Tag: God’s providence

Providence at Work!

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Video of 17-Year-Old Catching Child Falling From Apartment Building Goes Viral

Some good news, for a change–

Two-year-old child hanging from the ledge of a second-story window, and nobody around but a woman in her 33rd week of pregnancy. Child can’t hold on, and he falls–but the woman, who has stationed herself below the window just in case, catches him and neither of them gets hurt (https://www.breitbart.com/pre-viral/2023/05/09/pregnant-iowa-woman-catches-falling-child-two-story-building/).

We’re used to saying God moves in mysterious ways. But sometimes His providence moves in, well, action movie ways! What could be more dramatic than this incident? If that woman hadn’t come walking along just when she did, if she’d been a minute earlier or a minute later, there probably would have been a tragedy. She only noticed because the toddler threw a few things out the window before climbing out himself. It’s too bad, but toddlers need a lot of watching-over.

When is it going to sink in on this lady that God used her to save a human life? She’ll have to sit down…

Archbishop Vigano: ‘Everyone Will Face Judgment’

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Archbishop Vigano releases testimony detailing abuse cover-up by Pope Francis, Roman Curia

We have few heroes in this fallen world. But “few” is not “none”–and for those we have, we should thank God’s careful providence and honor those whom He has sent to us.

One of those heroes is Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano. His Jan. 6 Epiphany message applies to all the world; and he has special warnings for the globalist nabobs who will soon be meeting at Davos (https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/abp-vigano-everyone-will-face-gods-judgement-even-the-architects-of-the-great-reset/).

Please read it.

“While world leaders prefer to gather in Davos for their globalist agenda,” he writes, and outlaw churchmen are “encouraging the most unmentionable vices… transforming wise and just government into an instrument of hateful tyranny…

“What will you do, servants of the Great Reset, when your masters have to flee into their lairs and hide within the bowels of the earth?”

I have only picked out a few words from his Epiphany message. The man is bold for Jesus Christ! We need to hear his word and spread it. How he reminds me of St. Gildas (On the Ruin of Britain, c. 500 A.D.)!

Globalists might buy off worldly authorities, but they will never buy the Judge of All the Earth. Unless they repent, their doom is certain. They can escape consequences here on earth, but there is no escape from Hell.

A Thought! (A Gift of God)

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Esther (TV Movie 1999) - IMDb

Queen Esther

I was telling my wife about the heroic pizza delivery man who ran into a house on fire to rescue five children. She shook her head and said, “He’s wasted, delivering pizzas.” And it popped into my head to say, “But if he hadn’t been in that job, delivering a pizza, he wouldn’t have been there to save those lives.”

A comment from Erlene, reacting to a nooze item about intensely perverted men preferring “sex dolls” to women: the kind of thing, she thought, that makes you want to weep for the vileness of this age. And it came to me to answer–I’m not taking credit for this, you understand: I think it’s God speaking to me–“Maybe He put us here and now for a reason. Maybe we’re His pizza delivery drivers. Maybe we’d better be ready to run into a burning building and save people.”

I am not wise enough to have said that on my own.

I think of Esther, a nice Jewish girl who was made the queen of Persia. She literally had to risk her life, to speak to the king on behalf of her people. Mordecai told her she may well have been born “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14). So she hazarded herself, and saved her people.

We can’t all be heroes–or can we? I think that may be up to God, not us.

 

‘An Appreciation: Churchill’ (2017)

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Image result for images of winston churchill

Imagine a world without Winston Churchill. The very best we could hope for would be an America surrounded on all sides by hostile dictatorships. There’s no way Britain would have survived.

An Appreciation: Churchill

Of course, we’re so busy now tearing down statues and erasing our history, there are college graduates who never heard of Churchill, are only just barely cognizant that World War II ever happened, have no idea what it was about, and take the blessings of liberty for granted.

Which is how you lose them.

What Do Bees Do in the Winter?

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beekeeping. bumblebee. bee. Nest has queen, drones (males), and worker bees feed hatched larva and seal cells with wax. Honey bees, honeybees colony. Beehive, beeswax, honeycomb, brood. insect

These last few days around here have been quite cold–good thing I finished my book last week.

One of the pleasures of writing outside has been watching the bees–honeybees, bumblebees, and our little native bees–working on the masses of tiny white wildflowers that sprang up around my writing chair. These last two days, though, I haven’t seen any bees. Where are they?

Well, they’re in their hive, huddling together to “form a winter cluster to keep warm,” according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica. By doing this, they can raise the temperature inside the hive to 90 or even 100 degrees. And if the temperature outside rises to 50 degrees or more, the bees will venture outside to relieve themselves. Throughout the winter, they survive by eating stored honey.

