Back in 1921, a missionary couple named David and Svea Flood went with their two-year-old son from Sweden to the heart of Africa—to what was then called the Belgian Congo. They met up with another young Scandinavian couple, the Ericksons, and the four of them sought God for direction. In those days of much tenderness and devotion and sacrifice, they felt led of the Lord to go out from the main mission station and take the gospel to a remote area.

This was a huge step of faith. At the village of N’dolera they were rebuffed by the chief, who would not let them enter his town for fear of alienating the local gods. The two couples opted to go half a mile up the slope and build their own mud huts.

They prayed for a spiritual breakthrough, but there was none. The only contact with the villagers was a young boy, who was allowed to sell them chickens and eggs twice a week. Svea Flood—a tiny woman of only four feet, eight inches tall—decided that if this was the only African she could talk to, she would try to lead the boy to Jesus. And in fact, she succeeded.

But there were no other encouragements. Meanwhile, malaria continued to strike one member of the little band after another. In time the Ericksons decided they had had enough suffering and left to return to the central mission station. David and Svea Flood remained near N’dolera to go on alone.

Then, of all things, Svea found herself pregnant in the middle of the primitive wilderness. When the time came for her to give birth, the village chief softened enough to allow a midwife to help her. A little girl was born, whom they named Aina.

The delivery, however, was exhausting, and Svea Flood was already weak from bouts of malaria. The birth process was a heavy blow to her stamina. She lasted only another seventeen days.

Inside David Flood, something snapped in that moment. He dug a crude grave, buried his twenty-seven-year-old wife, and then took his children back down the mountain to the mission station. Giving his newborn daughter to the Ericksons, he snarled, “I’m going back to Sweden. I’ve lost my wife, and I obviously can’t take care of this baby. God has ruined my life.” With that, he headed for the port, rejecting not only his calling, but God himself.

Within eight months both the Ericksons were stricken with a mysterious malady and died within days of each other. The baby was then turned over to some American missionaries, who adjusted her Swedish name to “Aggie” and eventually brought her back to the United States at age three.

This family loved the little girl and was afraid that if they tried to return to Africa, some legal obstacle might separate her from them. So they decided to stay in their home country and switch from missionary work to pastoral ministry. And that is how Aggie grew up in South Dakota. As a young woman, she attended North Central Bible college in Minneapolis. There she met and married a young man named Dewey Hurst.

Years passed. The Hursts enjoyed a fruitful ministry. Aggie gave birth first to a daughter, then a son. In time her husband became president of a Christian college in the Seattle area, and Aggie was intrigued to find so much Scandinavian heritage there.

One day a Swedish religious magazine appeared in her mailbox. She had no idea who had sent it, and of course, she couldn’t read the words. But as she turned the pages, all of a sudden a photo stopped her cold. There in a primitive setting was a grave with a white cross-and on the cross were the words SVEA FLOOD.

Aggie jumped in her car and went straight to a college faculty member who, she knew, could translate the article. “What does this say?” she demanded.

The instructor summarized the story: It was about missionaries who had come to N’dolera long ago…the birth of a white baby…the death of the young mother…the one little African boy who had been led to Christ…and how, after the whites had all left, the boy had grown up and finally persuaded the chief to let him build a school in the village. The article said that gradually he won all his students to Christ…the children led their parents to Christ…even the chief had become a Christian. Today there were six hundred Christian believers in that one village…

All because of the sacrifice of David and Svea Flood.

For the Hursts’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the college presented them with the gift of a vacation to Sweden. There Aggie sought to find her real father. An old man now, David Flood had remarried, fathered four more children, and generally dissipated his life with alcohol. He had recently suffered a stroke. Still bitter, he had one rule in his family: “Never mention the name of God-because God took everything from me.”

After an emotional reunion with her half brothers and half sister, Aggie brought up the subject of seeing her father. The others hesitated. “You can talk to him,” they replied, “even though he’s very ill now. But you need to know that whenever he hears the name of God, he flies into a rage.”

Aggie was not to be deterred. She walked into the squalid apartment, with liquor bottles everywhere, and approached the seventy-three-year-old man lying in a rumpled bed.

“Papa?” she said tentatively.

He turned and began to cry. “Aina,” he said, “I never meant to give you away.”

“It’s all right Papa,” she replied, taking him gently in her arms. “God took care of me.”

The man instantly stiffened. The tears stopped.

“God forgot all of us. Our lives have been like this because of Him.” He turned his face back to the wall.

Aggie stroked his face and then continued, undaunted.

