"It Is Well With My Soul" By Wesley Pritchard & David Phelps
Friday, August 15, 2014
Suicide's Sad Solution: Thoughts on Robin William's Death
With the death of Robin Williams, I wanted to write something about suicide. Strangely enough, Williams had acted in a film which had suicide and death as its theme called What Dreams May Come with Cuba Gooding Jr. In the film he’s a happily married man when tragedy hits his family with the death of his two children. His wife is especially vulnerable, but with his efforts she seems to be overcoming, when suddenly he himself dies in a car accident. Williams goes off to Heaven and its delights while his wife struggles back on earth only to succumb to negative thinking and eventual suicide. The story involves Williams desire to see his wife and rescue her from the depths of despair in Hell’s Gates. Yahoo today has noted that What Dreams May Come, though not one of William’s more famous films, has received a surprise number of downloads since his unexpected death.
Suicide is always a sad song to sing. To me, every suicide is a mark against humanity. Every suicide is a tragic loss to mankind. Recently a young thirty-two year old adult in our neighborhood committed suicide. He had been a carpenter, but wanted to start his own business, to be the boss and earn more money. But he perhaps was not ready for the difficult decisions the boss needs to make. Perhaps he wasn’t good with finances and under-estimated the cost of the jobs he did. Whatever the reason, he fell behind financially and eventually had to declare insolvency. Unable to find another job, he battled with depression and was prescribed medication. Finally one day in March he went down to the ocean which is very cold here nearly all year round and threw himself in. Like many Portuguese, he wasn’t a good swimmer. His cousins arrived on the scene almost in time to save him. They managed to get him back to land, but were unable to resuscitate him.
I had known his auntie who had died of cancer a few years ago. She was a friendly and generous person. After being diagnosed with brain cancer she died some six months later. But when her nephew died, I asked myself, “Why didn’t I know about it?” I could have gone around to see him as his house was just around the corner only seven houses away. Though I had nothing to do with his death, I nevertheless felt the guilt of not having been more informed, of not having been able to do something to prevent it.
I had a restaurant friend who was found by his family on a recently built bridge over a good sized river that runs next to a small city fifteen kilometers from us. He, too, had been suffering depression after his son’s new business, a discotheque, which he helped to finance, went insolvent. On trying to reduce his medication, he became suicidal, but fortunately was saved by his attentive family. Eventually he and his wife lost their restaurant business which they had inherited from her parents. They have both battled heavily with depression. But after losing what they had been worrying about, they are finally better for it and have adjusted to their new more humble lifestyle.
Finances are often a reason that some choose to end their lives. In a small town north of us a client of mine’s brother ended his life because he was losing his business. She knew nothing about it and was later battling depression and guilt because of it. A beautiful mathematics teacher of thirty-two years in the same small town also chose not to continue living because of marriage problems. She had married her childhood sweetheart, but things turned sour and suicide ended up being her solution. She was also taking anti-depressants which some say have suicidal effects when the prescription is reduced too drastically. A friend of mine’s 25 year old son jumped out a seventeen floor window of their newly bought apartment. He was trying to quit his Ritalin addiction cold turkey and thought he was strong enough to do it. But perhaps he was unknowing of the side effects of the drug, sometimes called “Poor-man’s Coke,” which include suicidal tendencies, especially when reducing former amounts. My own son died also from a swimming accident at the age of twenty-seven about three years ago. So I am familiar with the guilt and heartache that an untimely death can bring.
Just hearing the response to Robin Williams’ death makes one notice that mankind suffers when one of its own chooses to end his or her life. It's a universal feeling of lost and sadness, knowing that a person felt so alone he thought he had no one but death itself to turn to. I myself have often battled with discouragement over my seeming failures in life. Even though one has a relationship with Christ, we can still be tempted with the enemies negative thinking which can very quickly lead us down the wrong path mentally.
What can we do to help this growing infirmity in the world today, the suicide solution, the sad solution, the wrong solution? We can remember that everyone we meet might be a person battling big personal problems. We can try to bring light and happiness into other’s lives even if only with a look, a smile, a touch, or maybe a kind word, so they will know that someone has loved them that day. The Proverbs advise us that “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.”[1] So we should use our tongues for good and not for evil. We should reframe from sarcastic comments which can hurt and discourage others. Proverbs, also, tells us, “Heaviness in the heart of man makes it stoop: but a good word makes it glad.”[2]
We can use praise and honest compliments to lift up those around us, as each one is carrying his own heavy burden. Another proverb states, “A man shall be satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth.”[3]The happiness we seek does not come from more possessions, or entertainment or alcohol or drugs. It comes from honest loving fellowship with others where we are truly seeking to help and encourage one another. Maybe that is why Hebrews admonishes, “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking (or neglecting) the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting (or encouraging) one another: and so much the more, as you see the day approaching.”[4]We all need good positive fellowship to grow and be healthy emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.
Proverbs, also, tells us “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.”[5] That verse seems to apply well to the life of Robin Williams who made us laugh. Maybe his ridiculous antics were his way of getting accepted and getting his need for love fulfilled. But now we see that the end of his laughs was heaviness, as he took to drugs and alcohol for more inspiration, power and comical relief. But finally, it only brought him sadness, loneliness and hopelessness. Don’t let it happen to those in your world. Reach out and lift up that weary soul who walks beside or behind you or in front of you. Be a friend. Be active. Be compassionate. In doing so you might save some other lonely soul along the road of life and in the same time cheer up and do good to your own soul. As the Good Book says, “As you would that men should do to you, do you also to them likewise: [6]for this is the law and the prophets.”[7]
One more thing, if you are able. Help them to find the lover of all lovers who alone can satisfy that deep longing in every human soul for love, understanding and happiness. Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith who waits patiently and tenderly at the door of our hearts for us to answer his quiet knocking. He will never leave you nor forsake. He’ll fill that aching void within your heart that money, success, power and things just don’t satisfy. He’s just that beautiful and it’s just that wonderful. He says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good: blessed is the man that trusts in him.”[8] Won’t you put your trust in Him?
You could pray a little prayer like this: Jesus, I´ve messed up. I just haven’t got it together. I did it my way and it came out bad. The things I’ve worked and lived for have left me empty and unfulfilled. I tried to ignore the spiritual side of things, but now I see I should have given it more attention. Jesus, I really don’t want religion or to be religious. But I need help. I can’t make it any longer. Please Jesus, if you are there, reach down and touch me, like that song they sing. Lord, if you are there, reach down and touch my life and help me to find the reason for my existence. Life must be more than food and clothes and jobs and recreation. I’ve made mistakes and screwed up, sometimes big time. Please help me. If you are out there, please come into my life. Manifest yourself to me. I’m weak in faith, Lord. I don’t even know if you really exist. Jesus, if you really are the Son of God then I need you in my life, to help me to turn things around and find more meaning than I have right now. Please, take the burdens that I’m bearing and give me peace of heart, soul and mind. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen!
If you’ve prayed that prayer or something similar from your own heart in sincerity, then Jesus has come into your life and will soon be manifesting His presence to you, if He hasn’t already. He loves you and promises to stick closer than a brother. He has a whole new wonderful world waiting for you to live and He’ll live it with you, encouraging you along the way! I love you, too. If I could help you in any way please let me know! Keep fighting. It’s worth it if you’ll just hang on a little longer, you won’t be disappointed. Here’s a beautiful song to listen to "He Touched Me:"
[1] Proverbs 18:21a
[2] Proverbs 12:25
[3] Proverbs 12:14a
[4] Hebrews 10:24,25
[5] Proverbs 14:13
[6] Luke 6:31
[7] Matthew 7:12b
[8] Psalm 34:8
Write me at dennismedwards@gmail.com
Thursday, August 14, 2014
What Would Jesus Say to Robin Williams?
By Jim Denison, Christian Post, Aug. 12, 2014
Actor and comedian Robin Williams was found dead in his California home yesterday. Suicide is suspected.
Robin McLaurin Williams was born on July 21, 1951 in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in a wealthy community outside Detroit, Michigan. An only child, he spent his early years in a 30-room mansion on a private 20 acre estate. His family moved to California when he was in high school. Williams attended the Juilliard School in New York City, where he befriended Christopher Reeve. He then turned to comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and became famous as the alien Mork on Mork and Mindy (1978-82).
During these years, he developed a drug and alcohol addiction and began a lifelong battle with depression. He quit alcohol and drugs when he learned that he would become a father, but suffered a relapse years later. Despite his personal struggles, he became one of the most successful and popular comedians and actors in the world. After he was found dead, his publicist stated that Williams “has been battling severe depression of late.”
What would Jesus say to Robin Williams, given the opportunity?
The actor was clearly a man who struggled for self-worth. He was significantly overweight as a child, with few friends, and was voted “least likely to succeed” in school. When accepting his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (for Good Will Hunting in 1997) he said, “Most of all, I want to thank my father, up there, the man who when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, ‘Wonderful. Just have a back-up profession like welding.’”
Jesus would want Williams to know that his heavenly Father knitted him together in his mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13) and gave him the amazing intellect and comedic gifts which made him famous. The comedian was right: “You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” Jesus would want him to know the source of that spark.
And he would want Williams to know that his significance could be based not on his performance or popularity but on his Father’s unconditional love. The comedian once explained, “I started doing comedy because that was the only stage that I could find.” In truth, we are each given a stage before an Audience of one. He cheers for us and accepts us no matter what the critics say.
Most of all, Jesus would want Robin Williams to find hope in his Father’s love and grace. Williams once called comedy “acting out optimism.” But optimism doesn’t have to be an act—in Christ we can find “strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” (Hebrews 6:18).
I don’t know if Robin Williams ever received the significance, unconditional acceptance and hope offered to him by Jesus. But I do know that our Lord offers these gifts today, to you.
Actor and comedian Robin Williams was found dead in his California home yesterday. Suicide is suspected.
Robin McLaurin Williams was born on July 21, 1951 in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in a wealthy community outside Detroit, Michigan. An only child, he spent his early years in a 30-room mansion on a private 20 acre estate. His family moved to California when he was in high school. Williams attended the Juilliard School in New York City, where he befriended Christopher Reeve. He then turned to comedy in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and became famous as the alien Mork on Mork and Mindy (1978-82).
During these years, he developed a drug and alcohol addiction and began a lifelong battle with depression. He quit alcohol and drugs when he learned that he would become a father, but suffered a relapse years later. Despite his personal struggles, he became one of the most successful and popular comedians and actors in the world. After he was found dead, his publicist stated that Williams “has been battling severe depression of late.”
What would Jesus say to Robin Williams, given the opportunity?
The actor was clearly a man who struggled for self-worth. He was significantly overweight as a child, with few friends, and was voted “least likely to succeed” in school. When accepting his Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (for Good Will Hunting in 1997) he said, “Most of all, I want to thank my father, up there, the man who when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, ‘Wonderful. Just have a back-up profession like welding.’”
Jesus would want Williams to know that his heavenly Father knitted him together in his mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13) and gave him the amazing intellect and comedic gifts which made him famous. The comedian was right: “You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” Jesus would want him to know the source of that spark.
And he would want Williams to know that his significance could be based not on his performance or popularity but on his Father’s unconditional love. The comedian once explained, “I started doing comedy because that was the only stage that I could find.” In truth, we are each given a stage before an Audience of one. He cheers for us and accepts us no matter what the critics say.
Most of all, Jesus would want Robin Williams to find hope in his Father’s love and grace. Williams once called comedy “acting out optimism.” But optimism doesn’t have to be an act—in Christ we can find “strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” (Hebrews 6:18).
I don’t know if Robin Williams ever received the significance, unconditional acceptance and hope offered to him by Jesus. But I do know that our Lord offers these gifts today, to you.
