30 Years in the Family

This year marks my 30th anniversary in the Family, and I feel that this might be a good opportunity to reminisce a little on those 3 decades and wrap up some sort of conclusion of what I have learned on this journey.
I specially would like to thank the Family for 3 things:

1. For giving me Jesus

Although the Family I got to know as a 13 year old in 1976 was a very different place than it has become since, and if I would have had the choice I might have preferred to wind up in some "hipper" movement, led by some perhaps a little less controversial spiritual thinker, writer or leader, I would have had to wait a long time for any of them to bring me Jesus.
I'm very thankful for that golden moment in time when the Family was active enough in my country, a field that has largely not been considered a "field" for the past 3 decades and shunned by most men and women of God, to find me in my dark little corner of the world and bring to me the Light of the World.


2. For teaching me to establish a personal relationship with Him

Since the Family's beginnings, Dad emphasized the importance of hearing from God, through Letters like "Faith," "Stop, Look & Listen" and others, and that this was the most important thing each new generation of God's children had to learn was to hear personally from Him, even if it took me quite a while until I finally got that point.
Certainly the Family is unique in teaching its members that anybody can hear from Him at basically any time, and for this gift I am very thankful.


3. For the lesson of looking unto Jesus vs. any personality cult

Relationship with Jesus has the quality that it only really works if we keep Him in the first place in our lives. Humans however have a strong tendency toward making their peers the primary point of their focus, and thus I am very thankful for the basic lesson Dad has taught from the very beginning through such classics as "For God's Sake Follow God" to keep our eyes on Jesus.


There would be more points I could point out and for which to express my gratitude, but these 3 are the main ones.
I pray that God would give me the grace and strength for another decade in His service, although I feel very much like "Now it's your turn," as far as the 2nd generation is concerned, and as John the Baptist said in relation to Jesus, they "must increase," and take the floor.

May they carry the torch and continue doing for others what their parents have done for me: Give folks Jesus, a living relationship with Him, and teach them to keep looking unto Him.

My Verse for 2010

Do you sometimes get a little frustrated because you can't figure out what the momentary mess that constitutes your life could possibly be all about? Well, maybe you don't, because your life is wonderfully organized and everything is perfectly under control, in which case I congratulate you.
I must warn you, though, that things can unravel even in the most perfectly organized lives sometimes, and you might find yourself in a similar situation where you wonder why on earth the Lord allowed a certain thing to happen in your life, like for example, "Why on earth did my wife have to get a dog (on top of the cat, the rabbit, the guinea pig and the four rats), when having pets is so time consuming, not to mention the resources?"

Or, "Why is my life not as simple and neat and organized and flawless as brother so-and-so's?"

Well, the Lord gave me an encouraging little message the other day, reminding me of the promise that there is nothing hid that shall not be revealed.
Meaning, no matter how chaotic and confusing your life may be, no matter how many lies and deceptions the Devil is telling the world, and no matter what a hopeless mess everything may seem to be, there will come a point in time (although it may well be time in a different way than we presently know it), when all things will be revealed, all questions answered, all doubts and unclarities removed.

"So what?" you might say, because none of these things ever fazed your mind, but for me that's something to look forward to.
Sort of like that older song of mine, "Today It All Makes Sense" or Jeremy's song "Bend In the Road"...


Anyway, that's the verse I chose for the new year: "“For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known” Luke 12:2.

It's not that I expect that verse to be fulfilled in the new year (unless the Lord should decide to take me Home for some reason...), but it's something that gives me an incentive to keep ploughing away through the occasional lack of clarity and obvious reason behind my momentary situations: Someday it'll all make sense and all things shall be revealed.

So, any question you might have about life or the universe that may be plaguing you, and unsolved mysteries giving you sleepless nights, cheer up, some day they're all going to be resolved, and as far as I'm concerned, that's something to look forward to.

May the Lord bless you with a clear vision for the coming year, and the initiative to make it happen, the faith to pursue it and the guts to see it through.

Happy New Year!

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Let It Out!

Hurray. Every couple of months I find something I consider worthwhile sharing with the Family on this blog... some stuff for another entry.

One of the many strange things about us is that we don't watch TV. Not at all. And that since 7 years. And we live. Isn't that amazing?
So, in order to find out what's happening in the world we go to the Internet. And guess what's my first address for world news?
The MO-Site.

Okay, granted, sometimes the news there is already a couple of days old... But you cannot deny this one point nevertheless: we live.

And so last night - it was a Sunday night - I read the news from Thursday, or at least those articles I hadn't already seen previously, and there was one article that particularly jumped in my face that I'd like to share with any potential readers from the Family because it comfirms something I've been saying before, entitled,

"How to Escape Perfectionism."

The writer, Peter Bregman starts off by telling us that the people of Iceland are the happiest people on earth, according to the World Database of Happiness (hehe), because they don't care whether they're good enough for anyone else, and so they just do whatever they consider they're good at, and he tops it all off with these magic statements:

"The world doesn't reward perfection. It rewards productivity. And productivity can only be achieved through imperfection."

