Old Testament “Action”

THURS., OCT. 12, 2000, 9:30
MORRIS LIBRARY, 5TH FLOOR

You sit here in this now familiar place on campus, looking out over trees that are in the early stages of “Fall color.” The tower of “your building” looms against the sky, an impressive structure because there’s not much else to “challenge it.” You are happy that you have made your home and career in this relative “backwater” region. You really have no desires to live any place else, and little in the way of urges to travel and visit elsewhere.

This is a region not greatly “advanced” (though this library is replete with computers on every floor), but life here and now is in quite a contrast with life described in the Book of 1 Samuel, your Scriptural focus “for awhile.” You are impressed with what I, as Yahweh God, choose to do, with and for My Jewish people, much of it rather mystical. If I Am “the Same, yesterday, today, and forever” then am I still acting in these unexplainable ways… and do you, and your culture, simply have “other explanations” for My current mystical acts?

Well… yes and no. That was a time, before I came as Jesus, when I spoke quite directly, and I affected life, there in the earth. I directly caused the death of certain people, often for their killing of My chosen people, which I allowed.

I wanted Samuel to be an active servant of Mine, so I “arranged for” his conception, birth, and early childhood. Then I “arranged for” him to be the spiritual “word” of Eli, the priest, so that he could develop into the Judge that I wanted him to be.

And, yes, this is “somewhat like” how I chose and guided you. Oh, I let you have quite a normal middle-class American childhood and youth… in particular, learning to write, well, and practicing this important gift/skill, so that I wouldn’t have to “pull a miracle,” when I called you for these Teachings. It isn’t clear, from the Scriptural account, how My childhood and youth, as Samuel (for he certainly was My Man at that time) was, without parents, but I obviously came through that well and was recognized as “Judge material” as I reached manhood.

It was an interesting and exciting time, as My chosen people, the Jews, were threatened and harmed by the Philistines. But accept that all of this was “action” that I either caused or allowed. I was always “in charge”… as I tell you that I am now, in this modern time.

You have little desire to have lived in this Old Testament time AND you have almost comparably little desire to live on into the more “modern world” that now is taking shape. You see your era as the best one for you, even as there has been wars and other means of cruelty in this “good time.” Most of this just has not affected you directly, and you have lived your life, relatively simply and with little pain, of any kind.

There will be no “Testament Story” of you and Your life, in relationship with Me, through these Teachings. You realize (vaguely and dimly) that you could write “your story” as one with much direct guidance from Me and a number of happenings that could be described in ways comparable to My “intrusion” into the lives of Samuel, Saul, and then David. You probably won’t do this, but it is a fine, appropriate “subject” for your contemplation.

One obviously vivid example was your prayer to Me as you pondered moving to this place in 1965. Though it was quite “natural” that Don Boydston and Elmer Clark chose you as the best candidate, in quite a rational way, it could also be told that I, wanting you here, did “affect” the hearts and minds of these “non-openly spiritual” men and actually “timed it” so that very soon after your prayer the phone rang, and it was Don, offering you this position. That would be “like unto” Old Testament action, for I still can act in such ways… though your “spiritual tradition” doesn’t look for or recognize such “action” on My part.