The Banquet

I had a dream early this morning.  It was one that was intended as a message.  It all started with a banquet, the largest I had ever seen.  It was at a country club, and the table settings were amazing and expensive.  The food had not been served yet.  The table itself stretched out of sight to the far end of what seemed to be and endless room.  There were a lot of empty places at this table, and there were a lot of conversations.  I was facing the windows which lined the wall, and I was three seats from the right end of the table.  I was sitting next to a man with a shaved head, about in his late twenties or early thirties.  He seemed like the biker type.  He wore a gray tank top and jean shorts and sandals.  To his right was a woman who was having a conversation with my wife and her friend, all three, oblivious to me and the man.

I started to have a conversation with this man, and I felt really at ease in his presence.  Suddenly, I realized that it was Jesus.  I don't mean that as it was just a some guy in a dream claiming to be Jesus.  I mean it was Him!  I knew it without a doubt as I have been in His presence before.  (see last blog entry)  I could feel it throughout my being.  I was excited.  We were joking, laughing, and talking, and all I could do was ask Him things.  I wanted to know more about Him.  I could tell that He didn't want me to tell anyone else who He was because He had wanted them to come to Him.  You would figure that I would ask him to cure my ailments or solve my financial problems, but no, I just wanted to get to know Him as my friend.  After all, you can't be friends with someone you don't really know.  It was just an amazing vision.

Well, when I had woken from the dream I felt great, and prayed for interpretation.  This is what the messages in the dream were.  First of all, everyone, and I mean everyone in the world, was invited to this banquet.  This is the same with God.  He invites everyone to be with Him throughout eternity.  He sent His only son, Jesus, to die for our sins so we could do that through Him.  Then there were the empty places at the table.  Not everyone accepts this gift of salvation.  We have free will, and we have to make that choice for ourselves.  God gave free will to everyone because He loves us all that much.  Then there was the fact that I was spending time getting to know Jesus while everyone else were distracted by their own conversations.  We can be like that.  We allow the world in general to take away the time we have to get to know Jesus as our friend.  We are distracted by jobs, worries, illness, disease, other people, friends, family members, vacations, money problems, and the list goes on and on.

I'll leave you with a few questions that you have to decide the answers for yourself.  Have you really accepted the invitation?  Have you found a church home?  Do you know someone who has chosen not to accept the gift of salvation, and what can you do?  Have you invited someone to church or to a church event?  Have you spent time in prayer, no matter how short a time that is?  Have you read the Bible?  Have you done anything like a Bible study or a daily devotional to get to know Jesus better and have Him as your friend, Lord, and Savior?  Have you shown anyone what the love of Jesus really is by example?

How my Blog Got Its Name

You may be wondering how my blog got its name, The Wolf’s Realm.  Why would a man who is a Christian have a blog with such a New Age sound to it?  The name goes back to my childhood.

When I was really young, I was plagued by nightmares.  These were intense nightmares, the kind from which you would wake up screaming.  There were these “monsters” in these dreams that would torment me.  They enjoyed scaring me.  The problem was that they would do this both inside and outside the dreams.  In fact, since then, I’ve figured out that I was experiencing demonic oppression.  Demons, or fallen angels, like their angel counterparts, have the ability to appear in dreams.  They were using them, not to deliver messages like an angel would like in the Bible, but to make me fearful of them.

There was one particular dream that I had when I was about 5 years old.  I had remembered it because it was so different from a nightmare.  It was the opposite.  I had dreamed that I had gone to Heaven.  I felt like I was being guided rapidly towards a bright light, but it wasn’t a tunnel.  It enveloped me, and then I was suddenly calm and peaceful.

A multitude of people and/or angels were singing, welcoming me.  The sound was so intense that I know that my normal human ears would burst.  There was joy.  I had never seen such vibrant and beautiful color.  I saw gates swing open as the people parted, though they didn’t walk.  I myself didn’t feel like I was walking.  There was a huge white columned building in the distance.  It shone like the sun.  Then there was the garden before that, green and filled with flowers of every color imagined.  I remember, for some reason, birds, but I did not see them.  There was a path or road that went down the middle of it from the gate.

