In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
                                                                                                          – II Timothy 4:1-4

I wonder if this is how Jonah felt when God told him to “Go to the great city… preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.” Like Jonah, I’d like to hop a boat and take off in the opposite direction and not tell you what my friend, Col. Myrl Allinder said. But then I remember the rest of the story… A storm almost sank Jonah’s boat, the crew threw him overboard, and “the LORD provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.” After the Lord made the fish vomit “Jonah onto dry land … Jonah obeyed the word of the LORD and went….”

I’ve obviously been putting off writing about my discussion with Myrl last week while I was in Clearwater, Florida. But I don’t want to risk being swallowed by a whale, so here goes…

Keep in mind that Myrl is not like the TV-preachers who raise millions of dollars, build business empires, and make proclamations “from God.” Myrl humbly ministers locally, similar to what Jesus did when He walked the earth and ministered. Myrl regularly serves homeless people and disciples prisoners in the county jail while he lives on his fairly meager military retirement pay. He’s seen — close up — many of the most prominent people in Christian communications, and he wants no part in what they’re doing. It bothers him quite a bit to see the frivolous ways money is spent by so many of these “giants” in Christendom.

When Myrl and I ordered breakfast the other morning, he humbly insisted on paying for it. After we sat down he began to describe what he sees in the Church and the world. His countenance changed. He suddenly had a concerned look, a mixture of frustration and sadness, as he talked about the perversion of truth in the Church.

Then he told me about two dreams he has had — the first one occurred almost 40 years ago while he was living in the suburbs of Washington, DC. The second dream occurred the night before our breakfast meeting. He felt both dreams were “from the Lord.” (I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. – Joel 2:28)

In his first dream he was with his family in their yard outside their home watching a terrible, devastating storm coming toward them. It covered the sky from one end of the horizon to the other. They watched beautiful green trees and homes being totally destroyed. Myrl collected his family and went inside. As the storm approached, it annihilated everything in its path and left nothing but brown dirt, like the sand in the Sahara Desert. However, when it got close to his home, he and his family watched it circle around their house, and multiple tornadoes turned into angels protecting Myrl and his family.

In his second dream, the night before our meeting last week, Myrl was again outside his home with a terrible storm approaching. Similar to his dream almost 40 years ago, he told his wife, “It’s time to get the stuff in the house.” Then he woke up at 3 a.m. and the Holy Spirit told him…

                                                     “The storm has begun.”

He didn’t go into much more detail, but I think I understood what he meant, and what he believed the Holy Spirit was telling him about our nation: judgment is on its way.

When I asked Myrl about the terrible devastation in Haiti he briefly discussed the unbiblical religious practices of the Haitian people. But he also said the behavior of both Christians and non-Christians in the U.S. will soon be bringing similar catastrophic Acts of God to major cities here.

This morning my scheduled reading was the twelfth chapter of Hebrews. Here’s some of what stood out…

If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens” … let us be thankful and worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.     – Heb. 12:25,28-29