Wednesday, August 13, 2014
This Map Of US And Russian Arms Sales Says It All
By Allan Smith and Skye Gould
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/map-shows-us-russias-worldwide-140503590.html
They say the Cold War is over, but Russia and the U.S. remain the leading supplier of weapons to countries around the world and are the two biggest military powers. Lately, tensions have been pretty high, too.The U.S. supplies much of NATO and Middle Eastern allies like Turkey, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.
Russia supplies many BRIC nations, as well as Iran, much of Southeast Asia, and North Africa.
We took numbers from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for 2012-2013 to see whom the two rivals were supplying with weaponry. The U.S. dealt to 59 nations that Russia doesn't sell or send weaponry to, while Russia dealt to just 15 nations that don't receive U.S. arms. Fifteen countries received weaponry from both the U.S. and Russia, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
The country that received the highest dollar amount of U.S. weaponry was the United Arab Emirates, with more than $3.7 billion in arms received over that period. Russia dealt the greatest value of weapons to India, sending more than $13.6 billion.
Overall, the U.S. sent more than $26.9 billion in weaponry to foreign nations, while Russia sent weaponry exceeding $29.7 billion in value around the globe.
Interestingly, the U.S. actually recieved roughly $16 million worth of weaponry from Russia. This was part of a $1 billion helicopter deal the two nations made so that the U.S. could supply Afghan security forces with equipment they were already more familiar with.
Importantly, SIPRI's totals don't measure the cost of the transaction but the cost of the weapons' production. The numbers are listed as the production value of the weapons sold rather than the amount they were actually sold for. In addition, SIPRI does not track the transfer of certain small arms.
SIPRI gives several examples to explain their chosen method. In 2009, six Eurofighters valued at $55 million each were delivered by Germany to Austria. Therefore the delivery was valued at $330 million, even though the actual transaction likely netted a much higher total. For comparison, when The New York Times listed the total of weapons sold by the U.S. at $66.3 billion in 2011, SIPRI came up with a much lower total based off of production cost of $15.4 billion.
You can read the full explanation of SIPRI's calculations here.
Scrambling Down an Iraqi Mountain, Yazidi Families Search for Missing
By Alissa J. Rubin, NY Times, Aug. 10, 2014
FISHKHABOUR, Iraq—Like sleepwalkers moving under a blazing sun, family after family from the Yazidi minority made their way across the narrow bridge that spans the river between Syria and Iraq, hardly seeming to see where they were going until they reached the Iraqi side.
Then many stopped and looked back, scanning the stream of people walking across the bridge, looking for lost relatives.
“We are waiting for my brother’s family,” said Sabri Caro, 48. “People told us they walked down from the mountain, but they were behind us.”
As a stream of Yazidis made their way down from the Sinjar mountains, where they had been stranded for a week after fleeing the advance of Sunni militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the depth of their plight became increasingly clear.
Many families have been separated, some in their flight to the mountains, some when they made the decision to come down. Many have nowhere to go, and because they fled with nothing, are completely dependent on the generosity of locals and relatives. And many, still dehydrated and hungry from the lack of food and water on the mountain, appeared confused about what to do next.
The Sinjar mountains lie near the Syrian border, and because the way into Kurdistan from inside Iraq is blocked by Sunni militants, the Yazidis hoped to cross the mountains and make their way to Kurdistan through an alternative route.
“We received people until 11 p.m. last night,” said Ibrahim Mohammed, the manager of the Bajid Kandal camp, which is run by the United Nations refugee agency and is the closest to the Fishkhabour border crossing here. There are now about 24,000 people in the camp, and bulldozers are breaking ground for a second camp across the road, but it will take a week to set it up, Mr. Mohammed said.
“The people are upset. Many families have been separated, some family members are still on the mountain, others are still in the Sinjar villages which are controlled by ISIS, and sometimes families are ending up in different camps,” he said.
At least several thousand people crossed the bridge Sunday. Estimates of how many have crossed since Saturday, when the trickle of those who could make it down from the mountains became a flood, ranges from 20,000 to 30,000. By nightfall Sunday, the numbers had slowed considerably from the night before.
As people crossed and collapsed near the border, searching for a patch of shade in the blazing sun, they seemed even more exhausted than those who arrived Saturday, testament to the longer time they spent on the mountain. A woman poured water on her 4-year-old son’s red and swollen feet, while two elderly women were unable to walk without holding on to younger relatives.
Mafrish Shaffadine, who comes from a village south of the Sinjar mountains, described the difficulty of making the choice to come down because some family members were unable to make the journey. “My aunt, my father’s sister, I could not rescue her,” he said, adding that she was still on the mountain but physically could not make it to the top. “We had to leave her,” he said.
The situation for those still on the mountain was far worse. Abu Khadija, an ISIS member reached by Internet messaging, who was traveling in the Sinjar mountains, said he saw “Yazidi women and children dying from thirst and starvation. I saw them with my own eyes taking their last breath, this scene awakened all my pains and sorrows.”
While many families fled from their villages at night after hearing gunfire and receiving calls from neighbors saying that ISIS fighters were on their way, some fled during the day and ran into checkpoints run by the militants. The Caro family, who fled their village of Zurava on Monday, said they were trying to find a way to drive to Syria, but soon discovered that ISIS fighters had blocked the roads.
When the fighters, who were masked, approached the car, everyone fell silent, said Mr. Caro, fearing that they would be shot.
“But they were polite, they didn’t shout or say bad words. They just asked us to become Muslims,” he said. “I told them, ‘We are a peaceful people, and we don’t want to change our faith.’ “
The fighters did not respond, but told the Caro family to turn back. Afraid that they would face death if they tried to pass again and still refused to convert, they went to the mountain.
Demands for conversion are a core demand of ISIS fighters when dealing with non-Muslim minorities. Christians also have been asked to convert or face death, and recently residents of two Yazidi villages that are held by ISIS fighters, Koocho and Hakeemi, were told that they had three days to choose whether to convert or die. The deadline was Sunday. At least 500 Yazidis have been killed by ISIS fighters since they seized Sinjar this month, according to Iraq’s human rights minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
The inhabitants of Hakeemi managed to escape to the mountains on Saturday night, but the people of Koocho could not. However, when an ISIS official came to Koocho on Sunday, he extended the deadline, said Ahmad Abu Shahab, the community’s mukhtar, a position somewhat like that of a mayor.
For those on the mountain, their best hope is to link up with Yazidi fighters who can guide them to a protected route off the mountain to the north near the Syrian border. The fighters are led by Qassim Sheshu, who has become a hero to Yazidis.
Many of the Yazidis fled with cellphones, and while there is no electricity on the mountain, in some areas they were able to drive their cars up the slopes and charge their phones.
United States officials are also in touch with Yazidis on the mountains who have cellphones, said an administration official.
Several refugees interviewed Sunday described encountering Mr. Sheshu’s fighters as they wandered on the mountain, and the encounters appear to have given them hope they had not been forgotten.
Ali Rashu, 55, who crossed the bridge into Iraq with 50 of his relatives, said they had fled up the mountain above their village, Gubel. From the heights above, he was able to look into the village with some borrowed binoculars and see what ISIS fighters had done to their homes.
“They had blown them up,” he said. “We could see three houses of Yazidi people, the smoke was rising from them. They didn’t do that to the Kurdish or the Arab houses.”
FISHKHABOUR, Iraq—Like sleepwalkers moving under a blazing sun, family after family from the Yazidi minority made their way across the narrow bridge that spans the river between Syria and Iraq, hardly seeming to see where they were going until they reached the Iraqi side.
Then many stopped and looked back, scanning the stream of people walking across the bridge, looking for lost relatives.
“We are waiting for my brother’s family,” said Sabri Caro, 48. “People told us they walked down from the mountain, but they were behind us.”
As a stream of Yazidis made their way down from the Sinjar mountains, where they had been stranded for a week after fleeing the advance of Sunni militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the depth of their plight became increasingly clear.
Many families have been separated, some in their flight to the mountains, some when they made the decision to come down. Many have nowhere to go, and because they fled with nothing, are completely dependent on the generosity of locals and relatives. And many, still dehydrated and hungry from the lack of food and water on the mountain, appeared confused about what to do next.
The Sinjar mountains lie near the Syrian border, and because the way into Kurdistan from inside Iraq is blocked by Sunni militants, the Yazidis hoped to cross the mountains and make their way to Kurdistan through an alternative route.
“We received people until 11 p.m. last night,” said Ibrahim Mohammed, the manager of the Bajid Kandal camp, which is run by the United Nations refugee agency and is the closest to the Fishkhabour border crossing here. There are now about 24,000 people in the camp, and bulldozers are breaking ground for a second camp across the road, but it will take a week to set it up, Mr. Mohammed said.
“The people are upset. Many families have been separated, some family members are still on the mountain, others are still in the Sinjar villages which are controlled by ISIS, and sometimes families are ending up in different camps,” he said.
At least several thousand people crossed the bridge Sunday. Estimates of how many have crossed since Saturday, when the trickle of those who could make it down from the mountains became a flood, ranges from 20,000 to 30,000. By nightfall Sunday, the numbers had slowed considerably from the night before.
As people crossed and collapsed near the border, searching for a patch of shade in the blazing sun, they seemed even more exhausted than those who arrived Saturday, testament to the longer time they spent on the mountain. A woman poured water on her 4-year-old son’s red and swollen feet, while two elderly women were unable to walk without holding on to younger relatives.
Mafrish Shaffadine, who comes from a village south of the Sinjar mountains, described the difficulty of making the choice to come down because some family members were unable to make the journey. “My aunt, my father’s sister, I could not rescue her,” he said, adding that she was still on the mountain but physically could not make it to the top. “We had to leave her,” he said.
The situation for those still on the mountain was far worse. Abu Khadija, an ISIS member reached by Internet messaging, who was traveling in the Sinjar mountains, said he saw “Yazidi women and children dying from thirst and starvation. I saw them with my own eyes taking their last breath, this scene awakened all my pains and sorrows.”
While many families fled from their villages at night after hearing gunfire and receiving calls from neighbors saying that ISIS fighters were on their way, some fled during the day and ran into checkpoints run by the militants. The Caro family, who fled their village of Zurava on Monday, said they were trying to find a way to drive to Syria, but soon discovered that ISIS fighters had blocked the roads.
When the fighters, who were masked, approached the car, everyone fell silent, said Mr. Caro, fearing that they would be shot.
“But they were polite, they didn’t shout or say bad words. They just asked us to become Muslims,” he said. “I told them, ‘We are a peaceful people, and we don’t want to change our faith.’ “
The fighters did not respond, but told the Caro family to turn back. Afraid that they would face death if they tried to pass again and still refused to convert, they went to the mountain.
Demands for conversion are a core demand of ISIS fighters when dealing with non-Muslim minorities. Christians also have been asked to convert or face death, and recently residents of two Yazidi villages that are held by ISIS fighters, Koocho and Hakeemi, were told that they had three days to choose whether to convert or die. The deadline was Sunday. At least 500 Yazidis have been killed by ISIS fighters since they seized Sinjar this month, according to Iraq’s human rights minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani.
The inhabitants of Hakeemi managed to escape to the mountains on Saturday night, but the people of Koocho could not. However, when an ISIS official came to Koocho on Sunday, he extended the deadline, said Ahmad Abu Shahab, the community’s mukhtar, a position somewhat like that of a mayor.
For those on the mountain, their best hope is to link up with Yazidi fighters who can guide them to a protected route off the mountain to the north near the Syrian border. The fighters are led by Qassim Sheshu, who has become a hero to Yazidis.
Many of the Yazidis fled with cellphones, and while there is no electricity on the mountain, in some areas they were able to drive their cars up the slopes and charge their phones.
United States officials are also in touch with Yazidis on the mountains who have cellphones, said an administration official.
Several refugees interviewed Sunday described encountering Mr. Sheshu’s fighters as they wandered on the mountain, and the encounters appear to have given them hope they had not been forgotten.
