Wonder What it Will be Like When I Turn 99

I am wiped out. Again.

On Saturdays, my church has a thing called Rhythms Lounge. The kids take over the cafe. They recite their own poetry, sing, and play music. Some of them are very talented. “ALL of them,” my pastor would probably say, if he were reading this.

I help out with food. I was not expecting to cook yesterday, but Christian rapper Dre Marshall showed up in Miami and decided to grace us with an appearance, so I got a frantic call at 10 a.m.

By three, I was at church, and by 7:00, we had twenty pounds of baked ziti, six dozen garlic rolls, and 72 brownies. I could not attend the 6:00 service because the cooking and shopping took so long. I’m getting very efficient. I started cooking at four, and putting all that junk together in three hours–alone–is not easy.

At 8:30 today, I was at the volunteer prayer meeting in the cafe, putting my surveillance kit in my ear and making sure my Glock was concealed correctly. I worked as an armorbearer for two services, and then I attended the third. When you work, it’s not considered attendance.

They had me roaming around, which is a good assignment. You get lots of exercise, it’s not boring, and if you sneak into the cafe for a snack, no one knows.

The Assemblies of God had some kind of big function today at 6 p.m., and our pastor suggested we show up in support, but my dad invited me to lunch, and by the time I got back and took a few minutes to rest, it was about 5:50.

I drove to Hallandale on Saturday morning for my usual 8:00 a.m. prayer group meeting. There were some screwups, so only two of us made it. Anyway, I have been on the go since about 7:20 a.m. yesterday. I am ready to become one with the mattress.

Today Pastor Rich talked about Pentecost. This is what Christians call Shavuot, which actually started last Tuesday. “Pentecost” comes from the Greek language, and it means “fiftieth.” Shavuot commemorates the day on which God gave the law to Moses. Pentecost is the day on which God wrote the law on the hearts of Christians by allowing the Holy Spirit to fall on them in the Upper Room in Jerusalem.

Shavuot is also the festival of the first fruits; Jews used to bring the first fruits of their labor to the Temple. Sheep and wheat and so on. When I was living on a kibbutz, they brought out fruit and young livestock.

Pastor Rich discussed Pentecost as a day of restoration. He talked of five blessings we should expect in return for our faith, obedience, and offerings. First, we should expect to be relieved of debt. Second, we should expect God to restore and save our families. Third, God will reveal himself to us in a new way. Fourth, there will be a redistribution of wealth (but not the kind Obama wants). Fifth, we will have power over weakness.

I don’t know exactly where this doctrine comes from. We were given scriptural support for it, but I’ve never seen it taught before. Maybe it’s an Assemblies of God thing.

I was fascinated by the sermon, because “fifty” has been very important in my life lately. I wrote about it a while back.

I “happened” to go to a Messianic synagogue on the first day of my fiftieth year, and they were singing about the Jubilee. That word describes the Biblical fiftieth year, or the “year of God’s favor,” as described in the Isaiah passage Jesus read to announce the beginning of his ministry. The Messianics sang about it, and the rabbi taught about it, and in an offhand remark he referred to Yeshua (Jesus) as “our jubilee,” and he even mentioned the Isaiah passage, in a seemingly unrelated part of the service. Now my pastor is singing the same tune, more or less.

I think this is the year of my restoration. God keeps hammering this theme. I don’t know why it should be true, but he won’t let it drop, so there must be something to it.

God seems to be promoting me in the background. Other people are getting attention and honor, but weird things keep happening to me, and I keep getting revelation. None of it gets much notice from the people around me. I don’t know where I’m going to end up, but I think God is going to move me into an important position of service, while sidestepping the man-ordered paths promotion usually takes.

I can’t figure it out, but I know God likes to remind us that man is not the one who bestows favor. When he wanted to change the world, he didn’t work through the High Priest, and he hasn’t worked wonders or explained his mysteries through Popes. He picks people from the periphery of the faithful, probably for the same reason he made Abraham refuse gifts: when he raises people up, he doesn’t want others to say man did it. Maybe the point is to avoid rewarding human pride.

If we could use our little minds to choose the prophets and the savior and so on, it would be a lot like the building of the Tower of Babel, which was supposed to allow man to control his own destiny. We were never intended to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps. We are intended to walk by faith, and as long as you think you don’t need God to help you achieve your goals, you will do what you want instead of what he wants. Humility is essential to walking by faith, and if we achieve too much using our base tools, humility will elude us.

Today at lunch, I got an opportunity to explain the Pentecost/Shavuot/Babel parallels to my dad. How about that? These metaphorical similarities are among the strongest evidence that Jesus is who he said he was, and that the baptism of the Holy Spirit (including the gifts of tongues) is real; these seeming coincidences could not have been planned or faked. This is the kind of stuff that makes an impact on intelligent people who resist the faith. I’m so grateful that God gave me the chance to present it.

Father’s Day “happens” to be coming up right away. Wouldn’t it be funny if it gave my dad an excuse to visit the church?

According to Jesus, in Sheol, Abraham told a rich man that if his brothers didn’t believe Moses and the prophets, they would not listen to a man raised from the dead, and that is absolutely true. Like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we can explain anything away, if we don’t want to believe it. People who should know better make up shallow, specious arguments “debunking” Christianity. But there are a lot of people who haven’t heard about Moses and the prophets or the endless list of Old Testament evidence which proves Jesus is the Messiah. Today I got a chance to present some of this material to someone who needed to hear it.

Ultimately, the Holy Spirit, and not evidence, convinces people to believe. If evidence would do the trick, every person who has heard the evidence would be a Christian. Supernatural blindness and human stubbornness outweigh mere evidence. But for those who are susceptible to the call, evidence is a great help.

To get back to the notion of “fiftieth,” I think Shavuot is very much like the Jubilee. Jesus was crucified, and fifty days passed, and suddenly, the Spirit fell on 120 believers. They became the first fruits of his harvest. They became the beginning of creation’s restoration; its jubilee. Sometimes the Bible uses years and days almost interchangably, as when God sentenced the Hebrews to wander in the desert one year for every day during which the spies investigated the land of Canaan. Maybe Pentecost and the Jubilee are reflections of each other; the same idea, expressed in different ways.

In the year of Jubilee, slaves were given their freedom, and people who had sold their birthrights got them back. After Jesus came, people who were slaves to Satan were freed, and they received the birthright Adam and Eve sold for a piece of fruit: eternal life. These things are not coincidence. On Pentecost, the believers in the Upper Room received the power that would eventually grow to liberate the world. Eternal life is wonderful, but the Holy Spirit gives us power to use here and now, to rip this world back out of Satan’s hands. That’s a completely different blessing. For two thousand years, it has been hindered, but it seems to have resumed growing into its fullness. The war is heating up, and God is arming us with Holy Spirit power.

I see this year as my Shavuot. I hope it’s not just my imagination. So far, things are looking good. If “first fruit” status has spread to me, it will spread to others, and eventually, we will be a huge and powerful force before which Satan will find himself utterly inadequate.