I Believe in the Extraordinary







I Believe in the Overwhelming






I believe in the overwhelming.


I Believe in the Bizarre


Talking dogs are all the rage.  Well, if TV shows and cartoons are any indication, some dogs can talk.  I’ve heard of YouTube videos where dogs are supposed be talking and sometimes it seems like they are speaking English.  I think Mr. Ed’s voice was a human voice recorded to make it sound like a horse talking.  I’m being silly now, but when we think an animal talks, it is probably just the natural aspect of sounds and phonetics coming together to sound like words.  It happens when you listen to a recording backwards, sometimes the phonetics and sounds come together and sound like words (this is without purposeful back masking).

Do you believe that a donkey talked?  There was a bad prophet of God who believes that a donkey talked.  Balaam was a bad boy.  He liked money and Balak the king of Moab hired him to curse Israel.  God wouldn’t let him curse Israel, so whenever he spoke to curse, blessings from God came out of his mouth.  Of course this upset Balak, so Balaam didn’t get paid.

Numbers 22:21ff, record Balaam’s donkey talking to him.  In fact, he responded to Balaam angrily beating him for pinning his leg against a rock wall.  The donkey actually saved Balaam’s life, but what thanks did the donkey get, a beating.

Animals do not naturally speak in human language, but God, being all-powerful has the ability to make them talk if he so desires, Balaam’s donkey talks and makes a fool of Balaam, and Balaam was a greedy fool who helped Balak seduce Israel into sin and then Israel received the consequences for their sin.

I believe the bizarre because God does.


I Believe in the Fantastic


Phenomenon embraces this earth with so many fantastic natural circumstances that superstitious people believe the supernatural has happened.  Sometimes, something fantastic takes place and that is the simple fact of nature.  Phil Madeira in his book God on the Rocks, Distilling Religion, Savoring Faith (Jericho Books, New York, ©2013) tells about a time when he and his “southern woman” are sitting by a lake in springtime watching the sunset and a cross appears inside a circle formed by the susunn.  “…she and I, wondering at creation’s constant declaration of glory” (pages 20-21).  Fantastic things happen in natural circumstances.

But fantastic things happen at God’s supernatural hand.  He destroyed the world with a massive world-wide flood, and mixed up the languages at the tower of Babel, and so many things that are “wow!” to our weak human abilities.

Joshua 10:12-13 (and Habakkuk 3:11) records that the sun stood still for about a half a day at Joshua’s request so that Israel’s armies would have daylight to fight a battle to victory.  Hard to believe something that fantastic could or would happen.  Did it happen?  There is a false story that NASA discovered the missing day in their research but, even knowing about this famous tale did the sun stand still for a half a day and Joshua reports?

Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky’s book World’s in Collision addresses many wonders of the world as reported by ancient texts, religious and otherwise, among other natural events.  He has concluded that the record in Joshua 10 must be true because the effect of the sun standing still (or rather the earth failing to rotate for about 12, or 13 or 14 hours would be found in other histories of the time.  Guess what, there is world-wide evidence, dozens of cultures and places around the world confirm the Biblical record (Why the Sun Stood Still, Reader’s Digest, http://tmgnow.com/repositiory/secret/velikovsky2.html).

What seems so very fantastic in the Bible that it is beyond human reason to believe that it literally and actually happened, is again found to be true!  I believe in the fantastic, do you?