Seeing the End from Here

I grew up on End of Times prophecy seminars and evangelistic meetings. My home town of Keene, Texas is pretty much the capital of Adventism in Texas and the Southwestern Union, being the home of Southwestern Adventist University. My great great grandfather signed the charter for the Keene Church back in the late 1800s. I lived literally in a city on a hill - Keene is the highest spot in Johnson County. There used to be a train that ran through Keene back in the 20s. The train's conductor, a would-be humorist, used to announce Keene as "Next stop the Holy City."

So I heard a lot about prophecy as a kid. It was during the great schism of the 60s between hard-line, Sister White thumpin' legalism and the rise of the second great righteous by faith movement in the church. There was a lot going on. The one constant however were the stories about what would happen at the end of time.

It was scary stuff; the SDA preacher's version of hell fire and damnation preaching. Baptists scared people into the pews with tales of the horrors of an ever-burning hell. Adventist evangelists (some and by no means all) scared people into the pews with tales of being "unready" for the time of trouble. So I have this spidey sense about end of time signs.

The first thing man needed to bring the world to an end was a means to literally end the world. Well we already had that. I grew up with cartoon turtles teaching us to duck and cover in elementary school. We've lived with mutually assured destruction for a long time. We already have the means to turn the Earth into a dead and blackened husk fo a thousand years. So that's already done.

Some ten or fifteen years ago Pope John Paul II sent out an encyclical calling for Catholics to start lobbying for Sunday laws in their countries and declaring that Sunday was the symbol of the church's authority which all recognize. This was suggested as a means to improve the quality of family life. Nothing happened in the USA (apparently we think family life is okey dokey, so we didn't really worry about it too much, at least in North American Adventist circles. What I didn't know is that European countries like Germany did enact such laws. You can, for instance be arrested and fined in Stuttgart for mowing your lawn on Sunday. You can be visited by the police for washing your car on a warm Sunday afternoon in Munich. Quietly other strongly Catholic nations have followed suit. I don't know how many. I only recently became aware of the strong Sunday laws in Germany.

Then I stumbled on an encyclical by Pope Benedict calling for one world government with "teeth" to rein in countries like the United States. He suggested such a clearly socialist government be organized by industrial leaders, trade unions, international political parties (there's only one of those) and religious leaders. I stumbled hard over the bit about "trade unions" in particular and I heard "bundles to be burned" echo in my brain. The plan was proffered as a way to insure the relief of the world's poor - a massive redistribution of wealth from wealthy countries to poor ones. In his encyclical, Benedict stated "Obviously it (the global government) would have to have the authority to ensure compliance with its decisions from all parties, and also with the coordinated measures adopted in various international forums." Can you say, "Beast".


Then we got a Jesuit pope, Frances. Given the history of Jesuit twiddling with the Protestant interpretation of the identity of the anti-Christ through stealth campaigns in Protestant seminaries and its insertion of the Secret Rapture doctrine into the Protestant eschatology, I could hear the far off rumble of a coming storm. In short order, Frances is invited by an ex Israeli prime minister to head up something called "The United Religions", an organization designed to be a kind of spiritual United Nations. He has not said "No". Shortly after that, the pope sends a video invitation to American charismatics to give up "Martin Luther's protest" and rejoin the Catholic Church, claiming the problem has been solved with a little wording change in the church's doctrine related to salvation by faith in Christ alone. That sent a little chill up my spine. Then he visited the USA and spoke to Congress while the Speaker of the House stood trembling with tears in his eyes.

Now we see in the very nation that SDAs have long predicted would become the "Image to the Beast", a presidential election in which both candidates are outright criminals, demonstrated liars and con artists. One owns strip clubs and borrows slogans from Adolph Hitler. The other is suspected of treasonous behavior, collusion with our enemies and massively poor judgment during her term as Secretary of State. And one of our own Adventist "bright lights", who ought to know better, is asking us to choose the lesser of two evils. Can you say "...some of our brightest lights will go out?" Thought so.

In the news today I saw an article about a new technology that has the ability to scrape all your records online, social media and everything for data. It analyzes words and puts together a report about you - one that purports to tell whether you are trustworthy or not. Google has already done something similar. The CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, said this when questioned about privacy concerns, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. The company, Score Assured, is offering its services to landlords, loan companies and employers as a way to vet those apply to them for housing, loans or employment.

"Whoa, "that no man might buy or sell" just flashed through my brain. The company's co-founder Steve Thornhill dismisses such worries saying, "If you're living a normal life, then, frankly, you have nothing to worry about." In the age of terrorism, can you imagine the US government not wanting to get its hands on a way to make sure people are living a "normal" life. All in the name of safety you understand.

So who decides what is a "normal" life. If you don't live a normal life what happens next. Can anyone else see a government market for this technology as a means to protect Homeland Security. The world has in its hands the means to insure your orthodoxy and we voluntarily have handed it to them. There's no hiding anymore other than literally going into the rocks and the mountains and hiding and with heat sensing scanners and satellites that can read a newspaper from outer space, there really is no hiding anymore.

