They Shall Not Learn War Anymore

Good to be here with you. Not too often when you go out with the President that you're asked to speak.

Stromerstam told me once when I worked with him for 12 years, he said, you need to speak more. And I said, well, they came to hear you, not me.

Although one time in Jordan, something happened about a half hour into his sermon, and he had to excuse himself. I don't know exactly go to the bathroom or something, but he hands me his little notes, which are four by six sheets, about six of them, with about 10 words on each page.

He says, continue on. So I wasn't sure it was real, but after about a minute, he didn't come back. So I continued on. About a half hour later, he came back in. He said, where are you? And I said, I'm right here. Gave him back the notes. It's the only tag team sermon I've ever given.

But you never really know what opportunities you're going to have in life as you go through doing God's Church especially. I was going to give a sermon on route today, but I found out that Mr. Hofker gave one a couple weeks ago, although mine was a little different angle. I switched mine. So this Memorial Day on Monday, I switched to another subject that is interesting and one I actually gave for a feast some time ago. But when we think about Memorial Day, you're going to hear a lot about heroes. Of course, war heroes. Sadly, war heroes because of killing people, not saving people so much, although certain wars have been fought obviously to save from tyranny, which is good. We read in Micah 4 verse 3 something that we're familiar with, but you can write it down and read with me if you would. Micah 4 verse 3 says, He shall judge among people, rebuke strong nations afar off, they shall beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into printing-huts, and nations shall not let up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. We know that time is coming. We know that's, of course, in front of the United Nations, we're the symbol of that, which people have tried to take down because of its religious implications. But there are a lot of people that have suffered a great deal and fought in wars, and most of them would rather not have any more wars. Everybody you talk to after war doesn't like it. But it's interesting that we have opportunities to learn some things, and about 10 years ago, Michelle and I had an opportunity, which we weren't really looking for, in that her father had a stroke. And overnight, he had 60 percent of his brain kind of disappear on him. And they were having difficulty keeping him in New Jersey, and Michelle and I were the only two that could really help out in the family. And so we had him. We agreed to take him for six months to try to help clear up what we could. And we ended up taking care of him for two years, which is unusual because we never thought we'd take care of either of our parents because they were all health food people, and more like Jack LaLanne types. And her father was that way, and actually he had a pacemaker put in. They didn't thin his blood, and that's why he gave him the stroke. He really didn't need that. But in those years that we took care of him, we learned a lot of lessons. You know, you think you know what it is, and people say, I know what you're going through. But until you actually do something, you don't really know what they've gone through. In Hebrews 5 verse 8, we read about Christ coming here to the earth, where he says, Though he were a son, yet he learned obedience by the things he suffered. And he did suffer. At the same time, Christ talks about joy. In John 15.1, he says, These things I've spoken to you that my joy might remain in you, and your joy might be full. And I always thought as a child, how can you be joyful when you're suffering and going through the things he did? Yet there's lessons that you learn through sacrifice, through suffering, through other people's trials. But how do you see joy in that? Well, hopefully today I can show you a bit of that.

When you're taking care of someone, there are certain scriptures that come to mind as you're doing things that you don't necessarily think about very often, except in those situations.

Philippians 2.3, we're told there when Paul writing, he says, Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory, but in the lowliness of mind let each esteem the other greater than himself. And esteeming others is something this world doesn't like to do.

Everyone seems to want to be in charge or be seen, be a celebrity, etc. When you care for a paralyzed person, you understand truly what foot washing is, what it meant when Christ washed the disciples' feet. It's more than a ritual. You learn something that you can't learn another way.

God tells us not to judge people, and certainly we don't always know exactly why people go through the things that they go through. I never fully understand my father-in-law. We were married at this time by the time we had to take care of him 34 years, and in those 34 years he had never, ever told me a war story at all. I mean, I knew he was in the war, but that's all I knew. He never said anything about what he did and what it was about. Now with the brain damage, though, that section of his brain apparently wasn't damaged at all, and he started telling me all these stories about the war, the things he'd gone through, and some of them are so remarkable that I didn't really believe them. I thought, man, he must be making this up.

But yet, as we tried to get help from the Veterans Association Forum, and it's very difficult to do because, you know, you don't get a stroke 50 years later from the war, and usually injuries are supposed to happen at the time of the war. But it was interesting that I had to look through all the history books, and we had to look up things my wife and I, and find out what his troop actually did. And I found out that everything he told me was totally true. And from those lessons, it was incredible. We're told for Romans 12.1 to present ourselves our bodies of living sacrifice to God. And men who fight in war often have to make great sacrifices.

We're asked to make spiritual sacrifices, and we're supposed to do it in a way that's pleasing to God. It's honorable, acceptable to Him.