Then I came to a halt before I could enter the gates.  A voice filled my head.  It had to be God, and I was so excited.  He said, “It is not your time yet.  Return, Lord of the Wolves.”  The last part was filled with so much love, like the way a parent would say an endearing name that they had for their child.  I had no idea what it meant.

Then I woke up.  It was strange because my mom and dad were in my room looking at me with a concerned look.  I didn’t know why.  Nothing else was said about it as they told me to go back to sleep, and they went back to their room.  It was just a dream, but it seemed to stay with me.  I wanted to go back ever since then.

Years later, when I was about 19, I had mentioned the dream to my mom, and how I had remembered it.  That is when she told me that it was for real.  That night, she said, my breathing and my heart had stopped.  For some reason, and she didn’t know why, she was overcome with a feeling that something was wrong, and she woke up my dad and went into my room.  My mom had some nursing aid training, and when she had realized my heart was not beating, she pounded on my chest, and it restarted, and I woke with a gasp for air.  I asked why she didn’t call for an ambulance, and her reasoning was that when your had no money, and there was nothing wrong at that point, you didn’t do anything to create bills.

Now, those demons still tormented me in my dreams all they way up to age 19.  That was until one dream when I was able to disperse them in the dream with what looked like a huge shock wave.  Ever since then, they referred to me as, “Lord of the Wolves,” or “The Wolf,” which implied the other title.  Jesus had given me the ability to cast out demons, and I’ve faced demons in both the waking world, and in dreams.  Yes, there presence does invoke a lot of fear, but I know I’m not alone and can face them.

One last thing you need to know is about the symbol.  As you can see, it resembles a wolf’s head.  It too, came from a dream.  I saw the symbol, and I knew it represented me.  There are two lines even with each other which are the eyes.  The extra line on the one side is the scar above my eye.  Look closer.  Do you see it?  The symbol of the cross is at its center.  Now you know.

Why So Intolerant?

There was a recent story in Philadelphia where a bunch of people were "offended" by the use of "Christmas" on a sign which was part of the regular holiday display on city property.  As a result, they took it down, no longer calling it a "Christmas Village."  On the news, they even talked to a Jewish leader who said that he was not offended by Christmas as long as they still allowed him his holiday.  Others supported this too.  However, some were just offended by the use of the term Christmas even though they celebrate Christmas themselves but are not Christians.  (They believe in being politically correct.)  Some are offended because it supports a particular religion that is not theirs.  Some cited that anything that is related to religion should be not be on city property.  Yes, it's back to that whole separation of church and state thing (something intended to keep the government out of religion and not the other way around) to support discrimination against Christians.

Some of you by now are thinking, "Discrimination against Christians?  That's ridiculous."  Don't believe me?  I've seen it over and over in this modern country in which we reside.  In a workplace, people can claim their right to worship.  When that happens, legally, the employer is supposed to offer a solution to the conflict.  They either have to arrange an accommodation to the employee, offer a compromise, or present the case how that would present a hardship to the company.  I have seen and heard of this plenty of times, and I have seen and heard of certain companies violating the law by ignoring it.  However, I have seen and heard about more accommodations by companies when the religion in question is not Christianity.  Those who are Christians face an uphill battle when claiming the right to worship.  However, the right to worship is a personal right protected by the Constitution of the United States of America and should be applied equally across all religions as our founding fathers intended it to be. 

We have come to a point in this country when discrimination against Christians is not perceived as discrimination at all.  I even had mentioned this issue to another Christian about having off on Sundays to worship where people serve during the worship services or teach Sunday school, and his reply was, "The world doesn't stop on Sundays."  No, it doesn't.  However, is the world always right?  Corporate worship is necessary for a Christian to grow in his or her faith.  It's even stated in the Bible.  God even dictated that you should labor for 6 days, and you shall rest on the 7th.  That day was originally Saturday in the Jewish faith, but since Christ resurrected on a Sunday, that is the day that Christians chose as their sabbath.  It can be any day you choose, but if there are only services in your church on Sundays, it makes a logical choice to have your sabbath on a Sunday.  However, businesses are insisting on being open on Sundays to maximize profits.  Provided, there are some jobs that people's lives could be in jeopardy if they shut down, but not every business is a life or death situation.