The Great Controversy has always been about freedom vs control.  God wants us to be free and to live as we choose. Lucifer has always thought we needed a more firm hand. Look at all the most devilish governments that have ever existed and they all share one thing - a lust for power over the lives of all.  We old geezers read George Orwell's 1984 in school and for some years have managed to avoid it. An new generation is rising and Orwell and the Bible are off the reading lists for children now.

We live in a world clambering for safety, entertainment and comfort - sex, drugs and rock n' roll if you will. Greed and the lust for power has created a world so complex we can't understand it anymore. So we invent conspiracy theories to try and simplify things enough so we can understand them. We're being set up to believe that the only way to save ourselves from these conspiracies is to give ourselves a powerful leadership we can trust. Sadly, we're being set up. The only conspiracy out there is a loose sharing of mutual lust, greed and self-interest. The leader of this conspiracy is not who people think it is. We fight not against flesh and blood, but against "principalities and powers" and these have been pushing the world closer and closer to the brink of surrender and destruction using the same lies, the same inducements and the same techniques over and over. Socialism has gone down in disaster and death time after time after time and still we see men binding them selves in bundles like Mussolini's symbolic Fascio - bundles to be burned in the fires of the concentration camps, the gulags and the ghettos.

I found God during the early days of the righteousness by faith movement in the late 60s. I began a personal walk with Christ at that time, but I was impertinent enough to ask God to prove He was really who He said He was. And somewhat to my surprise, He did. Repeatedly. Undeniably. Nowadays I have a different reaction to those scary prophecies and their ongoing fulfillment in the nightly news stories.

Now, when I see the signs as Jesus said we would, my heart is lifted for I know that the time is near. It is the Autumn of our world and the winter is bearing down on us. But we are His and we need not fear. I tell people all the time that I believe that Jesus is loading up the bus to come and get us. Everybody pretty much agrees, though all of us are not completely comfortable in that knowledge. But I do not fear the time of trouble, for He is with me always. I know this, for every time an angel appears to a man, the first message he delivers is always the same.  "Fear not!" So I don't. The world IS coming to its end. Like the changing of the leaves in Autumn foretell the coming of winter, the signs of the end are all around us.

Even so, come Lord Jesus, for I am not afraid.


© 2016 by Tom King

Grief: It's Who You Know

With Christ you do not walk alone whatever trials may come.

Up front, let me tell you I am no stranger to grief. At the age of four, my cousin who my Mom babysat regularly died suddenly of SIDS. It was my first encounter with death and the sadness that accompanies it. When I was a little older, my baby brother died due to a heart defect that he was born with. We kids brought German measles home and gave it to my Mom which caused Craig to be born with it. My 16 year old brother Donnie was shot through the chest with a 12 gauge shotgun at close range by a friend when I was 18. Fifteen years later, my stepmother shot my father through the chest with a 12 gauge shotgun and then waited to call 911 till she was sure he'd stopped breathing. I lost a business and home we had invested countless hours and dollars in. I had several jobs fold up under me. My family asked me not to visit my beloved grandmother anymore because it upset her, even though my grandmother had told us on our last visit with her that she'd never felt closer to God than she had while my wife had been staying with her. Her apparent stroke and mental confusion caused my aunt's ban on our visiting her. This effectively cut me off from my extended family on my Dad's side for years.

In struggling to do God's will with our lives we've run up against roadblocks and what I can only describe as attacks by Satan. We endured poverty and deprivation, our son developed a seizure disorder. Another son developed bipolar disorder. Our middle son died in his sleep in his senior year of college. I did CPR for 30 minutes before the ambulance arrrived. My wife developed bipolar and suffered a massive breakdown. My son's bipolar and the poor choices he made while not on his meds landed him in jail for we know not how long. We have passed through displacement, hunger and homelessness. We've witnessed God's deliverance and intervention many times when we thought we could not go on.

And then last month, the little dog that God had given us and who had brought us untold comfort and joy through the difficulties of the past 7 years died in my arms. It felt like losing a child. Then, my wife went back home to Louisiana for six weeks to help a cousin who's husband is suffering liver failure due to exposure to Agent Orange during his time in Vietnam.  I found myself alone without even my doggy companion to keep me company.


It sounds like a tale of unrelenting woe when you put it like that. My life, however, is not a tale of woe. Viewed from the perspective of one who endeavors to serve God as best that he can, my life has been chiefly one of peace, joy, love and happiness, albeit interspersed with grief and trouble. I have done things that I thought God wanted doing and am pleased that many of them resulted in good things happening. I have friends who love us, children I am proud of and the hope of heaven. I am content. 

Grief can make you a kinder, more sympathetic person or it can turn you into a self-absorbed angry monster. It is living daily with Jesus that makes the difference. It is He who heals a broken heart and keeps it from hardening and turning in on itself. It is Christ who helps the broken-hearted to heal by opening those same hearts to even more opportunities to share his love with a world suffering at the hands of the Prince of Darkness.