Ted Jomone, Michelle's father, became a paratrooper in World War II. He actually joined at age 17.

He had to lie on his applications to be able to get in. And he decided that he would join with his two older brothers. And he joined what proved to be the most elite unit of the war, the screaming eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. They pretty much were considered an expendable unit. The jobs that they had often were to attract the army to them so that the other main troops could come in and take care of business a different way. When he joined, he thought it was a great deal, because you got your pay, plus you got an extra $50 a month for hazard pay.

And he thought, like all of them did, I would be home by Christmas.

Of course, that didn't happen. He didn't fully know the hazards that he would have to go through when he enlisted. 101st Airborne Division was the first unit ever honored by a whole division with the Distinguished Unit Citations because of what they went through.

Some of you may have seen the movie Band of Brothers, and his story is very similar to that, only he actually did more than they did in that film with his unit. He became a paratrooper, and he dropped from planes daytime or nighttime, whenever they said. And he would land, who knows where, which was interesting because he would have a hundred pound pack on his back and ammunition tied to his leg when they jumped. And he couldn't swim. And I often wondered how you could possibly jump out of a plane over Europe, especially with all the lakes and rivers, and when you couldn't swim. And with all that weight tied to you, you'd sink like a rock.

But he didn't think of it that way. Just like us, when we look at our baptism, we're counseled and we're asked to count the cost. But no one can truly count the cost of what God's going to put you through, because you really don't know what's ahead of you. I, when I was baptized, was like that young boy, thinking this is a good deal. I didn't want to miss out on salvation, to be in the kingdom, to have eternal life. All you had to do is keep 10 simple little rules, and if you break them, you just repent and somebody else paid the price for you. Sounded like a really good deal. And besides, it'd all be over by 1975. But all you old timers know, didn't happen.

But scared? Yeah, in times of testing, you can get scared. Would God always be there for you?

How's God going to save me this time? Would He always recognize what I was doing and my duty to Him, no matter where I would be dropped? In my life, I've been dropped in a lot of strange situations, which I often use to try to encourage other people that what you're going through can't be that bad. Would I leave things in His hands, follow His orders, no matter where I ended up? And would I trust Him as my commander?

Ted Jomone's first tour of duty was Normandy. He was in the plane with all the other units that were going to be dropped in the 101st Airborne Division. And as they were flying, they hadn't reached their destination yet. They were still going well over the speeds for a drop. They usually slowed down to about 125 miles an hour, and they were going 200 or so. When the plane next to them got hit, they went up in a ball of fire. And so the captain of the airplane, apparently his wing had been hit a bit, so he pulled the green light and told them all to jump. So they ran up the front, artillery fire coming at them, and they jumped. They weren't at the site they were. When they jumped out of the plane, they were going so fast, they said it ripped the bag off his leg.

Didn't even have that. When he landed, he landed in water. I can imagine the terror he thought when he hit water. Thankfully, it was only waist-deep, and he was able to walk out.

But it was interesting that he walked out, started trying to find where his group was. He was miles away from where his unit was, and he had to figure it out. So he started walking, and the first person he almost killed wasn't even an enemy. He was another soldier. They had these little crickets that clicked. If you've seen any war stories, they would click them, and then you would know that it was a friend, not a foe. Unfortunately, the Germans figured that out real quickly and thought their machine gun bolts could make similar noise. So when some Americans would think they had a friend and stand up, they'd end up being shot. In his case, the person he ran into, he clicked his cricket and didn't hear anything back, and started to shoot. He thought, no. He yelled out something in English, and he was another 17-year-old boy. It had landed. It was just terrorized. He couldn't talk or do anything. So he helped him and took him on his way.

But sometimes we can mistake French for enemies as well. We can see that. You turn to 2 Corinthians 11. We read about that. People that would be on your side trying to help. Sometimes we might not take someone to be our brother's keeper if they're trying to help. But also, there's the real enemy we have. 2 Corinthians 11, verse 13, it talks about those such are false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves into the apostle of Christ. There have been a lot of divisions in the church over 2,000 years with people trying to transform themselves into something they're not.

No marvel for Satan himself was transformed into an angel of light.

Therefore, it's no great thing if his ministers also be transformed with the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works. Satan knows our crickets, and he counterfeits them. He tries to draw people away that way. Are we close enough to God to recognize what the truth is? Are we familiar enough with his word to know when someone's saying something wrong? Are we close enough to God and have the patience to wait and see if things really are as some people say they are? Somehow Ted Jomone didn't shoot his comrade, and they marched together till they each found their troops. His troop, Company H, was headed by a lieutenant Wiezbowski. The first thing they were ordered to do was take a section of land that had minefields in it and some machine gun fill boxes. As he walked through that, his lieutenant stepped on a mine, cost him his leg, and so he went over and carried his lieutenant back to safety. They were all huddled up there because they realized it was a minefield. But Wiebowski said, we've got to take out that pillbox so the people coming from the beach won't be able to get through and they'll be killed. So he said, Jomone, you're young, you're lucky. Take it out. So he ran through the minefield and took out the pillbox. Surprisingly, he didn't step on any mines. He didn't do it for a war to get put in for a silver star for that. He did it because it was the right thing to do. It was a sense of duty. And oftentimes we have a sense of duty that we have to do things maybe that we don't want to do. I don't know why God protected him. Maybe it was chance, maybe not.

