Homeschool News & Views

Issue 41, October 12, 2007

From Homeschool Helpers

Greetings. This is Dan White with Homeschool Helpers.

We just got back from the Feast of Tabernacles. The Biblical feasts, listed in Leviticus 23 and observed by the earliest New Testament church, have become much better known in recent years. There are now hundreds of Tabernacles sites around the country where people gather for eight days of personal devotions and congregational worship and fellowship. Evangelist John Hagee has a Tabernacles meeting every year, and on the 700 Club television broadcast of September 23, Pat Robertson’s son said he didn’t know why the church got away from observing these Biblical days.

So we spent over a week at the Feast of Tabernacles, camping by a lake in a tent that did not leak. Even when it rained. We love to camp. There is something about getting away from everything that is more relaxing than anything. We watched a flock of geese fly in and land on the lake, skimming just above the surface of the water, their long wings flapping wide but never miscuing and flopping down into the water. A sailboat slipped by with no sound at all and almost no wake in the still water. The sky went from sunny to cloud puffed to starry, and our spirits went from restive to restful.

Being in the creation brings you closer to the Creator. Camping does that. Today in our urban society, many people seldom see stars. I mean to really see a full sky of stars. It’s too light in a city or suburb to be able to see many of the stars above, all of which God knows by name. Camping lets you look up and see stars you forgot were there. Camping is a creation vacation.

I have even seen indications that families that go camping tend to stay intact. Doing things together as a family tends to keep families together.

Camping does take a certain amount of work. It’s not like going into a resort motel and having a chocolate mint on your pillow. Food and clothes have to be packed and there is always a bit of housekeeping that has to be done. There is no such thing as a perfect camping trip. Things get left or misplaced, and little irritants can enter the placid picture. Sometimes the peace of a burnt sienna sunset will be accompanied by the buzz of a bloodsucking mosquito. Sometimes the air mattress that was firm at bedtime has lost half its air by morning, and the air that it lost is somehow always right under your body, never to the side where you’re not lying, leaving you slumped down like a vinyl wrapped burrito. But the magic of camping is that irritants don’t really irritate. You’re camping out.

Going camping doesn’t cost much. You don’t have to lay out thousands for a camper trailer or an RV, as many do. I’m not sure about the wisdom of paying $20,000 for a camping rig to really get away from it all, then pulling into a scenic campground to sit in an RV and watch satellite TV. That’s seeing the stars all right, but it’s the wrong kind of stars.

Modern manufacturing and marketing has made camping very inexpensive. Tents used to cost a lot of money, and not many people camped out in tents. But now prices are very low for tents and camping gear. Sometimes too low. This summer Wal-Mart offered a whole camping package including a tent, chairs, cooler and lantern for about eighty dollars. Make one simple purchase and you were ready to go camping. However, reading reviews of that package on the internet, you would have been better off camping out in the supercenter where the tent was sold. Apparently that tent leaked. Wet campers are not happy campers. That does irritate.

On the other hand, we hiked to the back of our local supercenter and purchased a good tent for $70. It is ten by seventeen feet, and has room inside for four twin size air mattresses, plus other stuff. The air mattresses cost about ten dollars each, air not included. A cooler, a lantern, a few chairs and some sleeping bags complete the setup. For about a hundred and a half, a family can be all fixed to go camping. A camping spot in a nice park by a lake will run from ten to twenty dollars per night. For a little bit of money, a family can have an awful lot of fun.

Camping makes for family closeness, because you are close when you’re camping. There’s no place to run off to because you’ve already run off. So you sit around the fire at night – yes, campsites always have to have fires, even in the summer. Our camping at the feasts is in the spring and fall, and that’s the optimum time for having a campfire. So you sit around the fire at night – no TV, no radio, no internet, no newspaper – just firelight and family.

