The God of deliverance

For the past two weeks, I’ve posted “snake blogs” on www.firstofallpray.com. Sorry if these entries gave you the “heebie-jeebies”, but all of them—the biblical example of the viper that bit Paul; the lessons I learned from three different copperheads; a Cherokee rattlesnake fable; and the tales of miraculous deliverance from the bites of cottonmouths and a black mamba—are certainly edifying despite the high “creep factor”!

Have you ever noticed that serpents are usually cast as the villains in tales, both biblical and secular? You know, that really doesn’t bother me at all.

However, do you remember when God told Moses to have Aaron cast down his staff in Pharaoh’s court? It became a serpent. But then Pharaoh’s magicians threw their staffs down and they all became snakes; what were Moses and Aaron to do? Nothing…but to stand still and see the salvation of God—their serpent swallowed all the other serpents before everyone’s eyes!

In the summer of 2010, as I was drifting between sleep and waking up, I had a dream that reminded me a little of the Exodus account.

In that very brief but startling dream, I was in the custody of Islamists somewhere in the desert. Instead of killing me outright as an infidel person of the Book (as we have seen in the news recently with ISIS), these jihadis were preparing instead to chop off both of my hands at the wrists.

My hands were tied to a wooden slab as I was made to kneel in the sand under the hot sun. The “minister of Allah’s displeasure” stood over me, masked, robed, and with a gleaming curved sword—a scimitar—held high over his head. I was about to lose both of my hands.

I watched and waited in the glaring sunlight. Grasping his weapon with both hands, my captor swung it down with a vengeance against my pitiful, sharia-less existence. I waited, clenching my teeth, squinting as I kept my eye on the scimitar, anticipating the blow.

As the blade swung down, glistening with merciless brutality, something beyond explanation happened. Within a millimeter of my wrists, that razor-sharp scimitar morphed before my eyes into an enormous serpent—just like Aaron’s staff had done back in Pharaoh’s court—and as quickly as the sword descended, the serpent whipped back up, writhing and snapping, and wrapped itself around the neck of my would-be executioner, strangling him.

My ropes fell off and I arose, both of my hands still attached, still unharmed, and away I walked, praising the One true God and His Son, Jesus Christ.

Yes, this was just a dream. However, dreams can be instruments of God to establish, encourage, and enlighten His people. Would you like to see supernatural feats of divine intervention on behalf of men and women, boys and girls around the globe who are being viciously besieged? I know I would.

If that is your desire, I want to encourage you to pray big, Bible prayers of supernatural, miraculous intervention for those who are under attack in various places—especially for those who are being targeted for slaughter because of their faith in Christ or for their adherence to the God of the Torah.

I pray that your faith has been stirred and stimulated to stand strong in these stressful times. You and I have a great big God, and there is nothing too difficult for Him.

Dorothy

God is to us a God of deliverances; and to GOD the Lord belong escapes from death. Psalm 68:20

“Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?” Jeremiah 32:27