"Bless Yahweh, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His qadosh (holy, set-apart) name! Bless Yahweh, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: [He] who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, sso that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

"Yahweh executes righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel. Yahweh is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. [But] He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep (hold back) His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, so Yahweh pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.

"As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But the mercy of Yahweh is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's children, to such as keep His covenant, and to those who remember His mitzvot (commandments) to do them.

"Yahweh has established His throne in heaven, and His kingdom rules over all.

"Bless Yahweh, you His malakim (angels), who excel in strength, who do His word, heeding the voice of His word. Bless Yahweh, all you His hosts, you ministers of His, who do His pleasure. Bless Yahweh, all His works, in all places of His dominion.

"Bless Yahweh, O my soul!" (Ps.103:1-20, NKJV)

Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and mishpachah, and grace and peace in Yah'shua (Jesus) our Messiah who bids us welcome to His Father's assembly this afternoon. My apologies for having to postpone the morning meeting which was on account of ill-health. Please keep us in your prayers.

I received a message yesterday from a family friend whom we lost contact with some years ago owing to various work-related circumstances. She, unware of what's been going on with us because she has had no access to a computer, urged us to be prepared for collapse by the end of the year. Now unless we are all wrong - she as well as ourselves - because have been doing what so many believers do when they see social disintegration, plague, and war are in our midst or nearby - unless we are just reacting to fleshy survival mechanisms, then it would appear there are multiple witnesses coming forth with the same message - that this is the year of judgment we have been anticipating.

I don't want to talk about world affairs at all today - I have more or less tuned out of them because we already know what's on the way and the news was becoming burdensome and depressing to carry -instead I have turned God-ward and have started closely listening to what He has to say on a much more personal level, as I hope you have been too. The psalm we have read this morning is quite a well-known one, and as I was reading it out loud to my wife yesterday, she was able to repeat most of the KJV version of it verbatim from memory.

It is closely linked to the psalm before it, Psalm 102, which is about the renewal of hope after times of depair, when the fear of death has begun to receed. In that earlier psalm, the writer not only recognised that his suffering was a token of Yahweh's displeasure but, more importantly, he realised that the eternity and changelessness of Elohim (God) was the ground of his hope (Ps.102:24-28) and for the whole of Yahweh's people.

I think a reason the next psalm - Psalm 103 - is so popular, is because it strikes more than a note of optimism for those coming out of despair by going much further. It says that the hope of the previous psalm has been fulfilled, for sorrow has given place to thanksgiving. Many believe these are post-exilic writings, and they may well be. That's the historical context of Psalm 103, and remember always to seek historical context before applying it to your own situation which may well still be in a Psalm 102-type situation or somewhere completely different.

That done, we can note some general features that transcend all time. The first five verses consist of gratitude and praise - "Bless Yahweh, O my soul". What is the author grateful for? That Yahweh has shown to Israel in His own day the same power and grace which he showed in the days of Moses (Ps.103:6-12). In this way we understand that Yahweh's treatment of all His children in all generations and in either Covenant is the same. We see, once more, his constancy, as we were discussing the other day. He has a father's pity for our frailty, His mercy is shown generation after generation (Ps.103:13-18). He is revealed as a Universal Sovereign or King and views all mankind in exactly the same way in every era of history and in every culture.

I have been feeling pretty ill the last few days and yesterday I felt particularly mortal. After lunch I collapsed on the sofa and grabbed about 10 minutes' of sleep as best I could, in spite of all the pain. As I awoke I got quite a shock because standing in front of me about seven to ten feet away by the glass-paned doors that separate our living area from the dining room, was the figure of a man dressed from head to toe in this indescribable black material. He wore a hood that rose to a point, like a cone, but he had no face to speak of, nor was there any indication that there might be an opening in the hood for one. The blackness was so deep that not a particle of light impacting such material would have been reflected or escaped. It was a bit like a black hole shaped into a faceless humanoid entity. I knew I was staring at a representation of death and it was not pleasant, the more so as I was feeling as though my own life was slipping away from me at the time.

So I went into prayer, declaring that it was not my time to go and dismissed the apparition. Then almost instantly, a second vision opened up to me and I saw a very large rock, a bit loike a miniature mountain rather higher than the height of a man, and three of four times as broad, yet it looked huge in spite of being much smaller. Suddenly, there was a rumbling, and a massive explosion-like sound accompanied by a burst of light that split the mountain into two very large boulders, leaving a chasm between them in the which was this bright light. And just as quickly as all of this had happened, a tree sprung up, in an instant, fully grown, about one-and-a-half times the height of the mountain. My heart raced with delight and then, literally within two or three seconds of spinging up, the tree suddenly 'popped', rather than exploded, into a shower of dust that settled at the bottom of the chasm between the two huge boulders where it formed this rich soil. And the light remained.

When I went to share this experience with my wife, as by now I was obviously fully awake and not a little excited, I remembered Psalm 103 and determined I would read it loud to her, so I grabbed a nearby RSV bible and it opened unaided to Psalm 103...I didn't even have to flip-search for it - it was just there. I read it out aloud and when I came to verse 14 I jolted: "For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust". You'll remember that the tree just turned into dust, rather like a firework display, actually, now that I come to think about it, and settled onto the ground in the cleft as this fertile soil.