But his sense of duty was admirable. So I asked, do we have the same sense of duty to God?

We're Christian soldiers fighting a different war. But nonetheless, there are times when it seems hopeless. Yet we're told to obey. Just like Shadrach B. Shek and Abednego or Daniel, the men of old, those stories that help us. When we read those stories in Hebrews 11, the faith chapter, in Hebrews 12, where it says we're beset with so many witnesses. And those are for us. Witnesses, so we lay aside every weight, as Hebrews 12 once says, that we obey. And we run that race with patience, knowing that God is there. But the race is often a lot of little things. We have to go through a lot of spiritual minefields, so to speak. It's a race of faith. And we have to have faith to go through that. Are you too important to do the little things? Oftentimes, I've seen in my career, people are more than willing to stand up and slay Goliath, but they don't want to fetch water or wash feet or do simple things that are there. We have to have a sense of duty that transcends whatever our own feelings are. We have to have that faith. Going back to Romans 12, verse 3. We read about being a living sacrifice in verse 1. But in verse 3, it says, Paul speaking, he says, for I say, through the grace given to me that every man that's among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God has dealt to every man, a measure of faith. What is your measure of faith? Does it make the cause worth it to you that you will be that sacrifice? You'll go through whatever minefield God has you go through? Do you believe the promise is enough to step out? And do you pick yourself up after one battle to prepare for the next? Because life is not a single battle. It's a series of things that we go through that God tests us and proves us to see what we're made of. From Normandy, Ted Jamal's next mission was Carrington.

Carrington was known as Purple Heart Lane in June of 1944. It was interesting, one of the Colonels, Colonel Cole, he gathered a group of men, mostly from the 101st scattered divisions, that were taken apart. They were running short of ammunition, and they knew that they needed to take a hill because all the crossroads went through there and all the troops would have to go through. It was critical to the invasion that they take the area, but they did ammunition. So he had all the men in his troop fixed on their bayonets, and they charged the hillside. 750 men charged the hillside, 125 were left standing when they finished it. Ted Jamal was one of those 125.

From the archives, I read, it says, the Purple Heart Lane Airborne Memorial Museum will be located at the northern side of Carrington, in the field where the 101st Airborne Division's First Medal of Honor recipient, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cole, led the heroic bayonet charge of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment. I asked my father-in-law why he survived. I expected him to say luck.

But he didn't. He said, training. I said, what do you mean training? Fort Benning? Did they train you? That much? Oh, Fort Benning was nothing. We had a day or two. He says, my father had been in World War I. From the time I was 13, he saw a war coming in Europe again. He took his three sons out and taught him how to use a bayonet. I have a hard time thinking about my son and trying to teach him something like that, but he trained his three sons. And yet, we are being in training, too. When we read God's scriptures, when we go through trials and tests, we're in training for our job.

How trained are we for the jobs ahead that we face? We know Paul trained Timothy. He turned to 2 Timothy 3. The old among us know and the young find out that there'll be challenges in life, sometimes extreme challenges. Your past experience will help you get through those training.

2 Timothy 3 and verse 12, it tells us, yes, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. It's not going to be a better process to go through this. Evil men and seducers will act worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But continue you in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing of whom you have learned them. From a child, you've known the Holy Scriptures, able to make you wise to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. How we need to train our children. I remember reading and having Bible studies at 5.30 in the morning with my father, my stepfather, and then going to Imperial and having Bible every day. One of the greatest assets that I've ever had, even though I didn't have God's Spirit, I remember the things I read. And all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, which is what we have to put on. Why? That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly finished to all good works. We have to be learning and praying and studying and preparing.

Tejamon's training saved him at Carrington. It's our training that will allow Christ to save us and put us to work in his army. Training is not an end in itself, however. Training simply prepares you for the next challenge. In my life, I've always prayed, God, please let this be my test and not my preparation for one. Because they get worse. They always do. Tejamon's next assignment was market gardens. It was September 1944, an invasion of Holland. From the World War II database, I'll quote what they say. It says, the plan called Operation Market Gardens was for the largest airborne drop in military history. Three Allied divisions would be involved.

The US Army 101st Airborne would drop at Eindhoven and take the Canal crossing at Vengal.

