March 3, 2015 – Decision Day: Will America Stand Up and Be Queen Esther?

On the evening of March 3^rd, 2015, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the American Congress to plead Israel’s case against Iran’s nuclear program.  This will be a historic day for America as the Prime Minister of Israel describes the choices before our country and his.  The key question is whether or not congress side with Israel in opposition to the President or remain silent?  This may be the most critical decision congress ever faces for the survival of our nation.

For people of faith that have eyes to see, there have been several hints that reflect the importance of Netanyahu’s historic speech to our country’s future.  On January 20^th, President Obama delivered the annual State of the Union address to congress.  The very next day on January 21, Speaker of the House, John Boehner, invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to give another response to the President’s State of the Union address.  Then two days later on January 23, the movie Mordechai was officially released in America.  However it wasn't until Netanyahu’s address to congress was scheduled at the Prime Minister’s insistence for March 3^rd that people began connecting the dots.  

For you see March 3^rd is the eve of Purim, the Jewish holiday that commemorates Queen Esther saving her people, the Jews, from Haman who had plotted to destroy them.  I would encourage you to read this story in the Bible in the book of Esther.  It is about a young woman who is adopted by a Jew named Mordechai and later rises to become the wife of King Xerxes.

History has a way of repeating itself and there are many parallels in the story of Esther to events today.  Both social media and news have been discussing the connections between the biblical story to destroy the Jewish people and the Iranians aspirations to do the same.  For blog examples see here and here.  For example news story see here.

In the blogs and news stories, Haman is represented by Iran who also wants to destroy the Jews.  President Obama represents King Xerxes who eagerly made a deal with Haman for the money he would receive.  Prime Netanyahu represents Esther who went before the king to make her case for her people.

However, as I thought about these parallels and roles being played out, I see another possibility.  Maybe both President Obama and Iran are playing the role of Haman trying to destroy the Jews.  In this scenario, Congress would represent King Xerxes and Queen Esther who are actually in authority above Haman (I.e. the President).  Netanyahu would represent Mordechai who reported Haman’s plan to Queen Esther.  If these parallels are the case, then Mordechai’s words ring true for both Israel and America.  For his statement to Esther (those in congress sympathetic to Israel) were as follows:

Esther 4:13 – 14: Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not imagine that you in the king’s palace can escape any more than all the Jews.   For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”

So the message to God believing people in congress as well as all America is that if we do not choose to stand in agreement with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Israel, we will perish.  For us it is decision time in the face of evil.  Do we stand with Israel against the evil of Iran or not?  What we decide in our hearts and then express with our prayers and actions, will determine our fate as a nation and individually.  May you choose wisely for who knows, maybe our country was founded by Godly men and attained our current status for “such a time as this”.  Pray for Prime Minister Netanyahu as he delivers the truth of the Iranian threat to us and pray that we have the courage to stand with God’s chosen people as Queen Esther did in Biblical times!

Collective Consciousness - Reality is a Projection of Our Minds

We live in a material world, but the sages of Judaism have taught for 3500 years that the world around us is an illusion.  It is real, but still an illusion created by God for us to experience life and make choices that affect our eternal well being.  I have learned this from Rabbi Ariel bar Tzadok at https://www.koshertorah.com/

I recently came across two articles that seem to verify this concept.  The first article Are We Living in a Computer Simulation is a scientific paper which argues that we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.  The second article Science Proves That Human Consciousness and Our Material World Are Intertwined: See For Yourself" postulates that units of consciousness (prayers,thoughts, and intentions) directly affect our physical material world.  It goes on to state the following:

"For quite some time now, physicists have been exploring the relationship between human consciousness and its relationship to the structure of matter. Previously it was believed that a Newtonian material universe was the foundation of our physical material reality. This all changed when scientists began to recognize that everything in the universe is made out of energy. Quantum physicists discovered that physical atoms are made up of vorticies of energy that are constantly spinning and vibrating. Matter, at it’s tiniest observable level, is energy, and human consciousness is connected to it, human consciousness can influence it’s behavior and even re-structure it."

