The Road to West Virginia

Alright, I am back on the trail of exactly how the Lord has led us to the point where we currently are.



In the last post on this trip, I left off by telling you that I would share the story of how a sweet lady had offered our family a 81=/- acre farm in Northern Florida about 2 years ago, and why we felt constrained to turn that lady down.

As unbelievable as an event like this seemed to us, and probably to the majority of you, we were sure that it was only a test of the Lord to see if our real desire was to live a life that was faithful to His calling, or if we just simply were interested in worldly security and prosperity.



The lady in question was the mother of our landlord, and she was quite a real estate tycoon by most standards having amassed several large properties in different regions that she was using to secure an inheritance for her children. It seems that she was quite taken with the 'picture' of our little family that she had witnessed in the various meetings with us. This is an important point because, as you will see later, those pictures soon faded when the reality of our lives began to intersect with that of her own family.

This sweet lady, had seen my 'Amish-looking' wife and daughter, on several occasions, and had closely watched our family interact in both public and private on a daily basis. She was apparently attracted to some facets of our life and approached us one day with a cryptic offer to help us live the life style that she 'envisioned the Lord' calling us to. We later found out that it wasn't so much envisioning, as it was visioning. What I mean by that, is that this sweet lady was receiving 'visions' from God about our lives and what He intended for her to explain to us. She did not share these 'visions' immediately, but soon they were to become the backbone of much of our interaction with her and her family.



At first, it was an unexpected joy to think that God had heard our prayers to live a more sequestered and agrarian-sufficient life!

By sequestered, I mean a physically separated life that would limit the interaction that we, and our children had with the daily masses of Babylonians around us. By an agrarian- sufficient life, I mean a life that is lived in closer dependence on God, as we literally look to the blessing of increase from the land, mixed with our stewardship of it, as our chief means of living as the only alternative besides an unexpected inheritance!

A little more explanation, considering the current discussion surrounding agrarianism.;

I really want to pause for another moment on these two important parts of our understanding of Christian living.

For those of you who don't already know, I am theologically aligned with a segment of the Church, visible, that is very diligent in doctrinal studies, and takes great pains to root out any heresy, along with the false teaching that leads to heresy. I am in agreement with every major reformed confession, (by reformed I mean those that commonly arose during, or out of the Calvinistic reformation period), and I am an unabashed Puritan in my theology. That said, it is with the deepest and most sincere love to my brethren, that I state that, I am in almost universal disagreement with them on the issue of physical separation .

I am NOT speaking of spiritual separation unto personal holiness in our daily walk. This IS the primary lesson of many of Christ's teachings, and parables...internal righteousness, as opposed to only external legalism and a false sense of righteousness based on our own works. What I am speaking of is the need to get our children out of the bus ministries, and schools, and playgrounds of the enemy. It is a faulty theology that teaches us that we should send our wives and children into the hot bed of anti- Christianity as evangelists and teachers. We, as the men and women of God have a very difficult time standing against the modern age, and yet we willingly send our babies in to fight these battles. Please don't send a bunch of references about the chorus that 'the beasts of the wild shall be led by a child'. Tennessee Ernie Ford had a fine voice, but the theology of such arguments doesn't work out! If we would just take an honest look at the culture around us, we would easily conclude that during the greatest time of American so called 'evangelicalism', this nation has become the most perverse and debauched society in history. The examples abound and anyone that cannot see this just isn't paying attention. My fellow Presbyterians have been some of the worst defenders of an 'integrated' society. I can only assume that this is because we do strongly believe in biblical reformation of every part of civilization. We do not want a pure church alone. But, pray for a pure society at every level. Religious, political, education, economics, etc. We can point back to the great Puritan experiments in many places and prove that it can work! The problem here is that the people around us do not want it to work. The people themselves are not interested in living the Christian life. They may like Joyce Meyers, and even donate to the Osteen corporation, but they DO NOT have any interest in real Christian laws and government. They enjoy the shady bookstore at the edge of town. It helped revive the romance in their marriage. They have many 'gay' friends, and they are 'good people' who deserve respect.
Folks, this IS our country today. They HATE your Christ and His Law-Word. They love freedom and lawlessness. They choose it at the box-office and in their bedrooms. They even choose it in their legislators and magistrates. They have codified wickedness to ensure that they can live outside of the influence of the Gospel. Unless God chooses to send the Spirit of repentance to these people, our efforts to reach them have no meaning.
Therefore, I choose to remove my family to the safest physical place possible to train them for the battle that God may call them to one day.
It is not that I don't realize the potential mission-field in the urban areas of our land. I do. But, I am not interested in taking my children into a whore-house to hand out a gospel tract. That is not what God has instructed us to do ANYWHERE in His word! We are to set no evil thing before our eyes. Now, how can you take your child into modern day America and avoid that...
The only answer that I can find for my family is to physically remove them, as far as I can, and THEN make sure that I teach them the importance of heart-holiness, and reality with Christ as opposed to pharisee ism. For us, that naturally means trying to live as much of a self-contained 'farm' life as we can, while choosing wisely when and where to expose them to the bitter winds of this land. Perhaps God will surprise us and bring the harshness of this world crashing down upon some of our children before we have been able to fully prepare them, and then they will be like lambs to the slaughter... My only question to you is, do you pray for mercy against such a thing, or do you secretly accept the ultimate failure of purity in your life before you begin the battle?
O.K., sorry for the rant. It's a habit I am trying to break...

