For six and a half
years I had my own office and worked behind a desk after getting a degree
from a university in Texas. I had a good job
– met with company executives and engineers and city officials. I traveled the state of Texas, and had respect in
my position. But on this particular day, life
was different. I had now taken my big senior
ring off my hand and placed it in my top drawer. Instead
of dress pants, shirt, and tie, I was now wearing blue-collar clothing. Most certainly, I would have been embarrassed if
someone from my past had seen me now. Yahweh
called me out of that job and into the ministry. He
showed me that He had called me into the “pastorate.”
But shortly thereafter, even that had to die as well. “If I did not know better,” I said to Yahweh one
day, “I would say You are a cruel God.” First
He called me into the pastorate, and I did not really want it, but consented. Then He gave me the desire, then even the excitement
about it; but then, He killed it! “I am going
to teach you the death principle,” were His words to me; but, I had no idea
then how extensive that teaching would be. After
seeking to make my way in the business world, and dying to it and the pastorate,
I was now cleaning dirty carpets, primarily in apartments.
On this particular
day, I was at an apartment complex in Dallas that was located in a rather
rough part of town. As I began setting up the
equipment, an old man in a gray trench coat walked by.
He had all the appearance of a street person – unkempt and soiled,
with long oily white hair, and a full scraggly white beard that was yellow
around his mouth and nose from smoking so many cigarettes. He walked out onto the steps of the apartment just
outside of where I was working and slowly sat down, took a clear vial from
the inside pocket of his trench coat, removed the lid, and began to sniff
the clear liquid it held.
As I watched this
scene, my heart began to experience an immense pain.
The pain was so uncomfortable that I turned away from him and began
to busy myself with my work, trying to escape what I was feeling inside. Finally, when the pain became so unbearable that
I felt I would die if it continued, I fell on my knees in that dirty apartment
and cried out to Yahweh – “Either show me a way to help people like this
old man, or take this unbearable pain from my heart!”
Yahweh answered me as I knelt there, and told me something that no
man had ever before told me or taught me. In
fact, it was so foreign to me that when I got home that evening, I had to
look it up. He told me – “I have already provided
a way to help people like this old man, and that is for business men to give
the corners of their field.” (Found in Leviticus
19:9-10 and 23:22.)
This experience
in 1980-81 began an entirely new direction in my life, one that actually
continues to this very day. Shortly after this,
for the next twelve years I plead the cause for the poor.
Yahweh said concerning the good king, Josiah – “He plead the cause
of the afflicted and needy; then it was well. Is
not that what it means to know Me?” (Jeremiah 22:16)
For twelve years, this was my purpose in life.
Through a daily radio broadcast, a book, by teaching, by helping
other ministries to fulfill their own efforts to help the needy, and by
our own direct works, I “plead the cause” for the needy.
In 1991 we began a work that would be the culmination of this string
of efforts, though not fulfilling the ultimate call that Yahweh had in that
old man. After two years of building, we opened
a home for abused and displaced women and children.
Since the events
leading up to this home are already recorded and expounded upon in a writing
titled The Passing
Over Principle, page 6, we will not go into these here. In order to more fully understand this writing you
are reading now, and particularly the conclusion, it is important that
you read about these revealing preluding events. Simply
click on the subject title.
When looking back
over these years since the old man, one finds that everything Yahweh has
led this man into regarding the care of the needy, has been a passing over,
even death process, which has looked to its final fulfillment in that which
Yahweh is doing right now. Yahweh used that
old man to break my heart for the needy, and told me about the corners of
the field. I thought then that the fulfillment
would be to provide care for the needy who were needy through severe difficulties. But little did I know that He broke my heart for
those who would equally become needy, not by plight, but by willing obedience
to the instruction of Yahshua – “So therefore, no one of you can be My disciple
who does not give up all his possessions” (Luke 14:33).
The corners of
the field to which Yahweh directed me in that dirty apartment, are the corners
that were not only a provision for the needy, but also provided healing
(the corners of Yahshua’s garment - Numbers 15:38, Matthew 9:20, 14:36),
could not be removed (the corners of a man’s beard – Leviticus 19:27), were
an integral part of provision in Ezekiel’s temple (providing boiling places
for preparing the offerings for consumption – Ezekiel 46:21-24), and were
the location of the gold rings for transporting the table of showbread (Exodus
25:26), and the location of the horns on the altar (Exodus 27:2). Also, the elect are gathered from the four winds of
the earth (Matthew 24:31), even as the Remnant-representing 144,000 are sealed
when the four angels hold the four winds while standing at the four corners
of the earth (Revelation 7:1-4). The corners
will indeed be the Remnant Bride who obey the words of Yahshua and make themselves
poor.
Continue to page
2 of “Blessed Are The Poor” for FOLLOWER
OF PAUL, OR DISCIPLE OF YAHSHUA?