Ali Rashu, 55, who crossed the bridge into Iraq with 50 of his relatives, said they had fled up the mountain above their village, Gubel. From the heights above, he was able to look into the village with some borrowed binoculars and see what ISIS fighters had done to their homes.
“They had blown them up,” he said. “We could see three houses of Yazidi people, the smoke was rising from them. They didn’t do that to the Kurdish or the Arab houses.”
The US bombing its own guns perfectly sums up America’s total failure in Iraq
By Max Fisher, Vox, August 8, 2014
When President Obama announced US airstrikes in Iraq, most observers understood that the US would be bombing members of ISIS. What many did not know was that, in a twist of such bitterly symbolic irony that it could only occur in the Middle East, the US would also be bombing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of American military equipment.
Here’s why: in the decade since the 2003 US-led Iraq invasion, the US has spent a fortune training and arming the Iraqi army in the hopes of readying it to secure the country once America left. That meant arming the Iraqi army with high-tech and extremely expensive American-made guns, tanks, jeeps, artillery, and more.
But the Iraqi army has been largely a failure. When ISIS invaded northern Iraq from Syria in June, the Iraqi forces deserted or retreated en masse. Many of them abandoned their American equipment. ISIS scooped it up themselves and are now using it to rampage across Iraq, seizing whole cities, terrorizing minorities, and finally pushing into even once-secure Kurdish territory. All with shiny American military equipment.
So the US air strikes against ISIS are in part to destroy US military equipment, such as the artillery ISIS has been using against Kurdish forces.
The absurdity runs deep: America is using American military equipment to bomb other pieces of American military equipment halfway around the world. The reason the American military equipment got there in the first place was because, in 2003, the US had to use its military to rebuild the Iraqi army, which it just finished destroying with the American military. The American weapons the US gave the Iraqi army totally failed at making Iraq secure and have become tools of terror used by an offshoot of al-Qaeda to terrorize the Iraqis that the US supposedly liberated a decade ago. And so now the US has to use American weaponry to destroy the American weaponry it gave Iraqis to make Iraqis safer, in order to make Iraqis safer.
It keeps going: the US is intervening on behalf of Iraqi Kurds, our ally, because their military has old Russian-made weapons, whereas ISIS, which is America’s enemy, has higher-quality American weapons. “[Kurdish forces] are literally outgunned by an ISIS that is fighting with hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. military equipment seized from the Iraqi Army who abandoned it,” Ali Khedery, a former American official in Iraq, told the New York Times.
More: One reason that ISIS has been so successful at conquering northern Iraq is that it has a huge base of operations in Syria, where it had exploited the civil war to overtake huge swathes of Syrian territory. One reason that ISIS was so successful in Syria is that the US refused to arm moderate Syrian rebels, for fear that the weapons would fall into ISIS’s hands. So that made it easier for ISIS to overpower the under-funded moderate rebels, and now ISIS has seized, in Iraq, much better versions of the weapons that we were so worried they might acquire in Syria. So now we’re bombing the guns that we didn’t mean to give ISIS because we didn’t give guns to their enemies because then ISIS might get guns.
It’s not just ironic; it’s a symbol of how disastrous the last 15 years of US Iraq policy have been, how circuitous and self-perpetuating the violence, that we are now bombing our own guns. Welcome to American grand strategy in the Middle East.
When President Obama announced US airstrikes in Iraq, most observers understood that the US would be bombing members of ISIS. What many did not know was that, in a twist of such bitterly symbolic irony that it could only occur in the Middle East, the US would also be bombing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of American military equipment.
Here’s why: in the decade since the 2003 US-led Iraq invasion, the US has spent a fortune training and arming the Iraqi army in the hopes of readying it to secure the country once America left. That meant arming the Iraqi army with high-tech and extremely expensive American-made guns, tanks, jeeps, artillery, and more.
But the Iraqi army has been largely a failure. When ISIS invaded northern Iraq from Syria in June, the Iraqi forces deserted or retreated en masse. Many of them abandoned their American equipment. ISIS scooped it up themselves and are now using it to rampage across Iraq, seizing whole cities, terrorizing minorities, and finally pushing into even once-secure Kurdish territory. All with shiny American military equipment.
So the US air strikes against ISIS are in part to destroy US military equipment, such as the artillery ISIS has been using against Kurdish forces.
The absurdity runs deep: America is using American military equipment to bomb other pieces of American military equipment halfway around the world. The reason the American military equipment got there in the first place was because, in 2003, the US had to use its military to rebuild the Iraqi army, which it just finished destroying with the American military. The American weapons the US gave the Iraqi army totally failed at making Iraq secure and have become tools of terror used by an offshoot of al-Qaeda to terrorize the Iraqis that the US supposedly liberated a decade ago. And so now the US has to use American weaponry to destroy the American weaponry it gave Iraqis to make Iraqis safer, in order to make Iraqis safer.
It keeps going: the US is intervening on behalf of Iraqi Kurds, our ally, because their military has old Russian-made weapons, whereas ISIS, which is America’s enemy, has higher-quality American weapons. “[Kurdish forces] are literally outgunned by an ISIS that is fighting with hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. military equipment seized from the Iraqi Army who abandoned it,” Ali Khedery, a former American official in Iraq, told the New York Times.
More: One reason that ISIS has been so successful at conquering northern Iraq is that it has a huge base of operations in Syria, where it had exploited the civil war to overtake huge swathes of Syrian territory. One reason that ISIS was so successful in Syria is that the US refused to arm moderate Syrian rebels, for fear that the weapons would fall into ISIS’s hands. So that made it easier for ISIS to overpower the under-funded moderate rebels, and now ISIS has seized, in Iraq, much better versions of the weapons that we were so worried they might acquire in Syria. So now we’re bombing the guns that we didn’t mean to give ISIS because we didn’t give guns to their enemies because then ISIS might get guns.
It’s not just ironic; it’s a symbol of how disastrous the last 15 years of US Iraq policy have been, how circuitous and self-perpetuating the violence, that we are now bombing our own guns. Welcome to American grand strategy in the Middle East.
U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel
By Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt, NY Times, Aug. 10, 2014
BAGHDAD—When American forces raided a home near Falluja during the turbulent 2004 offensive against the Iraqi Sunni insurgency, they got the hard-core militants they had been looking for. They also picked up an apparent hanger-on, an Iraqi man in his early 30s whom they knew nothing about.
The Americans duly registered his name as they processed him and the others at the Camp Bucca detention center: Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry.
That once-peripheral figure has become known to the world now as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the architect of its violent campaign to redraw the map of the Middle East.
“He was a street thug when we picked him up in 2004,” said a Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “It’s hard to imagine we could have had a crystal ball then that would tell us he’d become head of ISIS.”
At every turn, Mr. Baghdadi’s rise has been shaped by the United States’ involvement in Iraq—most of the political changes that fueled his fight, or led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action. And now he has forced a new chapter of that intervention, after ISIS’ military successes and brutal massacres of minorities in its advance prompted President Obama to order airstrikes in Iraq.
Mr. Baghdadi has seemed to revel in the fight, promising that ISIS would soon be in “direct confrontation” with the United States.
Still, when he first latched on to Al Qaeda, in the early years of the American occupation, it was not as a fighter, but rather as a religious figure. He has since declared himself caliph of the Islamic world, and pressed a violent campaign to root out religious minorities, like Shiites and Yazidis, that has brought condemnation even from Qaeda leaders.
Despite his reach for global stature, Mr. Baghdadi, in his early 40s, in many ways has remained more mysterious than any of the major jihadi figures who preceded him.
American and Iraqi officials have teams of intelligence analysts and operatives dedicated to stalking him, but have had little success in piecing together the arc of his life. And his recent appearance at a mosque in Mosul to deliver a sermon, a video of which was distributed online, was the first time many of his followers had ever seen him.
Mr. Baghdadi is said to have a doctorate in Islamic studies from a university in Baghdad, and was a mosque preacher in his hometown, Samarra. He also has an attractive pedigree, claiming to trace his ancestry to the Quraysh Tribe of the Prophet Muhammad.
Beyond that, almost every biographical point about Mr. Baghdadi is occluded by some confusion or another.
The Pentagon says that Mr. Baghdadi, after being arrested in Falluja in early 2004, was released that December with a large group of other prisoners deemed low level. But Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar who has researched Mr. Baghdadi’s life, sometimes on behalf of Iraqi intelligence, said that Mr. Baghdadi had spent five years in an American detention facility where, like many ISIS fighters now on the battlefield, he became more radicalized.
Mr. Hashimi said that Mr. Baghdadi had grown up in a poor family in a farming village near Samarra, and that his family was Sufi—a strain of Islam known for its tolerance. He said Mr. Baghdadi had come to Baghdad in the early 1990s, and over time became more radical.
Early in the insurgency, he gravitated toward a new jihadi group led by the flamboyant Jordanian militant operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Though Mr. Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, began as a mostly Iraqi insurgent organization, it claimed allegiance to the global Qaeda leadership, and over the years brought in more and more foreign leadership figures.
It is unclear how much prominence Mr. Baghdadi enjoyed under Mr. Zarqawi. Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer now at the Brookings Institution, recently wrote that Mr. Baghdadi had spent several years in Afghanistan, working alongside Mr. Zarqawi. But some officials say the American intelligence community does not believe Mr. Baghdadi has ever set foot outside the conflict zones of Iraq and Syria, and that he was never particularly close to Mr. Zarqawi.
The American operation that killed Mr. Zarqawi in 2006 was a huge blow to the organization’s leadership. But it was years later that Mr. Baghdadi got his chance to take the reins.
As the Americans were winding down their war in Iraq, they focused on trying to wipe out Al Qaeda in Iraq’s remaining leadership. In April 2010, a joint operation by Iraqi and American forces made the biggest strike against the group in years, killing its top two figures near Tikrit.
A month later, the group issued a statement announcing new leadership, and Mr. Baghdadi was at the top of the list. The Western intelligence community scrambled for information.
“Any idea who these guys are?” an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence company that then worked for the American government in Iraq, wrote in an email that has since been released by WikiLeaks. “These are likely nom de guerres, but are they associated with anyone we know?”
In June 2010, Stratfor published a report on the group that considered its prospects in the wake of the killings of the top leadership. The report stated, “the militant organization’s future for success looks bleak.”
Still, the report said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq, then an alternative name for Al Qaeda in Iraq, “I.S.I.’s intent to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq has not diminished.”
The Sunni tribes of eastern Syria and Iraq’s Anbar and Nineveh Provinces have long had ties that run deeper than national boundaries, and ISIS was built on those relationships. Accordingly, as the group’s fortunes waned in Iraq, it found a new opportunity in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.
As more moderate Syrian rebel groups were beaten down by the Syrian security forces and their allies, ISIS increasingly took control of the fight, in part on the strength of weapons and funding from its operations in Iraq and from jihadist supporters in the Arab world.
That fact has led American lawmakers and political figures, including former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to accuse President Obama of aiding ISIS’ rise in two ways: first by completely withdrawing American troops from Iraq in 2011, then by hesitating to arm more moderate Syrian opposition groups early in that conflict.
But well before then, American actions were critical to Mr. Baghdadi’s rise in more direct ways. He is Iraqi to the core, and his extremist ideology was sharpened and refined in the crucible of the American occupation.
The American invasion presented Mr. Baghdadi and his allies with a ready-made enemy and recruiting draw. And the American ouster of Saddam Hussein, whose brutal dictatorship had kept a lid on extremist Islamist movements, gave Mr. Baghdadi the freedom for his radical views to flourish.
In contrast to Mr. Zarqawi, who increasingly looked outside Iraq for leadership help, Mr. Baghdadi has surrounded himself by a tight clique of former Baath Party military and intelligence officers from the Hussein regime who know how to fight.
