Led Astray

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are.

Michael Durham.

Chris Giesler.

Dispensationalism, Revivalism, and the Logic of Pragmatism

So we had an interesting question that came into us via personal conversation, I believe, with Michael, or maybe an email exchange or text exchange, and we thought it would be a decent topic for a podcast, even though we've covered something like this before.

It's actually, it's a little more broad, and we wanted to go ahead and air it and see what our thoughts were and see how we can answer it from scripture. So I'll go ahead and read the question. Me personally, coming out of Darbyism and the pre-mill fantasy, is there any other doctrine in modern history that has led actual believers further astray than this particular eschatological view?

And I think what we can do is kind of expand that. He's talking about dispensationalism, right?

Yes, pre-millennial is much broader than dispensationalism, and the dispensationalism that is most popularly received and discussed is far different from dispensationalism in history and so forth. And so the question is, is there in some other doctrine in modern history that has led true actual believers further astray than that, getting the focus off of where it needs to be?

I think that given modern history and influence upon actual believers, then we can dispense with the cults and so on and so forth, what is accepted kind of as mainstream Christianity. And I think for that, you have to go back to revivalism that emerges out of the second great awakening and a central fixture of that would be Charles Finney.

Great book on this by Ian Murray is Revival and Revivalism and how much of what we accept as normal church life today was developed by what was called new measures by Charles Finney and those who were of his persuasion called New Lights.

And what they saw in the second great awakening was the movement of the Holy Spirit and people repenting of their sins and widespread conversions and spiritual renewal going on in various locations. And so what they tried to do in kind of a scientific mind is let's observe what was going on just prior to this or what kind of measures were being taken in the middle of these spiritual flashpoints and let's make sure to do the very same thing in other places.

And so they developed things called the anxious bench, which later became the altar call and there was a sense in which every single religious service that you came to was to be considered potential for revival.

Every single religious service in the church should be primed for revival and so certain measures were put into place to accomplish that. The whole idea of the altar call, the invitation, all of this is part of that.

Well, the principle of revivalism really came down to let's find out what works because what works is what's blessed. And if you're preaching and no one is coming forward and being saved, if you're preaching and no one is falling out of their pew and calling out for God's mercy upon them because they're a sinner, if you're preaching and there is no religious excitement and fervency, then there's something wrong with you.

There's something wrong with your way of preaching and ministering because the Spirit is obviously not with you. Now, this was a theology developed out of experientialism. We're going to look around and see where the most extreme experiences are and we're going to say that that's where God is and that's what God blesses.

A lot of damage was done from this mindset, a lot of chaos, a lot of bad false teaching came out of that but what persists and it's a very American concept that whatever works is what's blessed. This pragmatism continued to be felt throughout the development of the church moving out of the late 1800s into the early 1900s and so forth where there is a big focus on big tent revivals and big names traveling through the whole area of the US and having big tent preaching circuits and looking for people to be saved.

Again, for a lot of people, it's a sincere desire and we want to see people born again come to faith in Jesus Christ. This is the whole idea of how Billy Graham's crusades is a throwback all the way to Charles Finney.

Lots of excitement, lots of people coming together, find ways to prime the pump, get a lot of people to come forward and decisions are made and this is the way that the kingdom advances apparently. Now, revivalism has become somewhat cemented into the strata of the American church experience.

I mean, it's kind of part of the bedrock upon which a lot of churches have been built and expectations are primed for that when you walk into a church. The floor does slope towards the altar. There's plenty of stairs all the way around the pulpit for people to come and kneel.

The whole thing is centered around the expectations of revivalism.

So you're saying some church design has been developed from this as well?

Yes, it's definitely impacted the architecture, the way that the whole buildings are constructed.

Well, even in that terminology, the altar, where was in the old covenant you had the altar in the new covenant, the temple is in heaven. The altar isn't in the church building.

Correct. So you can see how some of the language has developed over time. So some people would say, well, of course it's not the altar, it's an invitation, but the whole structure of the service, the way that the music is designed to crescendo at just the right moment, the style of preaching that is necessary, the need to structure the sermon to end with certain types of excitement and to call for response, all of these things are throwback to revivalism.

And that became the normal expectation of what a good church service would be like, would feel like. Now, the main idea was what? Whatever works is blessed. Well, what happens when it stops working? What happens when it stops working?

