David:          Karen, we know there’s a good chance some listeners could misunderstand the point we’re intending to make this visit.

Karen:          That’s true. So, we ask that everyone who’s listening to us, will listen carefully so that we make our way through this topic. Our visits are short.

David:          Yeah, characteristically they’re reduced to the essence of what’s being said in a single sentence.

Karen:          That’s right.

David:          We’ll do our best.

Intro:             Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:          If you believe in the veracity or the truthfulness of Scripture as we do, you come to the conclusion that God sometimes speaks through nature to make certain his thoughts are understood.

Karen:          And we have a lot of stories in Scripture that are proof of this, right?

David:          Let’s start with them just to make sure that we’ve established that point. Okay, for example, starting in the Bible with the book of Genesis, you have the account of the flood. It’s not that people didn’t understand. They just didn’t think it was true that God was going to do something that would destroy them, but God is mad. He’s mad because mankind is wicked.

Karen:          Has become wicked.

David:          Yes.

Karen:          Turn from honoring God Jehovah.

David:          Yes. So, God is going to send a flood, and he doesn’t try to surprise people. He has Noah preaching all along saying, “There’s going to come a day of destruction. You need to get into the ark.”

Karen:          Preaching and building this huge ark of rescue. It must have taken all kinds of time to do that. And they are laughing at him. They’re jeering and making fun of him.

David:          Well, we think they are. Because nobody followed up and said, “I’d like to book a passage.” So that’s one of those times when God through nature very obviously made his desires known. He wanted repentance on the part of the people, but nobody did.

Karen:          And so, he said, “I’m going to start again. And here’s one righteous man in his family and we will preserve them through the building of the ark. And as the waters rise, they will be safe.”

David:          Yeah. I think that a lot of people all of a sudden knew this is serious stuff. Okay, you got another illustration.

Karen:          Well, in Exodus, we have this extraordinary story of the plagues of Egypt. And of course, what has happened is the Hebrew people have gone into Egypt for safety, and they become slaves of the Egyptians. They’re laborers, common laborers. They’re building the pyramids or making the tons the bricks. And they are under the whip of their masters. And it’s cruelty of the kind that rises in the world all over that we see from time to time.

David:          And then Moses, who doesn’t want to go back.

Karen:          He’s been raised, interestingly enough, by Pharaoh’s daughter. She’s taken him into the courts of Pharaoh and raised him as her own son. So, he’s used to and knows the personalities that are in there.

David:          Now God wants him to come and say to Pharaoh…

Karen:          “Let my people go.”

David:          And now here’s where nature begins to be messed with.

Karen:          Divinely messed with.

David:          Incredible plagues. It bugs me when there’s a fly in my study.

Karen:          That’s a very appropriate sentence. It bugs me when there’s a fly. I love it.

David:          Anyway, I go after that fly.

Karen:          They drive you nuts, don’t they?

David:          But if there were ten in my office, that would be something.

Karen:          But if there were a plague and there were flies everywhere on everything. And of course, you had open windows in that culture with no screens. So, they’re in the house. I mean, it was awful.

David:          You know, this is God speaking through nature. And it’s not only flies, worse yet, gnats. That’s a plague of gnats. And then you have different things like hail. Frogs.

Karen:          God signing squish, squish. You’re stepping on frogs.

David:          I think I would have submitted under the frog wood. But God was saying, “This is what I want you to do. I want you to let my people go.” Each time Pharaoh’s heart is hardened.

Karen:          And each encounter with Moses, he seems to relent. And then he takes it back. He probably talks with his counselors, and they say, “You wimp.”

David:          Finally, his heart is broken because the firstborn all across the land were dead.

Karen:          He has been told that the firstborn will be taken. And if he does not let God’s people go, and he doesn’t. And so, the firstborn of cattle, the firstborn of livestock, the firstborn son.

David:           Son, the males.

