Kierkegaard: "the person who surrenders absolutely to God"

 

Soren Kierkegaard

This is from the blog Dover Beach:

“…the person who surrenders absolutely to God, with no reservations, is absolutely safe. From this safe hiding-place he can see the devil, but the devil cannot see him.”

--Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations

God's Creative Protection

God's Creative Protection

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God's Protection in the Midst of Trouble

Dreams from the LORD 2011-2023

6 February 2023

Last night I had a dream where I was with this large crowd of people.  We were outside; there were some buildings in the immediate area.  I don’t know if it was some sort of big picnic or social gathering.  Then something happened–some calamity–and we were all herded into these buildings.  At first, I was a bit concerned:  I thought we were being forced into these buildings against our will (but it was really the Hand of God).  Then I discovered that everybody inside the buildings were Christians.

The wicked were outside the buildings; they became angry.  They would yell at us and bang on the door to try to get inside the building I was in.  The wicked would walk by the windows and yell obscenities and give us obscene gestures.  Someone even took a sledgehammer and tried to break the door down, but they were not able.  The door was just a simple, wooden door and the guy with the sledgehammer could not break it down.  Then this one guy from the outside opened the same door and walked inside and closed the door.  He smiled at us.  He was the last one to come inside our building.  He was a Christian, so he was able to open the door.  The wicked were not able to open the door.  We who were inside the building were being protected by the Lord.

This reminds me of Noah’s Ark.  After Noah and his sons completed the Ark, the Lord brought all the animals onto the Ark.  After the animals and Noah’s family were safely inside the Ark, the Lord closed the door.  After the Lord closed the door, no one from the outside could get inside the Ark.  A week later, the fountains of the deep were broken up and the firmament collapsed and fell as rain and destroyed all the living from the face of the earth (Genesis 7).

Isaiah 26:20:  “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.”

Psalm 57:1:  “Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.”

Revelation 22:14-15:  "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers (PHARMAKOS), and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."

There is perfect protection in the Presence of God.

Alvin C. York

 

Dreams from LORD 2003-2006

21 February 2005

[This is an excerpt from Hand on the Helm by Katherine Pollard Carter]
 

“He Stood Untouched By 35 Firing Machine Guns”

Alvin York: “On October 6^th, 1918, he was in a reconnaissance group of sixteen men sent to locate the German division responsible for the deadly machine gun fire that was pinning down his American unit.

“Stepping out of a thicket in the Argonne Forest, all sixteen men walked unknowingly right into the fire from thirty-five machine guns.  Ten of the mountaineer’s followers were killed instantly and two others were wounded but dashed back into the thicket.  So did the three other men in the group.  But red-headed Alvin York was angry.  He stood his ground.

“Every time a gunner peeped over the rim of his machine gun nest, York sent a rifle bullet through his head.  Oblivious to the German bullets, he stood erect and downed the enemy with deadly accuracy.  When the German officer sent a bayonet squad after him, York picked off each of the men, beginning with the last one and finally dropping the leader.

“Amazed at his prowess, the German Major called out that he would surrender his entire force if York would cease firing.  York agreed, and marched 132 prisoners, including three officers back to his own lines.

“General Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force, acclaimed Alvin York ‘the greatest soldier of the war.’

“Alvin York absolutely believed that God supernaturally shielded him from those machine gun bullets.

“‘It was a higher power that shielded us,’ York said years later.  ‘The man on my right and the man on my left were shot to pieces.  I never got so much as a scratch or a cut on my uniform.’”

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Psalm 91: 7: “A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.”

Isaiah 54: 17: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.”

Psalm 34: 7:  “The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them.”

Psalm 34: 21:  “Evil shall slay the wicked: and they that hate the righteous shall be desolate.”

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Here is an excerpt from To Conquer Hell:  The Meuse-Argonne, 1918 by Edward G. Lengel.  Chapter 16, page 251:

"Among the soldiers charged with carrying out Liggett's plan was a tall, heavily freckled soldier with a thick red mustache, Corporal Alvin C. York.  A deeply religious, semiliterate farmer from Fentress County, Tennessee--one of the poorest counties in the United States--York was a draftee and deeply uncomfortable with shedding human blood, whatever the cause.  The War Department refused to grant him conscientious objector status, however, and his battalion commander and others succeeded in convincing him that military service was not inconsistent with God's word.  York served, but he never grew comfortable with war.  Bayonet training with straw dummies left him feeling 'queer to think I might have to cut up human beings.  I still didn't want to kill.  I still did feel somehow that it was wrong--terrible wrong for human beings to take each other's life.'

"All of which is not to say that York felt at all uncomfortable with guns.  He grew up in an era when guns and hunting were inescapable staples of American rural life, and like Jack Barkley, another country boy, he was an excellent marksman.  Yet York was a different kind of man.  Where Barkley, like many Doughboys, thrived on gambling, drinking, cussing, and combat, York preferred the simple life.

"'I had put all of the drinkin' and fist-fightin' away behind me.  I left it back home on the Kentucky line.  I didn't have a drink all the time I was in France.  I didn't have a fist fight or an argument.  I didn't swear or smoke either.  I wasn't any better'n any of the other boys.  It was jes my way of livin', that was all.'

