The Headwaters of Our Troubles

I suspect this article from someone you don’t even know may have inserted itself into your already jam packed day.  And besides that, its print is a bit smaller and there’s a lot of it.  So, it may be that, “Sorry,” won’t be enough to keep you from immediately moving on to some new web place.  But I’m hoping a sincere, “Please don’t. I promise it deserves a read.” might secure its reprieve.  And, if it does, please know that I (Larry Burnett, by the way) am very grateful for that kindness.

 So, I’ll get right to it.  Years ago, when I was learning to fly, I read these words of wisdom from a highly experienced airline pilot. He was writing of the dangers of flying into inclement weather.  He said, “Remember, the weather is not what someone forecasts. The weather is what you see through the windshield.” 

I have found this to be good, life-saving advice over the years – and, not just for aviators.  So, I also use this realistic approach in my everyday life. I try to assess reality according to what my mind’s eye can actually see through the windshield of the present moment. And here is one of those things.

There is a simple operational principal which governs the quality of both our personal and our national relationship with God.  It is revealed in the New Testament writings of the apostle, James.  That apostle said, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”  Simple, right?  And, the reciprocal principal is just as simple and just as true.  Draw away from God, whether individually or as a nation, and He will also be drawn away from you.

 And, when this parting movement comes to our relationship with God, there are always practical consequences - consequences which become ever more dire with the widening of that relational distance.  Consequences like those presently occurring in this now widely God-estranged America.

 Already, we are a deeply divided and greatly weakened nation – fully immersed in a dark, downward spiral which now touches every facet of our society. Our own government is purposely inviting a huge daily invasion through our southern border.  And, that same government, being thoroughly infiltrated with Marxist Democrat politicians and political operatives who detest our way of life, has now become an imminent threat to our very existence as a free and prosperous nation. They are daily plotting and actually implementing the end of this liberty-rich land.

 Our foundation, the rule of just laws, is crumbling at their direction – as is the integrity of our elections. Prices now soar as the worth of the dollar free falls, not due to natural forces, but by the design of those seditious plotters.  The plan being to break the back of our prosperity and replace it with a Marxist system which has never led any nation to anything but impoverishment in both treasure and soul.  

 Beyond all of this, our judicial and educational systems are widely corrupted by woke and socialist agendas. And, our salivating enemies, Communist Russia, the Chinese Communist Party, the psychopathic leadership of Iran, the brutal drug cartels and the now way-out-of-the-closet Marxist Democrat Party are spontaneously forming into an alignment. They are just naturally moving together as they sense the nearing final stage of their long dream - the permanent subjugation of America through this coming election.

 But for too long our misdirected gaze has been mistakenly fixed merely on these political intrigues. Certainly these political realities are very significant.  But these are only the downstream results of the much more fundamental cause of our woes.  The real headwaters of our rapid national disintegration actually swirl out of that previously mentioned relational rift with God.  And these political and social difficulties are just those previously noted practical consequences which always flow out of such a rift.

 The historical pages of the Bible actually hold many accounts of such divine retreats involving the nation of ancient Israel.  And, their national pattern was always the same as is ours now.  Those times of God’s estrangement from that nation were always precipitated by a widely abandoned respect and love for Him. 

 So now, this form of divine corrective discipline has also come to us – due to our similar behavior.  The beginning point of this change in the status of God’s national guardianship is easily noted by His non-intervention in that disaster that was our 2020 presidential election.  And, the seriousness of that change is clearly underscored by the quickness and depth of our national decline since. 

 But it would seem that this coming election and the possibility of obtaining a vastly more enlightened administration, may actually be the offer of a divine olive branch.  It may be that these last four years were God’s way of clearly demonstrating to the nation the harsh reality which emerges when we widely undervalue and thus begin to lose the blessing of His guardianship over the nation.  So, now the nation is better equipped to understand what is really at stake in this crucial hour if our national attitudes and behavior go unchanged and this relational rift continues to widen.    

 Thus, history now waits to actually mark its record.  And, so must we also wait to see how this present-day America will treat this possible opportunity for a reconciliation with God and a national healing. 

