Melchisidek

Several years ago I asked my friend Ben, a pastor, a question about a mysterious name in the ancient scriptures: “Who was Melchizedek?” “That’s a good question” said my friend Ben. Little did I know at that time that our curiosity about a mysterious priest would lead to a three-year odyssey of the mind, guided by the Spirit of the Lord. The journey started when Ben answered my question. He proposed that we turn to the scriptures in order to explore the question. So we did. Ben and Connie, Chip and Melody, Gene and Sharon, and widow BB joined with me and Pat to study the ancient scriptures to find the answer.

The mystery had started with some ancient words, found in the first book of our ancient scriptures, Genesis. The patriarch, Abraham, had just concluded a martial mission to rescue his nephew Lot from captivity in a prison camp near Damascus. So it was then that a funny thing happened on the way to world history. Hebrew scriptures have the event recorded this way: (Genesis 14: 18,19) “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine; now he was the priest of God Most High. He blessed Abraham and said, ’Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth.’ ” That was the beginning of a very long story, HIStory, which is recorded in that ancient book we call the Bible.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, so to speak, there we were, all in one place, a gathering of Christians alive in a special place, one small homestead, Ben and Connie’s living room. Our purpose was to rustle up some answers, by riding the written range of the New Testament, narrowing in on the book of Hebrews, drilling our attentions into the depths of ancient history and revelation. . . and this, among other notable ancient truths, is what we found: “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast, and one which enters beyond the veil, where Christ entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 6:19,20)

Now. . . all that to say, I had asked pastor Ben a question. We gathered with our friends to answer the question of Melchizedek. The answer was: God with US. YWHW The Creator of the universe, who later manifested Himself bodily in the person of Jesus, the WORD embodied, born to Mary in Bethlehem and crucified at Calvary; that Jesus had presented himself to Abraham in the ancient days. Why? That’s a stupid question. We’ll never figure it out. Just believe it, that the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us in Galilee, in Samaria, in Jerusalem, and in eternity after his Resurrection. The Creator of the universe, who, by the power of His Word had spoken the universe into existence, had earlier manifested Himself temporarily, as Melchizedek, in order to initiate the Revelation of Himself to the human race. He gave that First chapter of Himself to Abraham in the same sacramental way that He later distributed Himself with bread and wine at the last supper. The first seeds of the Christian faith had been sewn to Abraham. That seed was later planted into the fertile hearts and minds of ancient peoples, who spread it all the way to Babylon and Egypt and back. Then later, New testament peoples, then . . . on and on to the here and now, all the way to America and to the Boone community where we gathered at Ben and Connie’s to discover what that mysterious Melchizedek is all about. About five months ago, our friend Ben left this life. By faith, he has entered the eternal home of all God’s people, those who have believed since Abraham met Melchizedek. We will also meet those who, since that time, have believed, carried and evangelized that Christian faith, which was erected on the ancient Old Testament foundation that was documented by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul and millions of other believers. When I arrive in heaven, I will greet my friend Ben again, in the presence of that high priest who blessed Abraham, that high priest who later offered himself on a Roman cross, that high priest who was found worthy to break the seals and open scroll, (see Revelation 5:9) whose word was brought down through the centuries so that we could have the faith of Abraham, made complete by. the sacrifice of Jesus. What a glorious reunion that will be, even greater than our precious times in Ben and Connie’s living room, back in the day. When I get there, I’m thinking that Ben will be there to greet me, just as he did so many times at his own front door. Revelation 5:9

Boomers' Choice

The boys came marching home from Germany and France, and The Bomb had made a blast in Hiroshima. We were driving brand new cars; we were waving stars and bars, and everywhere was another factory. Back in 1953, cruising with Dwight E. Elvis sangthe white boy blues; McCarthy looking under every bush, in the home of the brave and the free, rolling on prosperity, and all the kids were going off to school. Ten years down the road, another dream had come and gone, and the power of one gun had made itself known. Back in 1964, big Lyndon opened the door for civil rights and a bloody Asian war. Young men on pork chop hill; young women on the pill. At home wesaid don’t kill; get a psychedelic thrill. But the dreams of Woodstock nation were just an imagination when the boys came trudgin’ home in ’73.