Karen:           The males in all of these families, his firstborn son. And at that point, he lets God’s people, the Hebrew people go.

David:          What’s the message is kind of like, “Don’t try to box with me. My heart is too long.”

Karen:           Yeah.

David:           Yeah. OK, well, I got another one here. Karen, this one isn’t known as well. We’re into now for 1 Samuel. Samuel is the greatest of all of the judges. We’re into the book of First Samuel. This is chapter seven. I’m reading directly from scripture.

“When the Philistines heard that Israel had assembled at Mizpah, the ruler of the Philistines came up to attack them. And when the Israelites heard of this, they were afraid. They said to Samuel, do not stop crying out to the Lord our God for us that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines. While Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to engage Israel in battle. But that day, the Lord thundered with loud thunder, against the Philistines and threw them into such a panic that they were routed before the Israelites.

And the men of Israel rushed out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them all along the way to a point below Beth-Kar.”

Karen:           Wow.

David:           Thunder, we don’t think of it as being all that terrifying.

Karen:          Well, I think I’m going to impose a little imaginative exercise here. I think you have thunder, that’s normal. You say a storm’s coming, or the weather system is changing. I think this was abnormal thunder. I think it was loud. I think it was continual. I think it shook the ground in which they were standing. I’m imposing this on Scripture. But for them to have that…

David:          No, no, there were times I’ve heard thunder that’s so loud and all that it felt like was right behind you. It scares the daylight out of you.

Karen:          But I think it was that kind of work of God that threw them into such an extraordinary panic. Scripture tells stories that are overviews, doesn’t get into the details. It leaves that to the imagination of the interpreters, I think. But that’s what I’m seeing in my mind is what happened here.

David:          Let’s do a nicer time when God speaks. Can you have a passage there?

Karen:          Well, I have 2 Kings 20. And this is Hezekiah’s story.

David:          Yeah, Hezekiah’s a wonderful, wonderful king.

Karen:          One of the good kings of the Hebrew people of Israel.

David:          The rulings of God during his reign, yeah.

Karen:          He was a good man. “In those days, Hezekiah became ill. This is again, chapter 20. And was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah, who was the chief prophet at that time, went to him and said, ‘This is what the Lord says. Put your house in order because you are going to die. You will not recover.’

Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord. ‘Remember, O Lord, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.’ And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him. ‘Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people. This is what the Lord says. The God of your father, David says this, I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you. On the third day from now, you will go up to the temple of the Lord and I will add 15 years to your life.’

So, Hezekiah had asked Isaiah, ‘What will be the sign that the Lord will heal me, and I will go up to the temple of the Lord on the third day from now? What will be the sign?’ Isaiah answered, ‘This is the Lord’s sign to you. This the Lord will do what He has promised. Shall the shadow go forward 10 steps? It seems like there was kind of a way of measuring the time on the steps of the temple, perhaps it was. Shall the shadow go forward 10 steps? Or shall it go back 10 steps?’” He’s asking Hezekiah. It’s a simple matter, says Hezekiah, for the shadow to go forward 10 steps, rather have it to go back 10 steps.

David:          I don’t know how simple it is to make it go forward 10 steps. Anyway, he chooses the harder way.

Karen:          We are muted, aren’t we? “Then the prophet Isaiah called upon the Lord and the Lord made the shadow go back 10 steps. It had gone down on the stairway.”

David:           I don’t know how you do that.

Karen:           Lovely and tender reaching into Hezekiah’s humanity.

David:          Whatever God used as His method to make that back up, that was really something.

Karen:          Yeah, it’s a beautiful story, isn’t it?

David:          It’s again, it’s God intervening in nature to accomplish what He wants. This story everybody knows, and nobody has to read it for them, but it’s the story of Jonah. You see him running from God and then…

Karen:          He’s running from God because God has given him a difficult assignment. It’s to go to the Assyrians of all people, those godless and bloody people, and give them this word of prophecy.

David:          They need to repent.

