This Week's 66/40 Radio Broadcast

Articles and Commentary

• Miracles: Mr Davies And The Iron Canyon Fire - (Read)
• NATO - Not Dead Yet - (Read)
• Psalms Mislabled? - (Read)

Important News Headlines

Memory Verse of the Week

MIRACLES: MR DAVIES AND THE IRON CANYON FIRE - (Print)

"Everything was black as far as you could see. We looked out from the top of that hill and it was totally black, except for what was around Mr. Davies' house." -Sheri Munson

Today's secular scientists maintain a skepticism of miracles. They tend to discount the miracles of the Bible out of hand because of an anti-supernaturalistic bias, a bias that rejects the possibility that a mighty God intervenes in human lives in obvious, tangible ways. Yet miracles did not only occur in the Bible, but they continue to take place today.

In order to do their jobs, scientists have to depend on the natural world – these four dimensions (three dimensions plus Time) that we can directly experience with our five senses. Scientists are dependent on experimentation that can be repeated over and over and still give the same results. Science is an excellent tool for learning about this world around us, and scientists have freed the world from much superstition by finding the natural causes of things previously attributed to the gods, things like sickness and lightning. However, just because science depends on the "natural" world doesn't mean the natural world is all there is. It just means that science is limited in what it can explain through experimentation. And yet, physicists have already provided evidence that there are many dimensions beyond the four we're familiar with.

What's more, things happen on this planet every day that defy naturalistic explanations. God still does miracles all the time. For the next several weeks we will tell about modern miracles in the lives of people close to our ministry. In every case we have verified the miracles through two or more reliable witnesses.

The Iron Canyon Fire and Mr. Davies:
It rained a lot in the desert north of Los Angeles during the spring of 1958, and the grass grew tall over the normally brown mountains. That fall, the hot Santa Ana winds came through and dried up that tall grass, priming the area for trouble.  Southern California is known for its dangerous wildfires. 

Doug Austin was 15-years-old in 1958, and he describes the fierce fire that swept through the desert from Saugus to Palmdale that fall. "We called it the Iron Canyon Fire because it started in Iron Canyon when lightning struck. My dad and I were driving down the road alongside it, and that fire was going just as fast as we were in my dad's truck."

Up on a lonely hilltop in that area lived an old black man known as Mr. Davies. "We'd take pies up to him on Thanksgiving. He was a nice old guy," Austin recounts.

Sheri Munson was just 9-years-old, but she also remembers Mr. Davies. "We would ride our horses up there to his house. His house was made out of nothing but cardboard and tin and pieces of wood that he'd found around. He had a few chickens and that was it. We'd ride up and sit on our horses and he would tell us stories about Jesus. "

That year when the Iron Canyon Fire raged through, Munson remembers being very worried about Mr. Davies. As soon as the burned land cooled enough for their horses to pick through the hot spots, Munson rode her horse out to see if Mr. Davies had escaped. She hoped that the old man had been able to get out before the fire destroyed his little patchwork house. It turned out that he had not been able to get out of the way of the fire after all.

"We came up the hill on our horses," Munson tells, "and all of a sudden, when we got to the top, we were in tall grass up to our horse's shoulders. There was Mr. Davies' house in the center of it all with his little chickens out there. We could see a long ways from that hilltop and it was black all around, as far as you could see.

"We said, ‘What happened, Mr. Davies!  What did you do?' He said, ‘I saw the fire coming,' and he went out there and pointed, and he said, ‘and I went out and got on my knees and prayed, and asked God to spare me, and I saw the fire split and it went around me on both sides and it came back together over there.'

"If you were to take half a football field and make it round, that's how big it was. Everything except what was around his house was burned black, " Munson said. 

"There was no reason, no reason his house should have been standing." Austin commented, giving the same description of the blackened mountainous desert. "Mr. Davies was a religious man," he finished.

Munson said, "It was fifty years ago, but I can still remember sitting on my horse with the grass clear up to his shoulders, talking to Mr. Davies. And the thing of it was, it just seemed so normal." She paused. "Mr. Davies was pretty excited."

God still does great things in this world. Science may have a hard time finding the true explanation, but just because science is limited, God is not. We see Him working constantly in the lives of His creation to show His great love and mercy and to demonstrate His power and glory in this world.