“Papa, I’ve got a little story to tell you, and it’s a true one. You didn’t go to Africa in vain. Mama didn’t die in vain. The little boy you won to the Lord grew up to win that whole village to Jesus Christ. The one seed you planted just kept growing and growing. Today there are six hundred African people serving the Lord because you were faithful to the call of God in your life…

“Papa, Jesus loves you. He has never hated you.”

The old man turned back to look into his daughter’s eyes. His body relaxed. He began to talk. And by the end of the afternoon, he had come back to the God he had resented for so many decades.

Over the next few days, father and daughter enjoyed warm moments together. Aggie and her husband soon had to return to America—and within a few weeks, David Flood had gone into eternity.

A few years later, the Hursts were attending a high-level evangelism conference in London, England, where a report was given from the nation of Zaire (the former Belgian Congo). The superintendent of the national church, representing some 110,000 baptized believers, spoke eloquently of the gospel’s spread in his nation. Aggie could not help going to ask him afterward if he had ever heard of David and Svea Flood.

“Yes, madam,” the man replied in French, his words then being translated into English. “It was Svea Flood who led me to Jesus Christ. I was the boy who brought food to your parents before you were born. In fact, to this day your mother’s grave and her memory are honored by all of us.”

He embraced her in a long, sobbing hug. Then he continued, “You must come to Africa to see, because your mother is the most famous person in our history.”

In time that is exactly what Aggie Hurst and her husband did. They were welcomed by cheering throngs of villagers. She even met the man who had been hired by her father many years before to carry her back down the mountain in a hammock-cradle.

The most dramatic moment, of course, was when the pastor escorted Aggie to see her mother’s white cross for herself. She knelt in the soil to pray and give thanks. Later that day, in the church, the pastor read from John 12:24: “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” He then followed with Psalm 126:5: “Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.”

This is an excerpt from Aggie Hurst, Aggie: The Inspiring Story of A Girl Without A Country Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1986.

Forsake not the assembling together …as you see the day approaching.

The good old days are not coming back. However, Jesus IS.  His return for His Church is imminent. We are now a bit past the end of the sixth day, 6000 years since Adam was created. The rapture and the seven-year Tribulation period are imminently upon us. The New World Order’s brief kingdom and lasting infamy have been thoroughly prepared and ready to descend upon this unsuspecting generation.

A couple of articles ago, I mentioned that a digital currency is being rolled out this year. We all noticed the recent bank failure in the last couple of days in California as well as the news that other banks could fail as well. Certainly, a designed failure of the banking and currency system is required to coerce people into using their new digital currency. This will bring about the New World Order  Beast system. Are you watching?

By all evidence, the jab, the required shot will soon become the mark of the beast. Without the shot that also gets you ID Chipped, those left behind after the rapture will not be able to buy or sell in the new digital money system. If you cannot wave your chipped hand over the scanning machine at the checkout, you cannot access your digital account. You cannot buy or sell unless you swear allegiance to the AntiChrist as God.  Your digital account will be cancelled. You and your family will be hungry,  homeless and hunted.  So, don’t miss the rapture!

So no, writing your congressmen will avail you nothing. Most of them have already been clued in and are on what they see as the winning side.  Protesting in the street will merely identify you as those troublemakers to be refused access to this brave new world.

All of the tech to implement this new system is already in place. The Patriot Act era year 2000  gives these plotters the quasi-legal authority to do whatever they want. “They” have been planning for this day for generations. Those elderly among their top leadership just cannot wait any longer. Their natural time has about run out. They all are heavily deluded that they will become immortal gods and will live forever once this New Age of digital cyborgs begins to replace the elite of the human race.

The next step in their plan is to spread another man-made enhanced virus and then bring out their new treatment plan that will also have the tracking chip.  This device looks similar to a one-inch square band aide. However, it has tiny barbed hooks on the underside which secure the patch onto the person, giving them their daily dose of this “faux vaccine.”

As it says in the Bible, this “mark” is both On and In the right hand or forehead!  Why this location? Because only these two locations are always exposed to the air. This heat difference exposure between the body and the outside air is necessary to power the tiny chip thus embedded in the back of the hand or forehead.  Think of this device as the microprocessor chip in your computer. This is the beginning of making people into cyborgs.

Once the person’s body has been altered by this gene editing biological software, a person is no longer completely human, they can no longer be saved by Jesus’ shed blood. Remember how that Noah was the only person left whose genetic makeup was still completely human? That had been and now still is the goal of the demon indwelt people.  This thought should make you gasp and your blood run cold when the reality of this situation sinks in.

This device was first announced a few months ago and is in human trials today.