Karen:          They need to repent, yeah, like I’m going to do that.

David:          Well, the God of nature brings the storm.

Karen:          Into the sea, he’s on a ship, fleeing, ready to swamp the boat, and he says, “Toss me over that. I’m the problem here. This is the reason why you’re undergoing this storm. Toss me over the ship.” The storm quits in a great big fish– We think we’ve interpreted that to be a whale, but it was a great big fish, Swallows him whole.

David:          So that’s all part of nature as well. I don’t know how you communicate with fish and have them be right there on the timing and everything.

Karen:          And the fish vomits him up on dry land. I mean how about that for the end of the day?

David:          After three days.

Karen:          After three days.

David:          And Jonah goes back, and he says okay, we can’t be worse than being in that fish anymore.

Karen:          Better do what God tells me.

David:          Okay, you have one more. This is a very tender one.

Karen:          This is the crucifixion.

David:          God working through nature.

Karen:          God working through nature. And it’s a tender thing because when Christ is on the cross, the earth darkens, the sun ceases to shine. So that was midday.

David:          That was midday.

Karen:          And there is this extraordinary covering of light. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m thinking you have an orb of sun in the sky and all of a sudden it goes dark.

David:          Yeah, it’s like night.

Karen:          And then there’s another verification, the great veil in the temple that divides the worshipers from the priests would function. That’s rent in two.

David:          Yeah, who did that?

Karen:          Yeah, that was God. The extraordinary crucifixion of his most beloved son.

David:          What do you think God was saying in that? I tend to think in my mind that he’s kind of saying, this is not a good thing you’re doing.

Karen:          Yeah, yeah. I’m involved here with this extraordinary act. I see what you’re doing and I’m grieving this extraordinary crucifixion.

David:          I started by saying, Karen, that if you believe in the veracity or the truthfulness of Scripture, which we do, you can come to the conclusion that God sometimes speaks through nature to make certain his thoughts are understood. So, we’re just giving a framework there. Let me put into a sentence where we were headed with all this and I’m aware that some people might say that’s a little bit kooky.

When hearing the news, including unusual weather reports, consider the possibility that God is attempting to speak to America through nature.

Karen:          Yeah. Okay. So, we’re in a time when we have climate change. You may deny it, but there’s good rationale to say we are in a climate change period.

David:          Or we’re in a cycle.

Karen:          Or we’re in a cycle. Whichever…

David:          It doesn’t matter.

Karen:          Yeah, it doesn’t matter. The seas are rising. The glaciers are melting in the South Pole and the North Pole. I mean, we’re living in an extraordinary time. So, we can say this is a cycle and perhaps it is. Or we can say, “Is God using this to get mankind’s attention, particularly those of us who are in America, although this is affecting the world, and do we need to be paying attention?”

David:          There’s no question. We’re in a pandemic.

Karen:          Yes.

David:          This nation knows that. The rest of the world knows that. I would say, “What is God attempting to communicate?” One would be that you’re in a perilous time. These are days that were forecasted. Jesus said, in the day that I will be coming back, there will be pestilence. That same thought could be said, there will be pandemics. That’s what it’s talking about.

Karen:          And he talks about the seas rising… in the middle East in 2000 and some years ago…  I mean, this is extraordinary.

David:          So, these are not normal days. So, we just have to at least consider the possibility that God is trying to say to the people.

Karen:          Pay attention.

David:          Pay attention.

Karen:          But I think it’s more than that. I think it’s, turn your hearts back toward me. And when you and I look at America, a land that we love, I think we’re appalled by the crassness in our culture. I’m appalled that we’re losing a moral base. I mean, you used to be a moral base that we function with that came out of the Judeo-Christian tradition, that we seem to be losing it. And one of that is truth telling. Your verbal words were enough in times past. You took pride in saying, “I will do this to the best of my ability and can be trusted. I will pay you back and can be trusted to do that.” I mean, that was a huge moral code. But who does live by that these days?

