Spiritual Encouragement

I've had a rough week at work, surrounded by two extremely encouraging weekends. This weekend coming up, we'll be going to the Texas Christian Conference put together by the Greater Houston Church. It should be an awesome weekend. I'm real excited to hear Gordon Ferguson speak. I've never heard him speak before, but I have a couple of his books. I've also heard great things about Sam Powell, and he will be one of the other guest speakers. We will also be making a trip down to Galveston to check out Moody Gardens. I'm pretty excited about the whole trip.

This past weekend, we had Dr. John Oakes from San Diego come to Austin. He was teaching from his book on Daniel, available at www.ipibooks.com. On Friday evening he talked about the portions of Daniel dealing with Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego and Nebuchadnezzar. Saturday, he dealt more with the prophecy, or what he called, (I'm paraphrasing) "The accurate history of the future". Daniel predicts accurately the history of Middle East for the next 600+ years. He predicts the Median/Persian Empire's defeat of Babylon, the divided nature of the Empire, and that the weaker part of the Empire (Persia) would become the stronger part of the Empire. He also prophesied the Greek defeat of Persia and the division into four portions of the Greek Empire after the death of Alexander the Great. He also predicted that one of the four, (the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt) would grow another Kingdom. (The Seleucids) Daniel also predicts with accuracy the time of the coming of the Messiah into Jerusalem. He predicts the persecution of Christians under the Roman Emperor Domitian, predicting that Domitian would overthrow three Roman Emperors, (Otho, Galba and Vitellius) and change set times and laws. Domitian changed the names of the months of September and October to Germanicus and Domitianius after his own names. He also changed the Roman laws significantly. These were changed back promptly after his death.

Daniel also predicts two Desolations that cause Abomination. The first is the desecration of the Jewish temple by Antiochus Epiphanes who sacrificed pigs in the temple, splatter the blood of pigs on the walls and put up a statue of Zeus with his own face. (Antiochus) The second was the destruction and subsequent desecration of the Jewish temple in 70 AD by General Titus (brother of Domitian and Emperor before Domitian) ending forever the sacrifices and traditions of the old covenant.

There were so many other great moments from the past weekend, but what really stuck with me more than anything else, was that God is in control. Dr. Oakes asked those of us who were in the class: "Who believes that God was in control?" Of course everyone raised their hand, but he asked, "Do you always believe that?" This made me think. It's very easy to believe that God is in control when things are going well. But when things are bad, when you're having a hard time, God is STILL in control. When you look at the lives of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego you see their fervent belief that God is in control. Total control, whether things are good or bad. (from our perspective)

After midweek last night, I was forced to remember this, and it put my bad Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday into perspective, and made me remember that God IS in control. I'm looking forward to this weekend and tons of spiritual encouragement.