Mark Giordano - Class 1 - Comfort in Sickness - Recovery in the Kingdom

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   The theme for brother Marx talks, this weekend is the God of All Comfort. First class is entitled comfort in sickness recovery in the Kingdom, brother, Mark? Well, good afternoon love, Brothers and Sisters in Christ. First, let me say how delightful it is for sister Jean. And I to be here this weekend among you, we’ve already rekindled some old relationships that have had faded somewhat into the past and when we have the opportunity to come so far away and visit christadelphians, who are all waiting in these desperate times for the second coming of Christ.

2. 0:36

   Together, the fellowship, the affinities that we have the feeling of having known, someone all their life. When you’ve met them just a few minutes, those things are the richest part of life for us. So we let me assure you. We are very, very glad to be here on a personal level, but before we get into our, into the substance of our subject today, first things first, you will see a picture up here of my That’s what I mean by first things first.

3. 1:09

   You’re a grandparent you know exactly what I mean the preeminence they take in your affections is just over the top, isn’t it? This is Silas and I’m going to start on a lighter note because we’re going to get into some very sobering and serious things. And I just think that this is probably the best way to start this particular subject because it’s a caricature.

4. 1:38

   What we experience in reality when we grow up and we get blindsided by things, we never thought would enter our lives and they become severe trials. For little children, they have all the same feelings but there’s really nothing wrong. So this say Silas and I had taken a walk down to the dock.

5. 1:59

   It was a perfect day. Silas was on vacation, I had the day off, it was grandfather and Grandson together. It’s a sunny day, we’re taking a walk and I don’t know. For some reason, the world as Silas knew it in that moment came to an end. And so he didn’t want to finish the walk. We just got a few houses down and he stopped in this yard and he gets this look and he looks at me like freezes in his tracks and you could see his little fist is clenched. And you can see the Deep anxiety that is all across his face. Things just weren’t going right for Silas that day and or in that moment, especially and I had no idea why there was no reason for him to feel bad.

6. 2:49

   So I, we never did figure it out but he had all the feelings of that are concomitant with total disaster, and he was in a very high state of dungeon. So that’s the innocence of Youth, the way little children respond to the smallest of things and when I was a little boy, this is me when I was about eight years old, I really wasn’t asking.

7. 3:18

   Why me? Life was pretty good for me, this is the Waterfront. Nice to walk down there and bare feet and love to feel the warm side. Walk under my, my feet and fish for gudgeons off the piers and crab. And I had a Relatively perfect life, but I didn’t know when I was this age, what would happen to me when I got older? I didn’t know.

8. 3:42

   So the question had not come up yet but it does for a lot of people, some people at this age or earlier they’ve already begun to say Why me, why did this happen to me? It’s a very serious question. When it’s, it’s accompanied by something that you never expected that appears in your contacts to be completely intolerable.

9. 4:09

   But there’s a deeper question still, and that is why when everything goes wrong when we suffer we can’t explain it. But it seems like God’s justice has been left out of our circumstances. When you see other people who seem to be the beneficiaries of the love of God or if they don’t know God, their beneficiaries of the goodness of human life and for you all that cave. And somehow.

10. 4:40

    So it’s that question, you asked when all seems to be lost and that is at the heart of what we are going to consider all weekend. As we look at three specific examples and a fourth of people whose lives took a turn that they never expected and didn’t seem to have any way out but bad. So that’s the question, why?

11. 5:08

    And interestingly enough, as you know, those of you who have read your Bible and applied yourself to what you were reading, you know, that the Bible addresses, the question of why in advance there isn’t any question. I believe that we can have that hasn’t been somehow or another addressed. Even the one, is that, that queries, how come?

12. 5:32

    We don’t understand this particular condition in the world. It has Explanation. It doesn’t make sense even though I know the truth. Now there’s there are questions reserved for the day and isn’t the day the answer to those questions that reservation we know that that one day even though we can’t understand what’s happening. Now there are if not to us personally to other people or in the world certain conditions, we know that those answers will be addressed and fully.

13. 6:06

    He supplied in the Kingdom. So the kingdom is the answer to all the questions that aren’t answered right now. So is that not an answer to those questions? Everything has been dealt with by God’s word, but this particular verse in, Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians where he says he Comforts Us in all our affliction.

14. 6:29

    So that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of Affliction. So there’s the the answer to the question. Why?

15. 6:40

    Why did this happen to me? Whether you were young or old, whether you’re still in it, or not, whether it’s somebody you love or yourself or your children, your helpless children or your helpless, elderly parents, or those around you? Whatever it is if there’s Affliction, the answer to the question. Why is so that we who have the understanding of God’s mind his purpose, our reason, for being The consequences of mortality and the consequences of the law Spirit of Life, operating in our lives.

16. 7:20

    So that we may be able to comfort those who are any in any kind of Affliction through the Comfort. We ourselves receive from God. That’s the answer to the question. Why or why me?