And this idea of whatever works is blessed, you can see this translated into who are the big names? Who has the most people coming to their churches? Who has the biggest budgets? Who has the biggest show?

The most baptisms.

Most baptisms. Now, I want you to think, a generation or two ago, there was a guy by the name of Robert Shuler. He's alive at the same time as Billy Graham. There was an infamous interview between Shuler and Billy Graham about how people can be saved even if they don't believe in Jesus.

But Shuler was kind of a pioneer in two different things. One, and they're related, one is the seeker-sensitive movement, and two, it's the warm therapeutic deism, and the moralistic therapeutic deism that is very much in vogue in North American evangelicalism today.

So, Shuler had the Christian Cathedral. He had a lot of people tuning in to his televised sermons, a lot of people attending, and he always said that which people love to hear. All right, 2 Timothy chapter four kind of warning.

They will heap up for themselves teachers who will tickle their ears. He was Joel Osteen before Joel Osteen. Now, to take a different route, there's a guy named Donald McGavern from India. He was a missionary in India.

He was, I think, a third-generation missionary there. So his parents and grandparents both were there, and in his involvement in mission stations in India, he noticed that some mission stations tended to have far more people there and far more success in their church planting than other mission stations.

And so he thought, well, let's be scientific about this. Sound familiar? Let's find out why some things are working and other things aren't working because whatever is working is blessed. So he went around and discovered that the mission stations that had the most people coming and the best successes were those that did not require the Hindus to cross caste systems.

So they didn't have to go out of their caste to fellowship with other people, okay? So the untouchables, if it was all untouchables, they did great, but if there were untouchables and then castes above them, they didn't wanna spend time with them, then the whole ministry just fell apart.

So what he figured out was, okay, plant churches in ways that don't require anybody to cross uncomfortable lines, okay? And so then he began to see marvelous success in this. All right, come to Jesus, but don't sacrifice anything.

So this worked really great. And so he took the same philosophy and he came into the West Coast and began to teach this and encourage this. And we have Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, both who have been greatly influenced by Schuller, also being influenced by Donald McGavern, and we have the birth of the Seeker Sensitive Movement, which is what?

Get people to come to church by removing all of those uncomfortable barriers and thresholds that keep them away. Do you have boring music? Get exciting music. Do you have dumpy looking facilities? Get better facilities.

Are your services boring? Put in video clips. You know, this is what Life .Church found out. And if you ever watch the documentary of the history of Life .Church and how they describe how they came to be, they had to borrow, they had to use a movie theater to gather in, and then they realized that everyone really liked theater seating, stadium seating, theater seating, and they all really liked watching the video clips on the big screen.

And more and more and more people started coming, and well, whatever works is blessed. And so, you'll notice how the architecture of churches have changed again, right? No longer are the churches being built for revivalism, they're being built for Seeker Sensitive Movement.

Like an entertainment situation.

Yes, and so this, I think, the Seeker Sensitive Movement, again and again, is like, well, how do we reach new audience, new people, if we notice that there is a group that we could identify through marketing tools that are not here, how do we get them here?

Well, we survey, we figure out what they like, and then we try to bring them in. This is how the Emergent Church came to be, because the church needs to become more postmodern, the church needs to become more socially concerned, we need to really reach this new generation that are of the postmodern mindset.

And then beyond that, okay, it looks like everyone's really interested in social justice, so now the church will be all about social justice, and marketing campaign after marketing campaign is rolled out, and the theology works to keep up with it, and it keeps shifting and changing.

So I would say that this pragmatism, this revivalism that turned into the Seeker Sensitive Movement that has many lives, and I'm hoping it doesn't have nine lives, I hope it dies way before that, but that, I would say, fits the bill for a kind of doctrine of modern history that has done far more harm.

Billy Graham, Robert Schuller, and the Seeker-Sensitive Gospel

Yeah, well, while you were saying all of that, I got to thinking, there's that famous clip of Larry King interviewing Joel Osteen, and it's basically, well, how can someone go to heaven? How can someone be saved?

Can someone who's never heard of Jesus be saved? And Joel Osteen's like, well, I know lots of Buddhists and different people, and they love God, so I think, yeah, they can go to heaven. But there's an older clip of Larry King interviewing Billy Graham, and he says the same thing that Joel Osteen said.

He sure did.

And then you mentioned Robert Shuler. Here's part of the quote from that interview. Shuler, what I hear you saying is that it's possible for Jesus to come into a human heart and soul and life, even if they've been born in darkness and have never had an exposure to the Bible.

