A Devotional Study of the Living Word of God

Psalm 119:66 Believing is the beginning and without the follow-through of being taught by God the Holy Spirit, we will never attain the judgment and knowledge needed to walk or talk as a mature “saint”

Good Morning

It was explained to me yesterday that two nuclear submarines collided in the Atlantic ocean this month. In searching the web I found that one English and French sub collided at slow speed and without damage to either vessel. This caused me to reflect on some of the near misses experienced by some of the subs in my past. Depth and area restrictions prevent many mishaps within the submarine world and the nations that have them. Under normal operations the threat of colliding with another sub is low, but when transiting from place to place, or when changing depth the threat of colliding with another sub or object increases. (This is very similar to staying in your lane when diving your vehicle, when you change lanes the threat of causing an accident increases). We seldom think about the oceans of the world being so filled up with vessels of the deep as being a problem. But when two collide we think how could this happen, the oceans are so big and these subs are so small. True, but the nations of the world share many of the same interests. Hot spots in the world tend to muster our national interests to the same areas. The armies of these nations find themselves fighting for; airspace, sea space and land space for position. If the hot spot grows ugly these nations are there to keep the uglies off their homeland. As the days and years pass we may see more of this bumping and nudging as the world approaches the hour of trial that the church of Philadelphia will be delivered from. Revelation 3:7-13.

Acts 19

Acts 19:24-27 We have seen this before in Acts, tradesmen fearful of losing income when the shrines and images they make come under attack of being false idols of worship. Mostly, I believe that these tradesmen could care less about a relationship the gods of their trade, since their main concern is for the income off the products sold. These are leeches or more commonly known today as “beltway bandits” companies that surround a larger company to catch the run off.

Acts 19:28-33 So these men are not prophets of the great Diana as they portray themselves to be by inciting the crowd. But their effort to excite the crowd is somewhat successful, so I reckon we could call these tradesmen, “profits of doom.” Whenever false religion and followers of Christ come together there will be anger and confusion. Today we do not see much of this going on because we have allowed to much religion to infiltrate our churches, making it more tolerable to co-exist.

Acts 19:34-41 I like this section, everyone is in an uproar, the tradesmen, local town citizens and the officials. All shouting about how great is the goddess Diana, who supposing is the daughter of Zeus, or Artemis along with Leto the mother. The crowd were all with one accord to cause harm to the men of God. Then out comes the town clerk who speaks for the people and the officials. “Stop this rebellious uproar, do we not have courts and lawyers to settle these issues?” Then the clerk dismisses the crowd and they go away. What power and wisdom a town clerk has! The next time I see our town clerk I will be more respectful.