Men grieve differently than women. Though we don't show it or talk about it as much, we still experience it. In many ways male grief is a more difficult process. Women talk about their grief and express their emotions openly with other women and with their supportive menfolk - fathers, brothers or spouses mostly. Men seldom show emotion with other men and often actively hide it in front of their womenfolk. Because we stuff our grief, we probably aren't terribly good at listening when our wives are grieving over the same thing we are. To listen and empathize would mean exposing ourselves to the danger of opening up our own emotional pain and that is something men don't like to do. 

Most of the time, if men shed tears over our grief, it is when we are alone, driving in our cars, sitting in a fishing boat or walking alone in the woods. In every case in my own life where I lost someone important to me, my tears have flowed mostly where no one but God could see them. I had to actively go to God about my grief, because, for some reason, the human mind processes grief in close proximity to where it generates anger. I've had to pray a lot during periods of grief in order to keep from being surly or short with my loved ones. Solitary prayer alone with God can help. Walking and weeping while praying seems to valve off some of that emotional pressure caused by the internal struggle we men have in trying to bury our sadness and sense of terrible loss.

We learn through grief that loving others, that offering ourselves to act as the instruments of our loving God is the only way through our pain. There is a bright and hopeful eternity beyond this sad little world, but we cannot go around life's dark valleys. We must, like David said in Psalm 23, "... walk through the valley of the shadow of death." David, in typical male fashion, however, follows up that statement with a ringing declaration. "I WILL FEAR NO EVIL!" One evening during a particularly difficult personal trial, I had just received another phone call with more bad news. I went out on the front porch and stood there looking out upon a darkening wood. I suddenly remembered David's declaration. Almost instinctively, I squared my shoulders, raised an arm and shook my fist at the darkness. Out loud I shouted, "Come on you old deceiver. Is that the best you've got?" Some people chide me for doing that, saying you should never tempt Satan that way. To me it felt like a battle cry in the midst of some war that was going on in my life. It gave me courage in a strange way and even though the devil didn't let up on us for a while, we did manage to overcome him anyway and came out with our faith stronger for it.

My neighbors probably wondered what the crazy man next door was yelling about, but it did give me a great sense of relief. The Apostle Paul said, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms." In any conflict, it is important to understand who your enemies are. It helps you to bear the losses that you inevitably have during any war and helps you stay out of the trap of blaming yourself or, worse, of blaming God.

A life which bears much grief can be viewed as either a tragedy or a triumph. Loss doesn't have to be defeat. Remember the Alamo. Remember the cross. Whether your life ends in defeat or victory, it's resolution does not depend on your won/loss record nor even on how well you fought. Whether you win or lose depends instead on who you know.

Me? I choose to know Jesus.

©  2016 by Tom King

Follow Your Leader? Sorry, I Already Have One.

And I'm not sorry at all....

Politics and religion often overlap because it is hard to believe something as fervently as Christians do and to avoid getting crosswise of your country's political leadership. It has always been so. After all, most of them believe they should be worshipped and find those who love and serve Christ to be troublesome at best and a downright threat to their power at worst.

The is nothing worse to a human leader than followers who won't follow and subjects who won't bow down. A few wise leaders do understand the power of a free citizenry, but not terribly many. God blessed our nation with a surprisingly large group of leaders who did, though most saw the folly of entrusting your liberties to princes, kings, emperors and potentates in the light cast upon the subject by England's insane King George III. In America, it was churches where the Revolution began and was fomented. Followers of Christ didn't think they needed any other King. After all most of the colonials had come to America to escape persecution by kings and nobles they disagreed with.

America has had a good run as protector of its citizens' rights and liberties. Two hundred forty years is not bad for a country. It took Rome a lot less than that before it gave up its Republican system of government in exchange for the empty promises of a smooth-talking "leader".

It's always amazing in history when perfectly sensible people like the Israelites, who had witnessed time and again God's deliverance under the government that God Himself had set up over His people, choose to put tyrants over themselves. They, like almost every group of humans who drift toward trusting in themselves, demanded a stronger king.  Samuel warned them (I Samuel 8:10-22)

• ¹⁰ So Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking for a king from him. ¹¹ He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. ¹² And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. ¹³ He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. ¹⁴ He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. ¹⁵ He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. ¹⁶ He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men^[a] and your donkeys, and put them to his work. ¹⁷ He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. ¹⁸ And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

When our current presidential election cycle began I had some hope. There were many candidates I could vote for, even including a Seventh Day Adventist who actually seemed to have a shot at winning the thing. I was thinking, maybe God was going to give us a brief respite to finish the work before Babylon rises up, wrecks the world and then falls. Instead, we wound up with two candidates so desperately slimy and evil that most Christians are revolted and the prospect of voting for either one. My favorite candidate even went over to the dark side and endorsed the strip club owner in the race, claiming he was at least  better than the socialist that was running.

The lesser of two evils, my friend, is still evil and electing someone evil to the most power office in the world is never, ever a good idea.  In discussing the situation with other Christians at the weekly food bank, my cab driver and a couple of folks I struck a conversation with at Walmart this afternoon, we have pretty much decided that the people of America have chosen the path to destruction and that Jesus must be loading up the bus to come and get us.

