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KEN WILLIAMS MINISTRIES QUARTERLY NEWS LETTER Copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved ________________________________________ Summer 2011 (June, July & August) Vol 4 No. 3 IN THIS ISSUE BIBLE STUDY: Finding Jesus in Hosea (Howshea in Hebrew) THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: More Vignettes (continued from Spring edition) OUR REAL AMERICAN HISTORY: More Vignettes (continued from Spring edition) A PERSONAL WORD: From Ken Williams ____________________________________________ BIBLE STUDY: FINDING JESUS IN... HOSEA (HOWSHEA in Hebrew) By Ken Williams We have been going through the Old Testament (the Jewish Scriptures) book by book looking for prophecies concerning the Jewish Messiah (Jesus - Yeshua in Hebrew). This quarter we come to the Prophet Hosea. Hosea was a prophet under four kings in the Southern Kingdom: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. Hosea was a prophet durng the time Assyria conquered the Northern Ten Tribes and carried them away captive. He was a contemporary with the Prophet Amos in the North, and the prophets Isaiah and Micah in the South. This book, which takes up only nine to ten pages, depending on the translation and size of type, is a very unusual story. The theme of the opening chapters is "The Unfaithfulness of Israel to Her God." The relationship of Jehovah God to Israel is pictured as a marriage. God is the groom; Israel is the bride. This is a very familiar picture in both the Old and New Testaments. The story of Hosea and his wife Gomer is a lif-long object lesson. Hosea married Gomer, and they had children. However, Gomer was unfaithful to Hosea, and eventually left him to wallow in a life of sexual immorality. Hosea finally gave up on her even though he still loved her. Eventually she fell so far into the depths of sin that she ended up a slave. One day when she was on the auction block, Hosea happened upon the slave sale and bought her back. After this, Gomer was faithful to, and loved her husband the prophet. The analogy which God uses here is that Israel has departed from Him, and sunken deeper and deeper into sin. God calls it "spiritual adultery." Finally God finds it necessary to let Israel go even though He still loves her. Eventually His people sink so low; they end up in slavery. It is at this point that God sends His Messiah to buy them back (to redeem them), and Israel returns to Jehovah God, and serves Him faithfully. God's identification with Israel's plight and His loving work of purchasing them from the "slave market" of the world through His Messiah is the story told in this prophecy. Again, for those Christians, who want to believe that God is finished with Israel, look carefully at this book. It is quite clear that God will fulfill His promises to Israel, not to some other group that some would have to replace Israel. The life of the Prophet Hosea, then, is a picture of the history of the relationship between Jehovah (Yahweh in Hebrew) and His bride, Israel. However, there is more than a picture in this book. For it is in Hosea that we find the prediction that Messiah will be called out of Egypt. You may remember from Matthew chapter two, that after the Wise Men left, God told Joseph and Mary to take the child Jesus and flee to Egypt, because Herod woud try to kill the child. It was not until after the death of Herod that Joseph, Mary and Jesus returned to Israel. Jacob and his sons fled to Egypt for refuge from the famine, and God called them out of Egypt in the Exodus. Messiah and his family fled to Egyipt for His safety, and retrned to "redeem His people." I want us to notice several things from Hosea 11:1, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son" (KJV). 1. God's dealings with Israel, even in punishment, have been because of "love" for His bride. 2. This is the fourth time in the Jewish Scriptures (the Tanakh) that we are told that God has a Son. 3. This is the only place in the Bible I can find in which Israel is referred to in the masculine gender. This use of the masculine gender leads me to believe that God, while He may have had reference to the Exodus, had another primary intent in this verse. Hosea writes, "Out ot Egypt I called My son." The New Testament emphatically states that this is a reference to Jesus. "...that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt I called My Son" (Matthew 2:15 KJV). In closing, let me remind you that Hosea acted as a savior for his wayward wife Gomer. Hosea's name in Hebrew means "salvation." The analogy God is making through His prophet is that God's Messiah is the Savior of Israel, and that His wayward bride will be restored and be faithful to Him. ___________________________________________________________ THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: More Vignettes (Continued from our Spring Newsletter) RADIOMETRIC DATING Rocks of Known Age = Radiometric dating clearly does not work. Rocks of Unknown Age = Radiometric dating is assumed to work. --------------- MAGIC IN THE MARSH "Without any regard to the laws of geology, mud on the marsh is hardening into stone in a few years rather than the thusands it usually takes... Professor Coleman said the rock was forming faster than anybody had ever belived possible, with one stone creating itself in just six months. ... They often contain beautifully preserved fossils, where the detail of the soft flesh of the creature is caught as well as the bone, as it had no time to rot