SALVATION
A word about salvation.  Because no human is good enough to enter the Kingdom of God, and I mean no one, it became necessary for God to make a way for us.  The alternative to Gods Kingdom is unthinkably hellish.  Therefore He doesn’t want anyone to suffer that reality.
God's way for us was for Him to become flesh in the man Jesus, the Messiah, who being without sin, bore the punishment for our sins; reconciling us to God.  Not only did Jesus die in our place, But He was also raised from the dead and now sits at the right hand of God continually interceding for us; covering all our sins past, present, and future with His innocent blood.
All God asks of us is to believe what I have just written, admit we’re not perfect and ask Jesus to cover us with His Blood.  Then be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Baptism is necessary to “fulfill all righteousness” and symbolizes being born again in Christ.  If we are sincere in our belief God will then indwell us with His Holy Spirit guaranteeing us as belonging to Him and give us the promise of resurrection, just as Jesus was, and eternal life in His Kingdom.
If we think we are a good person and don’t need help; we are greatly deceived.  Good is the enemy of perfect and God demands perfection, which can be obtained only by believing in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, for He is our perfection.
God bless you,
Marshall Warren   

Nature's Way

I had an experience the other day that caused me to think about the savagery of nature.  A male bear (boar) killed a fairly good sized cub in the backyard of a neighbor.  As is the bear's habit, he covered the dead cub to hide it and stayed with his kill to protect it. We couldn’t chase the old boar away, in fact, he had no fear of us at all.  There are children living nearby, so we had a problem.

As we stood by and watched him tear the cub apart and eat it, the decision was made that the bear had to be killed.  He was just too dangerous.  When wild animals lose their fear of humans they don’t become cute and friendly, they become dangerous.  

Eating one’s own kind in nature is not uncommon.  Nature is killing to live; there is one rule…survive!  By our standards, surviving in nature is savage; but for this adult bear, simply a necessity.

Wild animals rarely kill for fun.  There’s a good reason they don‘t.  The killing of any creature, regardless of the size differences, is dangerous.  The predator can’t afford an injury.   

I watched a dog I had hunt field mice.  One of them jumped at least a foot and latched on to the end of my dog's nose.  He yelped and shook his head violently until the mouse let go and went flying.  Dripping blood from the end of his nose he tucked his tail and trotted home. 

There are exceptions. I once lived in an area called the Callahan Divide, a rough mountainous region of west Texas.  In the last century, this was a big ranch country.  The descendants of one of the ranches broke it up into 50-acre tracts, creating a large subdivision.  Occasionally at night the family dogs would form packs and kill sheep and goats of the ranchers.  I have also witnessed them killing deer, just for fun.  I have seen documentaries saying domestic cats lead the world's list for predators.  In the above area quails and rabbits almost disappeared over a 25-year period.

Humans have always been hunter-gatherers and fishers.  Many peoples today still hunt and fish for survival.  In modern society, we have people that raise and kill animals for us.  Most people have lost touch with the reality that the meat they eat was an animal that someone killed for them.

Hunting for sport has been with us from antiquity.  “The poor kill to live, the rich live to kill.”  I was a professional hunter (PH) in Mozambique for a while.  People come to Africa from all over the world to hunt for fun.  Trophy hunters.  It’s a big business here in Alaska too.  I admit to having a problem with trophy hunting.  I was also responsible for anti-poaching on our 1,500,000 acre hunting concession in Mozambique.  I say this because the money raised by the controlled selling of wild animals to hunters is a major source of revenue to fight poaching.  The truth is poaching, not trophy hunting is what threatens African wildlife.
  There is no such thing as cannibalism or savagery in nature, just necessity. It is a mistake to attribute human characteristics to animals, because we are the true savages, killing without necessity.     