The Canal Road was also known as Hell's Highway. The airborne units that suffered heavy casualties in Normandy campaign were still reorganizing in their camps in England when the orders came down.

They returned in early August after 40 days of fighting. Some 40 percent of their members would never leave the Normandy coast or Carrington, resting in Allied cemeteries. On September 26, Montgomery ordered the first airborne to break out of Arnhem and rejoin the Allied forces to the south.

Out of 10,000 men dropped in Arnhem, only 2,300 came out. 1400 were dead. 6,000 were prisoners of war. It truly was Hell's Highway. As I watched Band of Brothers, every time they mentioned one of these names before the announcer would say it, my father-in-law would say, oh, that was Hell's Highway. Then the announcer would say, the soldiers knew it. Did the same with Carrington. It was interesting to have him even with his brain. He could remember everything about the war as clearest the day before. It was Marking Gardens where the second Congressional Medal of Honor was given out.

It was given out to a young scout named Joe Mann. It was interesting because Joe Mann was a sharpshooter. He was out in front, but he got hit. He got hit in the arms and legs, and the other soldiers took him back into the foxhole they were in. Started to ban you out, started to carry him out to the hotel. He said, look, I'm going to survive. He said, tomorrow, you're going to have to charge the enemy. He said, let me stand guard overnight. So they wrapped his arms and tied the bandages around his. They weren't life-threatening runes in the sense, as long as you stop the bleeding. He sat there and watched overnight.

Well, sadly, the next morning, instead of them attacking the enemy, the enemy attacked them.

Joe Mann was in the hole when a grenade was thrown into it. He was plaid the next to him.

There were a few other men in the hole. And when he saw it and saw no one could get to it, he just said, man, I'll take it and rolled over on top of the grenade. And so he got a medal of honor for that. You may wonder why I tell you the story of Joe Mann when I'm talking about Ted Jomann. Ted Jomann was in the foxhole with Joe Mann. Saved his life.

It's interesting when you look at that. What does Christ tell us in John 1512?

He makes it very clear. He says, this is my commandment, that you love one another. So I've loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

And he tells us that you're my friends if you do what I command you.

And he indeed laid down his life for all of us.

The next day, Ted Jomann was made a squad leader and one of his best friends that he had gone to Fort Benning with and gone through Normandy and Carrington was in the hole. He kept looking up to see if more grenades were coming. Ted told him, no, stay down, stay down. He kept popping up. Finally, he grabbed him around the body to pull him back in the hole one time. As he did, a sniper had a bullet shot right through his friend's head. His friend died in his arms.

He cried when he told me that story because it was difficult for him.

And I understood then why he distanced himself from people at times, why he wasn't as friendly even when things were going well that he might have been. I understood a little bit about what he went through because in his mind I could hear him asking himself, why me? He always didn't want any help from the veterans really because he said that the heroes were the ones that stayed over there that died. But he asked, you know, why me? Why didn't I die? But there are others that have asked that in the past. Turn to Acts chapter 12 if you would. When we read these stories, we understand that others have asked the same question. Probably you have. I know I have. Why me? Why did God call us? What does he want from me? In Acts 12 verse 2, we read the story of James' brother being beheaded.

It says, And he, Herod, killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. Because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. These were the days of unleavened bread. And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, delivered him from four quaternions of soldiers to keep him, intending after Passover to bring him forth to the people. Peter therefore was kept in prison, but prayer was made without ceasing of the church of God for him.

And when Herod would have brought him forth that same night, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and the keepers before the door that kept the prison. And behold, the angel the Lord came to him. A light shined in the prison, and he smote Peter on the side, raised him up, and said, Arise quickly! These chains fell off his hands. I'm sure Peter was thinking, I'm going to die here. After all, James died. And so obviously that can happen.

But here he is, he's saying, why me? Why didn't this happen for James?

And yet each of us have our own set of trials we go through. We really don't know which ones are going to be ours. So if you ever ask the question, why me? You're not alone.

Others have asked that before. Good deeds and character often come out in warfare.

Some are recognized, some are not. Do we allow God's Spirit to bring the deeds out in our spiritual warfare? To show our good works before man? To take his for others sometimes? To make life better for them? Things that we have to do. When I worked for Mr. Armstrong, first became his aide. You know, everybody wants to look good. I wanted to look good. He typed all his articles, but he only typed with four fingers because he grew up on the old manual typewriters. And as his eyesight went bad, he couldn't see very well. He missed a lot of keys, and they'd always be one or two keys off.

