Read the verse on 9/8/21 / Looked up on 9/15/21 / Started Writing on 9/19/21
I’m beginning to walk with the Lord and I’m starting to realize that he uses numbers to communicate. I’m studying Proverbs because Proverbs is the map to follow in our steps. Walkers tread lightly, like in Indiana Jones when he has to step on the letters to avoid the shooting spears of death? Same thing. Proverbs, which literally means pieces of advice, are the trustworthy stones to step towards our purpose.
Proverbs 19:25 reads,
“25 Strike a mocker, and the inexperienced learn a lesson;
rebuke the discerning, and he gains knowledge.”
And this just stuck like glue to the brain. Why does YHWH want me to see this verse? Like my eyes wouldn't let me move on. Frozen on the text. Strike a mocker?
Mocker: to treat with ridicule or contempt, to imitate in fun, an object of scorn, simulated false – a sham, in a pretending manner, to appear irrelevant, ineffectual, or impossible.
And the inexperienced learn a lesson? I feel inexperienced in this Bible venture, we should strike mockers? I don’t promote violence so I defined Strike and to my surprise there is a remarkable amount of senses under the word. #26 on ahdictionary.com is the one that stands out being related to Nurses – to undertake a Strike against, like an employee would against an employer.
Rebuke the discerning, and he gains knowledge, like I’ve posted before, Discernment is the ability to judge our surroundings well and to take that sense away would be concerning indeed. I believe Knowledge is powerful in the way of influence. Wisdom is Power, wisdom and understanding opens doors to freedom. Very good verse indeed! But I’m still perplexed by it, why? I wrote on a postcard on September 8th, 2021 ‘1925?’, pondering what happened in the year 1925.
Why? Because I thought it so I wrote it.
It wasn’t until the 15th of September that I had the motivation to actually look up the year and its significance to this verse. I date everything now through this journey to help me piece together a once broken soul. According to thepeoplehistory.com, here is a bullet point list of events that happened in that year:
United States first Motel
The “The Great Gatsby” was published
Mount Rushmore
Scopes Monkey Trial lost against Butler Act which prohibited Evolution being taught in Tennessee Schools
Chrysler is Founded
Sears opens its first store in Chicago
Nellie Tayloe Ross was the first female Governor in the US elected to Wyoming
Printed all Silk Dresses
Coolidge, first president to broadcast on Radio
First Television transmitter created
Increased freight mall and passenger traffic
Oh cool! Scotch tape was invented to help with paint jobs on automobiles – neat!
Frigidaire, like the refrigerator, enter the beginning of soliciting door to door sales
First Year for The New Yorker Magazine
The Grand Ole Opry music radio
The Shenandoah Airship Crashes which promoted the safety standards that attendants memorize today!
New Child Labor Laws are condemned over the concerns of child idleness
Diphtheria epidemic
Benito Mussolini takes over Italy
Hindenburg is elected president of Germany
A giant tornado hits Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana
This last one is interesting, Mein Kampf– Adolf Hitler’s personal manifesto was published. Yikes. So 1925 was a busy year and a huge leap forward for our modern world. Being that I own a car, a radio, a television, rent a refrigerator, a silk dress, have a magazine subscription, read the Great Gatsby, and oddly I’m lacking scotch tape, but why does God want me here? What's the big deal?
I went to church on the 19th of September and my pastor happened to mention the tyrant's name in his message. What are those odds? Alerted to the name drop, I right there in the lobby, looked up some articles regarding his beliefs and read what Chris Lawson from inference-review.com had to say about it. According to Mr. Lawson, turns out Hitler was a Christian. What the h-e-double hockey sticks?!
Yeah, his manifesto was about outlawing the free-thinkers, the atheist's, the influence with the technological advances, a lot like canceling culture. Earlier that week, I read Mark 7:3 The Traditions of the Elders:
For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, keeping the tradition of the elders.
Did Hitler kill the Jewish people because he thought he was eradicating the Pharisee's or because he was a Pharisee? What did his Ego tell us? According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, ushmm.org, "Antisemitism, the fear or hatred of Jews, existed in Europe for centuries before the Holocaust. The early Christian church portrayed Jews as unwilling to accept the word of God, as agents of the devil, and as murderers of Jesus. (The Vatican renounced these accusations in the 1960s.)"
So Hitler was afraid of the Jews? "The Nazis believed that Germans were racially superior. They believed Jews were a threat to the so-called German racial community. While Jews were the primary victims, the Nazis also targeted other groups for persecution and murder. The Nazis claimed that Roma, people with disabilities, some Slavic peoples (especially Poles and Russians), and Black people were biologically inferior. The regime persecuted other groups because of politics, ideology, or behavior. These groups included Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gay men, and people the Nazis called “asocials” and “professional criminals.”
So anyone remotely fun was persecuted. Where are we going with this? Speaking only for myself, realizing how real our Lord really is, I was so mad about how much influence persuaded my decisions because some image or somebody somewhere was justifying the action, the words, the behavior, now I understand those that want to cancel culture, careful now, apparently so did Hitler. I was so upset at the unfair fight being born with a remote in my hand. Here's the thing though, influence is the point.
Before the original sin, before Eve even had the thought, there was the influence in a cunning delivery. How do we react to the delivery of influence? Is the delivery effective? Is it righteous? Is it trapping? We all have scars by design to be relatable to people, to connect, whether by circumstance, by choice, by our own free will. Free will was the point. Adam heard the influence, there’s no mention of Adam having any thoughts about the influence yet he ate together with Eve. He made his choice just as Eve did.
Is it possible we have to stop speaking as if we don’t have a choice in the matter just because our preference isn’t available? Adam could have said "no", but he chose not to. The remote has an 'off' button. I don't have to download that app to be more accessible. I can silence the influence by keeping my phone on silent. We we’re literally forced to stay home and “chill” and yet I'm still subscribing. This made me realize that I placed the television on an alter consuming my time away from learning. Yeah, like basic learning. By pressing the mute button, the off button, by resisting the reel app, I‘ve been able to connect with the Lord and myself on a deeper level developing my mental status to a healthier one.
All because I was curious about the date 1925 to learn about a British guy inventing the television transmitter. Thank you Yeshua for the tip! This doesn't mean I got rid of the TV or smashed my phone against the wall. It means that with Jesus, I have the power to say "no" and prioritize my time more productively to allow the entertainment to be a reprieve, not an addiction.
Writer's Note 6/7/22:
I was so nervous about posting something about Hitler. Like wanted to avoid the topic altogether because I've made it my life to make sure other people are comfortable and I'm a master at pleasing people. For weeks now the fear set in that I shouldn't continue on with my blog, but then I realized that the entire point of this website was to create a free space dedicated to learning, developing, researching, exploring, discovering things about this world and myself to figure out where I fit in it.
I would love to hear comments, point of views, other links even that could enlighten this topic... Was Hitler really a Christian? Was he "saved" at the end of his life? Was it only then that he realized that he made a mistake? Or... "The Holocaust happened because of millions of individual choices."?
Where are our choices leading us and are we even aware of our choices to begin with?
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=strike
The People History
May 2016. Lawson, Chris. "Hitler’s Christianity." Inference. September 15th, 2021.
Fundamentals of Teaching the Holocaust. "Frequently Asked Questions about the Holocaust for Educators". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.