and when my airfare due date came, I had the money - on the very day that Soviet President Gorbachev was briefly ousted and under house arrest in his house in the Crimea (Black Sea) area.  When the hotel bill arrived, I had the money to pay that as well.  In fact, between the 19th of July and the 7th of September, an unexpected roughly $3850.00 extra came in through earnings in the "pulpit-on-wheels" taxicab and only about $535.00 through offerings by churches and the interdenominational choir I was a member of.  Of that extra $4385 God had provided, whenI boarded the plane, I still had over $1100 in my pocket even after having 1000 All Scripture Verse tracts in Russian printed. Halelujah!

By the time I returned from the trip and having left some $400.00 with a United Pentecostal Associate in Missions in T'bilisi, had distributed all the thousand Russian language tracts I had taken with me, preached six  times in the Georgian Baptist Church with my sermons translated by the man who translated the currentGeorgian Kartvelian language Bible and one time I preached in the Pentecostal church there, bought and gave out a dozen Georgian language New Testaments and witnessed to many people who did understand at least some English both in T'bilisi and Moscow, I had absolutely no doubt that I truly had heard from God that I was supposed to go.

So how can YOU tell whether the prophet who prophesies over you or the word you believe you heard for yourself from God is really the Word of God to you?  Couldn't Satan manipulate your fleece with "signs and lying wonders" and make you think you heard the voice of the Lord when you really were just following some psychologically induced perhaps hidden desire you had on your own?

There are several things to consider. One of the most important is to ask whether this thing will bring honor and glory to God. Yes? Check. Had you sort of wanted to do this thing for a long time?  Yes? Hold up. That may not have been the voice of God, but rather your own desires. Does it align completely with the written Word of God?  Yes? Check again. If the prophecy was through another person's lips, how genuine is that person's spiritual walk with God as you view their fruits? If there is any doubt that God might be speaking through that person to you, it may have been that person rather than God who was speaking to you.

For example, the Roman Catholic Church is now known worldwide as a rich organization that manipulates and contrives and whose high ranking officials who, for years, have been turning blind eyes to evil practices among its priests until too many accusations were brought forward and an answer became necessary.  Many other churches provide safe haven for swindlers, stock and sales fraud by members and even many preachers think twisting the clearly stated Word of God just a little bit is acceptable. So what power and authority can the true Church of our Lord Jesus Christ show to the world and to terrorists that we really are the people of God?.

If it were a crime to be a Christian, would there be sufficient court-admissible evidence to convict you?  Do you live in such a godly way that those who know YOU day by day will not believe the ill of you they hear somebody say? 

Some Apostolic Christians and some other churches tend to preach and teach only from the New Testament and to their own harm, overlook and bypass the Old Testament in the mistaken idea that because we are under Grace rather than Law now, we don't need the Old Testament, but the Apostle Paul says, "Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith." (Galatians 3:24).

So how was it that at times, ancient Israel was able to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord? Look at Joshua,  Samson, Gideon, Shamgar, David and other leaders of Israel and how by their leadership and the nation as a whole turning to God and away from evil and idolatry, they held their peace and let the Lord fight their battles and the victory could ONLY be credited to the Divine intervention of the Lord. 

In the Twelfth Century AD, a similar situation happened when another King David, this one known as "the Builder", faced with close to 10 to 1 odds against him reminded his greatly outnumbered Georgian army that they were fighting on behalf of the cause of the Lord Jesus Christ against the Islamic hordes of the Seljuk Turks. Within a half hour of joining battle, the Georgians were chasing the Turks well back into Turkey and actually gained some territory. Or take Israel in the 1967 Six Days War when Egypt, Syria and Jordan all attacked them and although not "Christian," the Jews were fulfilling prophecy in returning to their "homeland" and had been given the right to be a nation in 1948 by the United Nations and United Kingdom which had controlled the area for many years.

So, my dearly beloved Christian friend, If you truly want peace without war or the instantaneous meting out of justice on terrorists and rulers who are brutal and evil, you have to do everything you can to cause as many of your friends, relatives, co-workers and anyone else around you or that you have influence on to cry out to God in repentance and cry to Him for Mercy and Pardon for yourself, your community, your nation and the world.  Because short of a real Holy Spirit fired dynamic of POWER from Almighty God, that brings miraculous AND INSTANTANEOUS deliverance such as the Old Testament deliverances I have mentioned and the Georgian rout of the Turks in 1189 AD and the Six Day War of '67, the ONLY other realistic answer to terrorism is the arm of human strength and military might.

But oh! How I long to see the United States return to God and begin truly serving Him in the Beauty of Holiness so that instead of trusting in our great Armed Forces, we can and do place our trust in Him.

So whether you are seeking to win souls on the street, your co-workers, friends, neighbors or relatives, if even your own children, remember that the most joyful truth can be served in an unpleasant manner and instead of bringing a delightful, joyful and victorious life in Christ Jesus, can be like the "just right" delicious steak dumped in the lap instead of served on an attractive plate. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 5:16).