The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews starts the Eleventh Chapter with this profound statement:
Heb 11:1 Now faith is the substance, the (Gr - hupostasis) the ground and foundation, the real nature, thus the realization and reality) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained witness. By faith, we understand that time itself was framed by a command of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
So that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. This statement destroyed all forms of perennial paganism, even the modern form call “Materialism/Naturalism.”
Now, faith is the realization of things not seen. Christians treat this statement as if it says; Faith is the hope or wish, for things not yet seen. So their “faith” devolves to wishful thinking, a mere hope for a better day, etc. Faith that is tried and tested, like you try and test a new airplane prototype, or rocket engine, or automobile for that matter, I mean LITERAL trial and testing, produces a realization, and reality, not a hope. The realization of faith does not come to us in a vacuum, as a solitary event, even though we may believe it to be solitary. Saint Paul, the likely writer of Hebrews, makes this clear after he writes, recalling a few of the great “faithful ones”, which fills out the remainder of chapter 11. Then he continues saying:
Heb 12:1 "So therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every impediment, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, (man am I ever witness to how easily sin ensnares us) and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith . . ." Please understand that ANYONE who is not willing to admit their own sinful struggles is a liar, not a saint. The greatest saints give quick and consistent witness to their sinful struggles, because without that struggle they would never be tried, tested and tempered into the strength of sainthood.
The “cloud of witnesses” has grown exponentially in the last two thousand years.
The best test pilots are skeptics. Test pilots do not fly with abandon, nor do they fly with a vision of failure as their goal. Trials and Testing are not taken in a manner of suicide, or even tempting fate, but taken reasonably, thoughtfully and bravely. I thought I was alone the first time I actually tested my faith, but even the 13-year-old Butch had a cloud of witnesses and the witness of a merciful God.
Virtuous acts, signs, miracles, etc.
I'm a skeptic - that is always my first position. Every bit of information I have cobbled together over the decades starts from a base of healthy skepticism. I had to be skeptical even of those in my youth who were explicating scripture. I lived is a sea of scriptural explications, mostly unknowingly ripped from context, but there was that orthodox core, I've mentioned in previous lessons. Skepticism was necessary, because my heart told me too often, "this is error." Across the years without healthy skepticism, keeping economy with the great "truth seekers" of our era, were I not a skeptic I would be a ghost hunting, alien hunting true believer, locked in the delusions of the New Age or Luciferian Zeitgeist movement.
Growing up, I accepted many things as true, but reject many more things as, (1) the jury's out, or (2) absolutely NOT true. By age sixteen I formed the habit of keeping a little notebook in my shirt pocket I called my "lie list" and I never listened to a sermon or a lecture, never read a book, watched a movie or a T.V. show, or engaged in a meaningful conversation, without making note of what I believed were lies, or at least what I seriously questioned. If I had a doubt, I prayed about it and worked hard investigating. Before the internet that took effort. It landed me in friendship with Congressman Larry McDonald before he was a congressman and president of the John Birch Society. (Memory Eternal) I was too skeptical of the facts the JBS published; however, time and history have proved it all very true.
The source of my skepticism was, of course, logical as I explained in the lesson, "Miracles, Signs, and Wonders." But before you read that which I wish to give testimony, an event I think shaped me more than any other event in my life, I wanted to remind you that I am no blind believer; at my core, I am a skeptic.
At age thirteen, six weeks after my father's repose, I came home from school to find my mother talking away on the phone. She was suffering the loss of her husband and had been on the phone many hours every day, talking about "victory in Jesus" while she was unable to function as a person, unable to do much of anything. A couple of days before she had reacted to something I said violently and I knew she was on the very edge of mental breakdown. It would not have been the first.