Food never tastes so good as when cooked on an open fire at a campout. After the smoke flavored meal, in our family somebody always gets out a guitar. Or two, or three guitars, and the singing starts. This is so relaxing and enjoyable, salve for the soul. One of the great traditions and memories we have in our family is camping at the Feast of Tabernacles on the first night of the feast and watching the big full moon rise over the lake.

When a family beds down at night in one tent, that’s real family togetherness. At home, of course, everyone is in his or her own bedroom, and sometimes they may go to bed at different times, and you may yell “Good night!” from another room. But in a tent where you’re all lined up and laid out, with the water and the wind just outside the tent door, that’s family closeness. “Good nights” have a very personal touch then.

Camping is one of the most enjoyable and inexpensive forms of recreation a family can have. But most young people we talk to have never gone camping. You families might try it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, while we were camping at the feast Hilary and the liberals were hard at work promoting an anti-Christian America. They passed the Hate Crimes bill in the Senate, attached to an Iraq funding bill. They know the American soldiers in Iraq need supplies, and the liberals are using that dire need as a means to force anti-Christian persecution on the country. They are so bold and dedicated. They know that state after state has passed constitutional amendments against gay marriage. They know that the people of every state don’t really want homosexuality around them. Yet with only a one vote majority in the Senate they try to jam through their homosexual preference program.

A few years ago sodomy was illegal in some parts of the country. Now they are trying to make it a preferred behavior, receiving a status no other behavior has, which will not even be open to discussion. With the liberal Hate Crimes Law, in America homosexuals will have preferred status over conservative Christians. Homosexuals will be able to constantly criticize Christians. Christians will not be able to criticize homosexuality. This will be enforced at law. Those who believe in the Jewish Messiah will be wearing a yellow star. At some point what I am saying now will not be legal.

I have said before that Bill and Hilary Clinton are like America’s Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab was perhaps the most evil king of the northern ten tribes of Israel, which never had any good kings at all. Jezebel was his wicked wife, a scheming manipulator who earned herself a notorious place in Bible history, unlike any other woman.

1Ki 16:29-33, WEB

(30) Ahab the son of Omri did that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh above all that were before him.

(31) It happened, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he took as wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshiped him.

(32) He reared up an altar for Baal in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria.

(33) Ahab made the Asherah; and Ahab did yet more to provoke Yahweh, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him.

When Ahab and Jezebel forsook the true God, their nation was cursed.

1Ki 17:1

(1) Elijah … said to Ahab, As Yahweh, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.

This is the same thing that happened in the public schools. When God was kicked out of the schools by the teaching of evolution, and by forbidding the Bible, prayer and the Ten Commandments, the public schools became cursed. As America now casts out God, the whole nation will be plagued.

When the plagues of Jezebel hit, Jezebel attacked the people of God.

1Ki 18:1-4

(1) It happened after many days, that the word of Yahweh came to Elijah, in the third year, saying, Go, show yourself to Ahab; and I will send rain on the earth.

(2) Elijah went to show himself to Ahab. The famine was sore in Samaria.

(3) Ahab called Obadiah, who was over the household. (Now Obadiah feared Yahweh greatly:

(4) for it was so, when Jezebel cut off the prophets of Yahweh, that Obadiah took one hundred prophets, and hid them by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water.)

1Ki 18:13

(13) Wasn't it told my lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of Yahweh, how I hid one hundred men of Yahweh's prophets by fifty in a cave, and fed them with bread and water?

While Jezebel was in the palace, God’s prophets were slaughtered and the survivors were hidden in caves, living on bread and water.

Ahab and Jezebel surrounded themselves with false prophets. They were the cause of Israel’s trouble, yet they blamed God and his people.

1Ki 18:17-19

(17) It happened, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, Is it you, you troubler of Israel?

(18) He answered, I have not troubled Israel; but you, and your father's house, in that you have forsaken the commandments of Yahweh, and you have followed the Baals.

(19) Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel to Mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred fifty, and the prophets of the Asherah four hundred, who eat at Jezebel's table.