Is that a correct interpretation of what you're saying? And then Graham responds, yes, it is, because I believe that I've met people in various parts of the world, in tribal situations, that they have never seen a Bible or never heard a Bible or never heard of Jesus, but they believed in their heart that there was a God, and they tried to live a life that was quite apart from the surrounding community in which they lived.

And then Shuler, fantastic. I'm glad to hear you say that there's a wideness in God's mercy. Well, that's the seeker sensitive. If you're trying to remove obstacles, well, Jesus is an obstacle. Repentance is an obstacle.

We should probably remove that.

Yes.

Now, that was, I believe, a TV interview between Graham and Shuler. This is not a one-off. Graham said the same thing in an interview, written interview, that was printed in McCall's magazine in 1973.

And he again said it to the Bush family when he was invited to dine with the Bushes, as they were asking him, from their semi-Methodist background, what his thought on the plight of the native, that innocent native theory.

And so Graham was very consistent on that. It wasn't a one-off. I remember I broke my mom's heart when I was telling her about that. She just couldn't believe that he would say that.

So we're bringing it back to the original question. In a way, he's kind of asking to buy the numbers, which has led more people astray.

I think you also have to ask, what is the outcome? So with the seeker sensitive, they're not following after Jesus.

No, it's rise, fall, right. Like what he's talking about.

There's a moralistic therapeutic deism. With a dispensational, they have these oddities or different doctrines that we could argue about, but often they love the things of God. They love the Bible. They want to follow the Bible.

They're not going after another God. No. Right.

And they're not avoiding repentance.

Right.

Or difficult things. They'll tell people, you need Jesus. You need to repent and follow Jesus. He's the only way into heaven. And so in that sense, it's like, okay, that seems better than, you know, what's currently evangelicalism.

And they'll probably say, and he could come back tomorrow, so don't wait.

Don't, yeah, don't wait, yeah.

So what we're talking about is the difference between being, quote, led astray and maybe having error in our theological reading.

Yeah, there's a, I would say that the potential obviously is always there, no matter how healthy you try to work on your church, that the potential is for somebody to be there just simply because I want to be around people.

I want to feel loved. And they're there for, you know, they're there for inadequate reasons, right? So the potential is always there. But again, dispensationalism, you can easily find that in an independent fundamentalist Baptist church somewhere.

You can find it in very charismatic assemblies of God. You can find dispensationalism inherent in some seeker-sensitive driven church. So it spans across. But I would say that folks who ascribe to dispensationalism tend to have a higher view of the scripture just by default.

And I think that's helpful.

Even if they're arguing with you about interpretation, it's because they take it so seriously, not because they're jettisoning it like the seeker sensitive.

And so what the seeker sensitive is, it's difficult things like, but those who are being consistent with it, like Andy Stanley, no, you can't keep on honoring the word of God and elevating it to a place of sufficiency and authority and clarity and calling people to take it as is and to really invest in it.

It's a problem for you. It's a problem for Andy Stanley. And he's always trying to find ways to work around it and trying to remove it from the picture. It's a problem for folks of his stripe. And he's a great example of somebody who's done a very, very good job of moving forward in the seeker sensitive trajectories.

His ability to gather in tens of thousands of people into a multi-campus personality driven organization, I won't call it a church, and to try to say, this is what real Christianity looks like, full of LGBTQ plus affirmation, full of elevating feminism, full of being on the right side of history when it comes to woke concerns.

Andy Stanley back in 2012, in his instruction about what does it really take to preach a sermon, he said, most people think that you're supposed to exposit the scriptures and that you use personal anecdotes that are relatable to your audience as your illustrations.

He says, no, no, no, no, that's cheating. That's too easy. What you have to do is exposit your audience and you use the scriptures as your illustration.

Oof. Oof.

So, I don't even know where to go after that. But if we're talking about, because that's like, that to me, that's the led astray part, right? Like that's a definition of being led astray. And he is asking about kind of the prominence over one or the other.

And I would say, or what would you guys say by the numbers in the American culture? Because I view both of the seeker sensitive and I view dispensationalism as kind of a flash in the pan so far across Christian history, right?

Like they're not, they are very, very young views and seeker sensitivism is even younger than dispensationalism. So as far as numbers go, do we find dispensationalism more prominent in the American church today or do we find seeker sensitive like followings more prominent?