I walked into the kitchen intending to warm a can of soup. She was sitting at an old-fashioned phone table-chair just on the other side of the kitchen door, which was closed and I thank God it was closed. I can even now hear her voice, and see her twisting the phone cord around with one hand as she talked. She regularly destroyed receiver lines with this nervous habit. Looking at the electric stove I realized that there was a brand new iron skillet sitting there. I had never seen one before; all of our iron skillets were many years old, black and very well seasoned. I needed to slide the new skillet out of the way, so I reached and took hold of the rim and heard a sizzling sound just as an unbelievable pain hit my brain. For a moment I was in a panic, my fingers stuck to the metal sizzling away. Somehow, I managed to suppress my scream and using my other hand, I pulled my fingers off the blue-hot cast iron. It wasn't an easy feat, I knew I was tearing flesh away and it would have been excessively bloody if the wound were not being cauterized nano-second by nano-second. You see, she had turned the eye on, forgot it and went to prayer meeting mid-morning. That iron frying pan had been heating on the stove for at least five hours. I know this because I asked her later why the skillet was on, so hot with nothing in it. I can’t believe she did not notice the smoke the frying pan’s seasoning would have produced, but it all had been turned to brown dust.
I turned and ran to the back of the house, my eyes clouded with tears. I heard my mother declaring another round of victory and thought, "Lord, you know she is on the edge. I can't go to her and say take me to the emergency room." I felt like it would be the last straw for her. Then a sudden white-hot anger hit me and I thought, "I'm thirteen years old. I'm injured and I don't have a soul to trust." My fingers were a mess, I had left my skin hanging and sizzling on the inside and outside of the skillet rim. I turned my head up and said, truthfully with a lot of defiance, "You know the situation I'm in. I don't doubt you are real. What I doubt is that you give a damn about me. So, if you care about me show me. Heal my fingers." By this time I was shaking the injured fingers and thumb at the ceiling. As clear as I have heard anything in my life (not audible voice, but an impression so clear inside me and outside me all at once) he said, "I will if you promise never to deny it." I was still angry and rather than being amazed at God speaking to me I thought what he said was stupid. I said, "What do you mean, deny it? Look at these fingers, who could deny that?" He repeated himself, "I will as long as you never deny it." I answered almost sarcastically, "Okay, okay. I promise I won't deny it." To me, it seemed a stupid promise. Of course, I would not deny it. How could I? He said, "That means you won't deny ME." I said, "Okay, Lord, I won't deny you." And trying to force my mind away from the pain I drifted away for a moment, almost like a daydream. The second I was again aware of the present I realized that my fingers were not hurting. I couldn’t make myself look at my fingers. Instead, I closed my eyes, and slowly brought my thumb to meet my fingers, thinking I would experience burning pain, but when they touched, it felt a little nervy, like the nerve endings were exposed. Like the safe-cracker sand papers the tips of his fingers to feel the movement of tumbler inside the lock. I looked down and realized that the skin on my fingers was smooth; almost like baby skin, and in a minute or two my fingers were absolutely normal. No longer even sensitive as before. By this time I was pacing back and forth rubbing my fingers together with a lot of pressure.
In shock, I thought, "Man, you've got to get a handle on yourself. You panicked and nothing was wrong. You are as crazy as your mother!" I literally rebuked myself for my emotionalism, and stupidity, and worse, I was kicking myself for giving into the delusion that God had actually spoken to me. Suddenly by rational thought, it all seemed insane and just a dream. I was literally shaking my head no, marveling at my delusion as I returned to the kitchen and there hanging on the side of the skillet was the better part of my former thumb. I looked at that shriveled charred meat hanging and at my perfectly formed thumb and without a sound tears began to drip on my shirt. It has been mere moments and I had already denied Jesus Christ. Every rational sense I had DENIED HIM. Viewing that charred flesh I said under my breath, "My Lord and My God." I have never allowed myself to forget the wonder and shame of that moment of enlightenment. To this day, across the checkered path of my life, I have never stopped looking at the Icon of Jesus Christ, the one that exists deep in my heart, and saying, “My Lord and My God!” You see, while those were different wounds that Jesus let Thomas see, nonetheless they were wounds of witness, just the same. In that moment he taught me a lesson, he said, "The carnal mind thinks he is king. He will deny anything that challenges his kingship. He will give it any explanation that allows him to maintain his kingship. Those who are evil and seek signs will believe any hoax because they are deluded. Those of faith who experience wonders are tempted to deny them. Having witnessed the wonder they are tempted to ascribe it to means other than Me." In absolutely amazed gratitude I promised I would never deny the reality of what I witness and know to be true, no matter what it was or where I was.