 Will we smugly choose to continue with our secular disrespect? Will we continue in our widespread shallowness within the Church?  Will we allow unfolding events, absent God’s guardianship, to continue to push us permanently into the abject darkness of Marxism?  Or, will we widely come again to that truth which we once knew so very well?  The truth that, ultimately, both individually and as a nation, our success ever resides much less in our own prowess and much more in God’s friendship.   ~ Larry Burnett

        

The Re-Awakening Series by Larry Burnett is a unique, (fiction/ non-fiction) two book set.  Devil Whispers  and Spiritual Dynamics were born of and for this crucial hour in America. 

At Freedom Bridge Press, we are happy to commend these truly God-commissioned books.  They paint a single clear picture of the devastating treacheries within what has become America’s present secular and religious house of mirrors.  And, they describe precisely how to escape the outlandish deceptions of those grotesque images – both for the nation and the individual.  These book have something to say that this present America desperately needs to hear.  And they say it with great clarity.  

And, the books can be simply and securely ordered directly from The Back 40 Bookstore (linked below) or from the leading book retailers who are also conveniently linked there.  And, please understand that books, in spite of their inherent cost, are still our ministry’s best medium for extensive communications.  But we are, indeed, a ministry devoted to serving God’s message and the well-being of this nation. 

So, Freedom Bridge Press happily accommodates a snug budget by making a complete promotional two book set available (in paperback form) at no cost to those who request it. And, there is a “Contact Us” link in the bookstore by which to forward that request. We won’t let cost be an obstacle to your reading if you won’t.  ~ FBP

Meet The Books:  A Larger Intro to the Books

Meet the Author:  Larry's Back Story

                  The Book Store: www.TheBack40Museum.com/the-back40-bookstore

 Our Website:  www.TheBack40Museum.com

Choice: The Sophisticated Difference

I dearly love the morning sun.  So, my morning prayer time is usually located directly in front of an eastern facing window in our den.  And just outside that window are two willow trees with a bird feeder and bird bath located between them.  And, every summer morning those trees are alive with birds at this aviary McDonalds.

Recently, as I watched their activities for a couple of minutes, I heard a divine whisper (in my heart, not my ear).  That still, small voice said, “The difference is choice.”  As usual, I was then instantly engulfed in a fresh game of “Do What?” which the Lord seems to love to initiate on bright, sunny, summer mornings – and, for that matter, on cold, cloudy, winter mornings as well.

So, as I pondered that quick thought for a bit, I realized something.  Birds don’t really make choices, they just respond to the simple stimulants of their day.  “Sun is up – go to Larry’s house and score a birdseed breakfast.  Sun is down - go to the forest and get some shut-eye until the Birdie “Big Mac” opens again in the morning.”  Every day it’s the same routine – no choice required. It’s just instinctively doing the next obvious thing. 

But in the Book of Matthew, chapter 7, Jesus relays a kind of oblique example of just how important choice making is to the human species.  There He says, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.  Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’   And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”

Obviously, the group which Jesus describes here made, in His mind, some bad choices. And, their character, their life experience, and their ultimate outcome were all defined by those choices. 

But certainly, what they chose to do does not, at first glance, seem obviously bad.  In fact, they actually seem to be a fairly good set of time and energy investment choices.  Nevertheless, the reality which Jesus describes here is that those choices did, indeed, lead to the group’s catastrophic failure in the end.

But, upon reflection, it becomes evident that their failure was actually set up eons before these people were even born.  It was actually set in motion in the Garden of Eden when Satan uttered these words to Eve.  “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] your eyes will  be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” [Brackets added]

This treacherous statement is where it all started to go off the rails for mankind.  And, that existential wreck revolves around just one initial question: “Can human beings source truth merely from within themselves?”  

In other words, if truth is the correct interpretation of reality, and it is that, then, can we become our own authoritative self-interpreters of the good or evil in life’s circumstances – independently of God?  And eventually, the question becomes, “Can we successfully make the jump to living an entirely self-determined life instead of a God- guided one?”

