July 20, 2020 – Click here to listen
Saturday my daughter-in-law got a call from one of my former employees. She wanted my wife’s number and acted really upset. She was calling on behalf of my good friend and Pastor of the church our family attended for many years when I lived in Atlanta. She said she was now working as his administrative assistant and was very sorry about the “circumstances” concerning me and said she needed my wife’s phone number because he wanted to talk with her. My son, daughter-in-law, and twin granddaughters had all been to their mountain home retreat in North Carolina. Phone reception is not the greatest up there and she was really worried that something bad had happened and that perhaps my wife had tried to reach them and couldn’t.
So Saturday my Pastor friend called my wife and expressed his condolences to her. He told her that he’d heard that I died last Wednesday. My wife had no idea what was going on and told him that she didn’t know what he was talking about, but I was indeed alive. In fact I was sitting in my office.
He wanted to talk to me and when I got on the phone the first thing he said was, “as Mark Twin once said, it appears that “the rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.” By now our daughter in law called and wanted to know what was going on and my wife related the story to her. She was relieved as was my good friend.
So who made up this story? Our pastor heard it from my wife’s Bible study teacher of fifteen years in Atlanta. I assume the rumor started somewhere else and worked its way up to her and might have been changed a dozen or more times. I related to my pastor friend that while there might be some that wish that was the case, I was indeed alive and well and feeling great. We had a good laugh about it.
It was an interesting experience. It reminds me of an incident that occurred several years ago. A local store owner whose store was down the road from Honey Lake told me that someone stopped in his store and told him that I was a reclusive billionaire and flew back and forth to my plantation on a helicopter. He said that I was getting ready to build 2000 homes for low income people and it would ruin property values.
I have never been a billionaire, or owned, leased, or ridden in a helicopter to my plantation. I had never so much as thought of developing my land. In other words it was all a fabrication of someone with a very active mind.
This reminds me of what we see on the internet. Whether Democrat, Republican, or independent, fake news is so commonplace we don’t have a clue what is a lie and what is the truth. I’ve had hundreds of articles written about my business success and overcoming obstacles and not a one of them got the story right.
Aren’t you glad that the Bible has remained the same? It will never change nor will Almighty God and He cannot and will not ever lie. Every Sunday I watch a couple of Billy Graham sermons. I love to hear him preach. Today’s preachers don’t even come close to delivering messages like he did. One of his sermons was addressing the issue of how scientists constantly try to prove that God does not exist. Scientifically they cannot do so, but neither can Christians prove that He does exist. He then said that science or no science he can feel the peace, joy, and love of Christ and he has hope in a lost world that would otherwise be impossible to obtain.
This really hit home with me. There are many false prophets, atheists, agnostics, and folks who claim to be Christians who are as lost as the vilest sinner on the planet. I once was an atheist to the extreme and a hopeless derelict with no peace, joy, love, or hope, but God transformed my life and gave me all of those gifts. I named my autobiography Miracle on Luckie Street because it was a miracle that I even survived much less thrived. The disciples of Jesus experienced the same thing, being transformed from sniveling cowards before His crucifixion to bold ambassadors for Christ after His resurrection. All of them willingly were martyred for His namesake. The Apostle Paul was also transformed from a Christian hating murderer to perhaps the greatest preacher whoever lived. There are so many who have been touched by Jesus. We may not can see it empirically, but like the tide going out we can feel the pull . . .
Don’t believe the lies of Satan. Jesus loves you and wants to bless you as never before. I can testify to that truth as millions of others all over the world can. Try it for 90 days; if you don’t like it, God will refund your misery and welcome you back to the corruption and lies of the ever-changing world.
Numbers 23:19
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.