Marshall Warren

SHE

The day was beautiful, the day we met…the sky clear, the temperature just the right cool, with not a hint of wind.
I looked to my left and there she was, watching me. Our eyes met and locked.  Neither of us moved, she like a statue and I rooted like a tree.
Her eyes gave away nothing, no fear, no surprise, no assessment.  My eyes were the same as we watched each other, unblinking, waiting.  Two beings in an ageless relationship,  the most intimate of all relationships, life or death.
Neither of us would move until a decision was made. She was hunting, as I was. She for her family and me for mine.  We have been enemies, she and I, since our beginnings. The fleeting thought passed through my mind that it was to nice a day to die.  She caught my indecision and blinked in agreement.
As the light in my eyes softened she turned and started away in that stiff-legged trot wolves have.  After a few steps, she stopped, looked back at me with her yellow eyes and expressionless face, just long enough to tell me, “Enjoy the day, human.”

Marshall Warren         

Coast Guard station Juneau calling the F/V Infinity, over…..

I was hauling our shrimp pots, with my wife and a deckhand, on our fishing boat Infinity at the head of Tenakee inlet when; “Coast Guard station Juneau calling the Fishing Vessel Infinity, over” blared out of the deck speaker.  We had arrived from Sitka three days earlier, after a frustrating trip and late start for the shrimp opener.
On the run up, in the middle of Chatham Strait, my engine started vibrating badly.  I shut it down, leaving Carolyn on radar watch as we drifted, and went down into the engine room to check out the problem.  I had spent most of my working life flying jets. Jet engines just suck, squeeze and blow.  I knew how they worked, but these old 671 Detroit jimmies were something else.  I hollered up for Carolyn to start it up again.  Immediately I saw the problem.  A flywheel looking thing on the drive shaft at the front of the engine was wobbling badly.  Quickly I grabbed the manual shutoff and stopped the engine.  This was not good.
I went back up to the wheelhouse and started calling on channel 16 for anyone in our vicinity.  One of my sons answered.  We switched channels and he asked what was up?  I told him the problem and he said he was two hours behind me and would give me a tow into Tenakee Springs, which was both our destination.
The weather was fair and the tow was uneventful.  After tying up I went to a telephone that was on the dock and called the diesel mechanic in Sitka.  I explained the problem.  He called it a vibration isolator and said he would send me a new one by float plane asap.  As the shrimping season opened the next morning and only lasted fifteen days time was big money for me and he knew it.
The part arrived the next morning and it took me all day to repair the Jimmie, so we missed the opening day.  That night I ran up to the head of Tenakee inlet and anchored.  The other boats had a days start to stake out their areas, so I knew it would be hard to find a good bottom.  As it turned out we found a stretch of water just the right size for us and in a good area.  God is good.
On the afternoon of the third day the call came.  We finished hauling the string of pots and I stripped off my gloves and headed for the wheelhouse.  “Coast Guard station Juneau this is the F/V Infinity, over,”  I repeated the call.  “Roger Infinity, request you proceed to the nearest landline and call the Juneau Coast Guard station, over.”  “Roger Coast Guard Juneau, what’s up?”  “Infinity Juneau Coast Guard.  You have an urgent message.  That’s all I know, over.”  “Okay Juneau, we’re on our way.  ETA in an hour and a half.  Thank you, out.”
I looked around, Carolyn and our deckhand were standing behind me.  They had the same look on their faces that I had on mine.  Something was bad wrong.  We all three knew something was bad wrong.  There was no other explanation for this most unusual call.
We made the run back to Tenakee Springs in silence.  I suspect we were all praying.  I know I was.  It was a terrible situation.  Both our sons were fishing and our daughter lived in L.A.  I couldn’t bring myself to think it, but there it was.  If it isn’t my family then it has to be my deckhands.  How do you hope your family is okay and it is your deckhands family that is in trouble.  We looked at each other knowing what we were all thinking.
When we arrived at the dock one of my son’s and another young man that is as a son were waiting.  They had heard the call and had beaten us back to the dock and called the Coast Guard. Both had tears running down their faces.  We tied up in silence, with our emotions ragged, we all started to cry.  Finally, the boys said to my deckhand, “Your son has been lost at sea.  He was washed overboard in heavy weather out west last night and they couldn’t find him.  They’ve been searching for over twelve hours now.”
I wanted to yell, “Thank God it’s your family and not mine, but my heart was breaking as I looked at my deckhand.”  He said, “Somehow I knew it was my son.”  We all blubbered how sorry we were, but he knew that we were glad it wasn’t our family and understood. He went into the wheelhouse and came out with his sleeping bag and simply said, “Don’t wait for me.  I don’t know when I’ll be back.”  Then walked off into the rain forest.
Sorry, but relieved, we untied the boat in silence and headed back out to sea.  We had shrimp pots to run, a season to make…..A life to live.   