17. 7:35

    So just a little background on what we will be addressing in this series. It was six years in the making in some respects, much longer than that in other respects. For example, when I said of me as a child, I didn’t really know when life was good as a child. What would happen to me when I got older, when I was a newlywed and working very hard physically to sustain my marriage and my firstborn child?

18. 8:05

    I got a really severe back injury and that back injury was to create pain in my life for the next 33 years. It’s still residual in me, not quite as bad as it has been on occasion. It’s up and down, but I’ve spent 33 years in, chronic pain and it’s just my pain.

19. 8:24

    I don’t think it’s as bad as maybe some other people’s pain in the world has been bad enough to feel like it ruined a good portion of my life, that one enough out of the last 30 years. Ears, I had chronic headaches and those headaches were so chronic. And so pervasive, in my life, as to basically nullify and ruin 10 years of the last Thirty, thirty percent of that, time was ruined with that X.

20. 8:46

    And in all that, you know, II might have asked why me, but for the fact that I was raised by two parents who told me about the Kingdom from the time, I was dandled on their knees. And so, I had a very clear understanding that, this, the things that we suffer from, Even though they affect us, deeply on a personal level level are not really about us.

21. 9:09

    The World At Large is, is very old and full of suffering, groaning and travel together. Even until now, and that condition is the larger question that the mind of God addressed from the foundation of the world, in the hope that he said before men. But the in the more local sense to the subject, the series was In the making because things came into our conditions, came into the lives of, in particular, three of the sisters, in our khaleja, which were so severe, and we got so deeply involved with that vicariously. We went into their trouble and they were three very distinct areas of suffering.

22. 9:55

    That on one hand, on the arranging board. We had to manage from that level as an elder in the Ecclesia had to manage from that. At level being the husband of my wife, who was a very nurturing sister to these three sisters. I had contact with the suffering on that level. I was also very close to all three of them in different ways, very different ways. And so in all of that, when you share the tears, you You you vicariously suffer from the pain, you ask all the questions that suffering.

23. 10:31

    People ask you learn that the feeling most people have in such severe conditions is one of isolation from the rest of the world where although in the abstract they know their people are suffering like they are but their suffering is. They are isolated in their own suffering to such an extent that they feel alone and these are all very real feelings.

24. 10:54

    We all know people who Going through them. I think some of you here have conditions in your lives that you are suffering from where you feel like you are suffering in silence alone where nobody really understands. And in most cases how does anyone understand what everyone else around them doesn’t see how could, how could anyone understand how I felt for the last 33 years?

25. 11:20

    How could I understand how you felt when you go on the web gone through your trials? So in that, the Wonder the Majesty, the royalty. The Depth and richness of the Deliverance of God’s plan for us. Comes into such sharp focus, in contrast to the Affliction that we bear. That it takes its full.

26. 11:47

    Meaning almost only as a contrasting promise to what we are forced to endure in the mortality and Frailty of our lives. And so it was obvious to me, and these are the various subjects, that will be be speaking about between now and tomorrow morning. That when you are experiencing sickness of the kind, that is really, really bad. The recovery of the kingdom is the most marvelous thing to dwell in.

27. 12:20

    It’s a place where you can go and stand on such wonderfully, Holy Ground, it doesn’t take care of the problem, but it certainly is a way of managing the problem. And when there is Extreme loss loss of a loved one in from a death, an untimely death. The retrieval of that individual, that that loved one that child, as it is, in this case, in the Kingdom becomes all the more real, and you’ll notice as we go through the scriptures that are relevant to each of these different kinds of suffering, that we’ll be looking at that, these scriptures on one hand or something.

28. 13:02

    You might have read in the readings, they might have. Something to you at one point in a talk or when you had a some kind of realization somewhere driving down the road or in the middle of a prayer. But when you are in the depths of of an extreme situation in its particulars and then you look at the same verse again, the verse comes to life.

29. 13:28

    And it seems to somehow speak in a way it never did before you see things, you see. God was there all the while understanding what you would go through and addressing it in in the in the most intimate and and loving and kind and fatherly manner. So that only a living God, only his Living Word could Supply. What is necessary to reach into your heart and address. The things that your heart needs to understand only God’s word and God’s love him.

30. 14:05

    Sprung himself can do this for us where there’s abuse There’s the idea of God’s recompense the day of judgment is not only there to decipher between those who followed Christ, and those who didn’t, it’s there on a much larger level for God to deal with Satan. He’s going to bind him but he’s gonna bind him after he judges and good part.

31. 14:27

    When on Christ begins his judgments in the world and no judgments will result in a slaying of the Lord being from strewn from one end of the Earth to the other. So, severe with his judgments be, so it’s Fitz. Goodness and severity of God is going to be known in that day, in a way that it has never been known before.

32. 14:48

    And when there’s a fence will be speaking about offenses and judgments. And Grudges and criticisms and people who should love you and you should love being more like enemies than they are like Brethren. But the reconciliation that is Promised in the future. When we see breaches of all kinds some kinds of make sense to us, sometimes it make no sense, whatever there are breaches that we experience is a community that in some respects are irrational and another respects stand in defense of the truth, resolving. All these Kinds of things.