David:          Well, even loving your neighbor.

Karen:          Loving your neighbor as yourself. You know, we don’t even know our neighbors.

David:          Well, we’re on a national level. We don’t even talk to your neighbor or lie to your neighbor.

Karen:          Yeah. Divided from, if they have a different opinion than us, then we’re divided from one another.

David:          Anyway, the word to the church. I haven’t heard in the church, and again, our exposure is limited.

Karen:          We have limited exposure these days.

David:          Yeah, but I haven’t heard of churches where people are saying, “This is an unusual time. God is speaking very clearly, and we need to pay attention and not live like it’s just any other day.”

Karen:          Well, I think it’s even more specific than that. I think he’s asking us each one of us, and I’m speaking out of a spirit of conviction because I don’t believe I have done this, asking each one of us to set aside regular time every day to intercede for our nation. We need to pray for those who are going through the pandemic and losing their loved ones. I mean, those statistics are really extraordinary. And a million death is where we are getting closer. Every single Christian needs to be setting aside a time every day where we’re praying and interceding for our nation and interceding that the heart of the nation. As a whole will turn back to God, that we will begin to consider our own wicked ways. I mean, that’s what God asks people to do, and when they don’t do that, He allows these cataclysms to occur.

David:          Well, He actually initiates in certain ways. He initiates and says, I’m going to make it hurt if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do when hearing the news. As you hear it on radio, maybe you’re watching on television, including these unusual weather reports, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s the cycle of what has been passed and just continuing on, whatever it is, it’s unusual. Consider the possibility that God is attempting to speak to America through nature. And the question is, what is He saying? He’s saying you have to repent.

Karen:          It’s always repent. Repent of your sins and come back to me. Turn your hearts back to me.

David:          Now, that again, we started by saying, listen carefully. If you believe in the veracity or truthfulness of Scripture, which we do, you come to the conclusion that sometimes God speaks through nature to make certain that His thoughts are understood. And could this be one of those unusual times? Don’t be like Noah’s generation. Be like Noah.

Karen:          So, for me, the conviction, and I mean a conviction, and I’m asking Him to really convict me of this, not just a passing thought, is that Karen Mains has not spent 15 minutes, let’s just say 15 minutes, every single day interceding for our nation and interceding for God’s work in our nation.

David:          And interceding for the church in this nation.

Karen:          I can go tat-tat when I see the devastation that’s occurred in those over a thousand homes, you know, that were taken out by those tornadoes or the ones that face fires and flooding. But I’m not sitting down, putting time aside every day to just prayerfully hold those people who are undergoing that in my heart, praying for Christians to rise up and step into this need in a way that brings God’s love to people who have lost everything.

So that’s what I must do. I must come to terms with the fact that I have been neglectful. I’m concerned, I feel for them, but I have not done the prayer work. So that’s what I’m saying, and I’m asking other people to go before the Lord and say, “What is it I need to be doing at this time where we have natural disasters, where we have this pandemic?” God is obviously attempting to speak to His people in this country.

David:          We probably need to continue to talk this way.

Karen:          Okay.

David:          And it’s in a sense going out on a limb. But that’s what I believe God has laid on my heart. And to hear you talk the way you are right now, that makes me pleased. Sometimes with thoughts like this that come in, I can’t get them out of my head. I don’t want to say them because I don’t want to be misunderstood. But I really feel the Lord is saying this, and it’s an unusual message. I haven’t heard other people say it, but no, that’s good.

Karen:          Nice to have a friend for the journey, right?

David:          A co-partner.

Karen:          Happy to be there for you.

David:          Yeah, yeah. And those of you who are listening, thank you for taking our words seriously. For not saying, golly, the Mainses have gone overboard in their old days. They’re getting a little senile. I don’t think that’s true. I think that the Lord has put this in our hearts, and we will talk about it more.

Outro:          You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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