Marshall Warren

Misted

The other day I heard a noise in our carport.  Suspecting a bear I got my rifle and bear spray.  I opened the back door and sure enough, a bear was dragging a trash bag out of the carport.  I yelled at him, but the bear just looked at me and kept dragging the trash bag out into the yard.  He showed no fear.  As I tried to get close enough to spray him, about 15 feet, he would move away dragging the trash bag.  I got real aggressive, yelling and walking fast toward him.  He bowed up his back, hissed at me, picked up the bag and walked across the road into the woods, leaving a trail of trash.
I asked Carolyn, who was standing in the door watching, to bring me a trash bag.  As I followed the bear, I picked up the trash and caught up with him on the other side of the road.  He was just sitting there picking through the bag looking for something to eat.  I kept advancing on him trying to scare him away, but he would pick up the trash bag and move another 20 feet, sit down and start going through the bag again.
This went on for about 100 yards and by then I had all the trash in my bag, so I turned around and headed back to my house.  The bear followed me like a puppy dog.  I thought, “enough is enough,” so I got the bear spray ready, checked the wind, it was calm and sprayed.  He was no more than 15 feet away.  The orange mist shot out to about 10 feet and stopped.  The bear sat there looking at the mist.  Suddenly the orange mist reversed direction.  Before I could get out of the way it passed over me.
The effect wasn’t terrible, but my eyes were pouring tears, my nose was running a stream and burning right smart like.  Everything was a blur.  I danced around for what seemed like five minutes holding the trash bag, rifle and spray.  When I could finally see, the bear was still sitting there 15 feet away, patiently watching my antics.  I made my way through the woods to my neighbor’s yard with the bear right on my tail.  He, my neighbor, came running over yelling and waving.  The reinforcements were finally too much for the bear so he trotted off into woods.
Another bear had a story to tell his friends about the crazy carryings on of humans.  “All that,” the bear must have thought, “over a stupid bag of trash.”