33. 15:27

    Now seems to be sometimes irreconcilable. But we know this, the reconciliation of the kingdom of God will put everything in its order and bring peace and happiness, and joy in that reconciliation, that exceeds even the joy of understanding the Forgiveness that comes to us from the crucifixion of Jesus wherein. He took all our iniquities upon himself that should put us in a very, very high state of Joy, that’s that, but when he comes back and reconciles the whole world, I’m starving fed.

34. 16:13

    The sick are healed and all these little children, these helpless little children are dancing in the streets. When that happens, it’ll be reconciliation from a fence like we’ve never seen before. And then the restoration of the Kingdom will deal with all afflictions. So, Working with these three sisters over three years of time. Kind of it came to my mind.

35. 16:40

    That there was a premise that formed when I was thinking of first doing this for a bible school, I was thinking. Okay, so I have an opportunity to share some ideas about our faith with brothers and sisters at a bible school. What will I talk about this time and having gone through this, I thought, well, you know, I would prefer to talk about something.

36. 17:02

    I know a lot about and what I knew a lot about at that moment, was the suffering of these three sisters? So I realized that they were separate and distinct three, distinct forms of suffering. And I also having been with them was able to recognize that. What they were suffering from was not just isolated to them. There are way too many people in this world that suffer from the same thing and that gave me the premise for creating this series.

37. 17:31

    And that time is that there must be people in the last days, the dark days of this world right now who are suffering in silence or suffering in open in the open in such a way that is as extreme or more extreme because of the hour. Late hour of this world’s time more than ever before in history. Although we know that human suffering has been consistent from the beginning, but the premise is that, if what Paul said is true, that our suffering is meant for the comfort of others.

38. 18:06

    If I could, could describe their suffering to you and then put that suffering in the perspective of God’s purview over us and his Intimacy in our Our lives and his promise of redemption in the future that those three sisters could a great assignment of meaning could be made to their suffering. So I went and asked him.

39. 18:33

    I said, would you mind if I speak about what you’ve gone through two people made, they each gave me their permission in their own way. One of them needs to remain anonymous because the intensity of her circumstances. But that is the basis of this and you’ll see what I mean when you take a close, look at something, which not only is just particular to that purpose, but also epitomizes an area of human suffering that needs to be addressed by our faith, in the details of God’s purpose, then they these stories take on a vivid character. That I don’t think happens when we just speak about these things in the abstract.

40. 19:16

    So this is our subject and that is its environment. The subject is confirmed. The environment is Paradise. We don’t live in it yet, but that is the environment of the comfort of God in Paradise, which he has promised for the future. It’s a big subject. If you look at the different kinds of word that words, that are derived from the roof comfort, you have comfortable.

41. 19:40

    That means, one thing you have comforting. That’s something else. It’s all in the context. Sufferings you have the comforter? It was promised with the Holy Advent of the Holy Spirit and the change in roles that Jesus made from suffering savior to a righteous Everlasting high priest, you have discomfort and uncomfortable on the negative side of the word Comfort, but all using the same, the same route idea.

42. 20:17

    Like to raise a question with you. Two kinds of ways you can Define Comfort, natural, and spirit. As I Define them here, I’ve got both definitions up in front of you. See if you can in your mind, find out what the distinction between the differentiation is between the two, the natural meaning, that is from a dictionary, is our up, Comfort is ease of grief.

43. 20:42

    Improvement of move through in a bad mood, your comforted your mood gets better, restoration of well-being. You, you were ill at ease or ill and comfort came along and your, your well-being was restored. That’s the dictionary definition. The concordance definition is interesting because there’s a differentiation, which may not be obvious at first. But when we talk about it, you will, you will see that. It’s a necessary distinction, and one that come can only be addressed in the context of Faith. The spiritual meaning is to invite near As if in prayer you invite God to be near to you or if in prayer he invites you to be near to him.

44. 21:29

    An appeal for consolation. Or to entry exhortation to pray. You see the difference? Point it out to you. Spiritual comfort is not immediate relief in the definition, in each case, what was the source of the discomfort is addressed, and comfort is the result. But the comfort in the concordance comes to comes from a direct nearness with God. An intimate understanding that exists between you and God in your faith, where something in his word has reached into your discomfort and addresses it but does not relieve it. So you cannot say that spiritual comfort is immediate relief. It isn’t Any more than it was the immediate relief of Christ. When he was facing his crucifixion, he was comforted, but didn’t take the cross away, did he? If you look at the stories of Affliction and comfort in the Bible, immediate relief is not something that is, Necessarily found in fact frequently not found in the sufferings instead. Spiritual comfort is strength.

45. 22:45

    Strength. From Hope. The country is something that addresses. Our our disposition while we are suffering is a very important principle to understand as we as we head into this subject. Paul, the theme came from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians in the first chapter. In the first few verses there. He says this after he made them sorrowful from his first letter and he did that by saying well concerning your schisms got to do with this concerning the immoral man.