But he had handed me things to read, and I would read them and about half the letters were wrong. It would take me a little bit of time, and I was really slow in reading. So one day he asked me, why are you so slow? I said, Mr. Armstrong, you're missing a lot of the keys. And he grabs the paper from me and gets his magnifying glass out and looks at it. He gets so discouraged. He said, I am worthless. I should just die. I'm only good for writing articles and things, and I should die. And I realized how discouraged he was, and I thought, you know, I've got to change this so he doesn't feel so discouraged. So I learned another language, the mistyping language, because the L's were semicolons and the M's were N's and the N's. So I could actually read this stuff like it was normal, and he thought his typing had improved.

And it was interesting. One day I came in and I had a I sat in the chair next to him, except that was his bad eye, and I had work to do. He always wanted me there, but yet I had work to do it. So when he started typing, I could sneak out because he couldn't see out of that eye.

And I would count the Smith-Corona had the ding at the end of the line when he hit the carriage return, and so I could count the dings, and pretty much know what he's done. I could run back in, sit in the red chair, and be sitting there, and he'd pull it out and give it to me, and he'd think I'd been there the whole time. And I ran back in one time, and I looked, and I was horrified because he had typed a whole page, a type, and the carriage, the ribbon, had run out of the cartridge on the third line, and it was just a blank page other than those three lines.

And he pulls it out like he always did, and rips it out, oh, this is some of my best work, here, read this to me. Well, missing wrong letters is one thing, but blank page is another.

But I changed out his typewriters to 220 volt because somehow he'd managed to plug a 110 into a 220 outlet once and fried everything, so I reversed the thing. So I noticed that as I was reading those lines pretty slow, because I was trying to figure out how I'm going to explain, if you get upset that you can't hit the right keys, how can you, if I can't even tell there's nothing on the paper. So I'm reading it, and I noticed as I held it a line, I could roll it, kind of hit hard enough it left an imprint, enough that I could kind of read this hieroglyphics off of this blank sheet of page. And so I'm reading it, and he says, you're reading really slow, and I said, I'm having a bad day today. And managed to read the whole thing. And it was wonderful because it was lunchtime, and I thought he'll go away, I'll retype, he'll be fine. But he, the students had gone to China, and they were going to come back and print a little closing evasive, but was a thank you for the project there. And so he, so they were coming in to see him, and he thanked them and started to get up. Oh, wait a minute, Aaron, you need to read that thing too. So I'm sitting there, and they're on a couch here, and he's there, and I'm here, and I have to hold the paper like this to get the light right. And they were wondering why he's so excited about this paper, because there's only three lines on the sheet of paper. How can that be so wonderful? But then I kept reading after I ran out of the three lines, and they thought the force was with me because I just kept reading.

He doesn't know that. I'll tell him that someday. But the thing is, is sometimes it's about making other people better. It's not about you being good. It's about making your job help them do their job.

Do we get tired and want to stop? Yeah, at times, because it's difficult. But that's not what it's about. It's about helping and doing God's work. Tejamon was exhausted after Carrington, and you thought this was enough for one man to go through. Over in Carrington, or from Market Gardens, he went on to Bastogne. You've heard the story of Bastogne. It's in all the movies and things.

I'll read from the record about Bastogne and the Battle of the Bulge. It says, The seizure of the harbor at Antwerp with the encirclement and destruction of the Allied armies required the German army mechanized forces to use the roadways in order to maintain the speed of their offensive. All seven main roads in the Ardennes mountain converged on the small town of Bastogne. Control of the crossroads of Bastogne was vital to the Germans to speed up their advance and improve resupply in the German columns. As the poor weather conditions made cross-country very difficult, they needed this outlet. The battle lasted from mid-December 1944 to January 1945.

The 501st was the first to fight at Bastogne, and one of its battalions ran into the enemy near Neff, a few kilometers outside of Bastogne. Thus began the heroic defense of Bastogne, in which the 501st gave up not one foot of ground, in which the division, its comrades and arms stopped cold, everything the German army could throw at them. It ruined Hitler's offensive timetable and won the 101st Division, the first presidential unit citation ever awarded to a full division.

All seven highways leading to Bastogne were cut by the German forces by noon of December 21st.

By nightfall, the conglomeration of airborne and armored infantry forces were recognized by both sides as being surrounded. The American soldiers were outnumbered. They were lacking in cold-weather gear, lacking in ammunition, lacking in food, lacking in medical supplies, and lacking in leadership, as many of the officers, including the commander, were out outside the area and couldn't get in. They were surrounded, and they could not be resupplied, nor was air supply or tactical support available because of the weather. The most famous quote from that battle came from Brigadier General McAuliffe. When they asked him to surrender, he simply said, nuts. I asked him about Bastogne.

He said Bastogne was hell. He said it was freezing cold. People were dying all around you. They shot shells into the trees, and the trees would fall on you. More damage was caused by the trees falling than anything else. Bastogne is where he got his only Purple Heart. He'd been hit several times.