Jezebel was a lying manipulator.

1Ki 21:4-10

(4) Ahab came into his house sullen and angry because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him; for he had said, I will not give you the inheritance of my fathers. He laid him down on his bed, and turned away his face, and would eat no bread.

(5) But Jezebel his wife came to him, and said to him, Why is your spirit so sad, that you eat no bread?

(6) He said to her, Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite, and said to him, Give me your vineyard for money; or else, if it pleases you, I will give you another vineyard for it: and he answered, I will not give you my vineyard.

(7) Jezebel his wife said to him, Do you now govern the kingdom of Israel? arise, and eat bread, and let your heart be merry: I will give you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite.

(8) So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters to the elders and to the nobles who were in his city, and who lived with Naboth.

(9) She wrote in the letters, saying, Proclaim a fast, and set Naboth on high among the people:

(10) and set two men, base fellows, before him, and let them testify against him, saying, You cursed God and the king. Then carry him out, and stone him to death.

Jezebel killed Naboth so that Ahab could have his vineyard.

But Yahweh God decided that Jezebel and Ahab were going to the dogs.

1Ki 21:23-25

(23) Of Jezebel also spoke Yahweh, saying, The dogs shall eat Jezebel by the rampart of Jezreel.

(24) Him who dies of Ahab in the city the dogs shall eat; and him who dies in the field shall the birds of the sky eat.

(25) (But there was none like Ahab, who did sell himself to do that which was evil in the sight of Yahweh, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.

When Jezebel was about to die, she was so haughty that she painted her face first. She died with her makeup on.

2Ki 9:30-33

(30) When Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her eyes, and attired her head, and looked out at the window.

(31) As Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Do you come in peace, Zimri, you murderer of your master?

(32) He lifted up his face to the window, and said, Who is on my side? who? There looked out to him two or three eunuchs.

(33) He said, Throw her down. So they threw her down; and some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses: and he trod her under foot.

The dogs ate Jezebel, makeup and all. They probably thought it was just ketchup.

2Ki 9:35-36

(35) They went to bury her; but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.

(36) Therefore they came back, and told him. He said, This is the word of Yahweh, which he spoke by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, In the portion of Jezreel shall the dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel;

We have watched Bill Clinton since years ago when we lived in Arkansas and he was governor. He raised taxes and was defeated. Then he said he was sorry and was re-elected. He ran for president when no big name Democrats wanted to run because they didn’t think they could defeat George Bush, Sr. Soon Bill’s many adulteries floated out. Such scandalous affairs had always defeated all other candidates. Bill said he was sorry and he won the Democratic nomination. He was behind George Bush, Sr. in the polls. Ross Perot came into the election and allowed Bill to win with less than a majority. Once in office, the Clintons sordid dealings became public knowledge, even featured in the Wall Street Journal, not exactly a grocery store tabloid. Bill’s illicit affairs continued. He perjured himself and was impeached, but the liberals narrowly kept him in office. After all, Bill said he was sorry.

Now, his wife, who actually wielded much power in Bill’s administration, is currently favored to be the next president of the United States. It certainly seems that these people have extra help.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, during the feast of Tabernacles, we heard about eight sermons, spent multiple hours in personal time with God, had a reel dance, and met a number of homeschool families. We heard one fine sermon about how the seven days of Tabernacles recall Israel wandering through the wilderness, and today the feast pictures Christians wandering through the stinking wilderness of this world. Then the eighth day, the last day, looks forward to the time to come, when this world won’t stink any more.

One day after I had given a message on the liberals pushing homosexuality into the public schools, an elderly gentleman got up next to speak to the group. He said that when he was a boy in Barry County, Missouri, he went to a two room school and they started every day with a prayer and the pledge of allegiance, and they never heard of homosexuality. Then he had to pause, his voice halted, tears came from his eyes, and the old man cried a little, because of what is happening in America.