Because the way I see it, and this is growing up in the Bible, the buckle of the Bible belt, there was dispensationalism everywhere. You know, everybody's grandma, grandpa, everybody's mom and dad. And then that was like, you know, fourth or fifth generation, we're working on sixth and seventh generation of dispensationalism now.

And I see it kind of fading amongst our peers, but how much of a foothold has dispensationalism had and has it been somewhat of a bulwark against seeker sensitive movement, being what it is, being faithful to the Bible?

I mean, I think I would, in the past I would have said dispensational was larger. But the more I think about it and putting those connections together, like Rick Warren, he signed that statement, a common word between us on Christians and Muslims serving the same God.

And it's like, that's seeker sensitive. So that leads us to ecumenicalism. So now you have people that are all over the spectrum on Jesus or Muslim or whatever. It's like, I'm religious, so I'm good because that's just kind of where we are now.

It's all relative. That seems bigger now to me than dispensational did.

So you're feeling that seeker sensitive has outpaced dispensationalism as far as the numbers go?

It seems that way, but again, that's just my perspective.

I think dispensationalism is fading for two reasons. And I think that the seeker sensitive movement and all its various expressions is a much bigger issue. I think there's probably three reasons for it.

One is that for a lot of churches, the reason why dispensationalism persists is because it's what the people wanna hear. And that's the seeker sensitive model. How is it that David Jeremiah or Chuck Swindoll did so well?

These are more traditional, quote unquote traditional style ministries, but man, what a huge impact. But what do they have behind them as they preach? Massive murals of paintings, paintings and art that just, here's what's gonna happen in the seven year tribulation and all these different, it was very compelling.

People were tuning in, tell me more. I wanna know more about what's gonna happen. Tell me more about the future and how it's all gonna play out. That's a seeker sensitive model. They knew that that was what their audience wanted to hear.

So in that sense, seeker sensitive is a much deeper issue than the dispensational thing. But because it's a seeker sensitive driven model, that type of dispensationalism is not the hard studious kind that was originally brought to bear by Darby Schofield and so forth.

It's a popularized version because again, it's fed to the masses. So another reason I think it's fading is because it has proven to be an inadequate answer to the times in which we live. It's hard to reduce the idea of the sons of Issachar down to, oh, well, yes, here's something else bad that is happening and look, our society is getting worse.

But it's supposed to.

So you have no direction after that. You have nothing to do. It's just, look, this is playing out how it was supposed to.

Dispensationalism, all it gives you essentially is, well, when you see things getting worse, that's all part of the plan and you just need to tighten your belt buckles. And if you see somebody else who's not buckled up yet, help them get buckled up.

But as far as the future generations go, as far as children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, as far as investing long-term for the advancement of the kingdom, forget about it. That over time has the ultimate strategy of the liberal women saying, we're not gonna procreate anymore.

Because it's just so bad. We don't wanna bring a child into this world.

Right, there's no future. There is no future.

For the liberal women.

Yes.

Conservative women can starve children.

That's right. And you'll see institution building and you see family entrenchment amongst dispensationalists as if we're gonna be here for another 100, 150 years and so on. So I'm encouraged to see that.

Yeah, they don't play out consistently.

So it's not very consistent. But again, I think that has more to do with the fact that we're made in the image of God than it does with the particulars of the theology being followed exactly. But again, it does not have a great answer for where we live.

Basically, again and again, the story that dispensationalism tells every single week. If you go to a church that's always about, you know, everything's terrible, rapture's coming, get ready, look how terrible everything is.

It's like watching the news reports on the last days of Vietnam every single week and just waiting for those choppers, just waiting for those choppers, just waiting for those choppers. And that this was always the plan.

But the church is gonna fail. I tell you, I think that's one of the reasons why this particular popularized form of dispensationalism is not doing well. And ultimately, I don't think it's sustainable to be taught that way from the scriptures.

The best kinds of dispensationalists that I hang out with aren't depressed. They're not hung up on the latest news reports. They're not in anxiety about what's happening in Israel. They're not. You know, these guys are grounded, and they're saying, you know what, it's all in God's hands.

I think I've got a pretty good idea of what's gonna happen. And in the meantime, I'm gonna rejoice in my Lord. You know, I love those brothers. But again, I think that's some of the dynamics of why I think the secret sensitive movement in all of its different expressions, whether it's purpose-driven church, market-driven church, the emergent church, the woke church, you know, whatever it is, that's a much bigger problem.

