King Nebuchadnezzar First Tried To Kill Me

 King Nebuchadnezzar First Tried To Kill Me

1/13/2016

 

“Look!” he answered, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the son of the gods” Danial 3;25

 

            Babylon; the city where you can forge your wildest dreams, sleep in the most beautiful of palaces and worship as many gods as you can imagine. As far as worldly beauty goes, it is the queen of sinful lust and desire. If you love the world, you will love Babylon. If you are a Hebrew like me, Babylon goes against all your senses and represents hell on earth for the LORD’s faithful.

            My name is Shadrach. My close friends and coworkers are Meshach, Abed-Nego, and Daniel, the man with many visions of the future of God’s people and the demise of the great Babylon.

            My countrymen were carried off into exile to Babylon during my father’s generation. Those who weren’t slaughtered in Israel were carried off to this eastern land where the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers meet. This is the cradle of civilization, but for us Hebrews, this is the land of our captivity.

            It was so awful when our great city of Jerusalem was laid siege. The people were surrounded by the city walls. The Babylonians outnumbered us in numbers and their technology was superior. They taunted us by catapulting our dead brothers over the wall. Decapitated heads were slung over. We could hear the cries of the women and children as they told us to give up. The battering rams battered at the doors. The fiery arrows were shot over the walls.

            Some of my people were forced into cannibalization of the weak and young to stay alive. The hearts melted like beez-wax within our chests.  What was worse was that for years prior to this, some men who claimed to be prophets of the most high, declared that our punishment was upon us because we had forsaken the LORD and worshipped other gods like the foreigners around us.

            The people disbelieved and even killed some of those prophets. God’s messengers were cast out of the land, humiliated, starved, sawed in two, and hunted down like wild dogs. As death approached, and defeat was imminent, the words of those messengers hit my people’s hearts just as if David himself had shot a rock at us with his slingshot, the way he killed Goliath.

            I was one of the lucky ones. My parents were one of the ones who were captured in the city, to be dragged off into exile in Babylonia. My people were made to serve the king, King Nebuchadnezzar.        

            Government officials were sent out to see the mental capacity of the children of these exiles. If any of them showed any promise, they were taken from their parents so as to enter the service of the king in his palace.

            All types of skills were taught to these elite groups of exiles. Some were turned into the arts, including music, the visual arts, and all sorts of writing arts. Others were made to be servants of the high king himself. They were to advise him on the sciences, the state of political sciences, astronomy, the purchasing power of gold, and all sorts of other matters.

            The rest of the population was put into manual labor. This meant building up of the city, the maintenance of disease-infested sewers, and the purifications of religious activities. Other parts of the exiled society were for sport. They were made to fight against trained warriors to the death. Some were given training while others were not.

            During the time of the exiles, the great king Nebuchadnezzar had made a large golden image. It was the image of a large man/beast. The upper body was of a man with a long beard, and long hair while the lower part was that of an ox, which represented strength and prestige. The king made a decree that when he sounded off for all the musicians to play certain music, all peoples no matter what language, country of origin, or economic status, were to bow down and worship this golden image. 

            My Jewish friends and I said we would not worship this hideous image, and so we didn’t. We knew who our God was. Our God was the creator of everything visible to the eye; animals, beasts, mountains, fields, everything. Man was said to be made in God’s very image. This meant that all the spiritual attributes that God contained in himself, he created in man and woman. God was both masculine and feminine. He was both strong and nurturing. He was rugged, strong, and direct, and also beautiful, prestigious, and poetic in all his ways. God’s mind was above everything yet he chose mankind to share in his intellectual property, and not to be depraved just as the animals are, who being of lower being, cannot think or praise the almighty God, the way we are commanded to.

            Knowing all this, there was no way I would fall to my knees over a manmade image in the shape of an unnatural beast representing a god that did not even exist. If I must lose my life for this, then I must lose my life. Even as a servant of the king, I knew that it was always possible to disobey man while at the same time obeying God. I trusted that God would rescue us. If he didn’t, then it was his will to let us return to his presence eternally, forevermore able to worship at his throne. 

