the Great’s mummy has been available, and he and his family were red-heads, which in Egyptian myth made them desc. of Seth (a Satan-type god), hence Aquino’s satanic Temple of Set. (7) GEN 17:1-27