Why is today the day; the last final days, weeks or months before the rapture of the church and the AntiChrist’s kingdom? I’m glad you asked that question.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQsoScAALlg]

As I alluded to at the beginning of this article, we are at or even a bit past six thousand years from Adam.  There are only seven days or seven thousand years in God’s plan for mankind.  Abraham came at the end of the second day, era two thousand years after creation and two thousand years before Jesus.  Jesus came at the end of the fourth day.  Jesus will come back at the end of the sixth day, and reign in the millennial kingdom on the seventh day, the Millennial Kingdom.

The sixth day may have already ended, and we may be in double overtime!  Our ancient calendar is not exact. J Jesus died in the year thirty AD. The year 2030 will be two thousand years from then.  The context of  Jesus’ comment in Matthew Ch 24 about “no man knows the day nor the hour”  was concerning the exact day of His second coming,.

However, No, we really do not know exactly the day Jesus will be coming for us in the rapture.  He did say, however, that we are to watch faithfully.  Revelation chapter three states that while the world will be surprised, we the faithful watchers will not be surprised, we will know when He is coming. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees that they could discern the weather, but were blind that they could not see His coming. Even so, everything around us shouts that Jesus coming is IMMINENT.

Why we are the final generation

Ezekiel chapter thirty-six God is telling the land that was long desolate that He would bring His Hebrew people back to the land after centuries in exile. Ezekiel chapter thirty-seven tells The Hebrew people that He would bring them back to His land Israel.  In Ezekiel, chapter four, verses four to six, He tells His people they would be chastised 430 years because of their sins. The chastisement began in 606 BC.

In Leviticus chapter twenty-six, God also states that “if, after a time of chastisement my people do not repent, I will multiply the chastisement seven times.” After returning from Babylon captivity, the Hebrew people did not repent.  So now the 360 years of chastisement left after Babylon was multiplied by seven times.

This resulted in 2520 Hebrew years of chastisement, and also dispersal into the nations a generation after they killed their Messiah. This was a total of 907,200 days.  In God’s provision, the Hebrews re-established their nation In Israel 907,201 days after the return from Babylon. This was May 14^th, 1948.

How long is it from 1948 to the end of the sixth day from Adam? Somewhere around fifty years, How long is a generation? Biblically, Psalm 90:10 says between seventy to eighty years at the most. So, therefore, the second coming should be somewhere around eighty years after 1948, or about 2030.  Our Rapture should be seven years before that. So yes, we should be very close…  Are you paying attention?  Are you faithfully witnessing to all the lost people around us?

There are different levels of rewards or status in heaven. Our rewards in heaven depend upon our faithful works down here in our generation.

Daniel 12:3 KJV: And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever

© 2023 Lewis Brackett – All Rights Reserved

Jonathan Edwards had written a sermon that he felt would make an impact upon his church. He promised God that he would keep an absolute fast (no water) for three days before preaching the sermon. He spent His time praying for God’s power upon the sermon.

At approximately four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, two hours from ending his fast, Jonathan Edwards began to choke and gag. He knew he couldn’t preach, and he felt he would die from choking. So he violated his fast and drank water.

That night he was a broken man as he ascended the steps to the pulpit. He was devastated in his lack of self-discipline to carry the fast through until sundown. Holding a kerosene lamp in one hand and the sermon in the other, he read Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God. And the Spirit of God poured forth on his listeners, so much so, that they grabbed the post of the church, thinking they were slipping into hell.

That sermon began the First Great Awakening and revival swept through the 13 colonies. It wasn’t the fast that God had used, God anointed the brokenness of Jonathan Edwards so that one sermon touched Colonial America.

His famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was taken from Deuteronomy 32:35:

To Me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

He preached this sermon with power from on high, and Eleazer Wheelock who was with Edwards, reported that before Edwards was done, these “thoughtless” people were “bowed down with an awful conviction of the sin and danger.” The people were consumed with conviction as the Holy Spirit revealed their hearts to them. Knowing the terror of the Lord” (a thing seemingly forgotten in our day both by pulpit and pew)” Edwards smoldered with holy wrath. Impervious to any consequences of such severity, he thundered these words from his pulpit:

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and His arrows made ready upon the string. Justice points the arrow at your heart and strings the bow. It is nothing but mere pleasure of God (and that of an angry God without any promise or obligation at all) that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.

To utter truth like that with tears and tenderness takes an anointed and therefore fearless and compassionate man.

But in the hearts and minds of the hearers, there must also have been some prevenient grace at work. Apart from this, men would have rebelled at this stern sweep of power on their souls. As it was, before Edwards’ spiritual hurricane, the crowd collapsed. Some fell to the earth as if pole-axed. Others, with heads bowed, clung onto the posts of the temple as if afraid of failing into the nethermost depths of hell.