And it’s hey, hey ho, is there anybody home? and its high, high hay, seeking light in the night of day. But the dreams And it’s hey, hey ho, is there anybody home? and its high, high hay, seeking light in the night of day. Well it just don’t pay to sob; guess I’ll get myself a job selling leisure suits, or maybe real estate. I’m not moving very fast; I’m just waitin’ in line for gas, and Johnny Carson gives me all my news. Back in 1976, overcoming dirty tricks. Some were moving back to the sticks; some were looking for a fix. Ayatollah’s on the rise; sulfur dioxide in the skies, and the system makes the man that’s got his own. They say an elephant won’t forget; let’s play another set; there’s always another ghost on pacman’s tail. Don’t let this boom go stale; let’s find an airline sale, or pop another tape in the VCR. Back in 1989, we’re living on borrowed time, gettin’ lost in subtle sin eatiin’ oat bran at the gym. There’s. an empty place inside, and I was wondering why; these vanities don’t suit; I’m going back to the gospel truth. And its hey hey ho is there anybody home? and its high high hey, seekin’ light in the night of day. There’s an empty place inside, and I was wondering why; these vanities don’t suit; I’m going back to the gospel truth. Put on your Serajevo, Mogadishu, Kalishnikov and Columbine shoes. The way is treacherous with ruts and rocks. Yeah, we figured our digits out before that Y2K could spoil our route, but that 9/11 call was in the cards. Did you consider the question of heaven before the wreck of ’07?. Will you hear the trumpet call from the Ancient of Days? Our way is littered with fits and fads, from Baghdad to our mouse pads the reaper swings his steely scythes across our wicked ways. (To be continued.) http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/Boomer’s Choice.mp3 Glass half-full

Revolution Evolution

In ancient times, kings, queens and emperors ruled tribes and nations. But along came an Enlightenment, that opened up people’s minds to more modern ways of governance and security. The modern mode of politics took a turn toward democracy in 1215 when King John of Britain endorsed a reconciliation with British subjects (citizens), the Magna Carta. Englishmen expanded that arrangement in 1642 when they put the peoples’ pressure on King Charles I to allow a Parliament. , , thanks to Oliver Cromwell and his roundheads. Later. . . the word “revolution” was upgraded during g the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688, when British political confusion was simplified with the accession of King William and Queen Mary. Then in the next century, the 1700’s, democracy expanded in leaps and bounds when We the feisty American people inflated of a new wind of Liberty around the world, with a shot heard round the world. Our bold, feisty Revolution—long story short— blew a liberating wind over the ocean and ultimately around the world. After that, folks around the world became more comfortable with their own pursuits of life. liberty and happiness. But after that, all hell broke loose. One revolution after another. The French caught a whiff of the new Liberte’ and Egalite’ and took it to a new level. We yanks had only rejected a king, and told his troops to go jump in the lake (the big Atlantic lake. The French used a guillotine to solve their problem of control freaks on thrones. In France, things were going down fast. But moving right along, or left. . .The so-called Enlightenment of the 1800’s hatched science to replace some religion, and revolutions to replace revelation. Declarations and Constitutions became the order of the age. . .literacy propelling scripture, philosophy replacing theology. 17th-century thinkers like Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Spinoza, John Locke and David Hume had sparked a revolution in thinking that sparked new flames of democracy among the people and the proles. . . to replace monarchy. The 19th century hatched revolutions all around the world. . .in France, in multiple colonies of the Americas. . . Then a funny thing happened on the way to the modern world: the Dialectic. A German thinker, George W.F. Hegel, came up with a new way of analyzing history, a thing called the Dialectic, which, long story short, sort of applied the principles of physics to human history. . something like the “equal and opposite” reaction observation that Isaac Newton had theorized when he saw an apple fall from a tree. So the outcome of all that cerebral dialectic materialism was (long story short) the modern world, and the evolution among multiple revolutions that accompanied all that reactionary politics of the modernizing world. In the big picture since those days, we the people of this world have had reports about revolutions in multiple European countries in 1848, south American countries, central American countries, the Caribbean. . .and moving right along. . . the Russian revolution, which was the biggest of all. Then a couple of revolutions in China, in. India, many Aftrican nations. . . Algeria. and crossing the Atlantic. . . Cuba, Nicaragua. . . all iterations of revolutionary rhetoric and militarism. My boomer generation won’t forget hearing about the Cuban revolution. . . that little turn of events. . . nuke missiles on the island 90 miles from US! . . . our deep state freaking out with their dread of the commies trying to take over. We baby boomers had our reactionary response, an improvised a cultural revolution, as Ringo had put it. . .with a little help from our friends. . . that included a lysergic turn on tune in and drop out. Eventually it just drifted away as we grew up. We outgrew it. In the late 1960’s Beatle John Lennon even wrote a song about Revolution. He sang:“You say you want a revolution. . . well you know we all wanna change the world.” Well. . . yes, sure. . .Full disclosure of this blogatary process: I was prompted to write about revolution, by an article I had noticed somewhere online about Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the North Vietnamese Viet Cong who wanted to run our US soldiers out of Vietnam, back in the day, 1960’s. He had cultivated his revolutionary ideas when, in his youth, he went to European universities to learn what this world is all about; also noteworthy is that he visited Soviet Russia. It was western ways of thinking and doing things that got him all hyped up to start the revolution in Vietnam. Then our American deep state tried to drum up a military strategy to put a stop to his Viet Cong. But hey, in the big picture. . . maybe the Vietnamese were just like US, trying to run their own show, instead of taking orders from a bunch of wise guys from the other side of the world. At the end of the day, y’all. . . its all good. At least we hope so. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, the one who died on the cross in order to show us that there’s a lot more to life than trying to beat up on other folks. Blessed are the Peacemakers.