46. 23:23

    You have to do this concerning our traditions and and head coverings you have to do this and concerning the breaking of bread. Well, I hear that you’re doing this but but Let’s look at it this way and one thing point after another, he made them sorrowful and he knew that he was and and he said, I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, but he knew that the discomfort would bring joy and comfort in the realizations and the understanding that he was going to provide and his descriptions of things.

47. 23:53

    And so the second letter is starts with this this overwhelming appeal to comfort. We’re having made them sorrowful now. He’s To see if he can make their comfort, his comfort to them. Clear, though, he says blessed be the God and father of our Lord. Jesus Christ. The father of Mercies. And the God of all comfort. And if you read that for what it says, it says that all comfort has to address all affliction.

48. 24:20

    Doesn’t it if he’s a God of All Comfort, he has to that. Comfort has to handle anything, whatever comes up. It could be mental, could be physical, could be imposed on, you could be in, you could impose it, on yourself, whatever it is, could be just circumstances. Something like I said, that blindsides you and you never thought that would be your life. And in a moment, your whole life changes, if he’s the God of All Comfort, it has to address all afflictions. He goes on to say, who comforts Us in all our affliction, So that we may be able to comfort those who are in any Affliction that again is the reason for it with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

49. 24:58

    If there’s no Comfort coming from God, then there’s no real Comfort coming in Affliction except perhaps for the kind that mitigates, you know, are suffering from the human touch or medicine and or, you know, a little, a little brief respite from from horrible, trial whatever. But if it’s comfort that Comes from God, it is pervasive.

50. 25:20

    It is able to handle every aspect of the suffering for as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings. So through Christ we share abundantly and comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. So, Paul’s now thinking of his life and the things that happen to him, he gone to a city, he’d go to a synagogue, they beat him up or he may be Shipwrecked to be in standing water out in the ocean for a day and a night and all these things were happening to be bu T be bitten by snakes and beaten with whips.

51. 25:51

    So he’s saying, well, if we’re Afflicted, it’s for your comfort and salvation. So what we’re going to talk about this this weekend, how that works if that’s true, if it’s by Affliction that someone offers Comfort to you, What exactly happens in that exchange, it doesn’t happen the same, he’s just reminding them because he would go on to explain that in the whole depth of his letter.

52. 26:18

    He says, if we are afflicted as for your comfort and salvation, if we are comforted is for your comfort zone, whether it not it, came from Affliction, or for Comfort, he’s saying, whatever it comes to you from us, it’s for your comfort. In other words, I love you. I could say this to you today.

53. 26:33

    This is why I’m speaking about this subject because I love you and I know you’re suffering. And if you’re not suffering personally, you will suffer. And if you haven’t suffered yet, you know somebody who’s suffering, or you’ve been around somebody who’s Suffering The Suffering, this is enough suffering in this world for us, all to be intimately, connected to it. And what Paul is trying to get across the Corinthian. Ecclesia is I made.

54. 26:58

    I know I made you sorry. But we have a mission of righteousness, we have a mission of reconciliation, and it’s different from, from this mission of death, that the law put on us, all made us miserable in the understanding of our sins. This mission is one of righteousness and joy and peace and so when I come however I come to you, I come to you with a tremendous amount of personal love for you, whatever it was. If it’s from my comforter from my Affliction, it’s meant for your comfort and that that is the basis of this series. It is mint.

55. 27:30

    For your comfort and it will work in that regard. Once we start sharing the particulars of the afflictions and the way Faith Works in their context, So he says when which you it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure, the same sufferings that we suffer. I hope for you is unshakable. We know that as you share in our sufferings you will also share and comfort.

56. 27:58

    So there is this interesting statement of context if you look at his message and you take everything out except his his use of the word comfort. You can see this is his point whatever he says. In the second letter. Is meant to describe the fullness of what he speaking about. When he speaks about spiritual comfort and it’s in the context of Affliction see how many times he speaks. He uses the word sufferings and affliction because the two are inexorably joined we have the Affliction and the comfort is an essential part of managing that Affliction so that’s what we’re going to look at how these three sisters manage their affliction. Don’t like this one point before we start looking at their their particular circumstances, the time to respond to Affliction is before it occurs.

57. 28:57

    If you’re young and you’re kind of going, I know. Yeah, well, okay, still abstract you have really been through it yet maybe you have, I don’t know but you will As a matter of fact, that’s what the truth is for, because the big question you should always ask yourself when you think, should I be, if you’re not, baptized, you are, then, you know what I’m saying, but you’ve already answered this question.

58. 29:17

    But if you’re not, the big question is, well, will the job I get? Will this person? I marry. That is one of my, the love of my life will satisfying. All my greatest interest in life will be coming. Who I’m meant to be in this world with my talents and skills and mine.

59. 29:37

    Actual abilities. Well, that here’s the question. Well, that deliver me in the day of trouble. When the day my day of Calamity comes will any of those things deliver me? Is what you want a secure in your youth. Is what will deliver you in the day of your Calamity and that’s because there will be a day of Calamity for every one of us. And if it isn’t somewhere in the middle of Life interrupting Life, As We Knew It, it will be at the end of life. When a Calamity, the Calamity of our age. Weakens us to the point where we die in pain, I didn’t know this. Until I was with my mother and last few days of her life, she she lived in our home and so we were with her. Constantly in her dying days.

