"When God chose to include this FREE WILL thing in human beings it necessitated initiation and response, response and initiation, a cycle between Him and His children. Women and men.

And in a sense the whole story of God and the human race, is a story of the divine and the human coming together.

In the creation, God sculpts a resemblence of Himself from the earth, and breathes into it the breath of life, and pfoof, the human race is born.

Then God does a very risky thing. He gives this thing, called a human being FREE WILL. And from then on, it's a journey. It's an adventure.

Initiation and response. Response and initiation.

Between God and man. And between God and woman.

God says, "Noah, I'm going to send a FLOOD."

"But you've got to build a boat."

God says, "Abraham, Sarah, you're going to have a child, but be please be patient, and believe that I will accomplish it when I think think it's the best time."

God says, "Moses, I'm gonna deliver my enslaved people from Egypt. But I'm gonna do it through YOU."

The Divine steps out of heaven into the human realm. The human in turn links up with God's Divine Plan.

And in generation after generation, so it goes.

Prophets, centuries later, expressed God's heart when they wrote, - "I will put my laws into their minds, and write them upon their hearts."

"I will be their God, and they will be My people."

The poet expressed it when he wrote, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I go from Your presence?"

If I flee to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in the depths, You are there!

And because that is true, God, now search me, and know my heart!'

Initiation, response. Response - Initiation.

It's this coming together of the Divine and the human.

And then we come to the New Testament.

And we read there of Jesus - that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

And we beheld His glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

The coming together of the Divine and the human.

Prayer is the meeting place. It is the coming together in which the Divine and the human connect.

And that's why our prayers make a difference!

Even though God is not dependent upon our prayers, prayer is vitally important to Him, and it influences WHAT HE DOES, and WHEN HE DOES IT!

As I read scripture. And as I read Christian history. And as I look back on my own life, and as I listen in on the lives of others, I think that God just gets the biggest BUZZ out of just blowing us away from time to time with remarkable responses to prayer.

Illustrating this mix of the divine and the human, and FREE WILL, all coming together!"

Bob's BACKGROUND and COMMENTARY: It was in 1988 that my relationship with the Divine reached a new plateau of companionship and interaction. The initiation - response, response initiation Pastor Aalborg is here talking about.

As a lifelong Adventist, I had been baptized at the proper age, learned all the right doctrines, maintained the correct life-style as advocated in the "Red Books" of Ellen G. White, and gained the best education that the Seventh-day Adventist Church had to offer. .....But to say I knew Jesus personally would be a simplification and possibly untrue.... I knew what the church taught about him, but I never really felt his presence until October of 1986. ......And then he sort of knocked me down like the Bible story of Saul of Tarsus.

In October of 1986 I put on an "Elijah Revival" with the help of Pastor Cates, and after that the angels and I were buddies.... They rode around with me in my car and filled my mind with songs, stories, and potential sermons to be preached later if opportunity presented itself.

In the fall of 1987 I made the trip to see the pope in New Orleans, and Jimmy Swaggart in Baton Rouge. ......And all summer of 1988 I played in my off-duty time in the "Worthy is the Lamb" Passion Play at the Crystal Coast Amphitheater not far from Jacksonville, North Carolina. My usual acting role was that of a pharisee shouting "Crucify Hum!" as the crowd of amateur actors scoffed and sneered at the actor playing Jesus dragged his cross across the realistic outdoor set as thousands of Bible Belt tourists watched.

In the fall of 1988 I became interested in watching the "Rapture 88" Pentecostal Movement make the same numerological assumptions that the Millerites had made 144 years previously, and were just as DISAPOINTED when nothing happened on September 11, 12, and 13 other than Hurricane Gilbert. ...."Gilbert" did blow a few people and a whole lot of roofs away, but that's not what the "Rapture 88" people had in mind! They wanted to leave this earth themselves completely, and watch from "heaven" as the rest of us "left behind" were tortured for 7 years by God in His righteous wrath!

By 1992 I had done enough reading of the Bible using my own brain and the Holy Spirit to know there were indeed some kind of Codes in the Bible, and in that year when Barbara Thiering's "Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls" was published, I bought a copy as soon as I saw one in a bookstore. And finally a major part of the story of the REAL JESUS was available to read and understand. ....It had been in the Bible all along, but in a form that had to be "unlocked" by a canny detective like Dr. Barbara Thiering, PhD.

Such startling revelations are carefully orchestrated by Divine Teachers at the proper time. .....Ellen White was never allowed to learn much of this story at all, because the late 19th century was not the right time. ..But the late 20th century was indeed the right time. ........Especially after the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

And now, since 2002, it is possible to discover a whole lot more about the human Jesus, and his close interaction with a REAL GOD, a descendent of the original Elohim. .."Left behind" to be the God of this earth, and lead us all into the "New Age". .....Or destroy us if we fail to learn those lessons we must now learn........ Because there is a deadline, and little time left to save ourselves and our environment.