Ecclesiastes 12:10

    In 1870, the James Robinson & Co. Circus and Animal Show wanted to drum up some publicity for a performance in Middletown, Missouri. As the clowns, circus performers, and animals paraded through town, the circus band played along while standing on the roof of a cage…that held two hungry lions.   Despite concerns that the roof wasn’t strong enough to support ten grown men, circus bosses ordered the band to keep on playing. So they did…right up until the moment the roof caved in. The musicians plunged into the den of hungry lions, who tore them limb from limb. Ten band members started the parade; only three survived.   You don’t play around with a lion.   In 1 st Peter 5:8, we are warned, “ Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour .” Yet, we often will play alongside the Devil, thinking that we aren’t going to fall into his clutches. The barricades we erected will ...

    The 91 st Psalm is one that teaches us about the deliverance of God. It paints a picture of God as a protector like a bird covering its young. It reminds us that even when all seems to be falling apart around us, God is there watching out. It’s a passage that encourages us to take refuge in God and to trust in him.   So it seems strange is the one that Satan quotes to tempt Jesus.   Then the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple,   and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, 'HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU'; and 'ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE.' " Matthew 4:5-6      Satan knows Scripture.   He will twist it to make us think his lies are legitimate. The psalm encourages us to rest in God not test him. Yet the Devil tries to paint the message that way. It a technique...

  Genghis Khan was a brilliant military leader who united the Mongol tribes and created a fearsome army with himself at its head. He ruled an empire that stretched across Asia, from the wintry woods of Ukraine to the Eastern shores of Korea. An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great and four times the size of the Roman Empire.     In 1207, his men swept across the Gobi Desert to attack China, but they were halted at the walled city of Voloha. Here the hard-riding Mongols discovered that their cavalry tactics were virtually useless in attacking a heavily fortified city. There seemed to be no way to defeat the city from the outside.   Khan offered to end the siege in exchange for an unusual tribute: one thousand cats and ten thousand sparrows.   The request was unusual but rather a cheap price for security and seemingly benign, so they decided to comply.  It turned out to be a terrible choice.   Shortly after they delivered th...

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12   There is a war on against Christianity. Not one in the media or even from any political or national source. It is the one that has been going on from the beginning lead by the Devil.  It is a battle for the hearts and minds of every soul on this planet (2 Corinthians 10:3 -5). The devil uses any means to create doubt, cause delay and get us to ignore the truth of God word.  Let’s examine some of those he uses to do just that: Private I nterpretation This lowly one may not seem like he couldn’t do much damage, but looks can be deceiving. When private interpretation comes into play he causes the authority of God’s Word to come into question.  What is clearly said in the text can be twisted into what I think it says.  Since there ar...

   Victor Lustigly was called the king of the confidence men.  With forty-five known aliases, the mastery of five different languages, and nearly fifty arrests in the United States alone, Lustig could swindle even the brightest of marks.  His signature con was the Money Box, a so called "money-printing machine".  He would demonstrate the capability of the small box to clients, all the while lamenting that it took the device six hours to copy a $100 bill.  The client, sensing huge profits, would buy the machines for a high price.  Over the next twelve hours, the machine would produce two more $100 bills.  After that, it produced only blank paper, as its supply of $100 bills became exhausted. By the time the clients realized that they had been scammed, Lustig was long gone.  He had gall as well, he once conned Al Capone. He was so good (or bad really) he even sold the Eiffel tower for scrap metal. Twice!    Victor Lustigly...

  In March 1898, the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. During the next nine months of construction, two maneless male lions stalked the campsite, dragging workers from their tents at night and devouring them. The two man-eating lions were credited with killing 135 people in less than a year before they were eventually killed by the project leader John Patterson.   As the attack intensified, hundreds of workers fled from Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. Crews initially tried to scare off the lions by building campfires and bomas( thorn fences) around their camp for protection to keep the man-eaters out, but to no avail. The lions leaped over or crawled through the thorn fences. The lions were ruthless, attacking patients in the hospital tents, ambushing water carriers during the day. In his memoirs Patterson wrote: "(The lions') methods became so uncanny, and their man-stalking so well-timed and so certain of success, t...

  Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair   It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission.  It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...

         In 1985, Jerome Moody drowned at pool party hosted by the New Orleans Recreation Department (NORD). As tragic as the story was, it would have probably been forgotten if not for the unusual circumstance surrounding his death.  No one had seen him swimming and he was found fully dressed.  It was never known how he got in the water or when he drowned since his body was not discovered until lifeguards began cleaning out the pool at the close of the party and by then it was too late.  But what made this story even more peculiar was the party itself.  It had been thrown for the workers of NORD, which included over 100 lifeguards! The reason for the celebration; it had been the first summer without a drowning at a New Orleans city pool.  A pool full of life guards that had earned a reputation for good performance had all missed this obviously drowning man.      What happened in this tragedy is similar ...

   Once I entered into a discussion with a person on a message board about the existence of Satan and Hell. They asked the question "does the Bible really talks about hell and the Devil or does it just speak against sin"?  I responded with several verses from scripture that show the reality of both Satan and hell, but as I began to watch the conversation unfold I saw that their intent was not knowledge but to have a consequence free approach to the word of God. This person wanted to keep believing the idea that Satan and Hell are just fiction to help steer us to right living. This way sin is not as dangerous.     In this belief, a person can stray from God easier since they don’t have to worry about any eternal ramifications. It remind me of the famous quote about the devil that said,’ the greatest lie Satan ever pulled off is when he convinced the world that he never existed.”  If the world dismisses Satan and hell, why avoid the life tha...