60. 30:27

    I didn’t know how painful it was to die. It’s not always painful. My father died suddenly so he didn’t experience that level of pain but if you died a slow way, is very painful. So what had my mother done for example to deal with her suffering before it occur to deal with the Calamity of her age, she was 95 when she died very weak and very uncomfortable.

61. 30:51

    What am I father? Done to deal with his Calamity before it occurred. If you’re young, if you’re in your middle years or even if you’re getting on advanced in your years, the thing that deals with with trouble before it occurs is what God’s word puts into our hearts. That provides the strength in time of need.

62. 31:19

    This is why the psalmist said in the multitude of my thoughts Within Me by Comforts Delight. My soul. Those Comforts come from thoughts. And unless you lose your mind, those thoughts will be present with you, in whatever state that you find yourself in plenty or in want in happy, the happiness of health or in the misery of tribulation. And then he also said, this is my comfort in my Affliction, for Thy word.

63. 31:47

    Hath quickened me. How does that? How can that word come in? If it hasn’t been already put there. So some people are able to manage the the input during their suffering, but the best time to plant, all those seeds of seeds of strength and endurance and hope in your mind is before the suffering occurs.

64. 32:09

    So we’re going to turn to this, the focus of this part of our series sickness. And for that, we’re going to look at the amazing part. Of sister Dawn, you Zack?

65. 32:25

    She found the truth on her computer. She was always puzzled why religion made no no sense. As most people are when they when they are driven to the truth. And the gratification that she experienced in understanding, the truth was just unlike almost anything we had ever seen. And I’ve seen it from time to time. There’s an unspeakable emotion.

66. 32:56

    That overwhelms a person when they realized they were blind, just with their eyes, but to the, to the future of the world, to the sufferings of humanity, were totally blind until their eyes were opened. And they could see I’ve never been blind. I don’t know what it’s like to have my eyes open physically. But I know what it’s like to see the future. and that gives me a very special feeling inside to this is his sister Dawn, you second, I have to tell you a little bit about how this, this next series of pictures, Occurred. I was, I wanted to talk about Dawn, I got her permission and I called her up and I said, Don, can I come take a picture of you?

67. 33:39

    I don’t think it would be right for me to tell your story without people seeing you. I mean, I have a slides it’s going to be in the middle of a presentation. I’d like to take a picture. So she said, sure my life is an open book on take a picture and you can show it in public.

68. 33:54

    It’s all right. So she dressed herself nicely that day and we went to see her. She lived across the Chesapeake Bay on Eastern Shore. A couple hours from where we live. And when we went there, And she started to tell her story because I was also going to record her story so that I could get certain parts of it.

69. 34:13

    I noticed that she I had my camera hanging on my my front of me here and I noticed that her Expressions were following her story and this was completely unplanned. This kind of thing, I don’t think you can plan but I started just taking pictures of her. She told her story and what you will see in this are the Expressions that are not Our captured in her, in her face and her countenance, that correspond to what she’s saying in her testimony and it all the more meaningful. If the series is, will not only enable you to know Sister Dawn, but it will give you a better look at the kind of feelings on that.

70. 34:54

    Come through Expressions, that lay inside a person’s heart. So, this section is about sickness and injury and pain. It’s a testimony. Her personal testimony. What she went through when she was actually sustained in. Unbelievable anguish and you’ll see what I mean by that. This is Sister Dawn as she was gathering, her thoughts to tell me her her story, but I’m going to, I’m going to go down a bulleted list of what happened to her and her life so that you can see how very real, this idea of unbearable.

71. 35:35

    Pain was for her. Her mother hated her from the womb. She said her birth. She told her your birth ruined my life. When she was to her mother tried to drown her, she left her. And she took her out pushed her, under the water, and walked back up on the shore, and left her head out there in her aunt, saw her bobbing in the water. She was gasping for her breath and mother taken a walk. And she went and was saved by her aunt at the age of six. We’re leaving Uncle began to exploit her. When she was 13.

72. 36:10

    She was abused. By a taxi driver. She was on the street and pregnant at 17. She had the child. She never knew the child, she lost it, and it, and that memory of a lost child. Stay with her until we knew her all the way through her whole life. She married a man.

73. 36:35

    Who tried to beat her second child to death in her womb? He was an abuser over the next decade. He broke 12 Bones in her body. She said she kept having to go to the hospital until one time in the latter. Part of this whole horrible decade. They looked at her and she’s always lying about why she had these injuries. She said she would fall and so on is basically he was beating on her and they looked at her and they said this didn’t happen for the reason you’re telling us to. And so they had sort of a little wake up moment in all of that, abuse at 42, she left him.

74. 37:11

    Found her mother again but she said when she went in to see her mother, she beat her to the ground and she said, I could have fought her but she said I couldn’t fight my mother and so she just let her beat her to the ground. She met a powerful, man, George who became her protector?

