For the first eighteen hundred or so years God strove with mankind.  This covers the first 11 chapters of Genesis.  Then in chapter 12 God makes a covenant with Abram, later called Abraham.  Once Abraham obeyed, God kept his promise and ‘…made of thee a great nation…” (Genesis 12:2).  And, this is the beginning of the Jewish people.

    God had a bumpy ride with His people.  This lasts for about a thousand years.  He summed it up in Deuteronomy 10:16 when he said ’be no more stiffnecked.’   Stiffnecked they were and this is when the Jews demanded a king to rule them.  God gave them what they asked for and in comes Saul.  He was a military leader but lacked much in the way of spirituality.  Because of this Israel did not fare well under his rule.  Psalm 33:12 explains why this happened.  To sum it up:  a nation that has God as their LORD is blessed.

    David follows Saul as king of Israel and this is the brightest era in Jewish history.  His reign was one of devotion to God and Israel was the benefactor of David’s faith.  It doesn’t take long after a study of the different kings in the Bible to figure out that those who declared God as their LORD were blessed.  I & II Kings has a plethora of ungodly kings of Israel.  Under these kings is a history of idolatry, murder, and practices so bad that it led to the people being take captive and shipped off to Assyria.  Judah wound up in Babylonian captivity.

    Take a look at the nations of today.  Think about the rulers of them.  The Middle East and all of those countries that have radical terrorists staging demonstrations right now.  Are any of them blessed?  Mayhem is the order of the day.  If two columns were drawn on paper with one column listing nations that are blessed and the other those that aren’t,  would it be that Psalm 33:12 would be true?  Of course, because God is the foundation of all truth. (Deuteronomy 32:4)  

    America is blessed.  It is still ’one nation under God’.  Would to God that it continues to be so.

Lovely Readers,

Some of you may have followed the Sweden Items that Sister Linda Johnson has been publishing in the Douglas County Herald for the last few years. You may also have noticed that our items have been absent from the paper for the last couple of weeks.  Good news! Linda will now be publishing her insightful articles right here on this website each week.

Enjoy,

         It says in Titus 2:11 “For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,” so why is it that all men have yet to acknowledge God? Brother Josh told a little story about a woman who heard a clanking in her car. It had gone on for several weeks when she told him about the noise. Brother Josh asked her what she had done to fix it. She said, “I turned up the radio.” For sure, she couldn’t hear the noise but that didn’t get rid of it. Could it be that people ‘turn up the volume’ in their lives and miss the God who brings salvation?

          It’s an easy thing to be distracted. And distractions do what they do best--keep people pointed away from things that really matter. Many are caught up in ‘getting things done’, but is it important to enough to be a priority? What does matter? This world hopscotches from one dilemma to the next. Surely, there is something better. There is, and most people know it or, at the very least, are aware of it.  So why aren’t they hunting it down and trying to find out about it? 

          Should someone lose a valuable piece of jewelry, they’ll turn the place upside down trying to find it. It’ll be on their mind and they’ll keep thinking and looking, thinking and looking. It’s a jewel of great value. Remember the passage in Matthew 13:44-46 where the kingdom of heaven is compared to a treasure or a merchant looking for pearls of great value? 

          The Bible says that God has appeared to all. Some are lost in the distractions. Some are complacent. Some are pursuing salvation to the utmost. Salvation offers so much. The Bible is full of its promises. It’s there for anyone who wants to know more. Like Brother Josh said, “Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (Matthew 7:7)