As Christians we are called to be in the world but not of it.  What does that mean?  That means we live by a different set of rules which are put into effect by God.  We are to love everyone as God loves everyone.  We are to put God first in our lives before anything else.  We are to be generous, kind, caring, and not be self-centered.  It is the Christian ideal that forged this nation and the entire holiday season.  Nothing bad ever came from having good will towards people.  Nothing bad ever came from generosity or kindness.  Nothing bad ever came from love.  Love is what Christmas is all about.  Yes, it is founded because of the Christian belief that God gave us His one and only son, born as a human, but it's that love that is the true spirit of Christmas.  There is a whole secular part of the holiday based upon the Christian ideals.

Look at what is still the underlying foundation of Christmas.  It is love.  We give gifts to each other out of love.  People give to charities out of love.  We are generous out of love.  We help those in need out of love.  Isn't it strange that the ones who say that they are offended by Christmas are the same ones that want everyone to be tolerant of their beliefs, life philosophy, or way of life.  Why so intolerant?  Why attack something that is meant for everyone to enjoy?

Did you know the Bible states that this would happen?  Even Jesus said that He did not bring peace but a sword.  He stated that because of Him, even families would be divided as well as the world and everything in between.  He stated that those who follow Him will be hated because they believe.  He even said it will get worse.  Jesus even said that those who believe will be persecuted.  It's a very short distance between discrimination and persecution.  Why so intolerant?  It is the nature of the world.  The world is moving away from God, creating a self-centered philosophy of life.  The world says that we are here to serve ourselves and that we are not here to serve God.  Christians believe the opposite.  Christians, therefore, are the logical target for discrimination, and more and more there will be persecution.

Why so intolerant?  We as Christians are not of this world, but we live in it.

The Eyes and the Heart

When I was a teenager, I started playing keyboard by ear.  I could hear a song to the point where it stayed in my head, and I was able to reproduce it on the keyboard.  I remember one time, I had finished playing My Heart Will Go On, from the movie Titanic, and a friend of the family had asked me when I had learned the song.  My reply was "Just now."  I had played it note for note without a single mistake just then, for the first time.  I had even won a talent show when I was in the 4-H for my own composition, The Horror Hymn.

However, I'm not here to toot my own horn.  I know a lot of people who are way better than I am.  One day, I had gone over a friend's house and played some songs on his Korg synthesizer.  He asked if I always played with my eyes closed.  It was something that I had never thought about before.  I did tend to close my eyes while playing songs.  The reply was simple.

"Sometimes the eyes can deceive what the heart knows."

When I play music, I have to feel it in my heart.  Sometimes by looking at my hands, I mess up.  It's like my eyes are telling my hands to do the wrong thing.  However, if I listen to my heart, I don't.  It wasn't until recently that I had realized that the same quote that I had said many years before applies to being a Christian.  Too many times we allow what we see on the surface to stop us from being true Christians.

How many times have we not approached someone in church or on the street, or anywhere to share the love of God just based on someone's appearance?  Doesn't God love them too?  Shouldn't we let them know it?  Shouldn't we be the examples?  How many who are lost can be found if we share in the love of God?

We can never know the heart of another.  There are always questions.  Does this person know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior?  Does this person even know about the love that led to the sacrifice for our sins so we may have eternal life?  Do we approach, or do we judge?  Do we welcome, or do we exclude?

Think about it.  Can we be effective as Christians if we shun someone because they didn't "dress properly for church?"  What is the proper "dress code" for church?  If you don't know the answer to the question, read your Bible.  Jesus came to those as they were, not as they should be.  He had spent more time with the outcasts of society than with the "in" crowd.  The Pharisees were the ones that the society held up as the pious, as the examples of what it meant to be righteous.  Jesus was quick to point out that they weren't referring to them as "whitewashed tombs" or that they clean the outside of the cup but keep the inside dirty.  He had called them a "brood of vipers."  They were only concerned with what was on the outside and boasted of their false righteousness.

