10 August 2014,
Dear Phyllis,
There is much to say today – in both ways. On the physical front I am up to around 60% military power. Each week I am gaining by 10%. I certainly am vastly improved from what I was a month ago when I was next door to paralysis. Monday I went back to work in Sankapeng and felt great. It felt so good to be back working again that at one point I nearly forgot I had a problem. I could use a jig saw, router, and nail gun, but Friday I reached out my hand to pull a skill saw and couldn't do it. But praise the Lord for improvement.
On the other side, last week was the first time ever that I seriously considered taking down the flag, folding it under my arm, and return to the states for keeps. I wrote my niece a letter raising the question if the time hadn't come to call it a day in the Orient, and close shop like everybody else. Well over 90% of my friends that I worked with 30 and 40 years ago have long since pulled up stakes and gone home. Is this my time to join them?
I was looking to the Lord to give me some sense of guidance through my niece. If there is one person on this planet that loves me, it wold be my niece, Pam Gill. I was somewhat hoping for a letter like, “Oh praise the Lord! We have been praying the Lord might lead you in that direction.” But instead I got the reverse response where she virtually said, “No way. Stay where you are.” I really didn't appreciate that letter, but perhaps that was the guidance I was asking the Lord to provide. I replied to Pam's letter by saying, “The negatives are still very much in place. My heart is 50-50. On the surface it looks like the Lord has dried up Thailand for me and there really isn't much reason to stay.”
For virtually all my entire life the Lord's means of guidance for me has been to dry up the place where I am at that moment, making it almost impossible to stay. This was true with the Air Force, Karuizawa, Ikoma, Sasebo, and NLL. It wasn't that there were many clambering for my talents, begging me to move up the ladder, but it was a matter of being pushed off the stepping stone that I was standing on then.
In 1981 there was a famous aircraft accident with a bird taking off from Dulles in Washington. The aircraft got about 300 feet in the air when it hit flame-out and crashed in the Potomac River. There were many survivors. It was unusually cold in Washington at that time, and there was ice on the Potomac. I saw a famous news clip on Japanese TV where there was a lady about 15 feet from the shore in the water. There was a chopper directly over head dropping a horse collar for her to hang on to so they could pull her to the shore. She was nearly gone, and lost her grip two or three times, and then she just gave up and sank. There were at least 100 men standing there watching. When she gave up the last time and started under, something me screamed, “JUMP!!!” There were 99 men there, some of whom were probably praying, but realizing that they had a wife and children, and God didn't want them to do any thing foolish like jumping in cold water. There was one man who was not of that frame of mind. He dove in, grabbed the lady with one hand and the horse collar with the other and within seconds they both were out of the water.
I never forgot that scene. To this day it still brings tears to my eyes. In 1998 I heard of a place in Vietnam where there were five churches using one Bible. I asked, “Why doesn't somebody do something?” But everybody was busy. They had to make a living. They had to pay for the new car. They had to pay for the new 36 inch TV set. There was something inside of me exploding. I said, “Alright, if you won't go, I will.” And I got on a plane to go one way to Vietnam. I have told you that story many times. I told you last week how the Lord privileged me to do something that exceeded my highest dreams for the next 15 years. But that day has passed. The last time I was in northern Laos, I was talking to a missionary there who told me, “We have all the Bibles we need.”
Today my heart burns for Muslims. I long to go to Pakistan to preach to the Pakistani or the Pashtuns, or to go to west China to reach the Uyghurs. But it looks like God has clipped my wings. I have told Pastor Hanook in Pakistan I would join him this afternoon if the Lord would give me the money and a visa. But now with my physical disability I wonder if I'm not just a spent old man who ought to call it quits and go home. Of course I pray for Thailand. I pray for Japan. But both countries have plenty of churches. We have more churches in Mae Jo, where I live, than in Greenville SC. Both countries have had a Gospel witness for 150 years and yet there has been no significant moving of the Spirit like there was in Korea or China today.. The Bible tell us that the day will come when all nations will belong to the Lord, but I long to see the flag of Jesus flying over Japan and Thailand today. It is highly doubtful that I will have anything to do with that flag raising. Now I am considering taking my flag down.
My morning meetings with Jesus continue to be superb. There are many things the Lord is showing me day by day. I have told you that I spend enormous amount of time in Revelation. I know that book so well now that I can close my eyes and tell you what is in every chapter. I know the contents very well. But I am further from being dogmatic about interpretation than I have ever been; other than one or two things seem perfectly clear. One is that I see no way that book is linear. That is, it does not follow 1, 2, 3.
I am convinced that it comes in a configuration with which we are not familiar now on this earth. If we had been born, raised, and lived in a two dimensional earth there is no way we could understand a three dimensional environment. That is, in a two dimensional earth, a dot has no dimension. But in a three dimensional environment a dot can be a line which has a dimension. I am convinced that spiritual things are more difficult for the natural man to understand than if we lived in a two dimensional earth. But if we can accept that the Lord is trying to tell us things that the natural man cannot understand, that makes it possible for the Holy Spirit to show us things that may not make sense.