It gave me another boost of encouragement in that I must have been right on in my policy about not having to wait until I sound like Metallica or Creed before publishing my songs (although perhaps I would very much like to impress everyone to pieces by sounding like Creed, but I'm afraid I won't ever - not in this lifetime).
Or until I look like the perfect blend between Pierce Brosnan and Keanu Reeves before I publish my first video, and know all the technical gimmicks to make it look "professional."

Fact is, some of our crummiest and oldest videos are the ones that get the most views.

It takes guts to be a fool for Christ, and an "Icelandish" determination to not care too much about what people are going to think about you.

Yes, it's a bit humiliating to let it all hang out before the entire world before you've got it all down perfect. And maybe we really still have another 50 years until Jesus returns. Well, maybe you do, but I won't. Not unless the Lord miraculously endows me with the grace to become 96 years old, which I don't even know whether I would be all that keen on the honor (since I already feel like 96 on some days...).

It also confirms something neat the Lord's been telling me some time ago about imperfection:
"Perfection is not the absence of imperfection, but the ability to integrate imperfection."

In other words, you make the best out of whatever you've got, and keep learning from your mistakes.

If you think my recordings sound crummy now, you should have heard my first ones from 1976!

There was a song when I was young that was on a record (the predecessors of CDs) I got when I was around 10 or 11 by a guy called Cat Stevens (he's a Muslim now and calls himself Yusuf Islam), that was called, "I Can't Keep It In." I really believe it was anointed, and some Family folks used to play it back in the 70s and early 80s, and it sort of describes the urge that you've got to have as someone wanting to reach the world for the Lord (and if that's not the case, you might as well wait for as long as you deem necessary until it is):

"I can't keep it in! I can't keep it in, I've gotta let it out.
I've got to show the world, the world's got to see, see all the love, the love that's in me..."

You've got to have something bubbling in your soul that can't be kept inside, and when you do, you shouldn't let any lack of perfection or fear of your pals' critique dissuade you from getting it out. Keep in mind that according to this guy from HarvardBusiness, productivity can only be achieved through imperfection.
In other words, if you want to get something done at all, you're going to have to start out with something less than perfect.
But whatever you do or whatever you've got, don't just keep it inside, tucked away or buried in the ground for fear, but let it out!

Share that less than perfect video, song or blog with the rest of the world, and it will inspire you to get more, and it's only bound to get better over time, because the Lord always blesses our being faithful in that which is least by giving us something more, something better.
Folks around you may not always think so (because there will always be factors that will cause others to be stingy with their applause, such as envy or jealousy or simply a matter of different tastes), but you will notice it. And so will the sheep for whom the stuff you gave was destined in the first place.

You see, we're not really here to impress each other, but to let the sheep know that we're around to save them, and they won't care too much whether you've got it all down perfect before you come and rescue them from the madness of the System. Take it from a former inmate (and believe me, dude, ya never know that there IS such a thing as "the System" until you've been stuck up to your neck in it), who is still glad today that someone didn't wait until they had it all down perfect before they shared Jesus with me.

The Numbers of Man vs. the Values of God

I usually go over my older messages from the Lord in order not to forget all the valuable counsel He gives, and as I do, I condense & categorize them for easier future reference. Sometimes what I read brings angles of what was being said to my mind that I didn't catch before, such as this excerpt of a message from a spirit helper I got some months ago:

"Your trials with those who couldn’t relate to any of what you’re going through in a thousand years make you fold your hands above your head and cry 'Oh, my God; Solomon was right: all is vanity indeed.' But think about the contrast you’re creating by daring to be so different from the indifferent masses who couldn’t care less about spiritual things.

Think about it as a piece of gold or a jewel or gem gotten out of a mine, with tons and tons of worthless, useless rock it was hewn out of… The rocks won’t buy you anything, but the gold and jewel does!
In this world, it may not buy you much, being one of God’s jewels. After all, their system of values is based on paper, and will soon be reduced to nothing but virtual digits in a computer system. Numbers…
What do they know about true values?"


It made me think, and somehow my mind drifted to some of the things I have learned in my life about numbers, the Lord's values compared to man's, and I was also reminded of the passage in Rev.13 about the mark of the beast and "the number of a man," the infamous 666.

One interesting aspect about 666 is that if written in Roman numerals, which were most likely the ones John the Revelator used, is that this number simply represents each existing numerical digit that was used during his time, since M, for 1000, was only added later.

Perhaps the mark of the Beast, the final version of the value system of man, will be the ultimate culmination of what man puts his faith in: numbers, as opposed to God's true values.

While God certainly uses numbers, too, the Bible shows that He can sometimes get annoyed by our putting too much emphasis or trust in them, as the story illustrates in which King David counted how many soldiers he had in his army, by which the Lord was very displeased and for which He punished him severely (see 1Chronicles 21).

