Blondie and Duckwood

2 Kings 20:5

"Return and tell Hezekiah, the captain of my people, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of David, thy father, "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold I will heal you. On the third day you will go up unto the house of the Lord." ' "

A great Bible practical joke is to ask someone to find the book of Hezekiah; they'll swear it's in there somewhere. For some reason this king of Judah sticks in people's minds, and indeed scripture praises him above all the kings of the southern kingdom. He's godly, but on a human level he seems to have all the foibles of other men in scripture. So what makes him so great? God declared him as good as dead, and then raised him on the third day. Like Isaac, he is a type of the death and resurrection of Christ. He's great because of how God used him, on a sickbed, in just a few days.

NOT the madonna

I've never been a Madonna fan. Her music is mostly pointless, and so is the rest of the stuff that goes through her head. Check out this story and you'll see why. It boggles me that Madonna thinks she knows more about Christ than the Church. If she knows He taught to "love thy neighbor," how come she doesn't know He taught that He is Almighty God? Her statements are a testimony of the low perception the world has of Christ: "I don't think Jesus would be mad at me." What about her total depravity? This is not news to anyone; I just felt a rant coming on.

Henny Youngman reducks

(He's buying lip balm, or ChapStick as most of us know it. It's an old joke.)

Paul timeline

Here is, as best as I can figure, the chronology of Paul's scriptural activities, for those of you who care about such things:

AD 32 - Conversion on Damascus Road, meets Ananias in Damascus, goes into Arabia, returns to Damascus
AD 35 - Escapes to Jerusalem (let down in a basket), rejected by apostles, received by Barnabas and meets with Peter and James some time later
? - Returns to Tarsus via Caesarea
AD 39? - Sought out by Barnabas and goes to Antioch for one year
AD 40? - Takes financial gift to Jerusalem with Barnabas
? - Returns to Antioch with Barnabas and Mark
AD 42? - caught up into "third heaven"
AD 45 - First missionary trip with Barnabas and Mark: Seleucia, Salamis, Paphos, Perga (Mark departs to Jerusalem), Antioch Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra (Paul stoned and left for dead), Derbe, Lystra, Iconium, Antioch Pisidia, Pamphylia, Perga, Attalia, Antioch (it is stated that Paul remained in Antioch a long time after returning; rebuke of Peter); Letter from James sometime in this period
AD 49 - Council at Jerusalem
AD 50 - Second missionary trip with Silas (split from Barnabas): Syria, Cilicia, Derbe, Lystra (Timothy joins and is circumcised), Iconium, Antioch Pisidia (directed away from Asia), Troas (gains Luke, directed into Europe), Samothracia, Neapolis, Philippi (imprisoned), Amphipolis, Apollonia, Thessalonica (three weeks), Berea, Athens, Corinth
AD 51 - • First letter to the Thessalonians, • second letter to the Thessalonians
AD 52 - Resumes second missionary trip after 18 months in Corinth, going to Cenchreae, Ephesus, Caesarea, Antioch; • letter to the Galatians; attends a feast in Jerusalem
AD 53 - Third missionary trip: Ephesus (three years)
AD 56 - • First letter to the Corinthians; resumes third missionary trip after Pentecost, planning to sail to Syria but instead going back through Greece and then Macedonia (three months)
AD 57 - • Letter to the Romans; ends time in Macedonia by going to Troas to wait for Luke's group (• second letter to the Corinthians, collects gift for Jerusalem church, visits Corinth during this period), resumes third missionary trip after Passover (seven days after Luke arrives), Assos, Mitylene (one day), Chios (one day), the island of Samos (one day in Trogyllium), Miletus (farewell to the Ephesian elders), Cos (one day), Rhodes, Patera, Tyre (seven days), Ptolemais (one day), Caesarea (several days), Jerusalem in time for Pentecost
? - Arrested in Jerusalem, handed over to Romans, removed to Caesarea, judged by Felix 12 days after arriving at Jerusalem
AD 59 - Still under arrest but at liberty, judged by Festus and Agrippa, sets sail for Rome in the autumn: Sidon, Myra, Fair Havens, shipwrecked (likely in October) on Malta for three months
AD 60 - Resumes voyage: Syracuse, Rhegium, Puteoli, Rome; • letter to the Ephesians, • letter to the Colossians, • letter to Philemon, • letter to the Philippians
AD 62 - End of the written record, Paul living in a rental house in Rome
AD 64 - • First letter to Timothy, Paul in Macedonia
AD 65 - • Letter to Titus (free during this period)
AD 67 - • Second letter to Timothy (back in prison)

I'm sure other folks who are better scholars than me have already tried to piece this together. If I've got errors here, well, I'm not surprised, but there you have it anyway.