For one thing I am beginning to look at the Seven Seal, the Seven Trumpets, and the Seven Vials of the wrath of God in new light. If we look at the Six Seal in chapter 6, and the last Vial in the end of chapter 16, we see that these are basically the same event. Therefor, I see the Seventh Seal as an explanation how the end comes. I see that the first Four Horses in Chapter 6, are exactly the same four judgment that the Lord has always used in dealing with humanity; the beast, war, famine, pestilence (Ez. 14:15-21). It may well be that these are not sequential but things the Lord has been using to speak to humanity for 2000 years.
I think it is highly significant that the Seven Trumpets and the Seven Vials are basically the same thing, but with a greater intensity. They are the environment (vegetation), the ocean, the rivers, the atmosphere, the pit (devils kingdom), and the Euphrates. As in the Seventh Seal, I see the Seventh Trumpet as an explanation on what bring us to the end. I see the Euphrates as the preparation for Armageddon.
In a general way I have seen a similarity with the conquest of Jericho in Josh. 6 and Revelation, but yesterday morning the Lord showed me how they are almost identical. Israel marched around the city blowing the trumpets seven times But on the seventh day they blew it seven times. That is exactly what revelation teaches. Then with the last blast there was the shout. This is exactly what we see in Rev. 19:1-6. Then the walls came down. That is Rev. 18.
As residents of this earth, we have a tendency to read Revelation looking more at the revelations of the signs than the revelation of Jesus (Rev. 1:1). Everyone says, “Look out, here comes war, here comes natural disasters, here comes the anti-Christ,” But that is not the way heaven looks at Revelation. Before any major catastrophic event on earth we see first the scene in heaven (Rev. chapters 4,5; 7, 10,12, 14, 15, 19). If Armageddon and the fall of Jericho are the same thing, don't you think we should have a different attitude as we hear the trumpets? To me, it seems that I can hear the trumpets sounding so loud now only the deaf can't hear them.
I am not as strong a literalist as I was in my early years. I believe that much of the Bible is figurative language, and we need the Holy Spirit to explain to us what it means. Obviously when Jesus spoke to the Jews of His day about eating His flesh and drinking His Blood He wasn't referring to cannibalism. I'm not sure what the Scripture is teaching us about marking the 144,000 in Revelations 7. That might be literal, but I also see that 12 is the infallibly number of God's people, and 144,000 is 12X12. God's promise to Abraham was multiplication. We see in Heb. 6:14 when God made His covenant with Abraham, He promised, “In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee”. Whatever 144,000 thousand means I see it as the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham to multiply his seed, And that may be us (Gal. 3:7,29).
It I highly significant that everybody in Revelation gets mark. They either bear God's mark, or the mark of the beast on their forehead (Rev. 7:3; 13:16). This is exactly the same thing that we saw in Ez. 9:4 before the destruction Jerusalem. The mark in Ezekiel and the mark on the servants of God in Rev . 7:3 seems to be more of a spiritual mark rather than a literal one. Whatever it means, I do believe the mark of the beast will probably be visible. But to me I feel that it is significant that God's mark, as well as the devils, is on the forehead. If we look for a figurative meaning, the forehead may well mean a persons mind set. Certainly this is clearly the most distinctive mark of Christians today. You can usually tell right now who is saved and who isn't by their mind set. lf a person says they are saved but they never speak of Jesus, and all they talk about is the world, I highly suspect they don't belong to the Lord.
I was deeply impressed with the concern that the Lord obliviously has for His own people, when He directed the angels not to hurt anything until His people were marked (Rev. 7:3). This also is in keeping with Ez. 9:4. But I also noticed that in Rev. 14:1, before the fireworks start of the wrath of God poured out, that we see the same 144,000 that we saw in Rev. 7.:3 stand with the Lamb in heaven. This also mentions forehead. For those who hold to the bug-out rapture doctrine this could mean that they got raptured out, but I strongly feel that they got there by being killed like everybody else. In His teaching on the end time, Jesus warned that His people would be hated by all men, and some would get killed, but then He added “Not a hair of your head shall perish” (Lk. 21:16-18). Obviously when He promised not a hair would perish, He was not exempting martyrdom. He also said that we are counted as sheep for the slaughter (Rom. 8:36). If that isn't happening today where we are seeing hundreds of thousand of Christian being killed in Africa and the Middle East, I don't know what it is. We are witnessing slaughter house genocide in many places today and I believe it must intensify. We haven't seen the real show with the anti-Christ yet. But for those who are being beheaded, the next stop is sitting on thrones (Rev. 20:4). I am sure they all will have a full head of hair. Things can only get worse. This may well cost us our blood. Praise God if it does, but nothing can harm us as we stand for Jesus.
Ganbarimasho (Let's give it our best shot),
bill
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