Jesus said in Mark 13: 28-30

• "28Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its branches become tender and sprout leaves, you know that summer is near. 29In the same way, when you see these things happening, you know that He is near, right at the door. 30Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened.…"

I don't know about you, but I'm seeing stuff happening that the evangelists who evangelistic meetings at my church and at camp meeting told us would happen at the end of time. In less than twenty years, we've seen the last three Popes call for (in order), Sunday laws (John Paul), a world government with teeth (Benedict) and an end to "Luther's protest" and reunification of the Protestant churches and Roman Catholicism into a universal church (Frances). We've witnessed a former Israeli prime minister inviting the Pope to head an organization called "United Religions", a quasi-governmental parallel to the United Nations for the world's churches. We've witnessed the Pope speaking before Congress and president after president making the pilgrimage to the Vatican to kiss the Pope's ring.

Kids, it's a comin' just like the preachers have been trying to tell us it was. So this election cycle, I'm voting none of the above. I may write someone in, but I won't be voting for either of the two corrupt servants with whom Satan has presented us.  If you'll notice that the countries that commit the most evil in this world like to have meaningless elections where there is no real choice at all, only illusory ones.

It's time to dust off your study Bibles and prepare to stand in the breach with your swords. It will take courage. Some of the brightest lights of the church will go out. We know this. It's heart-breaking when it happens, but there's a reason we Christians don't have to worry about leaders.

We don't need anyone's "great" human leader to fight our battles for us or to tell us what to do - we already have one and He has already one our battle for us. There's nothing they can do to us for Christ sends us angels to stand beside us and every time one does, the first thing he says to us is, "Fear Not!"

So I am not afraid. And that's a message we should be preaching to anyone who will listen.

© by Tom King

The Great Controversy Over "The Record Keeper"

This afternoon, I watched "The Record Keeper" again - the SDA funded film based on Ellen White's Great Controversy. I was again impressed by it. It's still my opinion that the suspension of the film was a mistake for the following reasons:

1.  I've seen the Record Keeper several times now. I realize full well I am looking at an allegory. There is a precedent for allegory in the Bible. Technically 7 lean cows could not eat 7 fat cows. They don't have the teeth for it and the thing, where the image Nebuchadnezzar saw is struck by a stone, didn't really happen.
2.  Cancelling the film is a huge waste of resources. The film was vetted at every step and still somehow after spending a million bucks or so, the GC didn't like the results. I don't like my tithes and offerings wasted in that fashion.
3. The failure of the GC to approve a film about The Great Controversy surprises me not a bit. The General Conference would never have allowed Jesus to tell the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, much less include it in Scripture. Christ's parable, after all, contains "theological inaccuracies".  
4. An allegory or parable is not intended to be accurate in every detail  It's designed to make a discreet and specific point and make a point it did. It's not a documentary. It's not historical fiction. It's a way to introduce the idea of the war in heaven and to draw viewers into a greater understanding of the cosmic impact of the little drama we're having here on planet Earth.
5. The Record Keeper does an excellent job of introducing the story of the war in Heaven, something most Christians know little about. It puts flesh on angels and broadens the perspective of Christ's mission to Earth and what it was about. It's a good starting point for a discussion.  
6. And no, angels aren't ninjas. It's not likely anyone will come away from the film thinking otherwise. We have no idea what a war in heaven would look like, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a College Bowl debate. The portrayal in this film only makes it clear that the conflict was really war - albeit of a sort we probably can't understand.
7. We really need some new ways to mine souls from the culture as it is. Jesus was accused of being a drunkard and a glutton for spending too much time with sinners and not paying court to the ruling elites of the church. I think the criticism of the film is uncomfortably similar to the accusations of the Scribes and Pharisees.
8. Science Fiction readers and viewers are actually really more open to the story of the Cosmic Conflict as Great Controversy is alternately titled than we give them credit for. A friend of mine became an Adventist because he picked up a copy of The Great Controversy thinking it was science fiction. By the time he finished it, he was looking up the location of the nearest Adventist church. It was seeing the war between good and evil in a cosmic context that did it for him. And this was back in the 60s. It's even more so now. If we can put Christianity into a broader context, i.e. an intergalactic war between beings we would see as aliens should they reveal themselves to us, we might just reach some folk we aren't going to reach with talking heads and sermons in our media.
9. We paid for it.  I think it was  a huge mistake to abandon the Record Keeper. I don't think the controversy over it would have been damaging to the church. It might well have been invigorating. I think every Adventist whose tithes and offerings went to fund this million dollar project should be give a copy of it for free. 
10. We church members should be allowed to decide if what we paid for is worthy. We don't need a GC nanny state. We work for Jesus. HE is our immediate supervisor.

The nice thing about digital media is that it's easy to pass around. You can find the entire 11 episodes of The Record Keeper on Youtube at the link below. If you find it useful, it's not hard to find the study guides that go with it.

Just sayin'

Tom King

Old Dogs and Children

Daisy among the daisies.

 We lost our beloved dog Daisy a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I were crazy about that little animal. I'm not one of those who believe the old "all dogs go to heaven" / Rainbow Bridge mythology, but I have come to believe that some dogs definitely must go to heaven if the universe makes sense at all.