"York said nothing about the Lost Battalion in his diary in early October.  Other thoughts occupied his mind.  'We went out on the main road,' he wrote on October 5th, 'and lined up and started for the front and the Germans was shelling the road and airoplanes was humming over our heads and we were stumbling over dead horses and dead men and shells were Bursting all around me.'  Faced with such sights, he could only look up to Heaven and spread his hands.  'Then it was,' he wrote, 'that I could see the Power of God helped man if he would only trust him.'  That--and a steady rifle."

Sergeant York (1941)
The Bullet Proof President
A Global Guide to the First World War
The Lost Battalion (2001)
Charles White Whittlesey

Ronald C. Speirs:  Absolute Legend

First World War - Massiges Trenches

First World War - Massiges Trenches from the Air

WWI Footage - Meuse-Argonne Offensive, 1918

Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger  - German War Memoir

Unraveling the Myth of Sgt. York

Soldiers of WWI Struggled to Survive in These Treacherous Trenches

One-Man Army Who Captured 132 Germans - Alvin York

U.S. Marines at Belleau Wood

Guard's 42nd Division went on attack in fierce WWI campaign

World War I - AEF in France - Trench Warfare - Soldier's Stories

According to Ole Dammegard, George H.W. Bush's grandfather (Samuel Prescott Bush,1863-1948) forged the Zimmerman Telegram in 1917 which led the U.S. into WWI (13:00 - 13:20)

World War I Conspiracy - Samuel Prescott Bush sat on the War Industries Board (1:17:42 - 1:17:50)

God's Protection in Battle

Escaping the Gestapo

Dreams from the LORD 2007-2010
5 June 2010

Last night I had a dream where I was being chased by police or some sort of Gestapo. They were rounding up all of these people and putting them in vans. When I walked up to this van, there were people sitting inside the van—packed like sardines—with handcuffs and some sort of ring that went around the back of their heads and connected to both ears. They looked like zombies. When I saw this I ran away from the vans. All of these policemen/Gestapo were chasing me, but I was never caught.

Psalm 91: 1-3: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence."

Psalm 91: 9-10: "Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling."

Psalm 91: 14-16: "Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name. He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him. With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation."

Escape from a Death Camp

Hand on the Helm

THE SOLDIER

It's the soldier not the reporter
who gives you the freedom of the press.

It's the soldier not the poet
who gives you the freedom of speech.

It's the soldier not the campus organizer
who allows you to demonstrate.

It's the soldier who salutes the flag, serves the flag, whose coffin is draped with the flag
that allows the protester to burn the flag!!!

"Lord, hold our troops in your loving hands. Protect them as they protect us.
Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need."

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The Soldier
By Gerard Manley Hopkins

YES. Why do we áll, seeing of a soldier, bless him? bless
Our redcoats, our tars? Both these being, the greater part,
But frail clay, nay but foul clay. Here it is: the heart,
Since, proud, it calls the calling manly, gives a guess
That, hopes that, makesbelieve, the men must be no less;
It fancies, feigns, deems, dears the artist after his art;
And fain will find as sterling all as all is smart,
And scarlet wear the spirit of wár thére express.

Mark Christ our King. He knows war, served this soldiering through;
He of all can handle a rope best. There he bides in bliss
Now, and séeing somewhére some mán do all that man can do,
For love he leans forth, needs his neck must fall on, kiss,
And cry ‘O Christ-done deed! So God-made-flesh does too:
Were I come o’er again’ cries Christ ‘it should be this’.

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Hand on the Helm
By Katherine Pollard Carter
Copyright 1977. Chapter 5.

"Ninety-First Psalm Became Their Impenetrable Shield"

"For four long years, in the front line warfare of World War I, the British regiment commanded by Colonel Whittlesey had not one single battle casualty. They did not lose a single man! They could only give one explanation for this incredible record.

"During those interminable years of danger and valor, every officer and every enlisted man in the regiment daily affirmed his faith in God's protection by repeating the Ninety-First Psalm."

"Each officer and soldier in the regiment carried a complete copy of the psalm and either read it or recited it from memory daily."

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With the Old Breed
By E.B. Sledge

Page 91: “The conversation with Hillbilly reassured me. When the sergeant came over and joined in after getting coffee, I felt almost lighthearted. As conversation trailed off, we sipped our joe in silence.

“Suddenly, I heard a loud voice say clearly and distinctly, ‘You will survive the war!’

“I looked at Hillbilly and then at the sergeant. Each returned my glance with a quizzical expression on his face in the gathering darkness. Obviously they hadn’t said anything.

“‘Did y’all hear that?’ I asked.

“‘Hear what?’ they both inquired.

“‘Someone said something,’ I said.

“‘I didn’t hear anything. How about you?’ said Hillbilly, turning to the sergeant.

“‘No, just that machine gun off to the left.’

“Shortly, the word was passed to get settled for the night. Hillbilly and the sergeant crawled back to their hole as Snafu returned to the gun pit. Like most persons, I had always been skeptical about people seeing visions and hearing voices. So I believed God spoke to me that night on the Peleliu battlefield, and I resolved to make my life amount to something after the war.”

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"Remembering the words of Nehemiah the Prophet: 'The trowel in hand and the gun rather loose in the holster.'"

--T.S. Eliot

Freedom to Bear Arms
Alvin C. York

God's Protection in Battle
Never the Same - Michelle Krubeck