before the rock formed around it." --------------- SOME POLYSTRATE TREES ARE UPSIDE DOWN EXTENDING THROUGH MANY LAYERS INCLUDING LAYERS OF COAL In Germany, France, the British Isles, Nova Scotia, California, and several eastern states, fossils that extend through several layers of sedimentary rock have been found. These are called polystrate fossils. They are usually tree trunks in an upright or somewhat slanted position. Polystrate fossils furnish clear-cut evidence that sendiment was deposited rapidly, as in a flood. If the rock layers surrounding the fossils had formed at the slow rate that evolutionists assumed as they constructed the geologic time scale, the trees would have decayed or fallen rather than fossilized. One type of polystrate fossil in California is especially interesting. Near Santa Barbara, fish fossils extend through several layers of algae fossils. Evolutionists calculate that each algae layer took hundreds of thousands of years to form. That would mean that the head and tail of the same fish were buried several hunred thousand years apart! Clearly the beds must have formed rapidly around the fish, not slowly. --------------- A PHYSICS DILEMMA * FIRST LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS - Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. * GENERAL RELATIVITY - There was a beginning of time, matter and space. --------------- THE PILTDOWN MAN HOAX The Piltdown Man hoax used a medieval skull combined with a lower jaw from an orangutan and teeth from a chimpanzee, which were then placed in a gravel pit in the village of Piltdown, England. The bones were stained with chromic acid an iron solution, creating the crude appearance of an old age. The Piltdown Man was publicized as the "Missing Link" between man and ape-like species, which eluded (and still eludes) promoters of evolution. --------------- ACCORDING TO EVOLUTION, DINOSAURS WERE EXTINCT BEFORE MAMMALS APPEARED ON THE EARTH... BUT WERE THEY? "Dinosaur Found in the Stomach of a Fossilized Mammal!" Reported in the January 13, 2005 issue of Nature "A mammal much larger than mice was found fossilized with a small dinsaur in the stomach region" --------------- DINOSAUR BONES: Engineering Masterpieces! Interestingly, it was an evolutionary scientist who said the bones of Brachiosaurus are a masterpiece of engineering. The design of the vertebrae was such that it provided great support for the huge dinosaur, but was also extremely lightweight. Evolutionists claim that all life, including dinosaurs, were the product of random processes. Yet they make statements about the wonderful design seen everywhere we look! --------------- RAPE AND EVOLUTION "Rape is evolutionary, biological, and natural. ...rape itself is an adaptation, a product of direct selection for rape in the past. Our male ancestors became ancestors in part becuase they conditionally used rape." Randy Thornhill (2001), Transcript from a lecture given at Simon Fraser University on: A Natural History of Rape (see full transcript On-line at: URL:http://harbour.sfu.cal/generalinfo/psa/Thornhill_on_tape.pdf) --------------- CHARLES DARWIN "Natural selection can act (work) only by the peservation and accumulation of infinitesimally small inherited modifications." "...by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed... why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" --------------- CHARLES DARWIN "Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine graduations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being as we see them, well defined?" --------------- MARK RIDLEY (Zoologist) "The gradual change of fossil species has never been part of the evidence for evolution..." "Darwin showed that the record was useless for testing between evolution and special creation because it has great gaps in it... "...no real evolutonist...uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of evolution as opposed to special creaton." --------------- MICHAEL DENTON (MD, phD) "Not only has paleontology failed to come up with fossil 'missing links'... ...but hypothetical reconstructons of major evolutionary development - such as that linking birds to reptiles - are beginning to look more like fantasies than serious conjectures." --------------- RICHARD GOLDSCHMIDT Evolution of the animal and plant world is considered by all those entitled to judgment to be a fact for which no further proof is needed." "It is true that nobody thus far has produced a new species or genus, etc., by macromutation. It is equally true that nobody has produced even a species by the selection of micromutations." --------------- RAPID BURIAL OF CREATURES AND PLANTS * A wide variety of insects, freshwater mollusks, fish, birds, and several hundred plant species (including nuts and blossoms) buried together. (Florissant, Colorado) * Thousands of marine creatures (corals, bryozoans, mollusks) buried with a tooth whale and marsupial possum. (Fossil Bluff, Wynyard, Tasmania) * Alligator, fish (gar-pike 1 - 2 meters long, sunfish, deep sea bass, chubs, pickerel, herring and others), birds, turtles, mammals, mollusks, crustaceans, many varieties of insects, and palm leaves ( 2 - 2.5 meters long) buried together. (Wyoming) --------------- THE GLOBAL FLOOD A Salt Water Legacy! The existence of salt lakes and inland seas provide strong evidence that there's been a global flood. The huge salty Caspean Sea is landlocked and has been shrinking in size. Lake Van (5,900 ft.) near Mt. Ararat and Lake Urmla (4,300 ft.) are excellent examples of