Daisy and the old guy she rescued.

I'm working on a book about the subject that I hope you'll read when it comes out. It outlines the thinking and scripture that have brought me to the opinion that God will one day reunite us with our beloved animal companions.

First, it's possible.  If God can raise something as complex as a human being from the dead, I do believe he can manage to restore a feisty little bit of a mixed breed retriever. I say that because I know for sure and certain that God sent us the little dog in the first place.

Back in 2005, my daughter's dog Suzy was living with us. We'd had her for more than a decade and she eventually became very sick and my daughter made the difficult decision to have her put to sleep. It was a huge blow to our family as we were all very attached to her. We all showed up at the vet's at the end - three large men and two tall women all crammed into the tiny treatment room. The vet saw that there was a lot of emotion happening and wasn't sure quite how to handle that much grief packed into one little room surrounding one very sick little dog. He brought us a children's book called the Rainbow Bridge. Now all of my kids were in their twenties. I had gray hair. There were no children there, but the vet had no other comfort to offer. We grieved for that little beagle for years.

Walking with Suzy

Then our middle son, died suddenly and once again we were plunged into grief that was deep and painful. My wife developed a full blown case of bipolar disorder, in part, due to the stress of losing our boy.  One thing we both knew was that we couldn't imagine every taking in another dog. We become too attached to living things that we care for.

So, Sheila, my precious wife, never one to sit around and do nothing found her nursing skills becoming impaired. She developed a severe hand tremor and had to quite working as a nurse. She took up home care for elderly clients and took on one lovely woman named, Mary Bob. Not content to provide care on the fly, my wife took on the job with all the energy and efficiency of two people, despite the continuing damage being done to her by her struggle with bipolar. Where she no longer had the skills to provide help to Miss Mary Bob, she roped me into it.

One afternoon, after I had finished pressure washing the mold off the sides of Miss Mary Bob's house, I was carrying my tools back to the shed when I saw movement in the grass. Mary Bob's regular landscaper/gardener had recently been deported to Mexico and hadn't swum back yet, so the grass was getting pretty tall.  As I watched a pair of black ears emerged from the grass followed by dark eyes and a friendly doggy snout.

She came up out of the grass and loped over to me where she threw herself down on her back at my feet, exposing a skinny ribcage covered with fleas. I looked at her and hardened my heart.  "Oh, no," I said.  "We just can't take in another dog. It would hurt too much to lose another one." I put up the tools and avoiding eye contact, I went back to the house, climbed up on the porch and sat down on a chair to remove my dirty boots.

And there she sat. Making eye contact. "Oh no," I repeated.  She ignored me. Instead she came straight up to me, put her paws in my lap and laid her ear right on my heart and stayed that away. God didn't exactly say, "This is your dog now," but the message was clear. I called out "Help" hoping my wife would come and take the decision away for me. She burst out the front door thinking I'd cut off a finger or something. When she saw the little tableau, the dog hugging me as though afraid to let go, she stopped short. My wife is very perceptive about spiritual things. She recognizes the hand of God when she sees it.

Did someone say breakfast?

"Do you think she'll eat tuna?" she asked.  In short order, the dog had been fed, scrubbed and washed and named Daisy (because she popped up out of a meadow like a flower).  Miss Mary Bob even contributed to her rescue and gave us $50 to pay for the cost of the vet so we could get started right with her. She went home with us that day and lived with us for the rest of her life.  She house-trained herself. She had one accident and I told her "NO, don't do that," and took her outside. After that, when she needed to go, she went to the door and asked to be let out. Never had another accident.  She was the smartest most good-natured dog I've ever known. She didn't seem to be able to bark. It was a year after we got her that I heard a dog barking in the house and wondered whose dog it was. It turned out it was Daisy. She was parking at an approaching UPS delivery guy.  She never barked except to warn us that someone was coming. If she knew the people or decided they were harmless, she never barked, reserving her wrath for UPS, FedEx, the postman or anyone else in uniform that approached the house with a little too much cheek.

When she was younger, I used to let her out a couple of times a day to run. She would go bounding through the woods and along the beach near out house like some kind of demented kangaroo. She'd come home, eyes sparkling and tongue hanging out with a big stupid old doggy grin on her face. She was a high class mooch who always demanded some offering from every plate of food we ate. She didn't bark or steal food off the table. She'd just sit there with those big sad eyes till one of us, usually my wife would crumble and give her something. I always put stuff on my plate that she could safely eat. Our sharing food with her made her feel like family.

And she was family. I used to make fun of old people who talked baby talk to their pets and doted over them like they were human. Over the short span of Daisy's, however, I found myself more and more talking just like that to her as she ever more endeared herself to our hearts.  She died suddenly on my birthday in April. We fought hard to save her. Christian and not-so-Christian friends donated nearly $1800 to pay for her veterinary bills. Sadly, in spite of our prayers and the prayers of literally hundreds of others, her health continued to deteriorate rapidly over the last couple of weeks. We went for our last walk as a family just three days before she died. My wife and I were and are devastated. We prayed as hard for that little dog as we do for our children. Once again it was a pitiful scene in the vet's office as we let her go. She died with her stuffed squirrel under her paw where she liked to have it at nap time. Her ashes are on top of my rolltop desk next to a vase with a fresh daisy in it.