It seems parasitic. It can latch on to anything that has some sort of lifeblood going for it and really work from there and just hop and hop and hop to a new host all the time.

Is that?

Yeah, because they're not defining what they mean by if it works because the outcome is different. Like, oh, we're trying to make a lot of money. Oh, we're trying to just get a lot of people in. Oh, we're trying to fix social justice issues.

Oh, we're trying to get these bills. Like, it's never defined. And so if it's just whatever works, you can latch on to that in any way.

It does seem to have like some sort of, like we were talking about before, off air, almost every time have some sort of a financial incentive in order to drive it, or at least a financial backing each time to drive it.

Well, how do you know if the Lord's blessing you?

Nickels and noses.

Yeah, nickels and noses, the whole idea of fame and facilities. You know, how big is your platform?

Yeah, podcast.

How big is your campus? So it's fame and facilities, nickels and noses. And these are the metrics for, is God really happy with you or not? And it's kind of a, like, is that consistent with the scripture?

Is that how Jesus put it?

The Young, Restless, and Reformed as a Reaction Movement

So you were a believer during the Young Restless Reform Movement. I was not. Was that seeker-sensitive attached to Calvinist soteriology playing out, the way it kind of, it blew up and became the en vogue thing and the thing that was used?

And I mean, we've seen many from that movement back away from it for various reasons, but many have hopped to the next seeker-sensitive thing, right, like the guys that kind of bulged or they started to become prominent during it, they hopped onto the woke ideology, they hopped onto everything that the state fed them later on.

So it looked like, I mean, is that something that seeker-sensitive attached to or even could have attached to as well?

Yes.

Okay.

So it's kind of a, it's kind of like the counter movement that is stirred up from it. So instead of the skinny jean effeminate crooning and swooning kind of church, here is a more robust, manly doctrinal kind of church, but, and this is why we all have beards now, but hey, it's part of the good fruit, right?

Right.

But here's an opportunity to get really cool by the theology that you know, okay? And that's attractive. If you're talking about just the marketing side of it.

Right, right, yeah.

You get to be Christian, you get to be deep, you get to look cool, you get to drink beer and talk theology all at the same time.

And dunk on the atheists.

Yes, and dunk on the atheists and it's really about being the cool kids at that point.

Yeah.

However, part of the restless, so the young restless and reformed, so restless is reaction against, reaction against, reaction against. And so there's a reaction against the, probably the kind of frivolous nature of the secret sensitive church, all of the affluence, reaction against that, a reaction against pietism and the escapism of dispensationalism.

You know, it's all gonna get worse, but we're gonna get out of here before it gets really bad. And so that restlessness is like, we need to speak to all of these social concerns that are not being addressed.

And so that's why when everything starts shifting towards that new demographic and the Calvinists won, well, what they won with as well came with it. We're all socially engaged and you're not. Tim Keller.

Right.

Okay, Tim Keller is the epitome of, the epitomized leader of the young restless and reformed. Piper is. And Keller and Piper come forward and they're all very socially and concerned, socially engaged.

And this is what takes off in balloons. And so this is why, and again, if we are critiquing dispensationalism for saying, oh, it's all gonna get worse anyway, that's all part of the plan. The problem with the pop Calvinism is, well, we're all utterly depraved and we can't ever get this right.

The sin is systemic. And so now all of a sudden white guilt is systemic, racism is systemic, and it fits really good with Calvinism. And they just ran with it. Without a lot of thought. And so there were holes.

There were holes in the doctrine, holes in the thinking. And they just kind of float with it.

Recommended Resources

Well, I think we about wrapped that question up. Why don't we move on to what we recommend this week, Michael?

Oh, good. Well, my recommendation is a kind of a course in philosophy, reading the history of Western philosophy and theology by John Frame. And so he wrote it for college students. And as you read through, he's warm, he's winsome, he gives some interesting examples.

He keeps you afloat as you walk through. Obviously, this is not like a pleasure read, but it is interesting. And he always takes the time to relate whatever he's talking to, even if he's talking about Socrates, he'll take the time to relate the issues at hand back to the gospel of Jesus Christ and how it fits within a Christian worldview.

And I just find that refreshing. So I want to recommend A History of Western Philosophy and Theology by John Frame.

All right, Chris.