In the war, you had to go to a hospital to get a Purple Heart. He was hit in Bastogne's leg by a shell. After Bastogne was done, he was in a hospital and got a Purple Heart. Although, when they asked him where were he injured, he'd hear. It's all over his body. But it was interesting.

When I looked at him, and when I had to take care of him, Washington might see his toes. His toes have been black. His toenails are black. He still had all his toes, though. He's one of the unfortunate ones. Almost all of them lost their toes because it was so cold. He said it was freezing. He couldn't stand it, but there's nothing they could do. They said they waited for supplies for any type of ground support or air support. He said you could hear the planes going over, and the planes did drop things to them, but they didn't have GPS at the time. Most of the supplies went to the enemies.

Occasionally, some would find their way down inside Bastogne, but for the most part, they didn't.

He said he felt totally alone, totally surrounded by the enemy.

Is that a normal feeling? Do you ever feel alone? I'm sure at times you have.

At times like this, if you turn to 2nd King 6, we'll read of someone else who felt alone.

This is a story of Elisha.

He was helping the king of Israel. 2nd King 6, verse 8, says, The king of Syria warred against Israel and took counsel with his servants, saying, We're going to go build our camp over here, laying out his battle plans.

Verse 9, The man of God sent to the king of Israel, saying, Don't go this way, because that's where the Syrians are going to be.

And then the king of Israel sent to the place, and the man of God told him and warned him, and saved him there, not once or twice. But every time the Syrian war machine would move, the king of Israel would know where it was.

Verse 11, we said, This thing, the heart of the king of Syria, was troubled. And he called his servants, he said, Will you not show which of you is the traitor? Which of you is telling the king of Israel where I am?

And instead, his servants said, No, my Lord.

The Elisha, the prophet that's in Israel, tells the king the word you speak in your bedchamber.

So the king said, Okay, go get him. Go spy out where he is.

And he told him he's in Dothan, this little small little village out there.

And he sent chariots and horses and great hosts, and they came by night and coppiced the city round about.

When the servant of the man of God was risen early and gone forth, behold, a host coppiced the city both with horses and chariots.

And his servant said to him, Alas, my master, what shall we do?

He had to be thinking, you know, every time Syria went somewhere, God told you where they're going to tell the king. Why didn't he tell you they were coming here?

Why didn't he warn us so we could get out of here?

And of course, Elisha answered and says, Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.

Now, the servant's got to be thinking, This is not. This is a small little village. It's just us.

And they got this giant army.

And he's wondering, what do you mean?

And Elisha prayed and said, Lord, I pray open his eyes that he may see.

The Lord opened his eyes to the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire. Round and round, Elisha.

Do we see the chariots around us?

I often wish you could look up and just see the angels in the room.

They're there.

Protecting us.

Helping us. Helpers of our joy.

Do we see those chariots? Do we see God's hand helping us?

It's not about the big things.

But God supplies our needs, what we need.

Tejamon waited for help. And like he said, occasionally some supplies did land near them.

Minimal, but enough.

And I asked him, how did you survive Bastog?

And he said, socks.

I said, what?

Socks.

He says, they saved my feet.

Between market gardens.

And Bastog, he'd received a care package from home. And inside that, his mom had sent up care of wool socks.

Everybody else had cotton socks. Wool doesn't absorb water. My cotton does.

And so he says, they saved my toes.

Saved my feet.

Wool socks from home.

Yes, he was saved by socks from mom.

Interesting, not always something you put in a care package. Usually it's cookies and food.

Things like that.

But sometimes it's another person that gives us comfort.

A kind word.

A small gift, a pair of socks, so to speak. Or a scripture that carries you through.

In my life, it's been the scriptures, stories in the Bible that have gotten me through.

Romans 8, 28. It says, all things work together for the good of those who love God.

Called according to His purpose. And He has a purpose when He called you.

And those little things He'll give to help you.

Every day that I washed and cleaned Him, saw His feet, saw His toes, curled in a misshape, black.

But He still had them.

I remember Bastogne, the price He paid for this country.

It's easy to see it when you see it. Turn to John 20, if you would.

Because every time I washed His feet, I would think of Christ washing the disciples and the price He paid for you and me.

And I thought of doubting Thomas.

Of course, all of them doubted, but Thomas gets credit for it.

John 20, verse 24.

After Christ had been crucified.

Verse 24 says, Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The first time when they all saw Him.

And the other disciples said to Him, We've seen the Lord.

But He said to them, Except I see in His hand the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe.

That man was dead. I saw him on the cross. He died.

But after eight days, again, the disciples were within, and Thomas was with them this time.

And they came to Jesus. The door was being shut, and He stood in the midst and said, Peace be unto you.