As pastor of one of New England’s largest, wealthiest, and most socially-conscious congregations, Edwards had a rare perception of the needs of his flock. He also had a heart of great tenderness for spiritual health. Let’s go to the woods where Edwards is alone with his God. Let’s creep up behind that old gnarled tree and listen to his broken prayer:

I have had very affecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness; very frequently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together; so that I have often been forced to shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater sense of my wickedness, and the badness of my heart, than ever I had before my conversion….

I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be than heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. Very often, for these many years, these expressions are in my mind, and in my mouth, Infinite upon infinite….Infinite upon infinite!” When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell.

I have greatly longed of late for a broken heart, and to lie low before God…it is affecting to think how ignorant I was, when a young Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy and deceit, left in my heart.

In one of the revivals, Edwards recognized a certain amount of deception among some of the people, an action that would grow as the revival did. He made it very clear that with the acceptance of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit, a life ought to be quite changed.

If a person confessed Christ but continued unabated in sinful ways, Edwards was apt to note that as a false confession and would not count the person among the number saved.

To him, as it is written in James, there had to be outward signs of a changed life from inward salvation. The work of the Holy Spirit went beyond convicting the sinner of the need for repentance and Christ. Edwards wrote that:

For the people, it was a “dreadful thing” to think of being outside of Christ when hell awaited them daily.

The Spirit also burrowed into the hearts of believers. An example of the powerful work of the Holy Spirit is the story of an elderly woman in her 70s, who had spent most of her adult life under the solid teaching of Solomon Stoddard. Reading about Christ’s suffering for sinners; she seemed to see it for the first time. She wondered how Stoddard could have missed such a wonderful concept, and then realized she had heard him many times.

She understood how ungrateful she had been to sin against God and such a loving Savior, even though everyone vouched for her as one of the pious and good women in the town. But she was so overcome with the conviction in her heart through the Holy Spirit that her family thought she was dying.

The revival reached its peak in April 1735. Edwards recorded an average of four conversions daily during this portion of time. Entire families were saved, and at least as many more repented of backsliding and committed themselves anew to the Lord.

Edwards wrote the book A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in response to the requests for more information. The book made it into the hands of two elderly men of God in London, who re-published it there, in what was practically the capital of the world at that time.

Publishing the Narrative was a fateful decision, for God would use it as a spark for His Spirit elsewhere. With that London publication, events in New England gained worldwide attention.

Iain H. Murray wrote:

It was possibly the most significant book to precede the great evangelical awakening on both sides of the Atlantic.

The book went through twenty printings and influenced groups of men who desired just such an act of God—including John Wesley, who wrote of it in his journal, and George Whitefield, who would put feet to his faith.

Space and time forbid writing more about this flaming revivalist. The question is: Lord, what will it take to break me?

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is acknowledged to have played a role in one of America’s First Great Awakening and he experienced the first revival in 1733-1735. He is also known to be one of America’s greatest intellectuals and philosophical theologians. He wrote many books including The Life and Times of David Brainerd, which continues to be published today and which has inspired thousands of missionaries and generations of believers.

It has been reported by one historian that in the larger world of the rapidly growing colonies, the church of Jesus Christ was already well into spiritual decline. It was nothing like modern America, of course, but gone were the days of tightly knit bands of fervent believers who were seeking refuge from English persecution. More and more, immigrants were coming for the economic hopes of fertile and cheap land, and less for their unconditional devotion to Christ.

Most people in a colonial town such as East Windsor were church members, often attending every Sunday morning and going through the rituals. But a decreasing percentage had Christ in their hearts. For them, the church was more traditional than being part of the body of Jesus. And the more people who immigrated from Europe, not from persecution, the more the churches were diluted of committed Christians…… They could still give correct answers to the catechism, but their hearts were fixed not on God, but on land and trade. The decline naturally manifested itself in community life, also.

The Puritan ways had all but disappeared and were increasingly being mocked. Many pastors saw this trend and the problem, but they did agree on the solution: the power of God to revive the spirits of the people, starting with their spiritual leaders. We have to understand that the only religion in those days was always referred to as Christianity. There was no other. And therefore, for this pouring out of the Holy Spirit, Jonathan Edwards and many others prayed diligently.

E.M. Bounds in his book Weapons of Prayer writes:

Jonathan Edwards must be placed among the praying saints—one who God mightily used through the instrumentality of prayer. As in the instance of the great New Englander, purity of heart should be ingrained in the foundation areas of every man who is a true leader of his fellows and a minister of the Gospel of Christ and constant practice in the holy office of prayer.