Daisy in her Service Dog outfit.

Daisy got us through a lot of tough times over the past few years. She would come and get me if Sheila was having a panic attack and get up right beside her and offer Sheila a head to stroke until the terror subsided. She goaded me into taking longer and longer walks that have helped me gradually lose almost 30 pounds in the past few years. People have asked me if we rescued Daisy. I tell them, "No, Daisy rescued us." C.S. Lewis had an interesting notion about the Earth where we will spend eternity that I find hints of throughout scripture, especially in Isaiah. He believed that in the New Earth, we will find all the good things of the old Earth - that this life is something like a crucible in which the dross is burned out of us leaving behind the pure gold which he will then save. Lewis and I with him think of those things as the "real" things of Earth of which this is all but a shadow. I never met a more perfect dog than Daisy, although Suzy wasn't far behind and it wasn't as if she didn't try to be a perfect dog. If the shadow Daisy was that good, then what must the "real" Daisy, recreated by our loving Father be like?. I sometimes think that it is no accident that dog spelled backward is what it is. 

• Dogs love us unconditionally. 
• Dogs are always glad to see us.
• Dogs forgive us easily and often.
• Dogs want to spend time with us.
• Dogs will die to defend you or protect you.
• Dogs like Daisy are patient, loyal and do not give up on you.

Daisy and me - worship time.

Some of the more moribund of Christian theologians scoff at the idea of God resurrecting something so lowly as a dog. "They cannot choose to follow Christ, so they cannot be saved," they say. There is no baptism for dogs. These are also the same people who believe God will chicken fry little children in an ever-burning hell just because the pastor said "in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit" instead of "in Jesus name" over them when they were baptized. I don't hold much credence in such grim theology.

A creature, as perfectly lovely as our Daisy was, just shouldn't be lost. He who sees the sparrow fall and makes the lion to lie down with the lamb in peace, is, I am certain after my 44 year walk with Christ, surely able and willing to give us that which is good and pure and lovely. And I have met very little in this world as good and pure and lovely as our little Daisy.  God will surely not deny us good things. Jesus said he wouldn't. And while there may be a reason God let our furry baby go to her rest sooner than we wanted to in this world, I can think of no reason for him not to give her back to us in the next.

Daisy and I and Miss Sheila have a lot of exploring yet to do. It will be one of the great joys of eternal life for us to ramble the hills of our vast and perfect world. May he come soon. I know I have a lot of folk waiting up ahead in time for us to arrive at the moment of resurrection when we are all reunited. The we will look up and see Jesus coming in the clouds. The timing of that is His, not mine. For now I wait upon Him, trusting in His goodness and wisdom. I've got a couple of brothers, a son, my grandpa, and others - a whole crowd of loved ones I expect to see again at the last trumpet. I'll also be looking around for a couple of very happy hound dogs that will throw themselves into our arms, wagging their tails for joy.  That to me is the very essence of heaven and of heaven's kindly and loving Lord.

Wendy Francisco, whose husband wrote the song "He's alive!" wrote this little song that expresses my feelings about our doggy friends precisely. I sang it once for church and found I had tears running down my face by the time I got through it. A creature who inspires that kind of love and emotion in a human being, should have a place among the redeemed of Earth.

Just sayin'.

© 2016 by Tom King

Shoot Your Own Side First - Finding My Favorite "Lost" Song

Forty years ago on a quiet Sabbath afternoon, I was hanging out with a college friend, Bow Walker in my hometown of Keene, Texas.  Bow put on a reel to reel tape of Christian folk music he'd collected. We were listening to the usual collection of spirituals, old gospel tunes on six string guitar and other folksy religious music, when Bow said, "Listen to this. You'll like it."

The singer had a resonant bass voice and a nice guitar style, but I'm a word guy and it was the lyrics that caught my attention.  The song was about soldiers gearing up to go into battle - kind of an unusual metaphor, although I was a big fan of Onward Christian Soldiers and The Captain Calls for You when I was a Primary and Junior.

But the song wasn't some martial call to Christian arms. It was satire. In this song, the sergeants were quite well versed in Scripture, upright and chaste, but as the troops were preparing to advance upon the enemy, the sergeants gave the battle cry.....

"Shoot Your Own Side First!"

If you read much of my stuff or actually know me, you probably realize I have what people in authority think of as "issues" with authority. Not in a big way, mind you, but I do tend to be at all times cognizant of the fact that my leaders do put on their underpants one leg at a time. As such, I am not over-awed by authority, which probably accounts for my checkered career as a church school teacher.  At any rate, this song really appealed to me, having grown up in and SDA college town and encountered spiritual bullies, holier-than-thou gossips and the full range of barons of private religious fiefdoms throughout my formative years.

After I heard it, I looked everywhere for the song. Bow wasn't sure what album it was from, his having copied a copy of a pirated tape to obtain the song. All I could remember of the song was that bit from the chorus about the sergeants giving the battle cry.  Had I been able to find the song, I would certainly have learned the chords and introduced it to every youth group, summer camp and sabbath school I came in contact with.