You can imagine what Thomas felt right then, when all of a sudden Christ appeared in the middle of the room, supernaturally.

And the first thing he does is look at Thomas. And he says, in verse 27, Reach here your finger, look at my hands, put your hand here, put it in my side.

Be not faithless, but believing.

And Thomas said, My Lord and my God, Jesus said, Thomas, because you've seen Me, you believed. Blessed are they that have not seen, yet have believed.

Seeing is believing. It does remind us.

But we need to have the faith we see without.

We believe without having to see it.

The faith to realize this is real. It's what it's about.

If this wasn't enough, the 101st airborne was now ordered into Germany.

Ted Gomone's next challenge was not being shot at, not freezing, not starving.

He'd seen enough of death.

But what he saw next made him sick.

His little squad walked into the woods and walked into one of the death camps.

He saw them. He tried to feed them.

They realized when they gave them food, it actually killed them because they had no, they'd not eaten anything so long, they had no bacteria enough in their stomach. And to put food in there, they couldn't digest it.

And they watched people die, so they tried to help them. And so they had to stop.

They were simply too weak.

Yet at the same time, they would cling to them, begging for help, for liberation.

We're going to be spiritual soldiers.

The world needs you and I when Christ returns to help them understand the battles that we will have to fight.

Zechariah 8, verse 23, it talks about that time in the future. We read these scriptures at the feast of Tabernacles usually.

Verse 23 of Zechariah 8, Thus says the Lord of hosts, In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold, out of all the languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.

Those people yearn for physical food, for freedom.

People will come to us for spiritual food.

To know God, understand the truth.

Tejamon didn't do it for the reward.

He did get five bronze stars and a purple heart.

True heroes don't do anything for the reward.

They don't brag. They seldom even talk about it.

There's a lot of fakes out there that will tell you stories that didn't even happen in most cases.

You can't make yourself a spiritual hero, either.

Remember the story of Simon Magus when he said, Give me the power that whoever I lay hands on can have the Holy Spirit.

There have always been people that want to be seen, want to have power when they don't deserve it.

People to show. Christ was surrounded with them.

Matthew 6 tells of those who did alms publicly, so people would see them. How much money they threw in.

And he tells his disciples, Don't do it to be seen. Don't do it. Don't sound the trumpet. Don't let other people know. He tells them when they fast. Don't look like you're fasting.

Back normal.

God will bless you. He sees what you're doing. He knows. And that's who's important.

It may seem like Tejamon was a giant. Indeed, he was a war hero of sorts.

But he, like all, had weaknesses, just as we do. And warfare weaknesses come out, whether it's spiritual warfare that we go through or the physical one he went through. Besides not being able to swim, which is a real weakness when you're jumping out of airplanes, Tejamon was a sleepwalker. He'd always walk in his sleep in the time he was a kid. He told me when he was a Holland, he says he woke up one night about one o'clock or two in the morning. He said, he was up next to a windmill. And the German army was on one side, and the American army was on the other.

And it was pitch black, and he said, I couldn't walk either way. I'd get shot. So he sat there huddled up by the windmill all night long, wondering what's going to happen. We can go forward, or we can go back. We often have to analyze what we're doing. This world is full of compromises.

It wants you to compromise. It wants you to be able to do what you want. It wants you to compromise. And how many times do our weaknesses, our humanity, our making heroes of men, instead of Christ as our king, put us in the middle? It's interesting, when we took our father to the Veterans Administration to get help for him, and over a period of two years, we managed to get help from him.

It was a difficult thing, but there are so many people that try to get help and don't really need it. But it was interesting, when we took him in, they said, we'll get him back to the line. We gave him the name, and invariably, within a couple of minutes, they would, Ted Jomone, would you please come to the front? And you'd hear them in the background saying, he's one of them. He's one of those survivors. There are not that many of that group that returned.

It was interesting, because in trying to get help for him, they wanted to help him, and they said his stroke wasn't caused by the war. And so, they said, the things you were trying to ask for, I thought maybe because he had shrapnel in his head that it might do something, but they finally told us what we needed to do. But it was interesting, because they asked him, well, where were you hurt?

And he, like I said, he pointed at all these places and things, and they said, look, we don't discount it, but none of those things were written in the book. And if it's not in the book, it didn't happen. And they said, you know, we can't change that. There are so many people like that there. There were others there that had been in the worst of the combat. My cousin was a Navy SEAL. After doing this, I wrote and told him, I said, because they asked us, I said, can you get letters from all the people he served with saying what he did?

Well, he was 17, went in, he was 82 years old then, everybody had died, and you're supposed to get letters from people. But I told my cousin, I said, you get letters from people, because he was in the SEALs, and every operation he did was covert. And all these guys that did covert things, there's nothing in the book. So they go get help, and I'm sorry, it didn't happen, it's not in the book.