Glass half-full

Ancient Visions

A long time ago in a land far away, a conqueror deported prisoners from a land that he had conquered. While performing his role as king of Babylon Nebuchadnezzer noticed that some of prisoners carried with themselves, into captivity, a literacy that seemed to surpass the literacy of the people who served him in Babylon. A very smart, educated young man, Daniel, interpreted some dreams that the emperor Neb had not been able to understand. So Daniel, having spiritual resources that extended beyond Neb’s understanding, spoke a synopsis of the dream. . . which he knew because he had an ancient heritage based on the Creator YWHW’s revelations that been given to his ancestors, back in the day. Then Daniel, after describing the dream, interpreted it for Nebuchadnezzar. The dream went something like this: Four beasts were coming up out of the sea. It was kind of weird: Four beasts were coming up out of the sea. But they were not regular critters like you might see roaming around ancient Mesopatamia. There was a lion like an eagle; but it morphed into what looked like a man, with a human brain. Then there was a bear with a weird mouth that looked like rib bones, between its teeth. . . if you can imagine that. It started eating some other animals. Then there’s this leopard, and get this. . . with wings! and four heads! The leopard started dominating all the other critters that were around. Then the weirdest beast of all showed up. . . the toughest kid on the block, so far. It had ten horns. One of the horns sprouted. . and get this: eyes! I’m like. . eyes on a horn?! and if that’s not enough. . . a mouth. He’s like, running his mouth, uttering great boasts! Eyes on a horn! Say what?! But hey. You just never know what’s gonna happen in this life. Suddenly the scene changes. The Ancient of Days takes his seat, and millions of people are standing around

him, and He starts breaking the seals on the ancient scrolls. I’m not making this up y’all. http://www.micahrowland.com/carey/Revelation 5_9.mp3 to be continued. . .

Paris 1937

. . .from chapter 15 of Smoke. The year is 1937. Philip and Lili are in Paris, standing on a bridge over the Seine River, near an international exposition, where Lili is commenting on the nearby German pavillion. “This city is on the edge of Germany,” she said. “But the border is hundreds of miles away.” “Paris is closer than you think, to Berlin.” Philip considered this. Then he pointed beyond the Russian pavillion, to the west, and said, “Over there, between us and where the sun will set, is Versailles, where the treaty was agreed to and signed after the war. The treaty should ensure peace and security, n’est que ce pas?” “That doesn’t mean a thing to Adolf Hitler.” Her eyes, stern with the memory of where they had just come from, were cast down upon the Seine. “Germans know. That treaty means nothing to the Nazis.” “Do they? Do Germans know?” “Some of them do, though they will not say it. There is a lot they will not say. We have neighbors in Munich who will not say that they have done business with my father for many years. Instead, they pretend to not know us. These last few months when we were at home, near the shop, when I would walk on the streets, I felt at times that I must have some horrible sign on my head, something like a mark of shame, a big. . . yellow patch of . . . verboten, or something . . . Even people my own age would act as if they had never known me. What makes people do such things? What compels them to change their attitude toward others whom they have known all their lives, people they grew up with?” “They must be scared as hell of the Nazis.” https://www.amazon.com/Smoke-L-Carey-Rowland/dp/1495330834 Glass half-Full

