Epiphany

In two days, some Christians will celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany. Like Thanksgiving, Christmas, real Christians should celebrate epiphanies year round. An epiphany is when you come to a realization, a sudden manifestation, a real experience that should have been clear to you many times before, but hits you in the here and now...a beautiful sunset, the innocence of a small child, the indescribable aroma of a flower, or even good food. Thank God part of the beauty of human existence is the experience of epiphanies.

One of my friends, a well-known minister and his wife were on vacation, traveling to visit their daughter in Tennessee. They just wanted to get away from everything and visit their grandchildren. They stopped in a small town, a small restaurant, and were no more than seated when an older man, clean, well-dressed, came over and greeted them. They thought, “now what does he want, we just want to be alone.” This old man said, “welcome to *name of the town* we are so happy to have visitors. Where are you from, and what do you do?”

Annoyed, my friend told him where he was from and that he was a pastor of a church. The old man said, “I must tell you my favorite preacher story: I was from a very poor home of drunk parents. There was a church up the road and I decided to slip up there one Sunday, sat in the back row but something caused me to go back. I would always get up and leave early, before the pastor came to the door. But one Sunday, he caught me because he came to the backdoor to the give the benediction. He said, 'I see you here every Sunday, and I want to meet you. Whose boy are you?'” I resisted to give my father's name, because he was such a menace in the community. The pastor said, 'I know, we have the same father, the heavenly father.' This pastor started a relationship with me which led to my salvation, even my attending college. Don't ever think you are not important.” Then, the man got up and left.

The waitress had been kind in waiting to take our order until the conversation was finished. She said, “I didn't want to bother you while the governor was talking to you. You know that Mr. Prentice Cooper was governor from 1939 to 1945?” Think of that epiphany, a Christian with a Christian testimony, even a former governor.

I can think of no greater epiphany than realizing the importance of raising godly children in an ungodly world. Satan is using everything wicked to bring mankind down to his level. I have said to my only child, my son, “Satan wants your two sons.” Both of my grandsons were raised on the foreign mission field, where both of their parents were foreign missionaries. Both grandsons are now college graduates. The greatest epiphany in the world for these two boys, like their father, like their grandfather and the ancestry before me, would be for these two boys to spend time on the family farm as did their father. Now in heaven, two have seen their great grandfather, a solid rock of Christian endeavor and endurance. To have seen their godly great grandmother, both nurturing animals and children, plant life, their daily walk in the simplicity of nature. The good earth, God's rewards of sunshine and fresh water.

For one who is educated, with a life spent in the complexities of the trillion industry of death and disease, the epiphany of health care has been an awakening. Why not treat life instead of disease? Why cover up symptoms, intermediate relief, just to have someone coming back? The greatest player in the New World Order is Big Pharma. Have you noticed the proliferation of drug stores in your community? The same Greek root-word describes both pharmacia and sorcery. The purveyors of death have captivated pharmacy schools, healthcare schools. Since healthcare depends entirely on government grants and largess, no one questions anything anymore, we have become a “pharmaholic” society. Even the big three: heart attack, cancer, and stroke, all controlled by phamaholics. Six million Americans are alcoholic, at least 50 million Americans are pharmaholic. A pharmacist moved out of my building, his library was mostly pharmacy manuals and sales catalogs. The tragedy, pharmacists are educated by Big Phama, prescribers of pharmaceuticals, doctors of every discipline educated by Big Pharma.

It all started in the garden, eating the wrong things; when did you hear that cancer thrives on sugar? Sugar, one form or another, usually fructose, is added to every processed food. God installed filtration systems in our body such as the liver, because He knew the earth would eventually be turned into a big garbage can. If any sick among you, let him pray, if any afflicted (James 5:13, Isaiah 53) Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.(1 Peter 2:24)

Remember when you go to the communion table, you celebrate not only Christ's remission of sin, but His healing of your sickness. America has become a wilderness of corruption, the most blessed nation, corrupted by those not only content to pick your pockets here, but send your means of making a living, your job, over seas. In traveling the world, every continent, I've seen American industry and know-how everywhere. Most religious denominations were started in America, and you would be amazed to see how many churches, most of them cults are strewn around the islands of the South Pacific.

In November, a Carnival luxury cruise liner was stranded 200 miles off of the California/Mexican coast. These 4500 people aboard were imprisoned in a prehistoric world of eating cold food with none of the air conditioning by which we all have been spoiled, without power they had none of today's excesses, games, television, computers, even swimming pools. In an century of enlightenment, when we know more about microbiology than ever before, spoiled people have not learned yet that the swimming pool is a cauldron of disease.

It should be an epiphany to any thinking person that we cannot live without convenience...computerized cash register, instant gratification everywhere. It should be an epiphany that with all our knowledge, billions on research, and the history of human reactions, if drugs are bad for you, don't use them. Alcohol is a drug, 50% of all murders attributed to alcohol, 50% of all divorces are alcohol-related, 60% of all emergency room visits alcohol-related, 75% of all prison cells filled by those who could not control alcohol. Like smoking tobacco, now limited in every way, if these drugs are so bad for you, why not make them totally illegal? We are like sheep and as the great radio commentator Edmond Murrow said, “we are sheep ruled by wolves.”