Analysts and Iraqi intelligence officers believe that after Mr. Baghdadi took over the organization he appointed a Hussein-era officer, a man known as Hajji Bakr, as his military commander, overseeing operations and a military council that included three other officers of the former regime’s security forces.
Mr. Baghdadi has been criticized by some in the wider jihadi community for his reliance on former Baathists. But for many others, Mr. Baghdadi’s successes have trumped these critiques.
The victories gained by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which define a region known as the cradle of civilization.
“He has credibility because he runs half of Iraq and half of Syria,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New American Foundation.
Syria may have been a temporary refuge and proving ground, but Iraq has always been his stronghold and his most important source of financing. Now, it has become the main venue for Mr. Baghdadi’s state-building exercise, as well.
Although the group’s capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, appeared to catch the American intelligence community and the Iraqi government by surprise, Mr. Baghdadi’s mafia-like operations in the city had long been crucial to his strategy of establishing the Islamic caliphate.
His group earned an estimated $12 million a month, according to American officials, from extortion schemes in Mosul, which it used to finance operations in Syria. Before June, ISIS controlled neighborhoods of the city by night, collecting money and slipping in to the countryside by day.
The United Nations Security Council is considering new measures aimed at crippling the group’s finances, according to Reuters, by threatening sanctions on supporters. Such action is likely to have little effect because, by now, the group is almost entirely self-financing, through its seizing oil fields, extortion and tax collection in the territories it controls. As it gains territory in Iraq, it has found new ways to generate revenue. For instance, recently in Hawija, a village near Kirkuk, the group demanded that all former soldiers or police officers pay an $850 “repentance fine.”
Though he has captured territory through brutal means, Mr. Baghdadi has also taken practical steps at state-building, and even shown a lighter side. In Mosul, ISIS has held a “fun day” for kids, distributed gifts and food during Eid al-Fitr, held Quran recitation competitions, started bus services and opened schools.
Mr. Baghdadi appears to be drawing on a famous jihadi text that has long inspired Al Qaeda: “The Management of Savagery,” written by a Saudi named Abu Bakr Naji.
Mr. Fishman called the text, “Che Guevara warmed over for jihadis.” William McCants, an analyst at the Brookings Institution who in 2005, as a fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, translated the book in to English, once described it as “the seven highly effective habits of jihadi leaders.”
American officials say Mr. Baghdadi runs a more efficient organization than Mr. Zarqawi did, and has unchallenged control over the organization, with authority delegated to his lieutenants. “He doesn’t have to sign off on every detail,” said one senior United States counterterrorism official. “He gives them more discretion and flexibility.”
Even before the civil war in Syria presented him with a growth opportunity, Mr. Baghdadi had been taking steps in Iraq—something akin to a corporate restructuring—that laid the foundation for the group’s resurgence, just as the Americans were leaving. He picked off rivals through assassinations, orchestrated prison breaks to replenish his ranks of fighters and diversified his sources of funding through extortion, to wean the group off outside funding from Al Qaeda’s central authorities.
“He was preparing to split from Al Qaeda,” Mr. Hashimi said.
Now Mr. Baghdadi commands not just a terrorist organization, but, according to Brett McGurk, the top State Department official on Iraq policy, “a full blown army.”
Speaking at a recent congressional hearing, Mr. McGurk said, “it is worse than Al Qaeda.”
BAGHDAD—When American forces raided a home near Falluja during the turbulent 2004 offensive against the Iraqi Sunni insurgency, they got the hard-core militants they had been looking for. They also picked up an apparent hanger-on, an Iraqi man in his early 30s whom they knew nothing about.
The Americans duly registered his name as they processed him and the others at the Camp Bucca detention center: Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry.
That once-peripheral figure has become known to the world now as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the architect of its violent campaign to redraw the map of the Middle East.
“He was a street thug when we picked him up in 2004,” said a Pentagon official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “It’s hard to imagine we could have had a crystal ball then that would tell us he’d become head of ISIS.”
At every turn, Mr. Baghdadi’s rise has been shaped by the United States’ involvement in Iraq—most of the political changes that fueled his fight, or led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action. And now he has forced a new chapter of that intervention, after ISIS’ military successes and brutal massacres of minorities in its advance prompted President Obama to order airstrikes in Iraq.
Mr. Baghdadi has seemed to revel in the fight, promising that ISIS would soon be in “direct confrontation” with the United States.
Still, when he first latched on to Al Qaeda, in the early years of the American occupation, it was not as a fighter, but rather as a religious figure. He has since declared himself caliph of the Islamic world, and pressed a violent campaign to root out religious minorities, like Shiites and Yazidis, that has brought condemnation even from Qaeda leaders.
Despite his reach for global stature, Mr. Baghdadi, in his early 40s, in many ways has remained more mysterious than any of the major jihadi figures who preceded him.
American and Iraqi officials have teams of intelligence analysts and operatives dedicated to stalking him, but have had little success in piecing together the arc of his life. And his recent appearance at a mosque in Mosul to deliver a sermon, a video of which was distributed online, was the first time many of his followers had ever seen him.
Mr. Baghdadi is said to have a doctorate in Islamic studies from a university in Baghdad, and was a mosque preacher in his hometown, Samarra. He also has an attractive pedigree, claiming to trace his ancestry to the Quraysh Tribe of the Prophet Muhammad.
Beyond that, almost every biographical point about Mr. Baghdadi is occluded by some confusion or another.
The Pentagon says that Mr. Baghdadi, after being arrested in Falluja in early 2004, was released that December with a large group of other prisoners deemed low level. But Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi scholar who has researched Mr. Baghdadi’s life, sometimes on behalf of Iraqi intelligence, said that Mr. Baghdadi had spent five years in an American detention facility where, like many ISIS fighters now on the battlefield, he became more radicalized.
Mr. Hashimi said that Mr. Baghdadi had grown up in a poor family in a farming village near Samarra, and that his family was Sufi—a strain of Islam known for its tolerance. He said Mr. Baghdadi had come to Baghdad in the early 1990s, and over time became more radical.
Early in the insurgency, he gravitated toward a new jihadi group led by the flamboyant Jordanian militant operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Though Mr. Zarqawi’s group, Al Qaeda in Iraq, began as a mostly Iraqi insurgent organization, it claimed allegiance to the global Qaeda leadership, and over the years brought in more and more foreign leadership figures.
It is unclear how much prominence Mr. Baghdadi enjoyed under Mr. Zarqawi. Bruce Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer now at the Brookings Institution, recently wrote that Mr. Baghdadi had spent several years in Afghanistan, working alongside Mr. Zarqawi. But some officials say the American intelligence community does not believe Mr. Baghdadi has ever set foot outside the conflict zones of Iraq and Syria, and that he was never particularly close to Mr. Zarqawi.
The American operation that killed Mr. Zarqawi in 2006 was a huge blow to the organization’s leadership. But it was years later that Mr. Baghdadi got his chance to take the reins.
As the Americans were winding down their war in Iraq, they focused on trying to wipe out Al Qaeda in Iraq’s remaining leadership. In April 2010, a joint operation by Iraqi and American forces made the biggest strike against the group in years, killing its top two figures near Tikrit.
A month later, the group issued a statement announcing new leadership, and Mr. Baghdadi was at the top of the list. The Western intelligence community scrambled for information.
“Any idea who these guys are?” an analyst at Stratfor, a private intelligence company that then worked for the American government in Iraq, wrote in an email that has since been released by WikiLeaks. “These are likely nom de guerres, but are they associated with anyone we know?”
In June 2010, Stratfor published a report on the group that considered its prospects in the wake of the killings of the top leadership. The report stated, “the militant organization’s future for success looks bleak.”
Still, the report said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq, then an alternative name for Al Qaeda in Iraq, “I.S.I.’s intent to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq has not diminished.”
The Sunni tribes of eastern Syria and Iraq’s Anbar and Nineveh Provinces have long had ties that run deeper than national boundaries, and ISIS was built on those relationships. Accordingly, as the group’s fortunes waned in Iraq, it found a new opportunity in the fight against Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.
As more moderate Syrian rebel groups were beaten down by the Syrian security forces and their allies, ISIS increasingly took control of the fight, in part on the strength of weapons and funding from its operations in Iraq and from jihadist supporters in the Arab world.
That fact has led American lawmakers and political figures, including former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to accuse President Obama of aiding ISIS’ rise in two ways: first by completely withdrawing American troops from Iraq in 2011, then by hesitating to arm more moderate Syrian opposition groups early in that conflict.
But well before then, American actions were critical to Mr. Baghdadi’s rise in more direct ways. He is Iraqi to the core, and his extremist ideology was sharpened and refined in the crucible of the American occupation.
The American invasion presented Mr. Baghdadi and his allies with a ready-made enemy and recruiting draw. And the American ouster of Saddam Hussein, whose brutal dictatorship had kept a lid on extremist Islamist movements, gave Mr. Baghdadi the freedom for his radical views to flourish.
In contrast to Mr. Zarqawi, who increasingly looked outside Iraq for leadership help, Mr. Baghdadi has surrounded himself by a tight clique of former Baath Party military and intelligence officers from the Hussein regime who know how to fight.
Analysts and Iraqi intelligence officers believe that after Mr. Baghdadi took over the organization he appointed a Hussein-era officer, a man known as Hajji Bakr, as his military commander, overseeing operations and a military council that included three other officers of the former regime’s security forces.
Mr. Baghdadi has been criticized by some in the wider jihadi community for his reliance on former Baathists. But for many others, Mr. Baghdadi’s successes have trumped these critiques.
The victories gained by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which define a region known as the cradle of civilization.
“He has credibility because he runs half of Iraq and half of Syria,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New American Foundation.
Syria may have been a temporary refuge and proving ground, but Iraq has always been his stronghold and his most important source of financing. Now, it has become the main venue for Mr. Baghdadi’s state-building exercise, as well.
Although the group’s capture of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, appeared to catch the American intelligence community and the Iraqi government by surprise, Mr. Baghdadi’s mafia-like operations in the city had long been crucial to his strategy of establishing the Islamic caliphate.
His group earned an estimated $12 million a month, according to American officials, from extortion schemes in Mosul, which it used to finance operations in Syria. Before June, ISIS controlled neighborhoods of the city by night, collecting money and slipping in to the countryside by day.
The United Nations Security Council is considering new measures aimed at crippling the group’s finances, according to Reuters, by threatening sanctions on supporters. Such action is likely to have little effect because, by now, the group is almost entirely self-financing, through its seizing oil fields, extortion and tax collection in the territories it controls. As it gains territory in Iraq, it has found new ways to generate revenue. For instance, recently in Hawija, a village near Kirkuk, the group demanded that all former soldiers or police officers pay an $850 “repentance fine.”
Though he has captured territory through brutal means, Mr. Baghdadi has also taken practical steps at state-building, and even shown a lighter side. In Mosul, ISIS has held a “fun day” for kids, distributed gifts and food during Eid al-Fitr, held Quran recitation competitions, started bus services and opened schools.
Mr. Baghdadi appears to be drawing on a famous jihadi text that has long inspired Al Qaeda: “The Management of Savagery,” written by a Saudi named Abu Bakr Naji.
Mr. Fishman called the text, “Che Guevara warmed over for jihadis.” William McCants, an analyst at the Brookings Institution who in 2005, as a fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, translated the book in to English, once described it as “the seven highly effective habits of jihadi leaders.”
American officials say Mr. Baghdadi runs a more efficient organization than Mr. Zarqawi did, and has unchallenged control over the organization, with authority delegated to his lieutenants. “He doesn’t have to sign off on every detail,” said one senior United States counterterrorism official. “He gives them more discretion and flexibility.”