I've already expounded once on how it seems that God has a different time system than we do. Dad taught that, too. He said that God lives in the Eternal Now. There is a word for that time in which God lives, called Cairos, as opposed to our current time system, Chronos.

Likewise, there is probably a difference between our other current system of values and His.

We like to use numbers in order to sum up our value. Rich people usually have a lot more self-confidence than the average. Perhaps rightly so. On the other hand, all their confidence is based on is a few numbers and digits on their bank account, and some people have recently experienced how fragile those values can be.

So, maybe the implementation of mark of the Beast will be the final culmination of man having placed his faith utterly in numbers... the numbers of man. It's the closest step Satan will have taken toward imitating God's system of values by shifting man's faith in visible things (such as gold and paper or a Master Card) to invisible values and numbers...

I guess we'll all see how that will pan out...

I Recant That He Couldn't

A while ago I stumbled across the fact that since the stars and planets were created only on the 4th day since the creation of heaven and earth, there was nothing for the earth to revolve around, and I had a hard time imagining what it could have been that determined how "the evening and the morning" had come about without the sun being around, which is our clue along these extents nowadays.

My view of baby Earth was that of a solid ball hanging in space with nothing to revolve around, and no particular reason for revolving around itself.

I even came across the views of the geocentricists who claim that the earth is the center of the universe, and that the universe revolves around earth in 24 hours, and gave that some thought.

Maybe you're like the majority of people I know who wouldn't waste a second thought on such matters, but I've always been curious about our origins, and having just caught up a little on physics (a subject that had perfectly eluded me in school), I was clueless as to what kind of a cosmological scenario I would have to present to "anyone that asketh" me, since I wasn't very satisfied with my own current view of the first few days of history, and as usual, I brought my complaint before the Lord.

He didn't say anything.

He did remind me, though, that there was a book sitting on my shelf less than an arm's length away that I had purchased more than a while ago, and instantly I made use of my arm in order to find some answers. So, I gave it a second go at "Starlight and Time" by D.Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.

I had already grasped his concept of time being distorted by gravity, and thus moving more slowly close to the center of the earth, and faster at a distance, thus making it possible for the light of stars billions of light years away to be seen by us, even if earth is only 6000 years old.

He claims that time moves so much faster out in the vastness of space, that billions of years may have passed out there during our meager 6000 terrestrial years...

(I'm still curious whether this view is supported by evidence, and if anyone comes across such information and would like to share it, I'd be grateful.)

This time I kept reading until the part to which I hadn't made it the first time around, namely his Appendix B: "A Biblical Basis for Creationist Cosmology," in which he reconstructs creation week by taking the statements from Genesis 1 literally (availing himself of the original Hebrew meaning of specific words) and interpreting the events it describes in scientific terms.

What it did for me was rekindle my faith in a biblical truth that my mind had previously rejected, and that was that the "expanse" or firmament created in verses 6-8 was not just a water canopy hanging above the atmosphere before the flood, but actually stellar space, the place where he puts the stars in verses 14-18.

That was something Dad had said back in the 80s, in a Letter called "Astronomical Fakery" (ML1309), but to be honest, I always thought that that was one point he was off about. First of all, that would have taken away my explanation for the longevity of people before the flood, and second, I couldn't imagine a layer of water surrounding the entire known universe. Not until yesterday, that is.

The longevity of Antediluvians can be accredited to the higher magnetic field on pre-flood earth, and according to Humphreys, when God created the heaven and the earth in Gen.1:1 & 2, the "heaven" it's referring to is what the Bible refers to elsewhere as "the Heaven of heavens," something even greater and beyond the scope of stellar space, which was only created on the 2nd day, and that everything else originally consisted of water (see v.2), confirming what Peter wrote (2Pe.3:5), that "the earth was formed out of water and by water."

In other words, the first appearance of solid matter occurred on day 3 when He makes the dry land appear, followed by herbal life, and only then by the rest of the stars and planets that now make up the bulk of matter we observe in our universe.

This may not be a revelation for anyone else, but it was a change of views for me. Somehow it's a bit easier to believe that space was just something God tucked between the waters when the bulk of everything we call physical was made of water in the first place, or maybe it just took all these years for me to find out just how little there is to all the claims made by scientists, media and the machine, and how little they really know of all they claim to know, until I was willing to adapt my perception of these things.

It shows just what a blessing Home schooling is, where you don't have to subject your kids to the stuff they're incessantly drilling into students' heads in public schools. In Germany, public school is obligatory, based on a law first passed by Hitler, so enjoy your freedom to homeschool and of being able to base your knowledge and that of your children on the Bible, which - after all - makes a lot more sense than their theories that try to explain away the Creator.

By now, nothing can surprise me much anymore, not even the notion that the universe should be nothing much different than a water bubble with a bunch of particles called stars and planets in it. It just makes God even bigger than I thought He was before... Outrageously big.

If you're in the possession of an even better or updated explanation or creationist cosmology model, feel free to share and enlighten other not-quite-as-bright minds such as mine & share the know.

Related article from GP Blog: Divine Physics