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Some people dislike heights. The problem is that it is a long ways down and it makes them feel as if their head is spinning and their stomach is churning. I have a friend who always sits in the aisle or middle seat on an airplane. The window seat is too harrowing. For them the window seat is like the time my sister talked me into going with her 8th grade classroom to Magic Mountain—the “crown jewel” of all theme parks. She needed another chaperon and I looked perfect for the job.

I wondered…is this the precursor to the stock market plunge some are anticipating? Is my 401k ready to disappear? I have no idea what $14.7B looks like, but it is like saying to me, “Your medical bills just took the last nickel in your bank account.” Or, “Hurricane Patricia just blew your house and car into the next neighborhood.”

I guess none of this should surprise us. We are familiar with James 5:1, “Come now, you rich, howl for the miseries that are coming upon you!” Now this is not the exact context of James verse, but you get the idea–this loss hurts!

"Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" asked the Philippian Jailer fresh from a near miss (Acts 16:30). A few moments earlier he had pulled his sword with full intent of ending his miserable life but grace had prevailed. Paul and Silas, who had been mercilessly beaten at the hand of the multitude and magistrates and then turned over to the callous jailer, had prevented a mass escape from the prison following an earthquake that supernaturally opened all prison doors and loosed everyone’s chains. They themselves, prized prisoners, had remained as a testimony to the faithless.

In a theory known as the Phantom Time Hypothesis,he suggests that all of the events between 614AD and 911AD never actually happened.  They were fabricated by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III and Pope Sylvester II in order to alter the calendar such that their lives would intersect with the noteworthy year 1000 AD – the millennium.