My Milton Meditations

We’ve heard some big questions raised lately about the ancient book of Enoch. Now I don’t know but I been told that Enoch had written about the revolt of the angels, when they were cast out of heaven, long before this world was even around. So I was remembering back to my college days at LSU, studying English literature. We read John Milton’s poem, published in the 1600’s, when the Brits were beginning to catch a whiff of democracy. Oliver Cromwell and a host of other rowdy Englishmen made their first attempt to convene a legislative Commons. King Charles I wasn’t into it, so he sent his soldiers out to stop the democratic outburst. So the English had a civil war in 1642, which might have motivated poet John Milton to compose his classic epic poem, Paradise Lost, about Satan’s rebellion against God, a disturbance that got him thrown out of heaven and banished forever. But I digress. So, getting back to my theme for the day, Milton. . . there was another Milton that came to mind: Milton Friedman, the economist who I remember as an originator of “trickle down” economics, back in the day, when President Reagan was trying to convert the Washington bureaucracy, the “deep state” to a more Republican way of doing things. Milton Friedman was a Nobel laureate whose home base was the University of Chicago. His conservative world view and economic theories had originated in his mind, as a reaction, when he was working in Washington in the Depression 1930’s, during the FDR New Deal days. Milton’s subsequent middle-of-the-country conservatism was a reactionary fiscal and academic retaliation against the liberal and their statist economic strategies of allocating money to the lower ends of society in the working class. The Democratic worldview favored a “percolate” strategy in which funds and assets would be governmentally provided to the working folks, the lower classes of America. In contrast, Milton Friedman’s strategy was known as “monetarism”; it favored a a steady, minimal, explanation of the money supply, what some folks call “trickle down”. This 1970’s theoretical strategy was a reactionary response to the 1930’s New Deal policies, related to Keynesian economics, as had been theorized in Britain in the 1930’s. Milton Friedman called price/wage-fixing “economic overkill”. We were recently in Chicago area, Northwestern University in Evanston, where I noticed this flyer pinned to a bulletin board, with a message of resistance against the conservative establishment at University of Chicago.

So much for battles, whether in heaven, hell, England, America, or wherever. . . Lastly, in my Milton meditation, and on a lighter note. . . is Milton Berle, also known as “Uncle Miltie”. He was television’s first superstar. . . a comedian whose career had started back in. Vaudeville and early Hollywood. He had started as a stand-up comedian. This Milton’s life and career goes way back, to working with Charlie Chaplin in early Hollywood movies. Then. . . a pioneer in radio entertainment, he had a comedy broadcast sponsored by Campbell’s Soup, Philip Morris and Texaco. brands that were important to the greatest generation, my parents’ generation. When TV was experimental, Milton was right there, a pioneer who stood up for black performers on his shown, back in the day, when many Americans had not yet comprehended the “all men created equal” words of our Declaration of Independence. Elvis Presley’s earliest TV gigs were on Uncle Miltie’s show. Lastly, there’s the town of Milton, Florida, on the panhandle where our family spent our earliest vacations, back in the day, 1950’s.

So there you have it, for what it’s worth. . . my Milton reflections from this 1951 baby boomer writer with a memory that refuses to surrender to the battle of amyloid plaque against brain cells. Go figure! Glass half-Full

Two World Wars

Sarajevo rebel shoots Archduke. . . provoking world war puke: Austrian/ Kraut bullyhood suddenly in disarray. Kraut bellicosity says hey hey hey: let’s start the war today. So German panic goes manic. . .

But human folly is overflowing, Kraut aggression is growing, always has been, since bismark lit the spark of bellicosity, igniting European-wide atrocity. So krauts, hot to trot into the fray, turn around and attack the opposite way. Anxious to start the deathly dance; they make war on France! Russia rushes to the fray; can’t let France be blown away! Brits and Belgians descend into mudding battlegrounds; Ottomans join as Germans amp up artillery rounds. Round and round the war goes and where it stops nobody knows. . . Krauts launch chemicals and chlorine gas, rendering this world war their most lethal task. From the Marne to the Gallipoli, the bloody business spreads so tragically. From Verdun to Istanbul the tragic damage done, soldiers, doughboys shot down. . . the deathly spiral swirls round and round. Up in Russia, Czar Nicholas’ empire goes down; Bolsheviks take control from town to town. German tornadoes sink the Lusitania, American passengers perish in krout mania. Yankee doughboys take up the burden. . . of European war in Somme and Verdun. Finally, with Germany surrounded, millions of artilleries having then been pounded, the nations signed an Armistice, fulfilling many a peaceful European wish, with a little help from their yankee friends. But pshaw! twenty years later they fought the war again!. . . when an Austrian corporal, with his weird mein kampf, launched third reich holocaust, to snuff again the European lamp.

https://www.amazon.com/Smoke-L-Carey-Rowland/dp/1495330834 Glass half-Full