In point of fact, Satan’s most cherished goal for every generation is to convince humanity that we absolutely can make that leap successfully.  And, this is precisely the pitch that he made to Adam and Eve in that infamous garden meeting. He said, “You will not surely die...you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”    

To this very day, this remains the arch demon's chief subversive tactic to undermine the God/ man relationship.  It is to make each of us believe that just calling life as we see it, individually, irrespective of God’s view, is simply the more direct, secure, and unimpeded path to personal fulfillment.  

And, therein lay Satan’s real leverage – it was that normal and deep-seated desire for personal fulfillment which resides in all of us.  So, exaggerating that legitimate motive into something it was never intended to be, Satan began to sell The Great Lie, to humanity.  And that lie was essentially this. “By becoming your own truth-giver and interpreting and directing your life circumstances as you see fit, you can become your own best hope for personal fulfillment.”  

And, Satan also had (and has) a much greater treachery in mind than just subverting Adam and Eve.  Satan’s ultimate aim is to universally obliterate the supremacy of divine truth – God’s unique and singular authority to say what is the correct interpretation of reality. 

Ultimately, Satan’s treacherous intention is to make every individual secure in the belief that their interpretations of reality are equal in weight and value to God’s. Satan relentlessly pursues this equilibrium of truth because he knows that in that resulting vast sea of mere deluded opinions, mankind will lose his most fundamental relational connection to God.  He will lose his view of God as his beloved and and  supremely authoritative Truth-giver.

 So, by that garden treachery, Satan shattered the confidence of the first couple in the supremacy of the divine truth – and through them, that of the species.  And, as a result, man did, indeed, start to think of himself as his own best hope for fulfillment, and thus, the better master of his own life-course.  Thus, we are now born, predisposed to believe this treacherous satanic whisper, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil…” 

So, Adam and Eve introduced this new soul-killing life approach of self-determination into the human experience.  They became their own interpreters of good and evil, right and wrong, how to proceed, etc.   And, all of their subsequent choices, became based  merely on  their own individual, and very subjective view of things.

In their naiveté, Adam and Eve did not realize that they were actually making the most fundamentally important choice that mankind ever makes.  And they also failed to understand the far reaching sophistication of that choice.  So, they never saw the devastation coming, until it was too late.  

One's answer to the question, “Whose circumstantial interpretations (truth) will I embrace,” inextricably leads to one of two outcomes.  It leads to either a humble life of faith under the loving and benevolent guidance of our Creator.   Or, it leads to an arrogant life of self-determination under the direction of merely our own thoughts, and ideas.  

Adam and Eve mistakenly opted for the latter. And, in fact, so also did that group described in Matthew 7.  They, too, failed to see the sophisticated outflows of becoming one’s own truth-giver.  Indeed, they entirely failed to see what Jesus saw instantly and very clearly.

 So, in that last critical moment of time, Jesus, looked right past their self-determined “good” works. Instead, He entirely assessed them by the quality of their interactivity with God. He judged them by His own, much more primary considerations. “Were their actions born of a true deference to the Father’s wishes (faith)?  Or, were they born of those still self-determined motives – merely veneered in relational pretense?”  

 In this instance, Jesus determined that the latter case was the true reality, and His judgement, then, was this. “I never *knew you; [I’ve never known a truly close and correctly interactive friendship with you] depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness [you who practice self-determination]!” [Brackets Added]

(* In the Greek, the word used here for "knew" is "Genosco."  Its precise meaning is, "a deep and intimate knowing.")

So, as it turns out, birds do, indeed, have the more simplistic existence – no sophisticated choices involved. They just instinctively pursue the up-close, day-to-day necessities.  Thus, it would seem that “the capacity for choice is the difference,” and a big one, just as God whispered to me on that sunny summer morning. 

And, it would also seem to come to this.  Indeed, we are human beings, not birds.  And, as such, we are now actually obligated to make this very sophisticated choice regarding our truth source.  

So, through Christ, we can choose to trust God and His loving daily guidance as our supreme and always trustable Truth-giver.  Or, we can opt out of that, in favor of becoming our own.  But,  as with that M-7 group, in the end, this will, indeed, be the very choice which entirely defines each of us in God's eyes.