Even before the civil war in Syria presented him with a growth opportunity, Mr. Baghdadi had been taking steps in Iraq—something akin to a corporate restructuring—that laid the foundation for the group’s resurgence, just as the Americans were leaving. He picked off rivals through assassinations, orchestrated prison breaks to replenish his ranks of fighters and diversified his sources of funding through extortion, to wean the group off outside funding from Al Qaeda’s central authorities.
“He was preparing to split from Al Qaeda,” Mr. Hashimi said.
Now Mr. Baghdadi commands not just a terrorist organization, but, according to Brett McGurk, the top State Department official on Iraq policy, “a full blown army.”
Speaking at a recent congressional hearing, Mr. McGurk said, “it is worse than Al Qaeda.”
This Might Be The Easiest Way To Boost Concentration And Memory
Lauren F. Friedman and Kevin Loria, Business Insider, Aug. 10, 2014
Mind wandering after a long day at work? Forgetting where your keys are when you finally decide to leave the house on the weekend?
While many things could be going on, one often-overlooked possibility is that you might simply be nature-deprived. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix for that, especially in the summertime: Head for the trees.
Time In Nature Can Boost Short-Term Memory. In one study, University of Michigan students were given a brief memory test, then divided into two groups.
One group took a walk around an arboretum, and the other half took a walk down a city street. When the participants returned and did the test again, those who had walked among trees did almost 20% percent better than the first time. The ones who had taken in city sights instead did not consistently improve.
Another similar study on depressed individuals also found that walks in nature boosted working memory much more than walks in urban environments.
Natural Environments Restore Mental Energy. You know that feeling where your brain seems to be sputtering to a halt? Researchers call that “mental fatigue.”
One thing that can help get your mind back into gear is exposing it to restorative environments, which, research has found, generally means the great outdoors. One study found that people’s mental energy bounced back even when they just looked at pictures of nature. (Pictures of city scenes had no such effect.)
Studies have also found that natural beauty can elicit feelings of awe, which is one of the surest ways to experience a mental boost.
A Walk Outside Can Help You Focus. We know the natural environment is “restorative,” and one thing that a walk outside can restore is your waning attention. In one early study, researchers worked to deplete participants’ ability to focus. Then some took a walk in nature, some took a walk through the city, and the rest just relaxed. When they returned, the nature group scored the best on a proofreading task. Other studies have found similar results—even seeing a natural scene through a window can help.
The attentional effect of nature is so strong it might help kids with ADHD, who have been found to concentrate better after just 20 minutes in a park. “‘Doses of nature’ might serve as a safe, inexpensive, widely accessible new tool … for managing ADHD symptoms,” researchers wrote.
Mind wandering after a long day at work? Forgetting where your keys are when you finally decide to leave the house on the weekend?
While many things could be going on, one often-overlooked possibility is that you might simply be nature-deprived. Fortunately, there’s an easy fix for that, especially in the summertime: Head for the trees.
Time In Nature Can Boost Short-Term Memory. In one study, University of Michigan students were given a brief memory test, then divided into two groups.
One group took a walk around an arboretum, and the other half took a walk down a city street. When the participants returned and did the test again, those who had walked among trees did almost 20% percent better than the first time. The ones who had taken in city sights instead did not consistently improve.
Another similar study on depressed individuals also found that walks in nature boosted working memory much more than walks in urban environments.
Natural Environments Restore Mental Energy. You know that feeling where your brain seems to be sputtering to a halt? Researchers call that “mental fatigue.”
One thing that can help get your mind back into gear is exposing it to restorative environments, which, research has found, generally means the great outdoors. One study found that people’s mental energy bounced back even when they just looked at pictures of nature. (Pictures of city scenes had no such effect.)
Studies have also found that natural beauty can elicit feelings of awe, which is one of the surest ways to experience a mental boost.
A Walk Outside Can Help You Focus. We know the natural environment is “restorative,” and one thing that a walk outside can restore is your waning attention. In one early study, researchers worked to deplete participants’ ability to focus. Then some took a walk in nature, some took a walk through the city, and the rest just relaxed. When they returned, the nature group scored the best on a proofreading task. Other studies have found similar results—even seeing a natural scene through a window can help.
The attentional effect of nature is so strong it might help kids with ADHD, who have been found to concentrate better after just 20 minutes in a park. “‘Doses of nature’ might serve as a safe, inexpensive, widely accessible new tool … for managing ADHD symptoms,” researchers wrote.
"A Word To The Faithless"-Pastor David Legge.
http://www.preachtheword.com/sermon/misc0044-awordtothefaithless.shtml
by David Legge | Copyright © 2003 | All Rights Reserved | www.preachtheword.com
Now if you have a Bible with you I want you to turn with me to 2 Timothy, the second epistle to Timothy - and of course we have finished, a couple of weeks ago, our series in Philippians, and so I just want to bring a one-off message to you this morning on 'A Word to the Faithless from the Faithful'. Second Timothy 2, beginning to read at verse 11: "It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself".
What a word that is to us all today! It is a statement of the consistency of God's character...
The word to the faithless from the faithful is found in 2 Timothy chapter 2 and the verse 13, the last verse that we read in these verses from 11 through to 13: 'If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself'. Some other translations have it like this: 'If we are faithless, he remains faithful: for he cannot deny himself '.
Now if you're familiar with Paul's writings, especially to Timothy and Titus, you'll be aware that this saying is one of five faithful sayings which he had given and mentioned. Of course the first is the very famous one which is found in 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 15, if you turn over and look at it, 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 15: 'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom', Paul says, 'I am chief'. That is a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptance - and if you're here this morning without the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour, you need Him as your Saviour, you need to accept Him as your Saviour and Lord.
The second faithful saying is found in chapter 3 of 1 Timothy and verse 1: 'This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop', or an elder, and overseer, 'he desireth a good work'. It is a good thing to desire to be leading the flock of God and to be in a responsible position within the church, and that's another faithful saying of Paul. Then in chapter 4, and a few more verses than one, verses 8 through to 10, Paul says: 'For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe'. It is true that we ought to look after the spiritual life more than the physical life, because there is a Saviour of all who believe.
Then the fourth faithful saying is the one that we read together in verse 13 of chapter 2 of 2 Timothy, and of course we know that. Then the fifth is Titus chapter 3 and verse 8, just turn over to it, Titus 3 and verse 8: 'This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men'. It's not just enough to be a Christian, but we have to maintain, Paul says, good works - and that is a faithful saying.
You know that we have cliches today, even in evangelicalism, but these were more than cliches, they were inspired word of God - but they were well-known among the church of Jesus Christ...
Now all of these sayings, as well as the one we read together this morning, are all weighty and important sayings. In fact, many scholars believe that they were probably cherished sayings during the infancy of the church, and were often quoted by preachers and teachers, and they had become common and well-known through the church of Jesus Christ. The great C.H. Spurgeon said of these faithful sayings: 'Such golden sayings were minted into proverbs and passed from hand to hand, enriching all who received them'. You know that we have cliches today, even in evangelicalism, but these were more than cliches, they were inspired word of God - but they were well-known among the church of Jesus Christ.
Many believe that it may well have become the case that they were made into hymns, hymns that were sung in the church, what we read of as psalms, hymns and spiritual songs by which the saints edify one another and encourage one another in their faith, building each other up. It is believed that verses 11 to 13 of 2 Timothy chapter 2 were one of these hymns, everyone would have known this off by heart: 'It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him' - what a truth that is! If we have died in Christ, that is if we have put our faith and trust in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, we will rise with Him as He is risen in His resurrection, one day we will rise also. 'If we suffer, we shall also reign with him' - there is reward for suffering with the Lord Jesus Christ. 'If we deny him, he also will deny us' - the Lord Jesus said that when He was on the earth, that if we denied Him before men on this earth, He would deny us before His Father in heaven. I think, to all believers, that is applicable in the sense of reward - that if we do not live for Christ down here we will suffer for it at the judgement seat of Christ.
But here's the one we want to look at this morning: 'If we believe not', or if we are faithless, 'yet he remains', or, 'he abideth faithful: for he cannot deny himself'. What a word that is to us all today! It is a statement of the consistency of God's character. Even when we are weak, even in the face of whatever trials, testings, tribulations we may enter and pass through and feel that we'll never come out the end of them, we can know one thing at least out of the many things that we do not know: God is faithful, and He cannot deny Himself. It's interesting that this promise is even given in the context of faithfulness, Paul exhorting faithfulness to the believers: 'If you suffer, if you do not deny him...' - and it seems strange, almost contradictory, that he should say at the end of this hymn: 'But if we...', just on the off-chance that we are not faithful to Christ, and even faithless in our unbelief, He will remain faithful to us.
What a terrible thing it would be in eternity to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, the bema, and as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3 and verse 15, to have that experience of our works being burnt up, suffering loss - yet Paul could say, even on that occasion, if you're truly rooted and grounded in Christ and saved, he himself shall be saved even so as by fire.
What I want to do for you today is bring a word to the faithless from the Faithful One. Wherever you find yourself today, maybe you think that you're in a state of faithlessness and unbelief, and you've denied the Lord or you've let the Lord down, or you're turning your back on the Lord, or you're doubting the Lord's goodness in your life - well, here is a word to the faithless from the Faithful.
What I want to do for you today is bring a word to the faithless from the Faithful One...
Let's deal first of all with the word to the faithless. In the beginning of verse 13: 'If we believe not', the Greek word 'believe not' is in the negative form, it's the same word that is translated later on as 'faithful' - and that's why many revised translations have translated it: 'If we are faithless, he remains faithful'. However on other occasions in the New Testament the word has been translated 'believe not', in Acts 28 and verse 24 we read this: 'And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not', it's the same negative form of the verb 'faith'. In Luke 24, the two on the road to Emmaus, downcast, believing that Christ had died, the promise of the kingdom had gone and their dreams were shattered, it says that Christ drew beside them and said unto them: 'O fools, and slow of heart to believe', there's the word, to believe, to have faith in, 'all that the prophets have spoken'.
Now what we must remember at all times when reading the epistles of Paul to the churches, is that he is writing to believers - he is writing to believers! By him saying: 'If we are faithless, if we are unbelieving', he must be inferring that it is possible to be an unbelieving believer. Now that might seem a contradiction in terms, maybe even to your mind an impossibility, but I think perhaps what he's getting at is that you may be someone who has believed in Christ to the saving of your soul, but that is where your believing has stopped - you haven't gone further to believe Him for your life. Now can I ask us, just at this stage, before we go on any further: do we really believe God? Do we believe in Him? Now let's test that for a moment, because all you have to do is open some passages, very famous well-known quoted texts of Scripture, just like these texts were very well-known, and take them at random and ask yourselves: 'Well, do you really believe that?'.
What about Acts 20:35? 'It is more blessed to give than to receive'. We all love receiving, don't we? From the smallest child to the oldest adult, but do we believe that it is more blessed to give than to receive? What about John 10 verses 28 to 29: 'I give unto my sheep eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand'? Could it be that there's someone here today and you're having trouble with the assurance of your salvation? One day you feel saved, the next you don't feel saved - well, God is asking you to believe His word, and if you've trusted in Christ at Calvary, you've repented of your sins, you've turned to Him in faith and acknowledged Him as Lord, He asks you to believe that no one or no thing or nobody can pluck you out of His hand - but you will never ever perish! What a promise to believe! What about some of you who are lonely? Some of you who have been widowed, some who have been divorced, those who have been deserted? Matthew 28 verse 20 says: 'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age'. Do we believe that? I mean, do we really believe it?
Do we, like David Livingstone, the great pioneer missionary to Africa, take those promises to be the word of a gentleman, that God's word is true and we can trust it? What about this one: Matthew 6:33 - 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you'? Now just pause for a moment: do you really believe that? The things that you worry about, and we all worry about in life, the necessary things, mundane temporary things of everyday existence, do we really believe that if we put God first in our lives and follow His precepts, principles and promises, that all these things will be added unto us?
'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age'. Do we believe that? I mean, do we really believe it?