NATO - NOT DEAD YET - (Print)

NATO appears to be in trouble. Europe lacks full commitment to the organization and its military is underfunded. Last week, the US Defense Secretary lamented over NATO's deterioration and fueled the fires of those who argue that NATO has long outlasted its usefulness.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates made it clear last week that NATO's weakness has been hurting the war effort in Afghanistan. "Right now, the alliance faces very serious, long-term, systemic problems," Gates said. Only five of its 28 member states are sticking by their agreements to spend two percent of their GDP on defense, and that lack of funding is hurting NATO's ability to buy the helicopters, cargo planes and spy drones necessary to fight effectively in Afghanistan.

One of NATO's purposes in Afghanistan has been to train the Afghan security forces to do their jobs so that the local government can fight on its own without outside help. NATO members, however, have only sent half of the 32,0000 trainers requested in order to teach the local security forces to do their jobs well. "Training and advising the security forces of other nations needs to become a key alliance mission," Gates said. "In Afghanistan, the alliance has struggled to field the trainers and mentors needed for this mission."

Support for the war has dwindled in Europe, especially in light of the corruption within Karzai's government. Yet, the war is not over, and it is imperative that the US maintain stability especially for the sake of Pakistan. If the Taliban overrun Pakistan with all of its nuclear weapons, the whole world will be in trouble. Europe, however, has not shown sufficient interest in maintaining a strong military force, and amidst complaints from US Cabinet officials that Europe does not do enough, some echo the sentiments of Andrew J Bacevich's "Let Europe Be Europe" in Foreign Policy magazine arguing that the US should just abandon NATO to the Europeans to handle all on their own.

While the need for NATO appeared to be over with the Cold War, other issues from the Balkans crisis to 21st century terrorism have arisen in the past twenty years to keep the alliance alive. The USSR may have been broken and Russia may be struggling, but its weakened military can still do damage. Europe and American still have common histories and cultures - convenient bonds that give both sides of the ocean plenty of reasons to remain committed to one another as allies.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949 as a defensive alliance in which each member was pledged to come to the aid of any of its members which were attacked militarily. However, at the 50th Anniversary Summit in Washington on April 23-24, 1999, NATO redefined itself in terms which appeared as a startling impetus toward the creation of a major new trans-global alliance. The new definition, as opposed to contributing toward regional and global stability, uncompromisingly identified the alliance as an offensive military threat to its neighbors.  Since 1999, 12 new members have been added to NATO from eastern Europe and the Balkans, including Albania and Croatia just last year. 

While some believe the time for NATO is over, the alliance isn't dead yet and even looks ready for another life boost. This fall another NATO summit will be held to present the updated vision of the alliance through a brand new Strategic Concept. Right now the Secretary General of NATO is drafting this new Strategic Concept in preparation for the 2010 summit at Lisbon, Portugal.

For centuries, Biblical scholars have been anticipating the re-emergence of the Roman Empire in its final phase. The bonding of Europe in recent decades would appear to be setting the stage for the final climax which the Bible portrays in such fascinating detail.

PSALMS MISLABLED? - (Print)

The inscriptions attached to some of the Psalms have puzzled scholars for centuries, and yet the key may have been in the Biblical text all along.

There are 34 psalms without inscriptions. There are 52 psalms with simple titles such as "A Psalm of David," "A Psalm of Asaph," etc. There are 14 psalms explaining their historical connection, such as "A Psalm of David when he fled from Absalom, his Son," etc. There are 39 psalms that include a special word inscription, presumably a musical annotation or instruction. There are four psalms designated for a special purpose, such as the Sabbath day, etc. And there are 15 psalms specifically designated "Songs of Degrees."

-Psalms without inscriptions - 34
-Psalms with simple inscriptions - 52
-Psalms with historical inscriptions - 14
-Psalms with inscriptions denoting purpose - 04
-Psalms entitled "Songs of Degrees" - 15
-Psalms with special word inscriptions (39, less 8 included in the 14 above) - 31 

Total: 150 

The antiquity of these inscriptions is well recognized. They were already in existence when the Septuagint translation was made in the 3rd century B.C., and since the translators let them stand untranslated it seems that their significance had been obscured even back then.

The Puzzle:
It is an admitted fact that the key to these inscriptions has been lost for over 2,200 years. Bishop Jebb, who issued a monumental work on the Psalms in 1846 regretted that "so great are the difficulties attending this enquiry, that in many instances little more than conjectures can be offered." The late Dr. E. W. Bullinger said: "No subject of Biblical Study has appeared to be more incapable of solution." That great Hebraist, Franz Delitzsch, said of these so-called psalm "titles": "The Septuagint found them already in existence, and did not understand them... The key to their comprehension must have been lost very early."

