Tag: God

What It Means to Know God

One sure way to know God

kevingdrendel1 Comment

The age old questions humans have asked since time immemorial are, “What is God, and how do I know God?” We have conceived of gods as animated trees, mountains, and the sun, the stars, and the moon. We have conceived of gods as a pantheon of god-men and god-women. We have conceived of God as a force that is in everything, and we have conceived of God as an aloof judge and guardian of the ever after.

The Hebrew Scripture provides a robust concept of God, the Creator of the universe, who reveals Himself to human beings, but who remains mysterious and even “hidden” to people who must seek Him. The Tanakh (the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings) that Christians call the Old Testament purports to be God’s revelation to human beings with a promise that those who seek may find Him, “though he is not far from any one of us.” (As the Apostle Paul said to the Greeks in Athens. (Acts 17:27))

Of course, the God of the universe must be greater than we could ever fully comprehend to have created such an intricately designed universe as the one in which we live. If the men who passed on the revelation of this God that has been recorded in the Bible are correct, we can know much about God even if much remains a mystery.

I am impressed today with the words of the Prophet, Jeremiah, who provides a glimpse of who God is in the words of warning he spoke to Jehoahaz, the King of Judah,

“Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his own people work for nothing, not paying them for their labor. He says, ‘I will build myself a great palace with spacious upper rooms.’ So he makes large windows in it, panels it with cedar and decorates it in red. “Does it make you a king to have more and more cedar? Did not your father [King Josiah] have food and drink? He did what was right and just, so all went well with him. He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the Lord.”

Jeremiah 22:13-16

I have never noticed before that Jeremiah equates defending the cause of the poor and needy with knowing God. In defending the cause of the poor and the needy, we come to know God.

We can search for God here and there and, perhaps, never find Him. In defending the poor and needy, however, we can know the Lord. It’s that simple.

To know someone in a biblical sense is to know more than facts about someone. To know someone biblically is to know someone intimately. The ultimate example of knowing someone biblically is to know someone as a spouse.

Thus, when Jeremiah says that defending the cause of the poor and needy is to know the Lord, he is talking about an intimate, experiential knowledge of the character and nature of God. The cause of the poor and needy is close to God’s heart, and it is essential to who God is.

The Psalmist says, “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling….” (Psalm 68:5) A dwelling place is where a person is most able to be who they are. God’s holy dwelling is where God is “at home”, where God is most like Himself, and the cause of the fatherless and the widow is at the core of who God is in His most intimate place.

Thus, people can intimately know who God is by taking up the cause of the poor and the needy, the widow and the orphan, and similarly vulnerable people.

The opposite is also true. People do not know God to the extent that they do not defend the cause of the poor and needy. This was the point Jeremiah was making when he said of King Johoahaz:

The father of Jehoahaz was Josiah. “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” (2 Kings 22:2) Josiah found the Book of the Law, reestablished Temple worship of God, and destroyed the idols in Judah. (2 Kings 22 & 23) Josiah also defended the cause of the poor and needy, according to the Prophet Jeremiah, and defending the cause of the poor and needy is what it means to know God.

Indeed, Josiah modeled the entire law that Jesus said can be summed up in these two statements: 1) love God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul; and 2) love your neighbor as yourself.

Throughout the Bible, then, we find that a sure way of knowing who God is and what it means to know God is to be concerned with the cause of the poor and needy. This is not liberal wokeness; it is the essence of who God is and what it means to know God.

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.”

1 John 4:20

Jesus even goes so far as to say that we should love our enemies and so be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:43-48) Loving others – caring for the poor and needy – is not superfluous or secondary; it is central to who God is and a key in what it means to know God.

Be Like the Sons of Issachar Who Understood the Times

The Kingdom of God is among us and it is yet to come

kevingdrendel8 Comments

I recently finished a review of the of history of the blogging on this site: Looking Back at 13 Years of Navigating By Faith. One article stands high above the rest in the sheer number of people who have read/viewed it.

I wrote that article, Who Were the Sons of Issachar? And What Might They Mean for Us Today?, during Donald Trump’s second presidential campaign. Christian support for Donald Trump was characterized by a sense of urgency and high stakes. State COVID restrictions jeopardized religious liberty. BLM aroused woke, liberal, mobs in streets around the country. Christians sounded the alarm that people of faith would be canceled by the most anti-faith Democratic ticket in years if Trump didn’t win.

Prominent Christian leaders like Robert Jeffress and Franklin Graham argued that Trump was a “strongman” needed to protect the nation from “anarchy” and “socialism.” Jeffress excused Trump’s obvious flaws, saying that American Christians didn’t need a “Sunday School teacher” but a “fighter” who would protect Christian interests in a hostile culture. Lance Wallnau framed Trump as a modern King Cyrus—the Persian king used by God to protect His people and restore them to the promised land.

Support for Donald Trump was increasingly framed as a battle against “darkness” and “anti-Christian” forces. While many traditional evangelicals focused on policy, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) was mobilized by prophecy, spiritual warfare, and the “Seven Mountain Mandate.” Dozens of self-identified prophets in this network insisted that Trump’s re-election was divinely mandated in a cosmic battle between good and evil controlled by a demonically influenced “deep state.” The current was strong, and a large number of Christians were swept along with it.

A conversation with my best friend from college, who I loved more than a brother, and who I trusted implicitly, left me in full spiritual crisis mode. He expressed his continued support of Trump on the basis of those prophetic claims predicting another presidential victory and the belief that God ordained Donald Trump for this time. My friend urged my to be like the sons of Issachar “who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.” (1 Chronicles 12:32)

I have a healthy respect for God’s ability to speak through people in what we call prophecy. The Apostle Paul commands us not to despise prophecy, but to test everything, hold fast to what is good, and abstain from every evil. (1 Thessalonians 5:20-22) I resolved to give Donald Trump another look and to reconsider him.

