VIEW FROM OUR KITCHEN WINDOW

Is there any doubt that our God does all things well? Check out those four maple trees in our neighbor's front yard. He planted them 19 years ago; they are the "Flaming Red" variety... and don't they flame? Thanks, Mr. Les, for sharing them with the neighborhood. And thanks, Lord, for thinking up maple trees. That Elohim (the Creator God) does an amazing job with rich colors and intricate detail!

Each season is my most favorite, but I do like

fall. If you look closely out our window, maybe you can tell that we had our first frost on the punkin' last night.

The colors of fall are my decorating palette...I love the brick red and orange and spice tones. And I found some lovely half-off fake veggies at Hobby Lobby to make a door wreath. Just call us seasonally appropriate.

I have a personal reason for loving fall - my grandmother LOVED fall and waited for this

tree beside her house to turn every year. I wish

she could see these beautiful red maples in NW

Arkansas. I wonder if "Miss Bessie" ever got this far north in her lifetime. My grandmother grew up, married, and lived all her life in Des Arc, Arkansas. She never owned a car, but walked everywhere. She was a second grade teacher for 32 years in the SAME classroom. Wait! Well...

duh! Grandmother IS seeing way more glorious scenery where she is. Ah, can it be?

And speaking of seasons and heaven, I spent all

day yesterday and today working on a Bible study. I couldn't put it down. Mike is hunting and that gave me a pass to go AWOL. I am struck with the Feasts of Israel and how God uses them to speak to the world. What could be more easily understood than hanging a sign in the sky? Everyone could see it...if they just knew what they were seeing...

Here are some things I picked up in the study:

1. When I hear "Feasts of Israel", I think of Golden Corral. But did you know that the Hebrew for that word "feast" has nothing to do with food? Back in Genesis 1:14, Elohim said "let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for SEASONS ("mo'ed") and for days and years." So God calendars by these lights He hung. And the "seasons" are His festivals.

2. That word for season ("mo'ed") is also the word for "assembly or gathering or a set time or appointment. And it also can be translated "feast". So these seasonal gatherings that the Lord sprinkled on the calendar were put there to declare His glory and to "rehearse" His two great appointments on His daytimer (the Biblical calendar). I heard a Messianic pastor say it was much better to hang a sign in the heavens than to hang a signal lantern ("one if by land, two if by sea").

3. The Jewish Feast Days don't exactly belong exclusively to Israel. In Scripture they are known as "Jehovah's Feasts". So they actually belong to the church as well. But not many in the church know about them. They will get interested, though, when they see how related the feasts are to prophecy and Christ's return. We can mark time in our calendars by the sun (the Gregorian calendar) and moon (Israel's calendar). Gentiles see solar eclipses as signs, but Israel notices lunar eclipses.

4. When you read Joel 2:31, Matthew 24:29, Mark 13:24, Luke 22:25, Revelation 6:12, and Acts 2:20...you hear repeated that a sign of Christ's coming will be cosmic upheaval and the moon turning blood red. You can see the picture above of the blood moon over the Temple Mount.

5. Did you know that you can go to NASA's website: http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEpubs/5MCSE.html

to find out about solar and lunar eclipses that are past/present/future? The earth, moon, and sun have to be lined up a certain way for a lunar eclipse to happen. This century there have been some, but the only string of four consecutive blood moons that actually fall on God's feast days (Passover in the spring and Succoth in the fall) have occurred when something was going on historically with Israel. Now isn't that interesting? There was a blood moon on Passover and Succoth in:

1493/1494 when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492

Then, nothing in the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries

1949/1950 after Israel became a nation in 1948

1967/1968 when Israel won the 6 Day War and took Jerusalem back

The next tetrad (four consecutive blood moons) that match Feast Days are scheduled for 2014/2015. Then, there are none for the next 500 years.

"Bless the Lord, O my soul. And let all that is within me bless His holy name." Psalm 103:1