high-elevaton, land-locked salty lakes. How did water get so far inland? Why didn't it dry up long ago? A gigantic flood within the last 5,000 years would seem a very good answer! ___________________________________________________________ OUR REAL AMERICAN HISTORY: More Vignettes (Continued from our Spring Newsletter) ELIAS BOUDINOT * President of the Continental Congress * Signed the peace treaty with England * A member of the first Federal Congress * Framer of the Bill of Rights * Director of the U. S. Mint * Read the Bible through each year He wrote: "Were you to ask me to recommend the most valuable book in the world, I should fix on the Bible as the most instructive, both to the wise and the ignorant. Were you to ask me the one book affording the most rational and pleasing entertainment to the enquiring mind, I would still say the Bible. And should you ask again about the best philosophy, or the most interesting history, I would still urge you to look into the Bible. I would make it, in short, the alpha and omega of knowledge." --------------- BETWEEN 1622 AND 1815, THERE WERE MORE THAN 1,500 OFFICIAL PROCLAMATIONS ISSUED CALLING THE NATION TO PRAYER...ALL OF WHICH PUT GOD IN THE CENTER OF THE PUBLIC/POLITICAL ARENA Here are just a few: John Hancock - President of the Continental Congress - later Governor of Massachusetts Hancock issued numerous calls to prayer. Here is an excerpt from such a proclamation issued October 15, 1791: He requested the people "pray especially that universal happiness can be established in the world and that all may bow to the Scepter of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the whole earth may be filled with His glory." Samuel Adams - One of the leaders of the Boston Tea Party Member of the Sons of Liberty Delegate to the Constitutional Convention Spearheaded the group to get adoption of the Bill of Rights Governor of Massachusetts Adams issued numerous calls to prayer. Here is an excerpt from his 1795 proclamation calling for prayer and thanksgiving: "...that the peaceful and glorious reign of our Divine Redeemer may be known and enjoyed throughout the whole family of mankind." In another official government proclamation in 1779, Adams wrote: "...speedily bringing on that holy and happy period when the Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ may be everywhere established and all the people willingly bow to the Scepter of Him who is the Prince of Peace." During the Revolutionary War, the Continental Congress offiially issued 15 natonal prayer proclamations, all characterized by strong Biblical and religious language. The first of many prayer proclamations issued by George Washington came in 1789. It stated, "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of God, it is the duty of nations to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly implore His protection and favor..." One of several prayer proclamations by John Adams included these words: As the safety and prosperity of nations intimately and essentialy depends on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and as the national acknowledgement of this truth, not only is an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him, but a duty whose natural influence is favorable to that morality and piety without which social happiness cannot exist." Did you notice that President John Adams, in an official U. S. Governmental document stated that it s a national duty to asknowledge God? Our founding fathers found no problem in expressing their faith in the public arena while conducting their official governmental operations. It is only in the past 50 years, because of Suprme Court decisions not based on the Constitution itself, that we talk about "the separation of church and state." -------------- THOMAS JEFFERSON THIRD PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES In the first book Jefferson wrote - Notes on the State of Virginia, he wrote: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, if we remove the only firm basis which is the conviction and the mind of the people that these liberties are the gift of God, and that they are not to be violated, but with His wrath. Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and His justice will not sleep forever." --------------- THE VERY FIRST CONGRESS It began with a very unusual prayer meeting First, they studied four chapters of the Bible They, then, read a Psalm They, finally, held what was described as an extensive and extended time of prayer John Adams described the prayer session to his wife Abigail in a letter. He wrote: "I never saw a greater effect upon an audience. It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that morning. I must beg you to read that Psalm... Read this letter and the 35th Psalm to your friends. Read it to your father." Abigail's father was the Rev. Williams Smith, the pastor of their local church. Silas Dean wrote of that Bible study and prayer time: "This time of prayer and Bible reading was so powerful that even the Quakers shed tears." --------------- From George Washington's farewell address in 1796 as he left the White House at the end of his preidency, reminding the people what made government so successful. "Of all the institutions and habits which lead to poitical prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." --------------- PATRICK HENRY KNOWN FOR HIS, "GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME DEATH..." Is also quoted as saying, "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ." --------------- JOHN