I'm still very, very skeptical, but I'm not cynical. The bottom line is, that little three-pound servomechanism we call a brain, through which my MIND expresses itself, and the spiritual pride associated with it, conformed to it, was knocked off his throne that day, and has never regained "kingship" in my life. Yes, there is a lot of fraud out there, but there are some real "wonders.” Those wonders are natural and not supernatural. They are supernal of God’s created, and uncreated energies, but totally natural. What could be more natural than our Lord Jesus Christ, the Creative Word of the Father by whom all the worlds hang together, expressing his love in matter? This was an understanding I came to, years before I became an Orthodox Christian. Much of what we think is Miracle, is the rightful exercise of our dominion, which is a power we regain in Christ. That power can only operate inside the will of the Father, through the Son via the Holy Spirit. BUT it is a power given to US, if we do not deny it, if we try and test our faith, like a test pilot tries and tests a new prototype. You see, it does not matter how many planes you witness flying the question is, is the one you are flying air-worthy; do you have control of it; do you understand its design limitations as well as capabilities?
Now let us skip ahead 50 years. I shared the following story with the owner of a chain of medical clinics, who is a wealthy Orthodox Christian, who cautioned me in a rather condemning or at least condescending fashion that Christians “needed to be reasonable about that which they pray and ask miracles,’ in effect counseling me not to ask God to do things that seem impossible from the extreme materialists viewpoint - which is the common consciousness of our faithless generation.
So I shared with him, this story, which is especially dear to my heart, this wonder, and blessing:
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My grandson Mac was born with a congenital disorder. After four girls, finally a boy, “the golden child” and from the first, he was gravely ill. Almost immediately he stopped breathing. Then a few days later he stopped breathing again. At three weeks he was in the hospital and then released. He began having seizures and would stop breathing. Until five weeks of age when he stopped breathing and turned blue he could be revived with stimuli.
For these weeks Mom and Dad were such heroes, they managed and ran a business, cared for the four girls and rotated constant vigil by his side. But at five weeks a seizure and no stimuli would revive as my daughter and her husband raced four miles to the emergency room. Days at the hospital and multiple tests and now after a seizure his heart stopped, this time, it took the electric paddles.
At that moment I was newly arrived home, tired, hot, drinking a beer, having spent two days in the hot Georgia sun, at an outdoor art show. I’m exhausted, home, and in the air conditioning. I didn't even want to eat, I wanted to enjoy the mellow exhaustion only two days in the sunshine can create, and go to bed early. I was concerned about Mac, but I had to keep the engagement I could not cancel (the show must go on – in this instance an art show months in preparation). But sitting cooling off, suddenly I saw and knew and said to my wife, who was nominal Baptist at the time, and not of particularly enlightened spiritual understanding, “I've got to get to the hospital immediately. Mac is dying. Please drive me.” She asked, “Did Cindy call?” I shook my head no, “No, I just know, trust me and I don’t trust myself to drive.” I had not eaten in two days, and the beer had gone straight to my head.