Now don't misunderstand what I'm saying: I'm not saying it isn't difficult at times to believe God - thank the Lord that He remembers we are dust, and we are frail, and at times we are overtaken and arrested with doubts and fears and anxieties. Although in our circumstances it can be difficult to see how we can believe such, at times, outlandish promises - one author says that when we say it is difficult to believe God's promises, it reminds him of a man who went to consult Dr Torrey about a spiritual difficulty. He said: 'You know, Doctor, I can't believe', and expecting him to reply: 'What can't you believe?', he was astounded when instead Dr Torrey, looking with piercing eyes into his, came with the quick and revealing answer of: 'Whom can't you believe?'. Not 'What can't you believe?', or 'Why can't you believe?', but 'Whom can't you believe?'. The word of a gentleman!
Really and truly, at times we must face this, it is not the saying but the speaker that we don't believe. Is it difficult to believe Him? At times it is difficult, but is it impossible to believe in Him? It cannot be impossible when we consider, even in our faithlessness, and whatever unbelieving state we may be in at this moment: He is faithful, for He cannot deny Himself! Even if we are one of these unbelieving believers, we can come to God - He allows, even in His grace, the possibility of coming and saying: 'Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief'.
Let's just ponder a moment, if we are faithless, what this means. Imagine if the church of Jesus Christ becomes faithless - many would say it is: it has denied the miracles, it has denied the word of God, denied the supernatural, and actually started to pervert the word of God and interpret it into their own everyday circumstances and contemporary situations. But what happens in a day, and perhaps it's a day that we are living in, when the church has apostatised to such an extent that we wonder is the true and living God still among His people. All we have to do for a moment to the ask the question: 'Has God left us?', even when we are a faithless church, is to go back to the Old Testament for the type of the Israelites, God's ancient people. They're delivered from Egypt, you remember the exodus story, and there they are going through the wilderness - God has delivered them with a high hand and an outstretched arm, and they're being fed in the wilderness with none other than angel's food, manna, God's bread from heaven; they're made to drink of the water of the rock that followed them, Christ Jesus - but day after day after day they are continually doubting God! What happened? Did God depart from His purpose in giving the land that flowed with milk and honey to the seed of Abraham, did He decide 'Well, I'll not give it to them any more, I'll give it to the Arabs'? Did He break up the covenant, did He grow weary of the people? The answer is: He didn't! When they were faithless, He remained faithful - and Abraham's seed inherited the land, and they dwelt therein every man under his own vine and fig tree. Though the visible people of God rejected Him completely on every occasion, it would seem, and often because of their unbelief generations died in the wilderness; yet God remained faithful to His promises - why? Because He could not deny Himself.
Maybe there's a child of God here and you don't pray any longer, you don't meet with the prayer meeting to pray; or maybe there's a preacher here and you've lost faith in preaching, you think that God has lost His cause...
I hope you see this: that there are times individually and collectively that we lose our zeal for holiness and for prayer, and for faith and for good works, and all the rest of it - but does God reverse His grace? Does God let us go? Does God turn His back on us? Of course we can become disqualified, there's no doubt about that - but isn't it wonderful that even when we find ourselves in the direst unbelief as a child of God, that this is a God that cannot deny us the way we would deny Him? Maybe there's a child of God here and you don't pray any longer, you don't meet with the prayer meeting to pray; or maybe there's a preacher here and you've lost faith in preaching, you think that God has lost His cause. When we think that God has lost His cause, and He isn't blessing the preaching of the gospel any longer, does God give up on His method that He's ordained of the foolishness of preaching? If we live in the day of small things, and we almost could think 'will there be faith when the Son of Man comes upon the earth again?' - maybe we should even live to see, as Jim will be speaking of tomorrow night, if it's not already here, a church that has become so degenerate that any light or presence of God has departed so that Christ has spewed us out of His mouth - will God say as of Shiloh of old: 'Go now to Shiloh where my place was at first, and see if there be one stone left upon another that is not cast down'? Even if that happens in the West, and even if it happens in this church, God will remain faithful.
Listen to what the great C. H. Spurgeon said: 'Even in a church where His judgement is incurred, His faithfulness is seen. All history of the church has shown that He will be faithful. Whatever His church may be, He will help her when she turns to Him, He will bless her when she trusts Him, He will crown her when she exalts Him, but He will bring her low and chasten her when she turns in any measure aside from the simplicity of her faith'. What is it saying? That even when we deny Him, He cannot deny His promises. He may deny us at the judgement seat, but He cannot deny Himself. Friends, that's wonderful, for that is a word to the faithless from the Faithful. Do you not feel the sheer joy of it? Wherever you may be in your own spiritual condition, God abideth faithful - this is an unswerving friend.
Now let me leave you with a few ways in which He is faithful. Here's the first: He will always remain faithful, true to His word. He will always remain true to His word. Hebrews 10 and verse 23 says: 'He is faithful that promised'. In Isaiah 31 verse 2, that famous passage about His word not coming back to Him void, it says: 'He will not call back His words'. When He has spoken, He doesn't change His mind; He doesn't say 'I take that back, I'm not going to do it, I'm not going to honour it', but He abideth faithful. Now here's why He is always true to His word: because He is His word! There's a little verse in the Old Testament that says: 'He has set His word above His name'. Of course, it's hard to understand how He could set His word above His name, but when we go into John chapter 1 and verse 1, we read that 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God', speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ - the communication of God to us is the Lord Jesus, He, the one that this verse is speaking about, the Lord Jesus is God's word, so He cannot deny Him!
'The grass withereth, and the flower thereof faileth, but the word of the Lord endureth forever; and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you' - He cannot deny His word, since that word is Himself. Now there are some implications from that: that means that He can't withdraw His salvation which He has given to men. He can't take your salvation away, He can't call back His word that went forth to save you and did that regenerative act - it is an absolute impossibility in time or in eternity. If you're here this morning and you're not converted, and you've never trusted Christ, if you were to take Him at His word now, He will save you now and forever! He cannot deny Himself - why? Because His salvation is Himself! Do you remember the angel came to His virgin mother, and said: 'He shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins'? Jesus means 'He will save His people'; Jesus means 'Jehovah's salvation' - His salvation, and He cannot deny Himself. That means the atonement, when He died on the cross and shed His blood for your sin and mine, it will always remain the same because it is Himself. Hebrews says: 'He has by Himself purged our sins'. He Himself is the sacrifice, that's why we can still sing today as the early apostles did in spirit: 'Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power', because He cannot deny Himself - and, praise God, He is alive today, He ever lives, and He ever lives and is able to save all to the uttermost who come unto God by Him seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. Blessed be His name: the atoning sacrifice, even in its smallest degree, has never once lost its efficacy - and it's just as mighty today as it was to wash the dying thief at the side of Christ.
He is true to His word in the gospel, in the atonement, in His intercession, and also in the mercy seat, the place of prayer. Isn't it wonderful to know that God cannot deny Himself in the place of prayer?
He is true to His word in the gospel, in the atonement, in His intercession, and also in the mercy seat, the place of prayer. Isn't it wonderful to know that God cannot deny Himself in the place of prayer? If that were altered, the mercy seat, where we come to God and bring our needs, if it were altered to such an extent that He became unfaithful and He didn't answer prayers, and He didn't give us our needs - not everything the way we want it, but He didn't give us what we needed - He would have denied Himself, and He cannot deny Himself. Now why is that the case? Because what is the mercy seat only a type of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and what He is doing for us now at this present moment in glory at the right hand of God? It is He Himself, He is our propitiation, He is the true mercy seat; and if prayer, for one split second, begins to lose its efficacy He has denied Himself!
Jehovah will never become like Baal, a deaf god that cannot answer - and to imagine such a thing would be utter blasphemy. He is true to His word in salvation, in prayer, and in all these blessings we've spoken of - but secondly He is true to His people, He is true to His people. His people are exhorted in scripture to commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator - that means one who will never ever let His creatures down. Here's another sweet thought: if Christ is true to His people, Christ's love to His church will always be the same, and His purposes towards His church cannot change, because He cannot deny Himself, because His church is Himself!
Are we not indwelt by the Holy Spirit of the living God? I know we're the bride of Christ, and one day we will be totally purged of all our sin and presented as a perfect chaste bride to Christ, and the marriage supper will take place - but you know as well in the New Testament that the doctrine of marriage is that the two become one, and in that sense we are one in Him as His bride. He is in us by His Spirit, so to deny us would be to deny Himself, and He cannot! Nor will any of His offices towards His church and people ever fail - He is a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, and that means that when you come to Him, praying according to His will, He will never refuse any prayers that you offer, any praises that you bring via the Spirit because He cannot deny Him.
One has said: 'The King will never cease to reign, or doff His crown, or lay down His sceptre, for He cannot deny Himself. The Shepherd will never fail to keep the flock, the Friend will eternally stick closer than a brother, the Divine Husband will still love His spouse - all that He is in relation to His people shall continue and abide, for He abideth faithful' - isn't that wonderful? He is true to His word, He is true to His people, and thirdly He is true to Himself. Verse 12 is a very frightening verse: 'If we deny Him, He will also deny us', but if, verse 13, 'we are faithless, he abides faithful: for He cannot deny Himself'. Every divine and human quality, remember we're talking about the Lord Jesus Christ here, the incarnate God; every quality from God and from man in Him is always held in perfect poise and balance. No part of His being contradicts or contravenes another part of His personality. Whatever He was in the past, He is now, and He always ever shall be; when He was on the earth, when He is in heaven, when He comes back for us again - what this verse is telling us is: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever! He cannot deny Himself.
There are three things that God cannot do: He cannot die; He cannot lie; and He cannot be deceived. Often people say, smart-alecs: 'Well, if God can't do things that means God's not almighty, and He can't be God'. But the impossibilities with these things are not from our perspective, because impossibility from our perspective means a lack of power and ability, but these impossibilities of God - to die, to lie, to be deceived - show a greater display of God's majesty and power and greatness, and Almighty ability, it shows His lack of weakness! Isn't it amazing that the achievements that we can throw in the face of God that we can do and He can't are a sign of our own weakness? Well, here is another: He cannot deny Himself, it's an impossibility. Some of the oldest manuscripts translate this phrase: 'For He cannot', it is an impossibility that He should deny Himself. He may deny us if we deny Him, verse 12, but grab hold of this: He cannot deny Himself!
Here is One on whom we may depend; here is One on whom we can put all our trust however undependable we ourselves may be...
What I want to leave with you today is: here is One on whom we may depend; here is One on whom we can put all our trust however undependable we ourselves may be. That's not to cement us in our faithlessness - it would be better if we were faithful, and He were in turn faithful to us and not deny Himself. We would be in so many more blessings - but even when we're at the end of our tether, and we're faithless and exhausted of all belief, He will not fail us. If, from the sheer physical weakness that you're undergoing, or will undergo in a day that is yet to be; if, from the extreme pressure of circumstances, or from the insidious oncoming of doubt, or from any other cause, you find faith faltering or failing, can I exhort you to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ away from yourself, and cling on this: that He is not faltering, He is not altering, for He cannot! He abideth faithful - what a friend!
Can I exhort you, as we close, just to think of this: don't put faith in your faith, for there may come a day when you will become faithless. Don't put your faith in your feelings, because there will come days when your feelings will not be there, they will change, they will fail - but put your faith in Christ, because He never changes, He never fails, He abideth ever, He cannot deny Himself, and He is faithful. J. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, said, who had gone through many hardships and difficulties: 'It is not by trying to be faithful, but in looking to the faithful one, that we win the victory'. It is not by trying to be faithful, but in looking to the faithful one, that we win the victory.
God revealed Himself to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7: 'Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; and repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face'. If you're faithful, if you're faithless, nothing - one or the other - changes God: He remains the same always.