            So it was no surprise when the king ordered us into his blazing hot furnace of fire in the ground. The king was so angry that he ordered that the furnace be turned up seven times the normal heat and that we be bound in chains and thrown in.

            We were thrown in. The furnace was so hot, that the valiant men who tied us and led us to our death, were themselves killed by the heat. God rescued us. We were in the fire, yet we were not affected by the fire. Our hair was not even burned. Our clothes were never singed and we never smelled of smoke. We were prepared to meet our maker, yet it was our maker who decided to join us and he kept us alive and safe.

            The great Angel of the LORD was there speaking with us. He spoke to us of eternal things; the greater picture in all this. He did not speak to us as one speaks to another man. He spoke to us with his mind. He could read our thoughts and he communicated to us through his thoughts. The thoughts were so deep that it was a communication so intense and so pure and so loving, that I had never had a day like that before, or after during my whole life.

            King Nebuchadnezzar came to the opening of this great fire and called out our names. He asked how we were and said that if our God was with us and had indeed saved us, then we should come out so that he can see and believe. We walked out

            The king immediately dropped down to his knees and begged that we ask our God for forgiveness. He then began to praise the God of the exiles. He came up and touched our faces and our clothes. He smelled our clothing and told us it was as if we had never been near the fire, while his own men had perished while only coming close to it.

            The king then told us from that day forward, we were to forever eat at his table and drink of his wine. We were to always be within reach on the matters of administering his government. The next law that he declared was that if anyone said any sort of malice to the God of the Hebrews, they were to be cut into pieces and his house was to be demolished.

            I have remained in the king’s service to this day. The LORD rewarded me with my faithfulness in that I am free to worship him at any time without malice, hatred, or any other sort of molestation to my rights.

The End.

            

Jesus Turned My Lemons Into Lemonade

 Jesus Turned My Lemons Into Lemonade

1/6/2016

 

There shall come forth a Rod from the root of Jesse. And a Branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD. ---Isaiah 11; 1-2

 

            When the Romans came into the land of Israel, they brought with them great terror and misery. All the inhabitants of the land were utterly uprooted and scattered. Our temple was defiled and burned down. Before this, a horrible Caesar actually went into the holy of holies, inside the temple, and sacrificed pigs upon the altar. This was after the city was laid siege. The siege lasted so long that before the great city wall was destroyed, the people inside resorted to the eating of each other’s flesh, even the flesh of their own children.

            So once these horrible armies took over, we prayed constantly to our holy God that he would take vengeance for his people. Yet all the while, we could not hold our heads up or find a word from the LORD. Many of the older prophets had spoken of a time of “Jacob’s troubles” because we had forsaken the LAW of the LORD.

            Our land that was given to our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was in utter ruins because of the Romans. They laid a heavy burden on all of us Israelites. We were all sold as slaves to the Roman government. Our streets were lined with criminals who were part of this new kind of execution, called crucifixion. On those crosses laid men, women, and even children for crimes against the Romans, both large and small. They were signs to us of the terror that they used against us.

            God extended minimal mercies to us in that we were allowed to retain our ideology. We were also allowed to practice the strict sects of our Jewish religion, so long as it did not offend the Roman Empire. Caesar took from our own people, all of whom we considered traitors, officials to be magistrates over us, tax collectors, and even spies to report all behavior to Caesar himself.

            I came from the small town of Nazareth. I lived with my small family of a wife and two children. I worked hard in the fields while my wife did her best to sell her crafts in the market. Our most sincere prayer was that we could live to the end of our lives without seeing our young children die of hunger or cold.

            The Roman society was one based on slavery. Over 30 percent of the people were slaves. The rest were full-fledged citizens with rights to own property, vote, and run their own businesses. The Romans used all their captives as slaves. Although such a large portion of the society was slaves, the average age of death for those slaves was 22. Their mortality rate was more than double the rate of their birthrate. Even though the Romans were conquering this part of the world at an astonishing rate, they were killing off their own workers with cruel punishments.