The paper on human consciousness goes on to review the latest quantum physics and recently declassified government military research documents to make their case.  The paper examines the following:

1) The quantum double slit experiment that demonstrates how the outcome can be altered by the observer.
2) The government sponsored psychokinesis experiments dealing with the possible influence of human consciousness on the behavior of physical or biological systems or processes (i.e. bending spoons).
3) The Global Consciousness Experiment/Random Number Generators.
4) NSA/CIA Remote Viewing Experiments In Conjunction With Stanford University.
5) Thoughts and Intentions Alter The Physical Structure of Water.
6) The Placebo Effect where people heal themselves by believing something will help them.
7) Teleportation of small objects.
8) The science of the heart - results have shown that emotional information is encoded into this electromagnetic field.

This research demonstrates that our consciousness and material physical world are intertwined and affect each other.  It seems that science is finally catching up to what religious people have know for centuries - heaven is the real world and this world is a mere illusion from which we interact to learn in preparation for eternity.

The Star Gate to Heaven - Near Death Experiences

In the 1990s, I had a good friend who had a massive heart attack.  His name was Chad and he was visiting his daughter who was a nurse at the local hospital when the heart attack occurred.  His daughter immediately recognized that her father was having a heart attack and went into swift action.  Chad died and then was brought back to life by the doctors and nurses who worked at reviving him.  While he was dead he had a Near Death Experience that he relayed to me one day while we were horseback riding in the Uinta Mountains.  His story sounded like so many others that had I heard or read about: the tunnel of light that he went through to meet deceased family members, the immense feeling of love from his deceased relatives, and being totally bathed in God's love while he was there.  He told me that he was told to go back to his body, but that he did not want to.  All he wanted to do was stay in heaven.

What I found fascinating was that Chad was a devout Mormon.  He believed in Jesus as his savior, but his theology was vastly different from mine as a Baptist.  I had heard other stories from my brother, a Baptist minister, who had been at the deathbeds of dozens of people from small children to the very old.  Some of these people were church members who believed in God and some were not.  Most of the stories he had heard from Godly people were nearly the same as Chad's story.  However when my brother was with people that hated God and wanted nothing to do with him, the stories were quite different.  They often saw demons coming to get them and went into death with screams.  If they survived the near death experience, they usually could not remember the experience or they assumed that they had been hallucinating and had a nightmare.

I did further investigations into near death experiences by reading three books that told near death experience stories.  The books were 1) Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo; 2) Visions of Glory as told by John Pontius; and 3) Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, M.D.  I would highly recommended all three books to see the common threads of the experiences from that of a little boy who died, to a Mormon, to an agnostic neurosurgeon.  The only real differences in the three stories were the theological perspective of the stories being told.

In Heaven is for Real, the little boy saw heaven as reflected by the theology of his evangelical-pastor father.  In Visions of Glory the stories and visions reflect the Mormon theology.  The story teller sees other righteous people in heaven who had not been Mormon, but assumes that they must have converted to Mormonism at some point in order to be in heaven.  Both the little boy and the Mormon see Jesus in their near death experience.  In Proof of Heaven, the neurosurgeon, Eben Alexander, experiences heaven without memories due to his damaged cerebral cortex.  In contrast to the little boy and the Mormon he does not see Jesus.  He sees only God who is energy emanating pure love from a concentrated source at the center of heaven.  An energy that is everywhere and in everything similar to descriptions in Judaism.

As I pondered the differences and similarities, a passage in the Mormon book "Visions of Glory" came to my mind that may explain the differences.  Here is the passage from page 89 of the book:

All of the glorified universes I perceived were one of three glories - celestial, terrestrial, or telestial.  There were other types, which were not types of glory.  These were wonderful places without glory where beings who had not qualified for a reward of glory during their lifetimes were ultimately sent.  These were of every type, of every description, and were created in response to their desires (Italics added).

 So, maybe the differences in the near death experiences were merely projected by the individual and what they expect to see in heaven.  Each person that goes to heaven puts his theological glasses on and as a result sees what they expect to see.  Those that don't believe in the God of heaven do not go to heaven.  They separate themselves from God by their own mental constructs and create their own hells devoid of the God that they don't accept or believe in.  For to be with God you must first believe in God.  In the end our theological differences may not matter as long as we believe in the God that created us and return to him through repentance to walk our path through life with Him.