Can you grab hold of this this morning, wherever you find yourself? Maybe this has been very elementary to you, very simple - well I'll tell you this: it's very necessary to venture your whole dependence upon God alone. In Christianity Today, Philip Yancey, the author wrote these words, and I want you to listen very carefully: 'I remember my first visit to Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. Rings of Japanese and German tourists surrounded the geyser, their video cameras trained like weapons on the famous hole in the ground. A large digital clock stood beside the spot predicting 24 minutes until the next eruption. My wife and I passed the countdown in the dining-room of the Old Faithful Inn overlooking the geyser. When the digital clock reached one minute we, along with every other diner, left our seats and rushed to the window to see the big wet event. But I noticed that immediately, as if on signal, a crew of waiters descended on the tables to refill water glasses and clear away dirty dishes. When the geyser went off we tourists 'ooohed' and 'aaahed' and clicked our cameras, a few spontaneously applauded - but glancing back over my shoulder I saw that not a single waiter, not even those who had finished their chores looked out the huge window'. This is what he said: 'Old Faithful, grown entirely too familiar, had lost its power to impress them'.
God's faithfulness deserves our entire praise and wonder, but do not lose the fact through familiarity that God is faithful, and if we are faithless He will remain faithful: for He cannot deny Himself.
Oh, our Father, we pray that Thou wilt forgive us for at times denying Thee, at times doubting Thee; for O, Father, we thank Thee that though we are faithless, You always remain faithful, and You will never deny Thyself, You will never deny Thy word, or Thy people, or Thy promises. We thank Thee that the Lord Jesus is our Saviour, and all may change, but Jesus never - glory to His name. And it is on that unchanging Rock we seek to stand this morning, whatever the storms may be, for we ask these things in His precious eternal and everlasting name, Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
------------------------
Transcribed by:
Andrew Watkins,
Preach The Word.
July 2003
www.preachtheword.com
This sermon was delivered at The Iron Hall Assembly in Belfast, Northern Ireland, by Pastor David Legge. It was transcribed from the tape, titled "A Word To The Faithless" - Transcribed by Andrew Watkins,
All material by David Legge is copyrighted. However, these materials may be freely copied and distributed unaltered for the purpose of study and teaching, so long as they are made available to others free of charge, and this copyright is included. This does not include hosting or broadcasting the materials on another website, however linking to the resources on www.preachtheword.com is permitted. These materials may not, in any manner, be sold or used to solicit 'donations' from others, nor may they be included in anything you intend to copyright, sell, or offer for a fee. This copyright is exercised to keep these materials freely available to all. Any exceptions to these conditions must be explicitly approved by Preach The Word.
by David Legge | Copyright © 2003 | All Rights Reserved | www.preachtheword.com
What a word that is to us all today! It is a statement of the consistency of God's character...
The word to the faithless from the faithful is found in 2 Timothy chapter 2 and the verse 13, the last verse that we read in these verses from 11 through to 13: 'If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself'. Some other translations have it like this: 'If we are faithless, he remains faithful: for he cannot deny himself '.
Now if you're familiar with Paul's writings, especially to Timothy and Titus, you'll be aware that this saying is one of five faithful sayings which he had given and mentioned. Of course the first is the very famous one which is found in 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 15, if you turn over and look at it, 1 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 15: 'This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom', Paul says, 'I am chief'. That is a faithful saying, worthy of all acceptance - and if you're here this morning without the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour, you need Him as your Saviour, you need to accept Him as your Saviour and Lord.
The second faithful saying is found in chapter 3 of 1 Timothy and verse 1: 'This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop', or an elder, and overseer, 'he desireth a good work'. It is a good thing to desire to be leading the flock of God and to be in a responsible position within the church, and that's another faithful saying of Paul. Then in chapter 4, and a few more verses than one, verses 8 through to 10, Paul says: 'For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe'. It is true that we ought to look after the spiritual life more than the physical life, because there is a Saviour of all who believe.
Then the fourth faithful saying is the one that we read together in verse 13 of chapter 2 of 2 Timothy, and of course we know that. Then the fifth is Titus chapter 3 and verse 8, just turn over to it, Titus 3 and verse 8: 'This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men'. It's not just enough to be a Christian, but we have to maintain, Paul says, good works - and that is a faithful saying.
You know that we have cliches today, even in evangelicalism, but these were more than cliches, they were inspired word of God - but they were well-known among the church of Jesus Christ...
Now all of these sayings, as well as the one we read together this morning, are all weighty and important sayings. In fact, many scholars believe that they were probably cherished sayings during the infancy of the church, and were often quoted by preachers and teachers, and they had become common and well-known through the church of Jesus Christ. The great C.H. Spurgeon said of these faithful sayings: 'Such golden sayings were minted into proverbs and passed from hand to hand, enriching all who received them'. You know that we have cliches today, even in evangelicalism, but these were more than cliches, they were inspired word of God - but they were well-known among the church of Jesus Christ.
Many believe that it may well have become the case that they were made into hymns, hymns that were sung in the church, what we read of as psalms, hymns and spiritual songs by which the saints edify one another and encourage one another in their faith, building each other up. It is believed that verses 11 to 13 of 2 Timothy chapter 2 were one of these hymns, everyone would have known this off by heart: 'It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him' - what a truth that is! If we have died in Christ, that is if we have put our faith and trust in the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, we will rise with Him as He is risen in His resurrection, one day we will rise also. 'If we suffer, we shall also reign with him' - there is reward for suffering with the Lord Jesus Christ. 'If we deny him, he also will deny us' - the Lord Jesus said that when He was on the earth, that if we denied Him before men on this earth, He would deny us before His Father in heaven. I think, to all believers, that is applicable in the sense of reward - that if we do not live for Christ down here we will suffer for it at the judgement seat of Christ.
But here's the one we want to look at this morning: 'If we believe not', or if we are faithless, 'yet he remains', or, 'he abideth faithful: for he cannot deny himself'. What a word that is to us all today! It is a statement of the consistency of God's character. Even when we are weak, even in the face of whatever trials, testings, tribulations we may enter and pass through and feel that we'll never come out the end of them, we can know one thing at least out of the many things that we do not know: God is faithful, and He cannot deny Himself. It's interesting that this promise is even given in the context of faithfulness, Paul exhorting faithfulness to the believers: 'If you suffer, if you do not deny him...' - and it seems strange, almost contradictory, that he should say at the end of this hymn: 'But if we...', just on the off-chance that we are not faithful to Christ, and even faithless in our unbelief, He will remain faithful to us.
What a terrible thing it would be in eternity to stand before the judgment seat of Christ, the bema, and as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 3 and verse 15, to have that experience of our works being burnt up, suffering loss - yet Paul could say, even on that occasion, if you're truly rooted and grounded in Christ and saved, he himself shall be saved even so as by fire.
What I want to do for you today is bring a word to the faithless from the Faithful One. Wherever you find yourself today, maybe you think that you're in a state of faithlessness and unbelief, and you've denied the Lord or you've let the Lord down, or you're turning your back on the Lord, or you're doubting the Lord's goodness in your life - well, here is a word to the faithless from the Faithful.
What I want to do for you today is bring a word to the faithless from the Faithful One...
Let's deal first of all with the word to the faithless. In the beginning of verse 13: 'If we believe not', the Greek word 'believe not' is in the negative form, it's the same word that is translated later on as 'faithful' - and that's why many revised translations have translated it: 'If we are faithless, he remains faithful'. However on other occasions in the New Testament the word has been translated 'believe not', in Acts 28 and verse 24 we read this: 'And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not', it's the same negative form of the verb 'faith'. In Luke 24, the two on the road to Emmaus, downcast, believing that Christ had died, the promise of the kingdom had gone and their dreams were shattered, it says that Christ drew beside them and said unto them: 'O fools, and slow of heart to believe', there's the word, to believe, to have faith in, 'all that the prophets have spoken'.
Now what we must remember at all times when reading the epistles of Paul to the churches, is that he is writing to believers - he is writing to believers! By him saying: 'If we are faithless, if we are unbelieving', he must be inferring that it is possible to be an unbelieving believer. Now that might seem a contradiction in terms, maybe even to your mind an impossibility, but I think perhaps what he's getting at is that you may be someone who has believed in Christ to the saving of your soul, but that is where your believing has stopped - you haven't gone further to believe Him for your life. Now can I ask us, just at this stage, before we go on any further: do we really believe God? Do we believe in Him? Now let's test that for a moment, because all you have to do is open some passages, very famous well-known quoted texts of Scripture, just like these texts were very well-known, and take them at random and ask yourselves: 'Well, do you really believe that?'.
What about Acts 20:35? 'It is more blessed to give than to receive'. We all love receiving, don't we? From the smallest child to the oldest adult, but do we believe that it is more blessed to give than to receive? What about John 10 verses 28 to 29: 'I give unto my sheep eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand'? Could it be that there's someone here today and you're having trouble with the assurance of your salvation? One day you feel saved, the next you don't feel saved - well, God is asking you to believe His word, and if you've trusted in Christ at Calvary, you've repented of your sins, you've turned to Him in faith and acknowledged Him as Lord, He asks you to believe that no one or no thing or nobody can pluck you out of His hand - but you will never ever perish! What a promise to believe! What about some of you who are lonely? Some of you who have been widowed, some who have been divorced, those who have been deserted? Matthew 28 verse 20 says: 'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age'. Do we believe that? I mean, do we really believe it?
Do we, like David Livingstone, the great pioneer missionary to Africa, take those promises to be the word of a gentleman, that God's word is true and we can trust it? What about this one: Matthew 6:33 - 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you'? Now just pause for a moment: do you really believe that? The things that you worry about, and we all worry about in life, the necessary things, mundane temporary things of everyday existence, do we really believe that if we put God first in our lives and follow His precepts, principles and promises, that all these things will be added unto us?
'Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age'. Do we believe that? I mean, do we really believe it?
Now don't misunderstand what I'm saying: I'm not saying it isn't difficult at times to believe God - thank the Lord that He remembers we are dust, and we are frail, and at times we are overtaken and arrested with doubts and fears and anxieties. Although in our circumstances it can be difficult to see how we can believe such, at times, outlandish promises - one author says that when we say it is difficult to believe God's promises, it reminds him of a man who went to consult Dr Torrey about a spiritual difficulty. He said: 'You know, Doctor, I can't believe', and expecting him to reply: 'What can't you believe?', he was astounded when instead Dr Torrey, looking with piercing eyes into his, came with the quick and revealing answer of: 'Whom can't you believe?'. Not 'What can't you believe?', or 'Why can't you believe?', but 'Whom can't you believe?'. The word of a gentleman!
Really and truly, at times we must face this, it is not the saying but the speaker that we don't believe. Is it difficult to believe Him? At times it is difficult, but is it impossible to believe in Him? It cannot be impossible when we consider, even in our faithlessness, and whatever unbelieving state we may be in at this moment: He is faithful, for He cannot deny Himself! Even if we are one of these unbelieving believers, we can come to God - He allows, even in His grace, the possibility of coming and saying: 'Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief'.
Let's just ponder a moment, if we are faithless, what this means. Imagine if the church of Jesus Christ becomes faithless - many would say it is: it has denied the miracles, it has denied the word of God, denied the supernatural, and actually started to pervert the word of God and interpret it into their own everyday circumstances and contemporary situations. But what happens in a day, and perhaps it's a day that we are living in, when the church has apostatised to such an extent that we wonder is the true and living God still among His people. All we have to do for a moment to the ask the question: 'Has God left us?', even when we are a faithless church, is to go back to the Old Testament for the type of the Israelites, God's ancient people. They're delivered from Egypt, you remember the exodus story, and there they are going through the wilderness - God has delivered them with a high hand and an outstretched arm, and they're being fed in the wilderness with none other than angel's food, manna, God's bread from heaven; they're made to drink of the water of the rock that followed them, Christ Jesus - but day after day after day they are continually doubting God! What happened? Did God depart from His purpose in giving the land that flowed with milk and honey to the seed of Abraham, did He decide 'Well, I'll not give it to them any more, I'll give it to the Arabs'? Did He break up the covenant, did He grow weary of the people? The answer is: He didn't! When they were faithless, He remained faithful - and Abraham's seed inherited the land, and they dwelt therein every man under his own vine and fig tree. Though the visible people of God rejected Him completely on every occasion, it would seem, and often because of their unbelief generations died in the wilderness; yet God remained faithful to His promises - why? Because He could not deny Himself.