A Solution Discovered?:
In the ancient Hebrew manuscripts there were no breaks or spaces separating the psalms as there are in a modern Bible. The only mark of division between them is the number in the margin. The inscriptions, therefore, have always been assumed to be the titles of the psalms following them; however, they could just as well be footnotes to the psalms preceding them. Are there any clues to Hebrew practice within the Biblical text itself?

In the third chapter of Habakkuk we find a psalm with both a superscription and a subscription that is illuminating:

-A Superscription: "A Prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, upon Shigionoth" (Hab 3:1);
-The Prayer or Psalm itself (3:2-19a);
-The Subscription: "To the chief Musician upon Neginoth" (Hab 3:19b).

We find the same arrangement in Hezekiah's Psalm of Praise and Thanksgiving for his recovery from sickness, recorded in Isaiah 38:

- The Superscription: "The writing of Hezekiah, king of Judah, when he had been sick and was recovered of his sickness" (Isaiah 38:9);
- The Psalm itself (Isaiah 38:10-20a);
- The Subscription: "Therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments, all the days of our life, in the house of YHWH" (Isaiah 38:20b).

These two examples give us a key to the ancient stylistic practice regarding the inscriptions. It seems apparent that the precedent superscription was a title, and the closing subscription an amplifying instruction regarding its performance.

As an outcome of the Babylonian exile, detailed knowledge of the original Temple worship became obscured, and by the middle of the 3rd century B.C., when the Septuagint translation was made from Hebrew into Greek, there was nothing to tell the translators whether the inscriptions between the psalms belonged to what went before or what came after. Our English Bible continued their presumption that the inscriptions always related to what followed.

An Example:
Psalm 9 has the superscription: "To the chief Musician upon Muthlabben, A Psalm of David." What does this mean? Muthmeans death; and ben would seem to mean son, but that seems obscure to say the least. Let us also recognize that this first part appears to be a subscription to Psalm 8 rather than a superscription to Psalm 9.

Furthermore, it could be beyn, written without the long vowel (the omission of the vowel sign being frequent in Hebrew): thus, muth-labbeyn, which means "death to the one coming between." This is how the inscription reads in the ancient Jewish Targum: "To praise, relating to the death of the man who went out between the two camps." This appears to be a reference to Goliath, who is actually called the "man between the two hosts (1 Samuel 17:4, 23)." Our English version misses this and has the translation as "a champion."

Read Psalm 8 again now in the light of this as a subscript and see in it, the celebration of David's great victory over Goliath.

[These comments have been excerpted from Learn the Bible in 24 Hours by Chuck Missler.]

Related Links:

Obama Influenced By Many Religions - March 10, 2010
President Obama, who rarely attends public church services, turns often to a wide range of Baptists, Mainline Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and Jews for prayer and spiritual and moral discussion, according to a new report. While this effort to include the religions of most Americans may appear unifying, it demonstrates that Obama lacks true religious conviction of his own and is not dependent wholly on Jesus Christ. USA Today

3-D Bible Movie In Planning Stage - March 09, 2010
Paramount and Reel Fx have announced plans to make In The Beginning, a 3D telling of the creation story. The stories of Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood and Abraham and Isaac were previously told by John Huston in 1966's The Bible: In The Beginning. Digital Spy

Russia Delays Resetting Relations With US - March 09, 2010
After months of delay and discord, administration officials said, they have learned that when it comes to deal-making with Moscow, nothing is done until it is done, and rarely will it go as smoothly as anticipated. The arms control treaty is part of a complicated diplomatic effort to forge a new relationship with Russia, interlinked with issues like Iran, missile defense and Afghanistan. Mr. Obama had hoped to restore ties with some relatively easier deals that could lead to more trust and deeper cooperation in areas that have long divided the former adversaries. The New York Times

One In Six Americans Infected With Herpes - March 09, 2010
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Iraq Holds Elections, US Pullout On Track - March 08, 2010
While lower than the 76 percent that turned out in the country's last parliamentary election in December 2005, the national turnout was higher than last year's showing in provincial elections, suggesting higher stakes. Some of the largest turnout occurred in regions, like Kirkuk and Nineveh, which include disputed territories. "It was really a good day for Iraqi democracy," the American ambassador to Iraq, Christopher R. Hill, told reporters. The New York Times

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour;
1 Timothy 2:1-3 KJV

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32

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