A sample of the utterances of this mighty man of God is here given in the shape of a resolution which he formed, and wrote down:

Resolved to exercise myself in this all my life long, with the greatest openness to declare my ways to God, and to lay my soul open to God—all my sins, temptations, difficulties, sorrows, fears, hopes, desires, and everything and every circumstance. We are not surprised, therefore, that the result of such impassioned and honest praying was to lead him to record in his diary: It was my continual strife day and night, and my constant inquiry how I should be more holy, and live more holily.

The heaven I desired was a heaven of holiness. I went on with my eager pursuit of more holiness and conformity to Christ. The character and work of Jonathan Edwards were exemplifications of the great truth that the ministry of prayer is the efficient agency in every truly God-ordered work and life. He himself gives some particulars about his life when he was a boy. He might as well be called the “Isaiah of the Christian dispensation.

There was united in him great mental powers, ardent piety, and devotion to study, unequalled save by his devotion to God. Here is what he says about himself:

As a boy, I used to pray five times a day in secret and spend much time in religious conversation with other boys.I used to meet with them to pray together. So, it is God’s will through his wonderful grace, that the prayers of his saints should be one great and principal means of carrying on the designs of Christ’s kingdom.

Pray much for the ministers and the church of God. The great powers of Edward’s mind and heart were exercised to procure an agreed union in the extraordinary prayer of God’s people everywhere. His life, efforts and character are exemplification of his statement:

The heaven I desire is a heaven spent with God; an eternity spent in the presence of divine love, and in holy communion with Christ.

At another time he said:

The soul of a true Christian appears like a little white flower in the spring of the year, low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasing beams of the sun’s glory, rejoicing as it were in a calm rapture, diffusing around a sweet fragrance, standing peacefully and lovingly in the midst of other flowers.

Again he writes:

Once I rode out in the woods for my health, having alighted from my horse on a retired place, as my manner has been to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God as Mediator between God and man, and of His wonderful, great, full, pure, and sweet grace and love. And His meek and gentle condescension. This grace that seemed so calm and sweet appeared also great among the heavens.

The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception, which continued, as near as I can judge, for about an hour. It kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated, to lie in the dust to be full of Christ alone, to love Him with my whole heart.

As it was with Jonathan Edwards, so it is with all great intercessors. They come into that holy and elect mind and heart by a thorough self-dedication to God, by periods of God’s revelation to them, making distinctly marked eras in their spiritual history, ears never to be forgotten, in which faith mounts up with wings as eagles, and has given it a new and fuller vision of God, a stronger grasp of faith, a sweeter, clearer vision of all things heavenly and eternal, and a blessed intimacy with, and access to God.

Here is a conscience summary of the Edwards from the pen of Leonard Ravenhill:

Jonathan Edwards achieved greatness as an American preacher-evangelist, principal of a college, mystic, and revivalist. For us to see Jonathan Edwards ascend his pulpit today, a candle in one hand and his sermon manuscript in the other would cause a titter in the congregation. His tongue must have been like a sharp two-edged sword to his attentive hearers. His words must have been as painful to their hearts and consciences as burning metal on flesh. Nevertheless, men gave heed, repented, and were saved.

A thin crust, a very thin crust of morality, it seems to me, keeps America from complete collapse. In this perilous hour we need a whole generation of preachers like Edwards. ‘Oh Lord of hosts, turn us again; cause Thy face to shine upon us, and we shall be saved.’

Contrast this great man of God with his contemporary. This again is from Ravenhill in his book Sodom Had No Bible:

There was an atheist named Max Jukes and a godly man named Jonathan Edwards. Max Jukes, the atheist, lived a godless life. He married an ungodly girl, and from the union there were 310 who died as paupers, 150 were criminals, 7 were murderers, 100 drunkards, and more than half of the women were prostitutes. His 540 descendants cost the State one and quarter million dollars. But, praise the Lord it works both ways! There is a record of a great American man of God, Jonathan Edwards. He lived at the same time as Max Jukes, but he married a godly girl. An investigation was made of 1,394 known descendants of Jonathan Edwards of which 13 became college presidents, 65 college professors, 3 United States senators, 30 judges, 100 lawyers, 60 physicians, 75 army and navy officers, 100 preachers and missionaries, 60 authors of prominence, one vice-president of the United States, 80 became public officials in other capacities, 295 college graduates, among whom were governors of states and ministers to foreign countries. His descendants did not cost the state a single penny.

The Bible says: “The memory of the uncompromisingly righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked shall rot” (Proverbs 10:7 AMP).