75. 37:31

    That’s George. Nobody can mess with George. George was beaten by his mother and sister during his early childhood. He left home at the age of six. He went to live with his grandfather and his grandfather. Turned him into a Rum Runner. As soon as he could drive in Brownsville Texas, somebody that runs alcohol.

76. 37:53

    Illegally across the border at 15 a gang attempted because he was good at what he did a gang attempted to enlist him to run drugs. When he refused, they said his house on fire while he was asleep in it. And he was burned in over 80% of his body from that fire. He spent a year in a hospital, seven months lying in an oil bath with his eyes sewn shut. He survived as a powerful.

77. 38:29

    Man. But as a loner instinctively all hit the while just in his own simplistic way, seeking God, he could hardly speak, he doesn’t speak the English language very well and I think his parents were an Indian and Mexican. So his language is not very good. He had no education. I don’t think you think he even went to school, he did. It was just in the very early years of his childhood. And on May 13 years ago when this was I did this two years ago.

78. 39:00

    So be 15 now and we’re married in 2012, they’re baptized in 2014. Don had discovered the truth. She was taking lessons on the internet internet, with one of our members and we finally had to accelerate those lessons. And we started seeing her and that led to his and her baptism in 2014. So there’s another side to Dawn’s life beside those sparse. Details of her story.

79. 39:31

    Why does sister Dawn hurt so bad because she couldn’t really come to meeting after. She was baptized, she was way overweight, every time you went to see her she was in pain, pretty serious, pain Relentless pain. So this is the story of her physical condition. She was born with a genetic kidney disease called focal segmental. Brahmos chlorosis, very serious disease being bipolar. She was put on lithium which induced near neurogenic diabetes.

80. 40:01

    Insipidus which is otherwise referred to as ndi causing chronic hypertension hydration, these two conditions, destroyed her kidneys overtime converted them to scar tissue and they were unable to function. We met her. She had I think four percent offer kidney function which is not a pleasant way to live in 2012. She was diagnosed with end-stage, renal failure and that led to depression but all the while she’s learning the truth. And so there’s this sharp contrast between this miserable. Life, which in every respect was met with one disaster after another and her physical condition and all the Pains of her body.

81. 40:38

    And then she learns the truth. So I don’t know about you. When I learned the truth, I was pretty happy. I was also kind of miserable, I was 17. I was miserable because I had become aware of the sin, that dwelt, the law of sin and death and my members. And so on that side of it. But I hadn’t gone through anything like this. I was raising a happy family with two one. Parents who were both diligent and applied in the truth. Had been raised in it from their youth. And and and and so I don’t think the truth means any more to her than it does to me.

82. 41:13

    But there was something about Dawn, when she described what happened to her when she learned the truth and she met christadelphians that just brought her to life while she was dying. This is a paradox in that, a wonderful Paradox to avoid Fatality. She was given two options dialysis or transplant. So she had to wait and she had other conditions that would would that delayed everything she started fistulas which is a vein artery graph for a dialysis and they were very painful.

83. 41:46

    She went on dialysis because their veins were too weak for the fistulas and they put a catheter to her heart and she would say something like that was painful. Has Tom health issues, resulted in debilitating weight, gain over 300 pounds, preventing the transplant. There were several 7 catheter treatments, which induced Strokes from constant, clotting key magic, going through this, while you’re learning the truth. And it was pretty much that period in the four years in 2016, without precedent or explanation for her. Her kidney suddenly started functioning Invasion, she was on her deathbed.

84. 42:25

    She got baptized and just inside two years, she was able to get off her dialysis and her kidney started functioning And she said, this is a miracle. I hit must be, God, is that close to me? And so, all of her hope turned into a kind of a, an immediate deliverance from a condition.

85. 42:45

    She was sure was going to take her out. Yeah, with her. Familial looking call them. That heard the horrible conditions of her life around other people who used her and abused her and the physical issue she had to deal with in all of her life. This is her testimony. What are you doing?

86. 43:48

    Yes, my fraction. My face. She had makeup on the cover, the black areas where her cheek was was still bruised from those balls. if I’m Sharon, Christ. because,

87. 45:58

    I don’t know if you recognize this but that was an area of consideration that dr. Thomas went through in elpis Israel, calling God a liar. If we don’t believe his promises, she got that from Elvis Israel,

88. 47:16

    So I get up and I Walk This Way. So she had several anchors that she had in place that she would mean on, as she went through all these cyclical burdens, she was carrying. This was the one I asked her. What’s the one verse that really stands out to you as the most important in terms of your comfort? And she said, for I know that my redeemer, she went straight to job that my redeemer lives and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the Earth.

89. 48:11

    And though, after my skin worms, destroy this body yet in my flesh. I shall see God. She had a poem that she said is her favorite poem. And I read that to you now, it’s called all I hoped for, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this poem before but knowing her story you can see what she’s saying.

90. 48:33

    I asked God for strength that I might achieve. I Was Made weak that I might learn to humbly obey. I asked God for health that I might do greater things, I was given infirmity that I might do better things and it’s God for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be. Eyes.

