After the chaos of harsh travel conditions in the desert 🏜 and the fiery 🔥 serpents 🐍 the Israelites travel further and sing the Song of the Well (funny how in Hebrew, it’s written “beer” in its phonetics, translated to the English language — verses 17-18 mention this). After this, they encounter some hostile people and succeed against them, defeating the Amorites and Og, king of Bashan (see Deuteronomy 3:11 for how big his bed was, and also Psalm 136:20 for a reference of God’s love and benevolence in stopping him). This passage is found in page 92 of the NKJV Bible I have for this four-translation project, pages 117-118 of the NASB Bible (Old Testament), pages 186-187 of my VOICE copy, and pages 190-191 of my Amplified Bible (Classic Edition) copy.
I’m glad the Israelites were able to succeed in their continued journey to Canaan, but it’s not good the Amorites and Og wanted to stop them from getting there. However, God didn’t want judgment for them, Israelites and Gentiles alike — it’s a shame everything was so that God’s wrath was the final word for most of the people Israel encountered in those days. And sadly, too many Israeli soldiers and a lot of others are thinking God wants them to kill His enemies today 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️🤦🏼♂️ I don’t think He would’ve had Israel decimate them at first, since He hadn’t forgotten to demonstrate His power to them — God doesn’t make enemies out of others. I hate seeing people do that at work, church, a friend’s house, etc. It shows they hate Jesus and want to take His place as ruler of the universe. We’re on a mission to preach the Gospel to all creation, just as He had said in Mark 16:15.
But I don’t need to explain anything further right now… except, why is Elon Musk a trillionaire? And how is he doing this in a state with too many people exalting themselves as if they were the best place on Earth? For Texas is more unsafe than just about everywhere else in the country and likely the world. I discovered a few days ago that the U.S. is now one of the top 30 most dangerous nations to live in (out of 163 counted in the rankings), and somehow, Eritrea is safer, though only by about five spots. And they allow only four religions and harshly persecute everything else, not to mention freedom of like anything is non-existent. So we can be sure we’re in trouble, even though the World Cup ⚽️🏟 just started here in the U.S. last night, and many people are watching the games in the stadiums 🏟 throughout the whole thing, both from here and abroad (there’s also some stadiums 🏟 in Mexico 🇲🇽 and Canada 🇨🇦 — in total, there’s 1️⃣6️⃣ here in North America). But though Musk has a trillion bucks right now, he won’t succeed in challenging the truth of Solomon’s wealth portfolio being chief amongst all others (see 1 Kings 3:13). For the word of God is unable to be erased, just as Jesus had said in Matthew 24:35, Mark 13:31, and Luke 21:33. And you may be thinking, “What does this have to do with the Numbers 21 passage?” Well, God was the one to authorise His defeat of those who stood in Israel’s way back in Moses’ time, and if anyone were to get as rich as Solomon back then, God would’ve defeated them, too. So we can see that James 5:1-6 is the perfect prophecy for this situation. Indeed, the Israelites didn’t ignore their wealth, and they knew they needed it to sustain themselves once they were to enter Canaan. But sadly, it’s easy to get an inflato-head when it comes to this — shouldn’t we be generous with our assets according to the kingdom of God and what He wants? But it’s not as though we can do this all the time — one of these days, we can be more broke and destitute than I was when I was sick with pneumonia again and stuck in homelessness during the fight to get better. This was ten years ago last November — I may get it a third time this fall, and I remember I was sick as a dog like that once when I was 15, taking chemistry ⚗️🧪🧫 in school 🏫 and struggling to keep up with all the others. I still need to keep everything in my savings to become debt-free in the future. However, I may never get there — the student loan guys and the education system are evil enough to troll me in punishing ways worse than a Mario Maker level like this.
I know I’ve said the same thing a lot, and you’re probably wondering, “Are you seeking out what’s good, dude?” Well, the good news is, I’ve discovered videos 📹 on YouTube that record lovely tropical lands like Bora Bora and Hawai’i on multiple channels, each one being either live or several hours long. But I’m mostly there for the clips and images I can screenshot into my phone 📱 📲 ☎️ 📞 📳 to gawk at God’s creation with. And I remember last week I had done the same thing with multiple parts of Sedona on Google Maps during my vacation. Also, I looked into my Google photo drive last night (didn’t think I could do that haha) and found all my images from my 2023 Awaken trip to Prescott are still there, including the 9-hole Frisbee 🥏 golf course I played with someone’s Frisbee there (haha I thought it was for everyone; sorry, Brody) — I did return it to him when I went back to the field, if you’re curious what I did with it when I was done. Want to see some photos? If so, here’s a few of them:
I hope you enjoy these photos! All these were taken from my smartphone I had received six months prior to this trip where I explored the lovely lands of Northern Arizona 😍😍😍😍😍 I really do think it’s worth it to travel. And yes, chapter 33 does well with the Israelites’ journeys, which I’ll cover later.
I keep forgetting to mention this, though: I find it very strange many people come to a bar to drink with a lot of them having the same idea of getting beer from a well, as though God meant for us to drink tons of alcoholic beverages like beer, margaritas, tequila, vodka, etc. Now to be fair, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing; indeed, some people can hold their liquor, but I don’t think it’s worth it for me to drink, and not just because of the cost of each beverage… alcoholic drinks can shorten our lives, make us do weird stuff, and destroy our liver (Proverbs 23:29-35). One translation of the end of that passage says that the alcoholic is saying, “When I’m sober enough to manage it, bring me another drink!” 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬 But the good news is, no one will be drunk in New Jerusalem, yea, those who accept Jesus now. We’ll eat succulent seafood and drink mai tais and tropical drinks to our hearts’ content there, and God wouldn’t have even killed anything, either! When Heaven and Earth become one, there will be endless places and depths of God to explore, and discontent will never be a thing again, ever! 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼 I hope I honour Him the way He wants me to now, though… and I want to find out what that’s like. But I hope you enjoyed this post, so be blessed today!
In Christ,
Ron Outland
Ron And His Stories 