So, our new benefactor was now offering to us an old hog-farm of 81 acres with an orchard of 40 Jerusalem Apple trees, 20 Persimmons, 30 Raspberry bushes and two-houses and an underground fallout shelter complete with a bicycle powered generator! NO, I AM NOT JOKING! The only problem was, that of her 3 daughters and 1 son, they all expected that property for themselves!

You see, our new friend had terminal cancer and has since gone on from this world to what we truly hope is a better existence in Christ Jesus, where she will never have to rely on 'visions', or private communique again. We quickly learned that she had lived a pretty rough life up until shortly before the 'cancer' news, and now wanted to make sure that she did some things right before leaving this world. We could see the disdain in the children's eyes every time we were around them and knew that they were not happy. So, we decided to do what any Christian would, and abstain from even the appearance of evil, by taking advantage of a dying woman with a bunch of money-hungry children that would be sure to drag the name of Christ in the dirt after her death.

But we did not tell her that. We instead, accompanied her to the land. The land that she had purchased, it turns out, as her own personal Shangri-la. Not to be sold like the other property, but where she would grow old learning how to tend the garden and pick the berries. Before she knew she had cancer. While there, we labored night and day to transform the effects of years of neglect back into the once radiant place that had brought her a little earthly joy. We still have photo's of Ms. Stewart, (that's what I'll call her), walking through the 45 acres of berries with my children, and picking apples that she did not even know existed anymore. We even went down to the local nursery and bought a few annuals to plant around the door of the house so she could sit and enjoy her last few days here. Then, we told her that while we were very grateful, we felt that God wanted us to stay where we were. ( Another factor was that moving here would mean leaving our Church and there was not any Church around the Farm that was acceptable). We explained slowly and gently how God had blessed us so much by giving us a faithful Pastor and that we had prayed for years for a Church that did not add man-made worship into their teachings, and that raising up children in the Lord was our greatest concern.

We smiled and thanked her again by telling her that the love expressed in her offer made us the richest people on earth. She then slowly turned around....and left!

The next few days she happened to have another 'vision' of the Lord that involved 12 rusty folding chairs being set up in the house there and a female prophetess standing on the mantle of the fireplace yelling some gobbly-gook...There you have it, obviously! Why did I not see it sooner? God had really wanted her chain-smoking prophetess friend to divorce her sissy husband and move here to start a church that would call back the 12 tribes of Israel! ( In respect and sincere love to Ms.T, she had a very aggressive cancer that had encompassed her entire being), so that is what happened. Today the children are still in court fighting the prophetess, each other, and one of their own husbands for control of the estate.

Lesson:
Obedience to God, faithfulness to the Church, and kindness to dying old women are more important than lands, or riches. Even if it is a lot of land...

Next up, How our mid-wife came to offer us 2 acres in West Virginia. And our new dilemma...