            They even took the Greeks as prisoners. From the Greeks, they had their doctors, scribes, great warriors, and philosophers. Even the educated ones were slaves unless they could prove their worth to be freed from their bondage.

            We looked elsewhere towards redemption. We prayed up to the sky, in the hopes that Yahweh would hear us, even though his holy house was demolished. The priests would talk about the almighty having promised that through the seed of David, we Israelites would see our deliverer through the might of his messiah.

            That’s when life began to get interesting, even though this terrible land of death and darkness that we now occupied. There was a man named Jesus. Some of my relatives remember him from when he was a carpenter. He grew up in our small town of Nazareth. There were rumors about him that spread all through the country. It was said of him that he was the deliverer.

            We had heard that he was on his way from the northern territory of Tyre. He was preaching a message about God’s kingdom at hand. That it was time to rethink our lives and consider the kingdom at once. He was doing miracles. He was healing the sick, raising up the lame, opening the mouth of the mute, giving sight to the blind and even casting out demons who begged him not to torture them.

            I decided it was time to go find this man. I was hoping for sure that he would end this injustice of the Roman rule. I left with my wife and kids towards the Sea of Galilee. Jesus was a friend of fishermen and was known to have walked on its waters. He also cast out the demons that possessed a very dangerous man who lived among the tombs. If he was coming through Nazareth, he would for sure stop by the lake.

            After many hours of looking, we did see the multitude of a crowd that was following him. So we followed him for two days straight as he taught in the synagogues, people’s houses, and finally when he taught that wonderful sermon on the mount just on the edge of the Sea of Galilee.

            On the third day, we sat down on that glorious hill and heard him speak about the kingdom. He spoke as one with authority, and not as one of the teachers of the law, of whom Jesus called hypocrites many times.

            Jesus spoke in parables. He talked about how the kingdom of God is like a man who had 99 sheep but lost one. He left those 98 in search of that one, and when he found it, he rejoiced greatly. This was how he spoke about God’s love for man as he came to search for and to save what was lost.

            He also talked about the law. He said that he was not there to abolish it, but to actually fulfill it. He spoke of the commandments, but when he spoke of them, it was like he opened our minds and made our hearts understand them. He said things like hate was the same as murder, and that if you looked at a woman with lust, you have already committed adultery with her in your heart.

            Our books from Moses told us to sacrifice an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, yet this Jesus was telling us to forgive and pray for our enemies. He said that God blesses both the just and the wicked. If we hate our enemies, are we not doing as the Gentiles and heathens do?

            After those three days, we were hungry. Jesus had intended to send us on our way but I overheard him tell his disciples to feed all 5000 of us. Was this a joke? I heard the disciples tell Jesus that they only had 5 fish and two loaves of bread. That did not make sense to me because not long afterward, Jesus passed out food for every single man, woman, and child who sat on that hill as we could see the warm sun glaring on the lake that Jesus had once walked on.

            We all had our fill. No one was hungry, although I asked Jesus if he could bring me something to drink. I thought I was being cheeky when I tossed him an old lemon that I carried in my pouch in the event that I came across some fish and wanted to add flavor to it. When I tossed that lemon to Jesus, he tossed something back to me. It was a long skin of lemonade. Enough for me and my family and anyone else around us who needed to wash their fish and bread down as well.

            We traveled back home that night, to our small living in Nazareth. Was this indeed the Son of God? Was he the seed of David? Was he going to overthrow the Roman government? Many of us who knew and followed him were let down and terrified as we would later hear that he was unjustly punished, held on false charges, and then eventually crucified. He was tortured and murdered just outside of the city. He was not treated like a general, but like a slave full of shame and scorn.

            What was more puzzling is that Jesus himself said that he must die in this way, but on the third day he would rise. I miss Jesus. I’m going to travel down to Jerusalem to see if he is alive like he said he would be.

 

The End.