Ducking issues

2 Kings 10:30-31

"And the Lord said unto Jehu, 'Because you have done well in executing that which is right in my eyes, and have done unto the house of Ahab according to all that was in my heart, your children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.' But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart; for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, who made Israel to sin."

Seldom in the Christian life are we called to do something specific. It's happened to me twice. Although work is work and we should expect to have difficulty with it, still I find these are the easy times. It's so great to actually know what you're supposed to be doing, to have a way to do it and have a goal in sight at the end. But most of the Christian life is not being called to some great work. Most of it is walking with Christ through the daily grind and waiting on Him. These are the difficult times, when we are most likely to believe God has withdrawn from us, or when we start off on some great project of our own design that leads to failure. This was Jehu's problem: He was great at fulfilling his mission, but his day-to-day life fell into destruction.

Action is easy; walking is hard.

How to be boring

Hey, I went golfing today with Ben. Shot pretty good, too, which surprised me because I hadn't been out for close to two years. Got the second par hole of my illustrious career. Ben cheated, but he was honest about it.

2 Kings 8:6

"And when the king asked the woman, she told him. So the king assigned unto her a certain officer, saying, 'Restore all that was hers, and all the fruits of the field since the day that she left the land, even until now.' "

This woman is the Shunammite, who has to be one of the most blessed characters in all of scripture. We first meet her in 2 Kings 4:8, where she is referred to as a 'great woman.' She is shown just out of the blue forcing her hospitality upon Elisha, not once but often, before she's really aware he's a prophet. So Elisha wants to bless her in return, which she humbly declines. So Elisha promises her a child, because she has none, and sure enough she has a son. But the next time we hear from her, years later, the son is sick and dies! So Elisha raises him from the dead. Ho-hum.

Then she disappears from the scene for awhile, but in chapter 8 she's back, being warned by Elisha of a famine that will strike Israel. So she moves to Philistine territory and survives, then returns after the famine is passed. It just so happens the king of Israel (presumably Joram, who's not that great) feels like hearing about all Elisha's exploits that day, and he is told of the son's resurrection. Then who walks in the door but the woman herself, begging for her lands to be returned to her now that she's returned to Israel. Joram is only too happy to serve the woman who blessed Elisha.

This is a gentile woman, singled out for tender care by God even as He besets Israel with warfare and famine. She is a type of the Church, chosen from the nations to be the bride of Christ. Ray Stedman points out that Elisha's ministry, following the harsh judgments declared by Elijah, is a foreshadowing of the sweet graces Jesus performed in His first advent. The Shunammite woman is just another testimony that God always had the gentiles in mind, not as a people in the way Israel was a people, but as a nation brought forth where there was not one before (1 Pet. 2:9-10).

And it's not even Sunday

Acts 3:13

"The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified his Son, Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go."

This may sound like a stretch, but work with me. Pilate was completely ignorant; therefore, he thought of Jesus as a harmless rabble-rouser. The Jewish officials, the scribes and Pharisees, were educated in the Scriptures and had all the information; therefore, they had the responsibility to recognize Messiah. In the same way Judas had the Jesus experience first hand, and he should have recognized Him. But they all betrayed Messiah and handed Him over to the ignorant gentiles. None of this came as a suprise to God, and He of course predetermined to use the unbelief of His people to bring about His plan. With God the promise always depends on some level of belief, even if that level is nil. So, He in effect says, "Because you don't believe Me, I will save you. I will use your hatred of Me to forgive you."

In v. 18 Peter reminds the Jewish crowd that they also have the information from Scripture to realize that Christ was appointed to suffer. So again, he calls upon them to recognize Messiah. It boggles me that the accusation of killing the Holy One is always followed by an invitation to seek mercy.

Life is hard

So, early this morning I went to the dentist to get a tooth filled. It was the first dental work I had to get done in about three years, which is pretty good for me. I'm surprised my teeth don't set off metal detectors. So first thing today I went down there and submitted myself to the dentist.

Dentists' offices these days are filled with more weird gizmos than Frankenstein's laboratory. They've got all sorts of lights and stuff that have no apparent function, and wear funky Mad Scientist gear over their faces nowadays. I've never really understood the appeal of working inside someone's mouth. But then, I haven't been married for awhile. Overall it was not a bad experience, and I was out of there in 30 minutes.

The worst thing about it is I missed my morning coffee. Half of my head still feels like Play-Doh, so if I tried drinking anything now I'd end up pouring it all over my face. Probably not a good thing with steaming coffee. Of course, if I'd gotten some McDonald's coffee, I could have sued them (obscure not-so-current events reference). I wish I'd thought of that when I was over there.

Captain's blog, star duck 2006 ...

Run for the border

Here's a sign from Monday's nationwide march by illegal immigrants:

"No Illegals, No Burritos
(You'd better think twice, America)"

We've clearly reached the crisis point.