As we drove the fifteen miles to the hospital, I silently called with a sincere heart upon God, what to do; I was not sure if I was supposed to be there to bring healing to Mac, or merely to comfort grieving parents. Yet, I had told Linda, “If I do not get there quickly, Mac will die.” When I arrived on the floor, the doctors were in with my daughter telling her and her husband there was nothing else they could do, that it was cruel to shock the infant back from the dead and that they needed to let him go, that he had terrible brain damaged and could not survive and each time they shocked him it was just needless suffering. As they stood in shock and dealt with the hopeless message, I stood out of sight in the doorway listening. The doctor said in way of explanation, “Sometimes, these infants just die. Who can explain it?” I felt Holy anger hit me and I said in my heart, “This LIE will not stand.”
They signed the “do not resuscitate order” and the doctors left. When I walked in they flooded me with the afternoon's horrors and what the doctors had said. I said, “I will heal this child . . .” WHAT? Yes that's what I said – not God will heal, but “I” will heal him – why because Peter didn't say to the beggar by the gate. “Sir, if you can have faith that Jesus Christ has the power to heal you, that is, unless your illness is some certain genetic disorders, I know that Jesus Christ will heal you if I say the right words with unwavering faith.” NO. Saint Peter did not say anything close to that! He said, “Such as I HAVE, give I thee. In the name of Jesus Christ stand up and walk.”
Think about it! No one today, talks about the beggar Jesus healed through Peter at the Gates of the Temple. The fact that we act by the power of Christ is assumed of Christians. No! Rather they talk about the man Peter healed. Jesus didn't say, “Greater things shall ye do – through me," but rather "after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, greater things shall YE do IN MY NAME.” Of course, all of the new life is IN, OF, BY, Through, and For HIM (Jesus Christ). But in that New Life, we Christians are far too timid. We as Christians take humility to the stupid and debilitating conclusion when we do not grasp this and do not “exercise” that is, try and test our faith. A person lifting weights, “tries” to lift extra pounds, tests to see if they are up to the task. The “exercise” of our faith is directly analogous.
I said, “I will heal this child on the condition that (1) you don't tell anyone, and I pressed the importance of not telling anyone, including Mac. I explained that he could not face childhood in this culture, with the weight of this “miracle” upon his psyche. That he needed to be old enough to grasp the meaning before he was told. (2) you don't deny what you have seen if you are ever asked to give witness, and (3) that when Mac is out of the hospital you will let me tell you how I did it.”
My daughter was adopted and had shallow beliefs, but she believed in me. Her husband was a stubborn agnostic toward the atheist side, bitter emotionally wounded Vietnam Veteran. Both were living dissolute and chaotic lives, with violence in the house and constant turmoil. They stood looking at me like I was insane. I said, “I'm not touching this child without your permission and agreement.” Like being shocked awake they both said, “Of course do what you can do.” I saw my son-in-law glance with a look of condescension and I think pity towards me. I was obviously in denial, after all, the doctors had spoken – in his deep grief he was being generous and humoring his crazy father-in-law, and to this day for Mac's sake I am grateful that he was a perfect gentleman while dealing with a crazy father-in-law, and while under such emotional duress. I loved them both deeply and knew that what I was doing was primary to their future understanding. It was profound lesson time and the lesson began. I picked the infant up, held him for a moment, never said a word. What I said in my heart was, “Lord Jesus, the life you allowed to rise in me, I give to Mac.” I handed him to his mother and said, “He will never have another seizure, and on top of that, I just saw him; he will be a very healthy even an athletic young man. I know you don't have the faith to do it, but what you need to do is get up and walk out of this hospital right now.”
My son-in-law of course quickly objected when my daughter showed signs of faith, when she showed signs of willingness to listen. Of course, my son-in-law, being locked in extreme-materialism, cautioned that prayers were one thing, but it would be best to do the prudent thing.
In that case, I gave them this warning. “So here is the warning. The doctors will not understand what they are seeing, tomorrow; they won’t be able to accept the change they see as real; they will be challenged and they will do something to make it appear that they know what they are doing. That something has the potential to kill this child. Please be on guard and don't let them kill him with tests or therapy.”