91. 48:55

    I ask God for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God. I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I had hoped for almost despite myself my unspoken prayers. Were answered. I am among all people.

92. 49:25

    Most richly blessed. Last fall, sister, Donna. Fell asleep in Christ. This was just a few days before she finally fell asleep. He said, Don do you have a last message? I’ll write it down. Tell people. She said yeah, she said no matter what you feel. God is with you. Put yourself in your Masters arms.

93. 49:53

    God is real. Tim taught me the truth and now I can live forever. What I love about her language is is so childlike. It sounds like the Pure Heart of a little child and I think in many ways she had to survive, she ended bypass the weight of her her aging, and her adulthood and are infirmities and narrow down to whatever happiness she could. She could see life through in the eyes of a little girl, and now I can live forever.

94. 50:29

    Before she died. She wrote Our Ecclesia a letter. And this is a particular interest to us because of the things that stood out to her as being important in her connection to christadelphians and to the Ecclesia, those of us who maybe take the Ecclesia for granted or we’ve lived in and all on lives, couldn’t possibly come up with the sort of realizations that she had by suddenly in her life being connected to people who for her. Were the the voice and the eyes and the hands of Jesus in her life, she felt his touch.

95. 51:08

    She saw his face and she heard his voice in the Ecclesia. This is what she said. She asked me to read this with the announcements one Sunday morning. My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ. This letter has been long and late in coming. But I can no longer remain quiet about the mercy and power of Yahweh or the rocks will indeed cry out.

96. 51:30

    I’ve heard it said that either. We see everything as a miracle or nothing as a miracle, I see miracles. Our Lives themselves are a miracle to yahweh’s ability to sustain us and to sustain us simultaneously. The continued presence of the Ecclesia on Earth is a miracle.

97. 51:53

    That the truth is still being preached and people are still answering, the call is a miracle. She’s going. What was she getting out there? The at this age of the Earth with the world at this level of ungodliness and the truth is still being preached and people are still answering to her is a miracle.

98. 52:12

    I’ve been up down and sometimes even sideways, but my faith in Yahweh, his Ecclesia and hope this. The men, he has given to lead and advise us. The men, he has given to lead an advisor us. Especially my hope in the Kingdom has never wavered. So what would produce a focus on the men of the Ecclesia that she had and I can tell you what that was.

99. 52:37

    She had known abusive men all her life. Man who saw her as an object, men who used her men who mistreated her broke her down. And when she met christadelphians, she met men who were gentlemen. who had genuine love for people who are in trouble, who would take their time and give it to her who, when they spoke sounded like, Jesus might be saying the same thing who when they shared the bread and the wine with her cried with her, she met men that took her seen so much to be like crazy.

100. 53:12

     We had a Rota in our khaleja. So brother after brother went to see her and George where they lived on certain Sundays. So she said that never wavered one Lord, One Faith. One baptism. Why did she say that she does that because since its Inception, the Norfolk Ecclesia has had a banner up front. That said that one Lord, One Faith. One baptism.

101. 53:36

     It’s up on our Podium now in Gold letters and she saw that in the few times that she was able to come to meeting with us. So that stood out to her as something that the Ecclesia is about. But when she said one hope, One Faith. One baptism. Was there not was that not full and Rich with substance and meaning the kind of substance you and I both know is embodied in those words but maybe seldom think about in the way that she’s using them here. When she says God’s word stand on stands on its own. And you have had the blessing to have found it. So cherish the truth and cherish, the Ecclesia. I wish I was there among you in my heart. I am keep the one hope clearly in your sight. Our Lord’s return is imminent.

102. 54:29

     May we all be found worthy to enter in come Lord. Jesus sister Dawn, you Zack. So that was the end of her story. She’s now asleep in Christ, she has No pain for. He gives his beloved sleep.

103. 54:47

     There’s no feeling in it but it’s not unlike Bliss. It’s a blissful State because it’s weightless. It’s painless, it has no knowledge of the sufferings of the world or depressed personal depression to be associated with you just sleeping. Waiting to wake up for. He gives his beloved sleep. So I said the story doesn’t end there because there is recovery in the kingdom and all that would be meaningless without the substance of what we understand lies before us in the kingdom of God.

104. 55:20

     Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then the lame. Shall leap like a deer or like a heart. This is a picture of a hard. It’s a young deer and the tongue of the dumb shall sing or something. So amazing to me about this picture because that, that heart, I’d love to see an animation a movie of it.

105. 55:41

     But that heart seems to be weightless, not bound to gravity full of strength and energy. And it’s just captured perfectly in this picture. Speaking of Israel for thus, said, the Lord says the Lord behold, I will extend peace to her like a river and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream. Then you shall suck.

106. 56:03

     You shall be borne upon her sides and be dandled upon her knees as one whom his mother Comforts. So I will comfort. You, you shall be comforted In Jerusalem. So the whole concept of this city of Peace in the city of the great king and the Throne of David and the return of Christ to establish that throne.