Thus God has given bees the ability to survive through the winter, even when there are no flowers for them to visit. He has provided for them as He provides for us and all the rest of His creation. The bees, by working diligently throughout the summer and the early fall, have what they need to make it through the winter.

And so I’ll see them again when the flowers come back into bloom.

Providential!

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Amazon.com: Deja Vu : Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer, Paula Patton, Bruce Greenwood, Adam Goldberg, Jim Caviezel, Tony Scott, Terry Rossio & Bill Marsilii: Movies & TV

Work has lately stalled on The Witch Box, mostly because I have a major artistic challenge looming up in front of me and I haven’t been shown the way to the top.

So we watched a movie yesterday, Deja Vu (2006), starring Denzel Washington and Jim Caviezel–and holy cow! Half an hour into it, I realized  Denzel was up against the same kind of dangerous problem confronting the characters in my book. Not exactly the same, of course–but Obst and Helki would be a lot better equipped to deal with it if they could see this movie.

Suddenly I was pumped to get back to writing the book. What would medieval people do if they were given powerful, cutting-edge 21st century technology–with no instructions as to how it worked, how to use it, what it could do, what to be careful not to do, and so on?

I don’t want to spoil the movie for you, and I certainly don’t want to spoil the book. This was one of those good movies that the critics didn’t like, possibly because there was a strong Christian slant to it. It’s a thriller that fires up your imagination. And I’d like to achieve the same effect with my book.

Well, I kept asking and asking the Lord to guide me in the writing of this book–and along comes this movie yesterday. Coincidence or Providence?

As far as I’m concerned, that’s an easy one to answer.

‘An Appreciation: Churchill’ (2017)

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Imagine a world in which Winston Churchill died in 1931.

An Appreciation: Churchill

Without Churchill, the Third Reich conquers all of Europe. The United States, if we survive at all, endures a state of perpetual siege–unless our own leaders, as so many of Britain’s were willing to do, enter into some kind of “understanding” with the Nazis.

Liberty is fragile. It’s at odds with Original Sin. Only by God’s providence do we have it; only by His providence do we keep it. There’s always someone lusting to take it away from us.

Remember that freedom is the gift of God, and no one has the right to take it from us.

We’re All Right (Thank You, Father)

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West Seattle weather: Should you be worried about your trees ...

We’ve just had ten minutes of the most ferocious wind and rain we’ve seen since Hurricane Sandy. My sister, Alice, thought her neighborhood was in for a tornado. The gales seemed to spring up out of nowhere, the cats ran upstairs and under the bed, and by the time I got all the hatches battened down, it was over. And Alice called to see if we were all right.

We are–but it was a close call. The wind was strong enough to snap off the top half of a very big sycamore tree and hurl it to the sidewalk. By God’s providence, it didn’t take down the power lines with it: hard to believe how that could be, when you look at it. I don’t know how we’d take a power failure on top of a quarantine. All we’re lacking is army ants.

It also somehow missed all the parked cars, not to mention pedestrians. I call that a miracle.

Keep your eyes peeled: Someone, somewhere, seems to be expecting the China Wuhan Communist Death Virus to be in retreat sooner than we think. I say that because I’ve noticed Climbit Chainge chatter is starting up again. Yeah, they’re re-heating it: gotta keep the peasants scared, only way to control ’em.

Is it just me saying this, or do we need a new ruling class?

‘The Power of Prayer’ (2005)

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If you take away anything from this 2005 Chalcedon editorial, take this: Pray as if it all depends on God, and work as if it all depends on us.

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-power-of-prayer

Here at Chalcedon, we’re totally dependent on God’s providence, manifested through voluntary donations from readers. Put bluntly, if the donations dry up, I dry up.

But this is good for us. This is humbling. So we work–we work hard. We plant and we water. But the increase is from God. Always from God.

He is, after all, our Heavenly Father who has begotten us in the Spirit, by the blood of Jesus Christ. It’s good for us to rely on Him.

‘Christian Reconstruction… and Fantasy?’ (God’s Providence at Work)

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Image result for images of bell mountain by lee duigon

In this 2014 Chalcedon magazine article, I traced some of the many steps of God’s providence by which I came to write my Bell Mountain novels. It started with a young R.J. Rushdoony reading Cornelius Van Til, and starting a correspondence with him–while I was still, literally, in knee-pants.

https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/christian-reconstruction-and-fantasy

You have to view these things in retrospect, because you can’t detect them while they’re happening. God’s work is subtle: best to view it from a distance. Get up too close, and you can’t see anything.

Anyway, here’s how my books came to be written, and why they’re written the way they are.