All night long that night no seizures, he is breathing fine, next morning, more tests, no seizures. He is home from the hospital, still no seizures and breathing fine, but that next day, seeing that he was not dead, the doctors did exactly as I say they would do, and put him on a powerful drug. Phenobarbital to an infant, I had never heard of such a thing. It is common practice today, it was not then. However, no one noticed that Mac had gone 16 or 18 hours without a seizure, when he had seven or eight seizures, in eight hours the previous day before I “held him” and his breathing halted each time. Yet after those many hours of non-seizure, which the doctors could not explain they started him on Phenobarbital.
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| Mac Bedor with his Station Chief |
In the days and weeks following, his parents secretly thought the drug therapy was working – that in fact him surviving the night and day without the drug was luck and now the drug was working – no wonder of healing had occurred, or if it did, it was just the mercy of God not allowing another seizure until the doctors discovered the right thing to do. After all, he had gone many hours before without a seizure. Six weeks later he turned blue, barely breathing; at the emergency room, they discovered drug toxicity that was killing him. They did the quick detox of his blood and saved his life, the poor little darl’n had to suffer withdrawals. In examination at the hospital the new doctors could not understand why he was on the drug at all since he was perfectly healthy, EVERYTHING was normal, normal brain, no damage. The new doctors explained to them that the old doctors had almost killed their son with the drug (just as I had warned them.)
Fast forward, from that night that “I” said so, over 25 years now, and never another seizure. Mac grew normally with much higher than average mental acuity, is a talented musician, firefighter (top of his class) and homeland security (top of his class). He is in his mid-twenties and when I told him the story of his first few months of life, he looked at me like I was a kook. Why? Because his parents knew better than to break their word, they had sworn to tell no one.
A few months after the “miracle” they approached me and wanted to know “what” “how”? I said, “You know I am not a particularly religious man. In fact, I rather hate religion, but my faith in Jesus Christ is real. I literally breathed LIFE into Mac. It was and always is Jesus standing in my shoes when I manage to do any good thing because on my own I would be a terribly evil man. Religious people know all about their religion, which for the most part they use to condemn sinners like you and me, but Jesus gives us the power to move mountains and engender life. You will never be able to forget this fact. From now on, every time you look at this child, you will know that Jesus visited him, restored him to life and all you have to do to come to this faith is pray, 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy on me, a sinner.'”
Note: Mac is a very strong man today. When I told Mac the story of his healing, he was nineteen years old. I finished by saying, “Please, don’t take my word for it. Ask your mother and your father and see what they say, in fact, believe what they say, even if it is different than what I just told you.” He lives seven hundred miles away, and on my next visit a couple years later, Mac invited me to his home for dinner. He had a couple of friends there who he wanted me to meet. They were amazing “characters.” One had literally raised himself and told me stories of his survival by faith. From the tenor of the conversation, it was obvious that they had been talking about practical faith in Jesus Christ. I asked, “Did you tell your father the story I told you about your healing when you were an infant?” He smiled and nodded yes. I asked, “Did he deny it?” “Oh no,” he said, “No, he said that it was ‘f-ing magic,'" then Mac said it again, imitating his Dad, "F..ing, magic, of course, he didn't say f ..ing."
"Is that it?"
"Well no, he said that you are a dangerous man.’” (The reason for the last part, “dangerous man” is another story that will go to the grave with me.)
So to the owner of the medical practices who cautioned that I needed to be careful about what prayers I offer,
whose words were what prompted me to tell this story, I say, “Shame on you William X for arrogating to your limited humanistic understanding the wonders of which FAITH IN GOD is able. Yes, there is great wisdom in what you say, ‘IN GOD'S WILL’ as long as that ‘in God's will’ isn't the usual mantra of disbelief it most times is, an actual taking of the Name of the Lord in Vain, using it to cover our unbelief. Rather we say, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief."
Faith is the realization of things hoped for. My grandson Mac, is pretty real.