What a rich content that vision had! And I became aware, only this morning, that it wasn't only about me, but about the Christ-life in all of us. We all of us face struggles and difficulties in life - they are unavoidable - but we're also admonished to endure and overcome until that rock splits. The mountain is itself a multi-faceted symbol because it can here both refer to an obstacle in life...a seemingly insurmountable one...through which persistent emunah (faith) causes the miracle of life to burst through. We marvel, don't we, when we see life in the most unlikely places, like a flower breaking through tarmac or concrete in a city, yet we too, when His light breaks through us, are remarkable because we were sinners whom He inexcplicable chose to use. Such negative mountains we are called to cast into the sea (Mt.21:21; Mk.11:23).

But a mountain is also a symbol of the Kingdom of Elohim (God) that can, quite suddenly, after years of apparent inactivity, burst into life. And we know the Kingdom is about to burst into life again one last time before the 'seven dreadful years' of Great Tribulation when Yahweh's two witnesses are assassinated and then rise from the dead (Rev.11:1-14), the time when many of the qodesim (saints, set-apart ones) are hounded, persecuted and killed.

This vision is, on a personal level, about me personally - my own health issues and disappointments in life and the apparently impenetratable obstacle that is the world - Babylon - and it's implaccable resistance to the Besorah (Gospel). But it's also about you (second level), and it's also about the Kingdom in these last times (third level). And though it appears Elohim (God) is asleep, He is not - He is abiding Him time, awaiting His moment, as must we also.

I can tell you, my mind was in a swirl after this vision as I imagined that it meant all sorts of scary things that I'll not go into. He didn't give me the meaning, though, until this morning, about two hours ago, when we should originally have met and which I cancelled owing to feeling so rotten and also because no message had been received. Let this be reminder to be flexible enough to allow Yahweh to change our schedules for purposes not always clearly understood at first. The roadblocks we face in life usually have a redemptive purpose, unless it's a man-made one occasioned by sin.

It's like Psalm 103 said - there are conditions to Yahweh's blessings. Yes, there is abundant grace (undeserved loving-kindness, unmerited favour), but also remember that promises are also linked "to those who keep His covenant and remember to do His mitzvot (commandments)" (Ps.103:18, RSV). You cannot separate grace from Torah-obedience - they are two sides of the same coin - and until you realise that, and respond accordingly, your spiritual life - or indeed your whole life - may well be kept on hold until you have learned obedience. You may not understand why at first, and possibly not for a good long time, but there are always reasons why.

So it was verse 14 that gave me the interpretation of the dust - whatever is about to happen in my life, or yours, if you endure, will suddenly spring up in glory and then, when your mission is done, you will return to the dust of the earth, like all creatures. But your work is not negated when you die. That dust - that formerly alive you that is your works, your legtacy - is by no means valueless, for it becomes the substance that fertilises the next generation, giving it a head start if they will allow themselves to be planted into it. That dust, soil, or dirt that was our lives was, and remains, precious, because it is what made up the lives of those consecrated into His fruitful service and the coming of His Kingdom. Don't neglect the doctrine of the Kingdom!

Psalm 103 connects to this latter-day work in another way as we consider our individual, family and congregational struggles. Turn with me to Matthew, chapter 6, beginning at verse 24:

"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both Elohim (God) and Money.

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life (the 'tree' in the vision) more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how Elohim (God) clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little emunah (faith)? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matt.6:24-34, NIV).

"But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness" (Matt 6:33, NKJV), the Saviour says. It has to be first in your life if you are serious about living victiously and not in defeat with constant delay after delay. Yes, some things we have to wait for patiently no matter what, as Abraham and Sarah did, but other things can get needlessly in the way. I hope we won't be too shocked or disappointed when one day we discover what it was that slowed us down or brought our lives to a halt. We'll be even more surprised - and ashamed, I dare say - when we learn how we falsely blamed and accused others for our apparent lack of momentum.

"Yahweh has established His throne in the heavens, and His kingdom rules over all" (v.19, RSV). Don't be deceived by the scope of Satan's 'kingdom' in this little bubble in time and space - it looks big to us because we're in the bubble. That bubble is suspended in the middle of - surrounded on all sides by - the Kingdom of our Elohim (God). And we are advance troops of that Kingdom in Satan's bubble! That's how hopeless his situation actually is but we often fall for the lie, because our vision is limited by the bubble, that he really is the master of something much bigger in the cosmos. He isn't. He is no more the master of this universe than the deluded élites who temporarily rule this world system are in believing they are about to obtain permanent control here, because they see even less than those of us who see beyond the bubble and into the vastness that is the Kingdom of our Elohim (God).

"Bless Yahweh, all His hosts, His ministers that do His will!" (v.21, RSV). The Kingdom is within you and around you as you extend its boundaries by your witness to others (Lk.17:21, AmpV). We bring the Kingdom within the bubble which is within the larger Cosmic Kingdom throughout Yahweh's vast domains. Don't lose that persepective because we all tend to when we get our eyes off Yah'shua (Jesus). Perspective is everything, as scientists and artists alike will tell you.

"Bless Yahweh, all His works, in all places of His dominion. Bless Yahweh, O my soul!" (v.22, RSV)