More than likely, the disappearance of this excellent song/parable is due, less to the popularity of the song than it is to the discomfort it no doubt gave to the legions of SDA deacons, elders, and local church good old boy networks it lampooned.  More than one creative artist of my generation got the old lecture about the dangers of encouraging the arrogance of youth, including me and one of the members of "Take 3", and SDA singing group that was pretty much run out of the church as heathen rock n' roll dope-fiends (they sounded a lot like Peter, Paul & Mary).  Even The Wedgewood Trio took a beating from the church's sergeants back then - so bad that the president of Loma Linda University eventually apologize 30 years later for his letter to his fellow college presidents urging that they be banned from SDA college campuses for their use of electrified stringed instruments and banjos for sacred music. Elder HMS Richards Sr., meanwhile, took The Wedgewood Trio on tour with his evangelistic crusades and Del Delker sang with them.  Both were roundly criticized for doing so, but Richards obvious success with the Voice of Prophecy radio broadcast, made the immune to the finger-pointers and they survived, although the Wedgwood Trio did not, disbanding in the mid 70s.

It says something about the character of that generation of creative young people that most of us remained in the church despite the fall of some of the leading lights of the righteousness by faith revival of the 60s and 70s. I rather think that by enduring persecution from our own church and hanging tough, we were being prepared by God for the persecution we will receive at the end of time when we ourselves will be the old graybeards (in my case literally) of the church. 

Let us hope we do better than our elders did. Let us hope we change the battle cry from "Shoot Your Own side first!" to "Lift your own side up!" so that our church doesn't wither as it had begun to do before brave men and women sounded the call to faith in the grace of God and the righteousness of Christ.

Here's what Jim looked like in his folk-singer days back
in 1976 when he made this album.

In the meantime, I've found the album and the artist who sang that wonderful song.  He is Jim Ayars. You may recall his name as a longtime member of the King's Herald Quartet. I imagine he was a perfect fit, given HMS Richards' independent style and self-assured brand of Adventism that focused on soul-winning rather than ivory-tower building. Ayars is now a pastor in Southern California and I found that he has a Facebook page and has for years been friends with people I know, including Steve Darmody, Jaime Jorge, Mike Tucker, Gerry Chudleigh and even a kid I taught in Primary at Tyler.  All these years, I've been looking for that song and the singer was right out there in plain sight.

I've done Google searches for five years without luck and then, suddenly this morning, there were three references to this song at the top of my Google Search.

I was sorely disappointed that this lovely tune was not available for download anywhere, nor could I even find it for sale in its original 12" vinyl. Jim has a deep rumbly bass voice, so it's not your usual folk music album. Some of the song titles are intriguing. Once, I had Ayars' name, however, I found the lyrics to the song in comment in a discussion on the Women's Ordination issue.  A commenter called "Billie" said, "There's a song that fits so well... one that I've been resisting quoting even in part.... but ... just can't resist any longer...  The name is "Shoot your own side first".... the lyrics were written by C. Mervyn Maxwell at the height of the seminary purge of the 1960's... and sung as a folk song by Jim Ayers...  It goes like this..."

Shoot Your Own Side First
by C. Mervyn Maxwell

• Our young recruits came marching by
  So proud they almost burst.
  Our Sergeants raised the battle cry
  "Shoot your own side first".

• The battle smoke crimped every nose
  Our men were wracked with thirst,
  But thru the ranks the watchword rose
  "Shoot your own side first".

• The foreign ranks came marching hot--
  Our soldiers feared the worst,
  But in their panic they ne'er forgot to
  "Shoot your own side first".

• The bullets whirred! The cannon roared!
  Our men were doubly cursed!
  Upon us two times death was poured--
  "Shoot your own side first".

• Our men fell wounded, maimed, and dead,
  In bright red gore immersed,
  But never blame the foreign lead--
  "Shoot your own side first".

• "Help! Help!" The dying soldier cried.
  Stop!" The private cursed.
  But in our ranks holes opened wide--
  "Shoot your own side first".

• 'Tis Christian, man, to notice sin
  and twice so if thou durst.
  Behold! The fault lies with thy kin, so
  "Shoot your own side first".

• The enemy would worship God,
  In scripture be well versed.
  They'd never sin if we were good, so
  "Shoot your own side first".

•  "Shoot your own side... ... first".

Jim Ayars in his current pastoral incarnation.

Now that I've got the lyrics, I'll look for the chords and a copy of Jim's wonderful version of it. This song needs to be sung in churches and seminary, colleges and youth groups across the land as a warning. I'm not surprised that Maxwell wrote it. He was a bit of a thorn-in-the-side to the sergeants himself back in the day. Maxwell was an SDA historian and, himself, involved in some of the disputation over theology that took place in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Some of it got rather brutal, but in checking out Maxwell's history, he seems to have managed to avoid setting fire to himself throughout the conflict. 