107. 56:24

     And this throng of people who once suffered standing around in the in praise and honor and power and glory to his name, is this picture of comfort and Jerusalem is fill in our hearts. There’s almost no detail left out because God has already via revealed to the mouse of his servants. The prophets, what he intends to do in that day when he comes and is with us, He saves us. You shall be comforted in Jerusalem, right now, is just what we know, it comes in the form of knowledge. This particular passage means a lot to me because when I was 17 having my own little trial of adolescence and I found peace in baptism and I found peace In this passage, which I converted to a song that my sister wife sang with me for years in our youth, we sang This Together, O Lord, my heart is not. Up, my eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great, and too marvelous for me, But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child quieted at its mother’s breast, like a child quiet. He’s my soul, really, beautiful picture, a future, that is. And when you see this, when you see it with your eyes, your heart will rejoice and your bones will flourish like an herb.

108. 57:52

     Fifty years before, the time of part of the time with us, when I was in college, my mother had a way of sitting with her hands folded. One over another and in her lap and her hands were the hands of service. All my life. Everyone that knew my mother knew that those hands symbolized service.

109. 58:15

     And so I said, Mom can I can I just draw your hands? Thank you. I really just want to capture that. That gesture that I think is so beautiful in your hand. So, she sat down. She had her robe on and let me draw her hands. And that was when I was when she was 44 years old.

110. 58:34

     I was in college, then when she was 94, 50 years later, fast forward, and she was dying. She was sitting in her chair, she had her little arm alarm. Watch on. And I looked at her hands and I saw what I had drawn so many years earlier But now, in a state of having borne all the weight of mortality throughout her life and I took a picture of them to relate the two, which I’m now doing.

111. 59:01

     And I have the pleasure of doing in this series, means a little bit more to me than perhaps it would to you. But think of all that and everything we thought of, and this verse strengthen, the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. Because what Don would think, if she read that, how that would enable her to manage her discomfort with strength and what a comfort it would be to her say to those who are fearful hearted be strong and do not appear, behold your God, will come with vengeance with the recompense of God and he will come and save you.

112. 59:37

     The Hilton as an Earnest when he was here, he couldn’t save the world. Then, I know he wanted to I think that was the nature of his prayer and disseminate when he said, let this cup pass from me somehow or another, that must have meant if we can just bring in peace and salvation in the blessing of the nation’s. Now, isn’t it enough as the suffering of the world gone on long enough.

113. 1:00:00

     Now, for us to do it now, nevertheless possibly with that, thought he says not my will but thine Done. So, his Fame spread throughout all Syria, because he wanted to do what little he could do in that day. And they brought him all the sick, those Afflicted with various diseases, and pains those oppressed by demons having seizures, and paralytics. And he healed them.

114. 1:00:22

     Every one of them, when the sun was setting, all those who had any who had were sick, and were buried with various diseases, brought them to him. And he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them and healed them all, when I was a teenager and I would run across this in the rare.

115. 1:00:38

     Things wherever it appeared in the gospel and many followed him, and he healed them all for some reason. It made me cry. Every time I read, it still does actually because the concept of God sending his son to the Earth. Finally, finally, in that day of his appearing. That wonderful day when god reigns down righteousness, and peace on this Earth and he heals all of the people in the world, And you and I will see it with our eyes and we’ll be there with our hands to touch them and heal them like he did. There’s so much in that that he healed them all. So, in the resurrection of what we hope for, what, Don hopes, for now we’re raised in incorruption. That means unending.

116. 1:01:28

     Existence, that’s the specific meaning of the word corruption in that passage air resistance. Will never end because will now be have the righteousness of God, driving our character and matched with perfect bodily health and unending existence in mortality Will be sown in dishonor but raised in honor with with and praise. And what we know is that we are assembled around the throne is seven, spirits of fire.

117. 1:01:55

     Giving all the praise to Christ who’s now in throne and is his mission has been fulfilled with respect to this marriage to his bride. What we get from him He puts us like a crown on his head. He says you’re the jewels in my crown. In that day, when I make up my Jewels, you are my Jewels, God said, and Alucard.

118. 1:02:24

     And we are praising him and he gives us the praise. Of a groom for his bride was all throughout the song. Isn’t it song Solomon? So we’re selling and weakness but raised in power and that power means miraculous abilities and miraculous abilities. For us means that the comfort that we Now understand in full from the tribulation, we suffered in our mortal lives, we can bring to the nation’s not just to the Ecclesia, not to those one or two people around us who need our help. But to the nation’s, to the starving millions in Africa, to the the, the pathetic abused in families, where there were selfish fathers and ignorant, To all the people of the world who in war-torn countries impoverished and starving and full of anxiety and stress and perplexity of Nations and Al miraculous abilities will be there. Multiplying the hands and garments of Christ by thousands upon thousands throughout the world. He looked from its miseries sown a natural body, but raised a spiritual body and this may be the best of all on a personal level, no longer with the weight of sin and death in our members. And all of us know what that weight is not even able to be tempted anymore.

119. 1:03:43

     God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and once again I’m thinking like we read this a lot but now in this focus and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain for the former things are passed away.