Mine's pretty short. It's just a song I heard. I haven't researched, but I've heard that this came into the public domain this year. It's Bolero by Maurice Ravel. It's interesting. It's very, very simple, but it builds throughout.

It's only got two themes in the whole thing, but he starts out with a smaller orchestration, and then it just builds into this giant crescendo. And listening to it, you'll hear it's very simple. So to think, oh, you take one theme and you play it for 14 minutes, that's going to be extremely boring.

But no, he builds throughout. And so it's like an exercise in, I don't want to say patience, because you're kind of carried along with it. It doesn't feel like you're waiting, but it just kind of builds and builds and builds.

And so I would recommend Bolero by Maurice Ravel.

Okay, that's an interesting recommendation. So this week, I've been at home this past week quite a bit, and I was looking at everything that I had on the bookshelf, everything that I haven't read, everything that I have read, and things that I've read or looked at with my sons.

And we want to, in our household, get good books, but we also want to get like aesthetically pleasing books as well. A lot of times we go for cloth cover, leather when we can, but sometimes inside too, you can get some very interesting aesthetic choices.

And there's a author and illustrator named David McCauley. He does kind of narrative form storytelling and showing you how Roman cities were built, medieval castles, medieval cathedrals, like London Underground.

And he does them all, and he can do them all in black and white picture, and then he has some in color. But the art, and I meant to bring them to show you guys, I have them and pass them out so you could have the oohs and aahs on the podcast.

Ooh, aah, I see you're, okay, good. Thank you for that. But it's really, really pleasing experience to just sit down and you can, it's one of those books where you can like open up a page as an adult and just kind of marinate on the illustration off to the side, maybe read a paragraph of what he has to say about it, about a Roman aqueduct and how it was built, and then go back and look at it again.

Just, it is really intricate, but still simple drawing and simple art, and I really enjoyed, like sometimes I'm sitting there and I'm now reading it by myself, and my sons are off shooting baskets on the little tykeskull.

But those books are very interesting and really pleasing to sit down with and enjoy with. I mean, even Heather and I could sit down and probably enjoy it together.

So it's like a set of books?

Yeah, he has a set of books. He's got some that are like about numbers and math and stuff like that, but the ones that I really enjoy have been architectural landscapes. So why don't we move on to what we are thankful for, Michael?

Thankfulness for the Church, Family, and God’s Kindness in Sickness

I am very thankful for the elders here at Sunnyside Baptist Church. Very glad that I do not shepherd alone and that we recognize our need together to depend upon our Lord, the Great Shepherd, as we try to do the work that he's called us to do.

And I'm thankful that we all recognize we always have room to grow in that and to learn together about how to do that better. And so I'm very thankful for each and every one of the elders here at our church.

Amen to that.

Chris?

I am very thankful for my wife. Been going through some ups and downs recently. I've got some decisions to make and then just kind of get settled into the new home and the girls are all in the same room now.

So navigating all of that and things breaking and having to fix them and she's been very patient and working very hard to keep things going and then just being able to do that together, to work on it together and say, okay, this is our home, we're gonna make the most of it, we're gonna improve it.

We got it in a certain state, we're gonna improve it together. This is a long-term thing. You know, our marriage and our children, our family, and it's just such a blessing to be able to work beside her.

Amen to that. Well, I'm thankful for two things. I'm thankful for my wife, just like Chris is for his, and I'm thankful for sick weeks. This past week, we had Julian and Lana over to our house. They were both sick with some sort of flu and all of my kids ended up running a fever.

Well, I say running a fever, Cohen didn't run a fever. Everyone else ran a fever or threw up except for me. I have come out unscathed thus far by the Lord's kindness and mercy. There is no other way to explain it because I was grabbing all the kids while they were sick, moving them around, but I am thankful that the Lord doesn't show you everything about your wife right up front, but that he slowly reveals it to you as you go along in the relationship because I did not know that this woman was capable of taking care of six other people and herself at the same time, timing medicines.

We got the homeopathic stuff out, which has thoroughly been depleted this week, and she's timing the medicines, timing it for herself, dealing with six-month-old with a fever, ended up having the two-year-old with a fever, Killian ended up having a fever too, and I mean, it was just all over the place, and I was home for three days too, and I was doing all kinds of stuff as well, and you would have thought that place would have been an absolute mess madhouse, and it sort of was, but it was being held together very well by her just diligent hands and diligent mind.