Who do you think should join us as fellow Christians in the adoptive family of God?  Who does God want there?  Everyone!  God loves everyone.  Do not let your eyes deceive you.  Your heart knows.  Use it.

Written on November 2, 2009

"I got to go. My dad is calling me."

Funny how the significance of that statement took me ten years to realize its truth. Ten years ago tonight, those were the last words that my mom had spoken to my dad. Immediately after, her heart stopped, and she breathed her last breath. The medical staff tried to revive her, but failed. Dead from sepsis, brought on by gangrene, a complication of her diabetes.

I had arrived well after that moment. There was her body. A tube still protruding from her mouth. One less leg than I had last seen her when she was alive. Quite a different image of the woman I knew for my 29 years.

My mom had grown up in a large, poor family. Her mother was an abusive alcoholic. Her dad, the only one who had shown her love. He was golden gloves boxer, and he taught her how to fight. He had died when she was 18, and her aunt took over raising her at that point. Her hobby as a teen, she had told me, was beating up Pagan motorcycle gang members. She was tough, a warrior, and she expected her son to be tough too.

She had succeeded in that. For me to even admit that I'm in pain, it would be considered crippling for most people. Even after that time I was hit by a car at 16, I had walked home, pushing my mangled bike for blocks while bleeding to get back home. I have chronic pain that most people don't know I have. I just deal with it, forgetting it's there most of the time.

However, this isn't about me. It's not even about my mom on the 10th anniversary of her going home. You see, I was driving home today and had an epiphany about my mom's final words. When it hit me, I couldn't stop crying. Yes, I do miss her, and maybe that is part of the reason, but most of it was joy. It was like the meaning of those words were hidden from me for ten years. Then it hit me at that moment. The words spoken, and the truth behind them. Put together as one for the first time. Can you see the meaning?

For ten years I had gone on thinking that she was talking about her dad. I thought it was her dad, who had loved her as his child, who was calling her. Then I thought about it, and it became clear. How many times have we said, "Our Father, who art in Heaven?" The word that had been used by Jesus was aba or abba, depending on how you want to spell it. It's a more affectionate term, like daddy.

Jesus had mended that relationship between us and our Heavenly Father. We can call Him "Dad" now through Jesus. He was calling her home. Personally. Yes, PERSONALLY. We can have this personal relationship with God now. There it was; put before me. So obvious now. God in the flesh came down from Heaven to sacrifice Himself for us. It's not us as a collective. It's us as individuals, by name.

"I got to go, my dad is calling me."

Someday, He wants to call us all home, to be with Him, to be loved by Him, for eternity.

Amen (So be it!)

Do I Believe in Ghosts?

In October, a lot of people like to be involved in a lot of “scary” things.  Some go to “haunted” attractions where you pay people to scare you.  Some people, like me, are the ones doing the scaring.  Some watch a lot of horror films.  Others like to watch those paranormal research shows or documentaries.  Some actually investigate paranormal activity or go on ghost tours.  The strange thing is that I like all of that stuff.  I do find it entertaining.  However, I have had very few people ask me, “Davey, what is your view on ghosts and haunted places?”  If you ever want to know my answer, read this little note.  If you fear that you may find the answer scarier than you can bear, stop reading now.

I believe that the question, or similar ones, like I had stated in the previous paragraph, are somewhat taboo today.  We are bombarded with TV shows where people actually investigate the supernatural.  We hear ghost stories all the time.  Everyone has an opinion on the topic, and no one likes theirs to be contradicted.  For some, it is like having their religious beliefs attacked.  As a result, we avoid asking the question, fearing that the answer may not be what we want to hear.  So, let’s get started, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

First of all, let me give you a little background.  I used to live in what everyone would say was a haunted house.  For the first 18 years of my life, I had firmly believed in ghosts.  I grew up with it; things moving from place to place, apparitions, shadow people, and more things that would have terrified the average person, especially as a child.  After age 18, my firm beliefs began to slip.  I realized there was another side to the story.  I read up on ghosts, and investigations of haunted places.  I saw the scientific part of it, and part of it can be explained by science or debunked by using science.  However, the part that made me arrive at my final view had nothing to do with science, but we’ll get to that later.

