Here in Nashville, we're in the middle of a VERY rainy week. This certainly provides GREAT reminders as to how BLESSED we are for even the roofs over our heads. The steady rain also conjures up memories of Gwen's "Legend to the Treasure" Series Videos, Audios, Writings, and Lessons. The "nautical" theme she used to teach those seminar lessons are SO FULL of WISDOM and TRUTH! Today seems like a great day to print one of those devotional posts...as the rain falls here and we count our BLESSINGS, remembering that GOD is GOD...and we are NOT.“He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.” - Genesis 8:10-12
The peace dove, the ancient symbol that has been used by all nations and religions, represents the greatest storm on earth, and it is God’s greatest war on mankind. Man had started the war by fighting against God and His laws. There was almost no one on earth who was not fighting against God. This was God’s answer to sin. The worldwide flood that unleashed all sources of water and covered the entire world was God’s response to rebellion. This mammoth historical event was never meant to be relegated to children’s Bible storybooks or to preschool Sunday school lessons. But God, in His mercy, has allowed this ignored event and symbol to be preserved all these centuries—lost and waiting, but not forgotten.
First of all, this story is a dreadful one with a higher death toll than all other disasters put together. Try to imagine being on top of a mountain with thousands of people watching the water rise to drown all men, women and children. This story symbolizes the destruction of the evil and the sparing of the righteous few. This flood represents the baptism of sin—the burying of sin and rebellion to God. This ark represents the salvation of the righteous.
This dove did not come quickly after the 40 days of flood waters that hushed all life on earth. Only after months of the quieting of rebellion on earth did God decide to make peace again with mankind. In fact, it was approximately eleven months after the water receded. God clearly demonstrated peace with man only when sinful men died in the ocean and were gone from the earth. At this point, His anger subsided. The peace dove came with the resolution of God’s anger. When sin is eradicated, the peace dove appears.
Man is looking for peace with man, but the only peace that counts is no sin before God. That is a far cry from the simple-minded, uneducated peace dove symbol that refers to the disarming of nuclear arms or the absence of war or man-versus-man violence. Man grants Nobel Peace Prizes for the wrong peace, but the truth is that Jesus is the Prince of peace, and He never got a Nobel Peace Prize. I will never get an award either from any man on this earth for promoting the only peace that counts—eradication of rebellion to God."
END OF GWEN'S DEVOTIONAL
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Finally, it indeed is a SHAME that the world does not know this peace. May we HEED these words and put them into PRACTICE in our own lives.
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