The song was evidently popular around the SDA seminary at Andrews in the late 60s. It's not surprising, however, that it didn't make it into "Advent Youth Sing" when Adventist youth music was canonized back in 1977. The song would have taken a rather advanced level of sophistication to see the value in this satirical gem.  

Whatever happens, the song is going into my personal Songleader's Songbook as soon as I figure out the chords. If you'd like a copy, click on the link above to download a PDF copy. This songlist of mine is not for sale or reproduction, but is for personal use only - learning to play it, sing it, etc..

If any of you know the chords to Shoot Your Own Side First, please send them to me. In the meantime, I'll be searching my limited musical memory for the nearest approximation I can muster.  Also, if you have any other such songs you'd like to share with all of us, please add them to the comments below and thank you in advance. We SDA songleaders have to stick together.


© 2016 by Tom King

Bible Archaeology's Rock Men: Seeing What They Want to See?

You See What You Want to See and 

You Hear What You Want to Hear. Ya dig?

In Harry Nillson's rather pointed rock opera, "The Point", he introduces a character called the Rock Man.  The Rock Man tries to explain to the hero, young Oblio, why people don't seem to understand things that ought to be obvious to everybody. "You see what you want to see," the Rock Man explains, "And you hear what you wanna hear.  Ya dig?"

And archaeology's confidently self-assured rock men seem to see what they wanna see rather more often than they would have you believe or that strictly adheres to the principles of good science. They seem to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear, THEN they dig. Watching documentaries on biblical archaeologies is a bit of a frustrating thing if you are a Christian for a couple of reasons.

1. They believe the Bible is a work of fiction: There is an assumption beforehand that the writers of the Bible are making stuff up as they go. And even if the biblical account finds support in the ruins, it is largely by accident.
2. The believe that their dating techniques can prove the Bible is fiction:  Archaeologists rely heavily on dating pottery shard styles, carbon dating and inscriptions by kings whom we know lie like all git-out on their victory monuments. Then they adjust their interpretations of those dates according to their own pre-conceived ideas and agendas.
3. They don't seem to read the same scriptures we do: They draw all sorts of wild conclusions from tiny passages that make perfect sense if you read them in context. Of course, if you're trying to prove a preconceived point, you'd actually expect that sort of thing.

Are you shocked that archaeologists have agendas?  Well they do. I just watched a Palestinian archaeologist explain how Israel was never more than a tribe of scruffy vagabonds who didn't amount to anything, how Abraham and Moses were made up and that the Israelites never came from Ur or anywhere else decent, but were a bunch of disgruntled serfs and peasants who revolted against their Canaanite betters.  This particular archaeologist claimed that the idea that the Israelites existed as a nation possessing the land of Canaan or that their history was anything more than "pious fiction" was equivalent to claiming the Earth was flat.

Care to guess what case he's trying to make there?

The interpretations archaeologists make of scripture cause you to wonder whether these guys ever actually read those passages. One group of scholars claim that because in one place Noah is told to bring in animals to the ark in pairs and then instructed also to bring in the clean animals in groups of seven that therefore there were two writers at work on the Noah story. That's a pretty big leap and assumes there was no such thing as clean and unclean animals prior to the Levitical laws and that the Genesis story is invented and written much later after the Sabbath laws and ten commandments are established in response to the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians as kind of a portable form of Judaism.

Some folks might find that the skepticism of many of these skeptical Biblical archaeologists should be avoided in order to not have doubts about your own faith. What I've found is that if you know the God that the Scriptures tell of, you find even in the skepticism of secular revisionist archaeologists you still discover the fingerprints of God.

It's not harmful to be aware of what the archaeologists are saying about Biblical history. It's even fun when cocky archaeologists have to eat their words because Biblical characters or events keep turning up in awkward places (at least awkward for the skeptics).

When I became a Christian, I challenged God to show himself.  My prayer the night of my conversion was, "God I think I have seen you. I will do what you say to do in order to know you, but you have to show me that you are real and who you say you are?"  Fortunately for me, God in his mercy had over the years answered my impertinent youthful prayer. I have no doubt but that He is who He says He is.

"Mythical" Israelite King David's Palace found

So don't let "higher" critics tell you that Scriptures are "spiritual" in their meaning and not to be considered "literally" true. As I used to remind my science students, a lack of evidence, doesn't prove anything. The idea that God must present Himself to us in the way we believe He ought to, misses the point of the aftermath of Eden altogether. When human beings decided to choose to do as they wished and not what God required, we in effect invited God to butt out of our lives. The fact that He has largely done so, ever since, should surprise no one. Fortunately for us God does respond to those who call upon him in faith.

I suspect that in the war of good vs. evil, that a good God would allow us to choose freely whether to follow Him or not.  An evil Lucifer, would do the opposite, coerce, deceive, and flatter in order to get us to follow him. Make no mistake, we are in a war. If you don't think the devil wouldn't take measures to confuse history and even to hide evidence, then you probably don't understand the concept of evil.

As H.M.S. Richards, the founder of the Voice of Prophecy, used to say at the end of every broadcast, "Have faith in God."  If you do, God will provide all the evidence you need, archaeological or otherwise.

© 2016 by Tom King