Marshall Warren     

BEAR AND BIRDSHOT
It had been an unusual summer for us and the bears.  We had had a late frost in the spring causing the loss of the wild berry crop and also a poor salmon run in the river and creeks.  The bears depend on these food sources to fatten up for the long winter here in Southeast Alaska.  We have a large bear population here and they were hungry.  Because they were hungry they started expanding their search area, which brought them to our homes.  Anyone leaving food outside or failing to properly dispose of garbage became a target.  Overnight the word was out among the bears and here they came. We were seeing more bears in our yards than in recent memory.  Trouble and conflict were on the way.
Since August my grandchildren had been restricted to the house unless an armed adult was with them outside.  On August 26 I had to kill a bear that had chased a neighbor and his daughter into their house, then charged me when I came over and tried to run it off.  Some pets had been attacked as well. I had begun to see bears on my property almost daily. It seemed the whole community was having problems.
It isn’t unusual to see bears in the yard.  It happens every year.  Normally they just pass through and run as soon as they see you.  I don’t molest them and they don’t molest me or my property.  That year was different.  Hunger had caused them to lose their natural fear of humans.  That’s a bad situation for them and us.
It was about 9pm when I heard the shot.  It was close.  The next morning I checked with my neighbors and one had fired the shot.  A bear had climbed into his daughter's car to get some snack food damaging it.  I asked if he killed the bear?  No, he hadn’t killed it.  Unfortunately, he had shot it with birdshot.  The word was spread to all the neighbors we had a wounded bear on our hands.
Birdshot or even an air rifle causes festering sores and infection that can lead to a slow death.  An injured bear is a dangerous critter.  If a person can’t chase a dangerous bear away with noise or spray, then it’s better and more humane to kill it.
Over the next few days, bears broke into two other freezers, destroying the people's winter meat supply, and ripped the back wall out of a storage shed.  People were going to their outhouses armed.  The situation was becoming difficult.
Late one evening I got a call.  Another neighbor had come home and found a bear in his garage.  As he grabbed his 300 Winchester Magnum from behind his pickup seat the bear took off.  My neighbor fired a quick shot just as the bear entered the tree line.  He was certain he had hit the bear and wanted me to come over and help him look for it before it got dark.
I picked up my .458 loaded with 400gr. Barnes-x bullets and went next door to get my son and his dog to help track the bear.  We followed it into a dense spruce thicket.  By then we had to use our flashlights.  I picked up the bears eyes no more than twenty-five feet away.  Putting my crosshairs on him I snapped off a one-handed shot.  It was difficult, but it connected, putting the poor fellow out of his misery.
When we examined him we found birdshot in his shoulder and neck.  They must have been causing a lot of pain.  The 300 win mag had caused a nasty flesh wound.  My 400gr. Bullet had killed it instantly.  Some may think the .458 an overkill, but under those conditions I wanted to inflict maximum damage and the .458 Winchester Magnum did just that.
Since then we had a sow and her two cubs pay us a visit.  Our dog treed the cubs and sparred with the sow until my son called off the dog.  That gave the sow enough of a scare that she didn’t return.  I still saw bear signs around and wondered how many would survive the coming winter.
If we choose to live in the bush and share our lives with the animals we must be responsible neighbors to them.  Don’t attract them with citified practices.  Proper trash disposal is imperative.  Keep freezers in your house.  Don’t leave food in cars or hang suet bird feeders on your porch.  Burning food in a burn pit is like sending up smoke signals saying “Food!”  And above all don’t try and scare a bear away by injuring it.  The best way to get rid of a pesky bear is to remove all enticements.  Of course you can dump dog food on your neighbors property.  That always works.

Marshall Warren                 

HOW GREAT IS THAT LIGHT!

For 37 years I lived in darkness.  Yet I thought I could see just fine.  Then one day God called me and I was chosen.  The light of Christ opened my eyes and I began living in His light.  How wonderful is that light!  I hungered and thirsted for His righteousness.  I wanted to help others be delivered from darkness into His light.  That’s when I realized how much darkness hates Light.  I had an enemy! He came at me from every direction trying to put out the light of Christ in me.  Satan knows he can’t take the Light from me.  He is happy if he can trip me up and cause me to sin, so he can use me as an example to cause others to stumble.
I had cataract surgery about seven years ago.  After its removal, I was shocked at how bright everything looked.  I had no idea my vision was so affected, so dark.  It was nice to see the brightness again.  I was doing great, then last month the eye doctor said I had a cataract in my other eye, so I had cataract surgery again.  Wow!  I had no idea how dim my vision had become.  Sometimes Satan and his demons are like cataracts, they slowly dim the light until you trip and fall into a pit of darkness.
I am so thankful for surgeons that can remove cataracts, restoring the light to our eyes.  But I am so much more thankful for a loving, forgiving, praying body of Christ that can lift me out of that pit of darkness.  A people willing to wash my feet and clean my garments, restoring the true Light to my eyes.
“For while I was yet a sinner Christ died for me.”  He took my guilt and shame onto Himself and washed me in His blood.  Now, when I fall, he picks me up, blots out my sins, and they are remembered no more.
HOW GREAT IS THAT LIGHT!

Marshall Warren