JAY John Jay was the first Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court and one of the authors of the Constitution. He also wrote, "Providence (a reference to God) has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian naton to select and prefer Christians for their rulers." -------------- "The greatest genius of the American revolution was this: it conected in one indissoluble land, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity." John Quincy Adams "The reason Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion in the world that deals with the heart." Thomas Jefferson ___________________________________________________________ A PERSONAL WORD: From Ken Williams I need to share something with you this quarter, which is far beyond my mental ability to comprehend. I shared a hint in the Winter Newsletter of what happened to me last year. It was a part of our family Christmas letter to all of our friends and family. However, I did not go into detail. I believe the Lord would have me share in detail what He has done. In early summer of 2009, I began building a small barn on the back or our property, complete with an upstairs loft with four different slopes to the roof. In October I was throwing the large 4 by 8 foot sheeting up on the roof (doing all the work myself), and I began to feel stiff in my back, and have some pain. I felt it was muscles I had not used in some time letting me know they were there. In late October we took a two week trip to Pennsylvania. I thought that would be enough time to take the strain off the muscles and get me back to normal. However, the pain only increased. In November I went to the doctor who began a series of tests which continued through December. The pain continued to get worse, and numbness began moving into both legs from the knees down. By the time Christmas rolled around, I was completely numb from the knees down and was walking with a cane. It seemed to take all my energy to do anything. I knew it was cancer, but up to this point, none of the tests pointed in that direction. I told the Lord that I was totally His, and that whatever He wanted for me was alright with me. January 2010 rolled around, and whatever it was that had me in its grips was not letting up. I was forced to retire from the radio station after 20 years. And then, finally, at the end of the month, came the discovery of an inoperable cancerous tumor on my spine. I underwent a series of 25 radiation treatments which seemed to suck every ounce of remaining enegry out of me. That was followed by oral chemotherapy. The treatments during February and March were mildly successful, shrinking the size of the tumor, and bringing some relief to the numbness in my legs. We had planned another trip to Pennsylvania in April, but I was in no condition to make the trip. We postponed the trip; but in the back of my mind I did not think we would ever be able to make the trip again. Pat and I had prayed for seven years that an Hispanic congregation might be established at our church. We worked toward that end, until, about four years ago when our Spanish services began. Pat and I have attended the Spanish service since that time. What a wonderful group of people who love the Lord, and love each other, has been raised up. In the first part of July 2010, a couple from Colombia, South American visited our congregation. Following the service, the wife gathered a group of people around, put her hand on my head, and prayed a prayer like I had not heard in a very long time (in Spanish, of course). I immediately felt stronger, but the muscles in my legs were still very weak. The following Thursday I was scheduled for a full body scan at the local hospital. There was no sign of the tumor! I have had two scans since that time, and the tumor is gone! It took some time with exercise, etc. to regain the muscle strength in my legs; but by the end of that same month, we were able to take that postponed trip to Pennsylvania. God answered the "prayer of faith." Notice that it was not my faith; but the faith of the one who offered up that prayer. God still answers prayer! God is still in the miracle working business! Blessed be His Holy Name!" We have since been back to Pennsylvania two more times: in December of 2010 for my mother's memorial service (she was 95 when the Lord called her home); and again in March of 2011 to celebrate my father's 100th birthday. Apparently the Lord still has some purpose for me here on earth. At the present time Pat and I are involved Monday and Friday at the Food Pantry at our church; distributing food to those in need. We continue to be active in the Spanish speaking congregation at our church. We also continue to take care of our place here and the rental properties we own. In addition I continue to write, having just finished Studies in the Gospel of Matthew which will be available shortly. It is the third book we have completed in the past four years. We remain open to whatever the Lord has for us in whatever time He gives us to worship and serve Him. ________________________________________________________ Home - Return to Home Page Check out previous Newsletters: Spring 2011 - Ken Williams Ministries Quarterly Newsletter Winter 2011 - Ken Williams Ministries Quarterly Newsletter Fall 2010 - Ken Williams Ministries Quarterly Newsletter Summer 2010 - Ken Williams Ministries Quarterly Newsletter Spring 2010 - Ken Williams Ministries Quarterly Newsletter |
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