From my previous statements, you can deduce that I myself have had many personal experiences.  If you ever had a personal experience, you immediately seek out other people who have had similar experiences.  After all, you don’t want anyone thinking you’re some kind of a whacko.  You need to justify what you had experienced.  We all do that at some point.  I did.  However, there are things that are just tricks of the mind.  We can be fooled by our own imaginings.  People have woken from dreams thinking that they saw something but didn’t.  Matrixing makes us think we see faces in things because that’s what our minds like to do.  Some ghostly encounters are simply products of our own minds.

Then along comes scientific investigations.  During the course of these investigations, usually, hours upon hours of potential evidence is gathered.  Things are debunked.  What was thought to be an orb was just a bug or a speck of dust.  Disembodied voices and sounds are recorded.  Sometimes apparitions show up on video or in still photos.  Sometimes, the camera can put in their own “apparitions” just by the limitations of the design.  Sometimes natural phenomena can create sounds or events that seem to be supernatural.  In this category of scientific investigation, I do believe in residual haunting.  That is when an environment or object can have an event imprinted on it, and under the right conditions, play it back like a recording whether it would be an image or sound.  Science has proven it can happen.

Now comes the part that excites us all in some way, interactive experiences.  This is when the “ghost” communicates in some manner and responds directly with us.  This is where it can get pretty intense.  This is where the other part comes into play.  Those who know me know that I like Bible studies.  In fact, for the disciple class we had to read about 78% of the Bible.  Yes, my faith dictates to me the last part of my view of ghosts.  Do I believe that these kinds of ghosts are actually the spirits of those departed from their worldly existence?  No, I do not.  This is because of what I have learned by reading the Bible and applying it in all aspects of my life.

I want you to think about this fundamental part in the Bible.  What happens to someone when they die?  Well, in the Old Testament, Jesus had not been resurrected, so there was no resurrection for those before then.  They sleep to be awakened to be judged by God.  It didn’t say that their spirits wandered the world.  Those after the resurrection go to one of two places, Heaven and Hell, and I don’t mean the towns in Michigan.  You may argue about Purgatory, but that was only a temporary part of the Roman Catholic Church doctrine.  It does not show up in the Holy Bible.  In other words, they would not be wandering around here on earth, and they certainly would not be talking to anyone.

For some of you, this may be a mind-blowing concept.  Some of you may be wondering why you never saw it in the first place.  Okay, people’s spirits don’t hang around on earth, so what could be talking to all these different people?  You’ve got paranormal investigators talking with ghosts.  You have people using Ouija boards and similar items.  You have mediums who talk with the dead and those who channel spirits through them.  Just for reference, the Bible repeatedly says that communication with the dead is forbidden.  Why?  If there are no spirits of the people who have died, what could possibly be wrong with it?  How, then, are there responses from the spirits?

Besides the Trinity, the Bible does mention two kinds of supernatural beings.  They are given different names in different parts of the Bible, and the evil ones are identified as spirits or ghosts when translated, but if you go back to the original languages, you can get their true meaning.  The first beings are angels, messengers of God.  God created them before He created us, and He made a fixed amount of them.  Then there was one angel named Lucifer who thought that he should be worshiped like God and rebelled.  He was defeated, along with the angels that had supported him.  They were cast down out of Heaven.  They are known as fallen angels, or known to us as demons.

Here is what we know about angels, and their fallen counterparts.  They can defy the physics of our universe.  They can instantly travel from one place to another.  They are also stronger than humans.  They can assume any form.  For example, if a person has suffered the loss of a loved one, they can take on the appearance of that loved one.  Now, angels may have not much use for this other than to appear more human or to offer comfort, but demons have a more sinister mission.  Demons want to separate us from God.  The can possess people as well as oppress them.  (I will not get into the details of this here as they can get pretty complex.)  They can also use their abilities to make us believe in something that does not exist.  What could be a better way to separate us from God but to make us think we can communicate with the dead, and that they walk among us?

It was the Bible that led me to this conclusion, and I have had personal experiences that have reinforced this view.  Think about it.  Chilling, isn’t it?