Maybe there's a child of God here and you don't pray any longer, you don't meet with the prayer meeting to pray; or maybe there's a preacher here and you've lost faith in preaching, you think that God has lost His cause...
I hope you see this: that there are times individually and collectively that we lose our zeal for holiness and for prayer, and for faith and for good works, and all the rest of it - but does God reverse His grace? Does God let us go? Does God turn His back on us? Of course we can become disqualified, there's no doubt about that - but isn't it wonderful that even when we find ourselves in the direst unbelief as a child of God, that this is a God that cannot deny us the way we would deny Him? Maybe there's a child of God here and you don't pray any longer, you don't meet with the prayer meeting to pray; or maybe there's a preacher here and you've lost faith in preaching, you think that God has lost His cause. When we think that God has lost His cause, and He isn't blessing the preaching of the gospel any longer, does God give up on His method that He's ordained of the foolishness of preaching? If we live in the day of small things, and we almost could think 'will there be faith when the Son of Man comes upon the earth again?' - maybe we should even live to see, as Jim will be speaking of tomorrow night, if it's not already here, a church that has become so degenerate that any light or presence of God has departed so that Christ has spewed us out of His mouth - will God say as of Shiloh of old: 'Go now to Shiloh where my place was at first, and see if there be one stone left upon another that is not cast down'? Even if that happens in the West, and even if it happens in this church, God will remain faithful.
Listen to what the great C. H. Spurgeon said: 'Even in a church where His judgement is incurred, His faithfulness is seen. All history of the church has shown that He will be faithful. Whatever His church may be, He will help her when she turns to Him, He will bless her when she trusts Him, He will crown her when she exalts Him, but He will bring her low and chasten her when she turns in any measure aside from the simplicity of her faith'. What is it saying? That even when we deny Him, He cannot deny His promises. He may deny us at the judgement seat, but He cannot deny Himself. Friends, that's wonderful, for that is a word to the faithless from the Faithful. Do you not feel the sheer joy of it? Wherever you may be in your own spiritual condition, God abideth faithful - this is an unswerving friend.
Now let me leave you with a few ways in which He is faithful. Here's the first: He will always remain faithful, true to His word. He will always remain true to His word. Hebrews 10 and verse 23 says: 'He is faithful that promised'. In Isaiah 31 verse 2, that famous passage about His word not coming back to Him void, it says: 'He will not call back His words'. When He has spoken, He doesn't change His mind; He doesn't say 'I take that back, I'm not going to do it, I'm not going to honour it', but He abideth faithful. Now here's why He is always true to His word: because He is His word! There's a little verse in the Old Testament that says: 'He has set His word above His name'. Of course, it's hard to understand how He could set His word above His name, but when we go into John chapter 1 and verse 1, we read that 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God', speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ - the communication of God to us is the Lord Jesus, He, the one that this verse is speaking about, the Lord Jesus is God's word, so He cannot deny Him!
'The grass withereth, and the flower thereof faileth, but the word of the Lord endureth forever; and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you' - He cannot deny His word, since that word is Himself. Now there are some implications from that: that means that He can't withdraw His salvation which He has given to men. He can't take your salvation away, He can't call back His word that went forth to save you and did that regenerative act - it is an absolute impossibility in time or in eternity. If you're here this morning and you're not converted, and you've never trusted Christ, if you were to take Him at His word now, He will save you now and forever! He cannot deny Himself - why? Because His salvation is Himself! Do you remember the angel came to His virgin mother, and said: 'He shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins'? Jesus means 'He will save His people'; Jesus means 'Jehovah's salvation' - His salvation, and He cannot deny Himself. That means the atonement, when He died on the cross and shed His blood for your sin and mine, it will always remain the same because it is Himself. Hebrews says: 'He has by Himself purged our sins'. He Himself is the sacrifice, that's why we can still sing today as the early apostles did in spirit: 'Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power', because He cannot deny Himself - and, praise God, He is alive today, He ever lives, and He ever lives and is able to save all to the uttermost who come unto God by Him seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. Blessed be His name: the atoning sacrifice, even in its smallest degree, has never once lost its efficacy - and it's just as mighty today as it was to wash the dying thief at the side of Christ.
He is true to His word in the gospel, in the atonement, in His intercession, and also in the mercy seat, the place of prayer. Isn't it wonderful to know that God cannot deny Himself in the place of prayer?
He is true to His word in the gospel, in the atonement, in His intercession, and also in the mercy seat, the place of prayer. Isn't it wonderful to know that God cannot deny Himself in the place of prayer? If that were altered, the mercy seat, where we come to God and bring our needs, if it were altered to such an extent that He became unfaithful and He didn't answer prayers, and He didn't give us our needs - not everything the way we want it, but He didn't give us what we needed - He would have denied Himself, and He cannot deny Himself. Now why is that the case? Because what is the mercy seat only a type of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and what He is doing for us now at this present moment in glory at the right hand of God? It is He Himself, He is our propitiation, He is the true mercy seat; and if prayer, for one split second, begins to lose its efficacy He has denied Himself!
Jehovah will never become like Baal, a deaf god that cannot answer - and to imagine such a thing would be utter blasphemy. He is true to His word in salvation, in prayer, and in all these blessings we've spoken of - but secondly He is true to His people, He is true to His people. His people are exhorted in scripture to commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator - that means one who will never ever let His creatures down. Here's another sweet thought: if Christ is true to His people, Christ's love to His church will always be the same, and His purposes towards His church cannot change, because He cannot deny Himself, because His church is Himself!
Are we not indwelt by the Holy Spirit of the living God? I know we're the bride of Christ, and one day we will be totally purged of all our sin and presented as a perfect chaste bride to Christ, and the marriage supper will take place - but you know as well in the New Testament that the doctrine of marriage is that the two become one, and in that sense we are one in Him as His bride. He is in us by His Spirit, so to deny us would be to deny Himself, and He cannot! Nor will any of His offices towards His church and people ever fail - He is a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek, and that means that when you come to Him, praying according to His will, He will never refuse any prayers that you offer, any praises that you bring via the Spirit because He cannot deny Him.
One has said: 'The King will never cease to reign, or doff His crown, or lay down His sceptre, for He cannot deny Himself. The Shepherd will never fail to keep the flock, the Friend will eternally stick closer than a brother, the Divine Husband will still love His spouse - all that He is in relation to His people shall continue and abide, for He abideth faithful' - isn't that wonderful? He is true to His word, He is true to His people, and thirdly He is true to Himself. Verse 12 is a very frightening verse: 'If we deny Him, He will also deny us', but if, verse 13, 'we are faithless, he abides faithful: for He cannot deny Himself'. Every divine and human quality, remember we're talking about the Lord Jesus Christ here, the incarnate God; every quality from God and from man in Him is always held in perfect poise and balance. No part of His being contradicts or contravenes another part of His personality. Whatever He was in the past, He is now, and He always ever shall be; when He was on the earth, when He is in heaven, when He comes back for us again - what this verse is telling us is: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever! He cannot deny Himself.
There are three things that God cannot do: He cannot die; He cannot lie; and He cannot be deceived. Often people say, smart-alecs: 'Well, if God can't do things that means God's not almighty, and He can't be God'. But the impossibilities with these things are not from our perspective, because impossibility from our perspective means a lack of power and ability, but these impossibilities of God - to die, to lie, to be deceived - show a greater display of God's majesty and power and greatness, and Almighty ability, it shows His lack of weakness! Isn't it amazing that the achievements that we can throw in the face of God that we can do and He can't are a sign of our own weakness? Well, here is another: He cannot deny Himself, it's an impossibility. Some of the oldest manuscripts translate this phrase: 'For He cannot', it is an impossibility that He should deny Himself. He may deny us if we deny Him, verse 12, but grab hold of this: He cannot deny Himself!
Here is One on whom we may depend; here is One on whom we can put all our trust however undependable we ourselves may be...
What I want to leave with you today is: here is One on whom we may depend; here is One on whom we can put all our trust however undependable we ourselves may be. That's not to cement us in our faithlessness - it would be better if we were faithful, and He were in turn faithful to us and not deny Himself. We would be in so many more blessings - but even when we're at the end of our tether, and we're faithless and exhausted of all belief, He will not fail us. If, from the sheer physical weakness that you're undergoing, or will undergo in a day that is yet to be; if, from the extreme pressure of circumstances, or from the insidious oncoming of doubt, or from any other cause, you find faith faltering or failing, can I exhort you to turn to the Lord Jesus Christ away from yourself, and cling on this: that He is not faltering, He is not altering, for He cannot! He abideth faithful - what a friend!
Can I exhort you, as we close, just to think of this: don't put faith in your faith, for there may come a day when you will become faithless. Don't put your faith in your feelings, because there will come days when your feelings will not be there, they will change, they will fail - but put your faith in Christ, because He never changes, He never fails, He abideth ever, He cannot deny Himself, and He is faithful. J. Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China, said, who had gone through many hardships and difficulties: 'It is not by trying to be faithful, but in looking to the faithful one, that we win the victory'. It is not by trying to be faithful, but in looking to the faithful one, that we win the victory.
God revealed Himself to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7: 'Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; and repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face'. If you're faithful, if you're faithless, nothing - one or the other - changes God: He remains the same always.
Can you grab hold of this this morning, wherever you find yourself? Maybe this has been very elementary to you, very simple - well I'll tell you this: it's very necessary to venture your whole dependence upon God alone. In Christianity Today, Philip Yancey, the author wrote these words, and I want you to listen very carefully: 'I remember my first visit to Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. Rings of Japanese and German tourists surrounded the geyser, their video cameras trained like weapons on the famous hole in the ground. A large digital clock stood beside the spot predicting 24 minutes until the next eruption. My wife and I passed the countdown in the dining-room of the Old Faithful Inn overlooking the geyser. When the digital clock reached one minute we, along with every other diner, left our seats and rushed to the window to see the big wet event. But I noticed that immediately, as if on signal, a crew of waiters descended on the tables to refill water glasses and clear away dirty dishes. When the geyser went off we tourists 'ooohed' and 'aaahed' and clicked our cameras, a few spontaneously applauded - but glancing back over my shoulder I saw that not a single waiter, not even those who had finished their chores looked out the huge window'. This is what he said: 'Old Faithful, grown entirely too familiar, had lost its power to impress them'.
God's faithfulness deserves our entire praise and wonder, but do not lose the fact through familiarity that God is faithful, and if we are faithless He will remain faithful: for He cannot deny Himself.
Oh, our Father, we pray that Thou wilt forgive us for at times denying Thee, at times doubting Thee; for O, Father, we thank Thee that though we are faithless, You always remain faithful, and You will never deny Thyself, You will never deny Thy word, or Thy people, or Thy promises. We thank Thee that the Lord Jesus is our Saviour, and all may change, but Jesus never - glory to His name. And it is on that unchanging Rock we seek to stand this morning, whatever the storms may be, for we ask these things in His precious eternal and everlasting name, Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Transcribed by:Andrew Watkins,
Preach The Word.
July 2003
www.preachtheword.com
This sermon was delivered at The Iron Hall Assembly in Belfast, Northern Ireland, by Pastor David Legge. It was transcribed from the tape, titled "A Word To The Faithless" - Transcribed by Andrew Watkins,
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