Where are we headed?
I’ve been meaning to post again on the man we met in South Bend last fall. T, the kids and her parents went out to visit Gary, Rae and Nick a few weeks ago and happened to meet up with him again. Actually, it was the weekend before the controversial Notre Dame commencement ceremony, where they invited President Obama to speak… which is ironic in several ways.
If you never caught my original post mentioning Ferdinand, you can read it here. If you don’t feel like doing that, the Reader’s Digest version is that he hears from Jesus. Take that how you want to, but I do have several reasons to believe him. Anyway, I woke up this morning and suddenly had it in my head that I never posted some of the things he told them during their visit. I pondered some of the things he had said, and wondered how much I should pass on. I then reached over to my Bible, and after praying to read something God wanted me to hear today, I opened directly to Hosea Chapter 5. More on that later.
One of the things Ferdinand mentioned when I met him last fall was that Jesus told him he would see the end of abortion in his life time. This man is getting up there in years, so that’s pretty interesting. He also said he was told that we, and I’m assuming this means the world, need to end abortion or Jesus will. And that right there scares me a bit.
This visit was now at a time of several protests of Obama speaking at Notre Dame the next weekend, the majority being related to his contrasting views with the Catholic Church on abortion. So, of course, the topic came up again when they spoke with Ferdinand. His understanding is that 50 million is the number. What’s “50 million” have anything to do with this, you might ask?
I can’t seem to find any consensus out in the web-o-sphere, but it appears the United States is at least very close to having performed 50 million abortions since 1973. Some sources say we’ve passed that number already, but those appear to make several assumptions on the number of unreported abortions. Regardless, Ferdinand says we don’t have more than a couple years before the number is hit. That lines up with the 48-50 million estimates that appear to be common, along with the estimated 1 million more each year.
What happens when 50 million is hit? Ferdinand said Jesus told him, “within two years, the United States is going to be on its knees begging for God’s mercy.” God’s patience with America’s killing of the unborn runs out.
I happen to be in one of the camps that believes the Old Testament is still relevant. I grew up with a different thought in my head… maybe it was me, maybe it was my church, or maybe it is mainstream Christian society… that once Jesus came, the Old Testament was meaningless (at least outside the Ten Commandments or the prophecies pointing to Jesus being the Messiah). The more I’ve read over the years, the more I understand that simply can’t be the case. Why do I even mention this? Because I believe we really are in trouble. God has been patient with this country (and the world) for quite some time. There are stories upon stories in the Old Testament of God’s patience and eventual pouring out of wrath on societies for the killing of the innocent and other evil they have done. I don’t think that ended with the New Testament. Don’t believe me? A friend of mine had a pretty good post related to this, and is based on New Testament verses if you want to read it.
If you made it this far, you may have noticed I still haven’t spoken about the passage I was led to read this morning. I don’t have anything else to say after this, so skip it if you want to go back to doing something else. I’m going to let the Bible speak for itself. Here is Hosea Chapter 5 from The Message:
Share on Facebook1-2 “Listen to this, priests! Attention, people of Israel!
Royal family—all ears!
You’re in charge of justice around here.
But what have you done? Exploited people at Mizpah,
ripped them off on Tabor,
Victimized them at Shittim.
I’m going to punish the lot of you.
3-4 “I know you, Ephraim, inside and out.
Yes, Israel, I see right through you!
Ephraim, you’ve played your sex-and-religion games long enough.
All Israel is thoroughly polluted.
They couldn’t turn to God if they wanted to.
Their evil life is a bad habit.
Every breath they take is a whore’s breath.
They wouldn’t recognize God if they saw me.5-7 “Bloated by arrogance, big as a house,
they’re a public disgrace,
The lot of them—Israel, Ephraim, Judah—
lurching and weaving down their guilty streets.
When they decide to get their lives together
and go off looking for God once again,
They’ll find it’s too late.
I, God, will be long gone.
They’ve played fast and loose with me for too long,
filling the country with their bastard offspring.
A plague of locusts will
devastate their violated land.8-9 “Blow the ram’s horn shofar in Gibeah,
the bugle in Ramah!
Signal the invasion of Sin City!
Scare the daylights out of Benjamin!
Ephraim will be left wasted,
a lifeless moonscape.
I’m telling it straight, the unvarnished truth,
to the tribes of Israel.10 “Israel’s rulers are crooks and thieves,
cheating the people of their land,
And I’m angry, good and angry.
Every inch of their bodies is going to feel my anger.11-12 “Brutal Ephraim is himself brutalized—
a taste of his own medicine!
He was so determined
to do it his own worthless way.
Therefore I’m pus to Ephraim,
dry rot in the house of Judah.13 “When Ephraim saw he was sick
and Judah saw his pus-filled sores,
Ephraim went running to Assyria,
went for help to the big king.
But he can’t heal you.
He can’t cure your oozing sores.14-15 “I’m a grizzly charging Ephraim,
a grizzly with cubs charging Judah.
I’ll rip them to pieces—yes, I will!
No one can stop me now.
I’ll drag them off.
No one can help them.
Then I’ll go back to where I came from
until they come to their senses.
When they finally hit rock bottom,
maybe they’ll come looking for me.”