But it's interesting, there's a book we can be written in this while. Turn to Revelation 17, when it talks about the beast. Revelation 17 in verse 8. It says, The beast you saw was and is not, and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life, from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was and is not.

These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome him, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful. And they're in the book, the book of life, over a couple pages, Revelation 20, verse 12. We read there, I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God.

And the books were opened, and another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the book, according to their works. Many will eventually be in the book, in the second resurrection. But only a few of Christ's elite core of firstfruits, his Medal of Honor recipients, his 101st Airborne, so to speak, will have part in the first resurrection. And it says, blessed he that has part in the first resurrection.

It's a special one that you and I are called to. What will the reaction be to us? I'm sure people will light up when they see us, and we have the ability to go through walls, and the ability to help them. They're going to ask how we survived, and it won't be luck. It will be with God's Spirit, with the help of each other, with Christ directing us. And you can teach them how to be in the book of life. And certainly, nation won't lift up sword against nation, and they won't learn war anymore.

Some will learn and some will not. We know there's a great battle at the end time. If you're not written in the book, you read in Revelation 20, verse 14, it says, death and hell were cast in the lake of fire. This is the second death. Verse 15, whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast in the lake of fire. Because if you're not in the book, you didn't happen. If you're not in the book, you didn't happen. You learn a lot through that service, through that sacrifice.

And like Christ, when he learned through suffering, we also learn obedience. And every morning and every night that I had to help my father-in-law to do things for him that were difficult, not that pleasant, tedious, some unpleasant, some pay other people to do it, and some refuse to do it.

You take that road, you miss out on the lessons that you can learn. Lessons of foot washing, the lessons of Christ's death, his sacrifice. I tried to give dignity to my father-in-law. I would try to even get one hand that was good, and I'd take him down the patio and let him water plants, and I'd wash things off and have him hold the hose and rinse them, and take him to the Home Depot because he liked tools, and we'd walk through the aisles and wheelchair and let him look at tools and things.

Try to make life more pleasant for him. And there are things that, in times, we can help make life more present for other people. But as you do those things that are unpleasant or difficult, or maybe even seem impossible, you have to see us in honor, not as a punishment, not as a difficulty, because our spiritual warfare is a little bit at a time.

We, the firstfruits, which we'll celebrate next week on Pentecost, are a special army, a special army of Jesus Christ. It has a special mission. In each of you and me, all of us, we have our normandies, where we're dropped in something that we don't know what it is and where we'll land. We all have our carantans where we may charge the enemy without anything except our Bibles. We have our market gardens where someone else's courage may take a landmine for you, help you get into God's kingdom. Your story or my story that can help someone else get in.

We all have our bastions where we think we're alone, surrounded totally by the enemy. We don't know how we'll get out. We all have people that need what we have, but don't even recognize it. They'll need to be spoon-fed sometime in the future. And we all have our sleepwalking into windmills where we have things to overcome.

And maybe no one but God and Jesus Christ will know the wars that you fought. But that's all that matters. He's the only one that needs to know, live or die. You can win, and we can help each other. Philippians 4.9, Paul writes to the Philippians, how we can help. He says, Those things which you have both learned and received and heard and seen and may do them.

When you see other people do good things, copy it, mimic it. And the God of peace shall be with you. You see, it's more than just not learning war anymore. The physical killing, you can stop with force. You have a bigger army? Yeah, you can stop just with force. But an outside force cannot stop hatred.

An outside force can only stop the physical side of it, not the spiritual or mental side. That's why Christ magnified the law when he said, it says you should not kill, but I said don't hate your neighbor. He magnified it. The spiritual plane, the mind and heart, we have to change. It's up here where you don't learn war anymore. It's not the physical. The love of God has to push out any thoughts of evil to help us be like his son. The physical will be changed in the millennium, but changing the mind is what we'll have to do when we're teaching others.

That's the real they shall not learn war anymore. When you're a spirit being, you'll have more power to teach that. And you have to be in total control of your mind. Because as a spirit being, when you think it'll happen, just like Christ said the word spoke and it was created, we have to control our minds. Do you want to be in God's book of life?

Especially as one of his first fruits, part of his army? Only one way to be in the book. You have to trust God with all your heart and your mind and your soul. You have to follow in the footsteps of your older brother and be like God in righteousness. But you can't do it alone, and you're not alone. Philippians 4, 13. Because we really do have to trust God.

And as Paul wrote there, I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. He's given you that power. When Andrew laid on you, you received the Spirit, you have the ability. You have to fight as if you're doing it yourself. You have to stand up to the trials. You may slip at times, but you can be picked up. And in him alone, with mind and heart and soul, can you truly come to the point in your life where you don't learn war anymore that you're a child of peace?