I had written in 2020 about wolves in sheep’s clothing with Donald Trump expressly in mind. Jesus said we would know falsehood by its fruit, and the fruit I saw in Donald Trump belied the claims of God’s providential blessing.

That a president is not a pastor made some sense. God can use anyone, even a donkey, right? Maybe Trump is like the Persian King Cyrus who is divinely appointed to restore the Christian heritage of the United States….

A year earlier, in 2019, I reflected on those claims that Trump is like a King Cyrus, and I came to a different conclusion. Trump seemed to me more like a King Saul, the king God’s people wanted – the king they wanted because they did not trust God. They wanted a king like all the other nations, though the Prophet Samuel warned them against it. God gave them the king His people wanted, even though they were rejecting God to ask for a king:

“[W]hen they said, ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the Lord. 7 And the Lord told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. 8 As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. 9 Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will claim as his rights.‘”

1 Samuel 8:6-9

God gave them the king they wanted in the same way that God gives people over “to the sinful desires of their heats.” (Romans 1:24) The people were rejecting God as their king, so God gave them over to the king they wanted.

People of that day might have assumed that God was blessing them to give them the king they wanted, but that was not the case. Samuel warned them against it, but they insisted anyway.

King Saul was rebellious, insecure, self-absorbed, and psychotic. He failed to obey God’s commands. He became obsessed with his power and reputation among the people, and he became jealous of David.

Though Saul remained king, God had already rejected him and anointed David to succeed him. Saul tried to take David’s life multiple times in fits of jealous rage, and David escaped into the wilderness.

This is where the Sons of Issachar entered the picture. Though Saul was still king, they “understood the times.” They could see the proverbial writing on the wall. They knew that David was God’s man, and Saul’s reign was ending.

Many people have argued that Donald Trump is like the foreign king, Cyrus, who protected and funded the nation of Israel to return to the Promised Land. I have argued that Donald Trump is not like the foreign king, Cyrus, but like the Israelite King Saul. Donald Trump is the king that God’s people wanted.

Continue reading “Be Like the Sons of Issachar Who Understood the Times” →

Unveiling the Mystery of the Hiddenness of God

Why would God be hidden to us?

kevingdrendel3 Comments

I have been meditating on the hiddenness of God lately and leaning into the mystery of God’s hiddenness. I am intrigued by it. The Bible is forthright about the hiddenness of God.

As I think about the hiddenness of God, the mind of the skeptic plays in my ear: “How do you know God exists? Why does God seem hidden? Maybe it’s because He doesn’t exist!” Believing in a “hidden” God is belief without evidence; it’s belief in the teeth of the evidence (as Dawkins says).

My response is that we all have faith in our basic assumptions about reality. The scientist assumes only matter and motion. He sees evidence for things like gravity and neutrinos, and dark matter and dark energy that cannot be seen. The scientist reasons to the best explanation for the things that cannot be seen in order to make sense of the reality in the world, and he does so within the “limitations” of materiality.

Science, after all, is the study of the material world. That is is the scope of science as it is defined in the modern world. Science is based on what is quantifiable, measurable, observable, and reproducible.

When I do theology or philosophy, I also start with assumptions. I start with an assumption, or a theory if you like, that God exists. The proof of God, however, is necessarily different than scientific proof.

God is not a substance in the universe to be quantified, measured, observed, or reproduced in the way we can study the natural world. He is not a component of the universe. He is not comprised of matter and motion like the universe. God is not a principle of physics that can be observed in its regularity and tested by its regularity.

If God exists and created the universe, He is separate and apart from the universe. That does not mean that God is not present in some way; it means that He is not present in the same way that you and I are present. Rather, God is transcendent. He is imminent (near in some way), but not contained within the creation.

God also must have agency to have determined to create. We understand the necessity for agency by our own agency. This makes sense of the question: why is there a universe; why is there something, rather than nothing.

For the life of me, I can make no sense of the assertion that a universe can create itself. What kind of voodoo magic is that? That conclusion is based on an assumption that matter and motion is all that exists, but we cannot prove that assumption.

To say that God must have agency is not to be anthropomorphic about it but to reason to the best explanation based upon what we know, which is our own agency and the way we conduct ourselves in the world. Where does a universe come from? The simple answer is that it comes from a creator who has agency, who has intentionality, and the ability to will and to act according to His purpose and design.

Where does intricate, fine-tuned complexity that is complex to the nth degree come from? It comes from a mind, from a creator who conceives a plan and then implements it. We know that from the way human beings create things. Where did we get that capacity? Like things produce or reproduce like things.

We know that the universe is “winding down”. That is what the law of thermodynamics tell us. Entropy is the rule. This means the universe is not getting more complex; it is breaking down, evening out, cooling, and becoming less complex over time.

Over course, this is occurring over a very, very long period of eons, so (perhaps) there is enough energy in the universe for complexity to form in areas of the universe even while entropy is working its very long way toward the inevitable heat death of the universe as a whole.

Maybe, but where did the energy come from to cause the so-called Big Bang? What triggered the universe to begin to begin with?

No one can explain that who doesn’t believe in a “Big Banger”, a Creator. It is the best explanation that we have. It makes the most sense of the reality that the Universe had a beginning.

The multiverse doesn’t solve the “problem” of a beginning. It just kicks the can back down the road further. What triggered the multiverse into being? It’s an endless regression.

The Christian (Jewish and Muslim) conception of God is that God is the timeless, eternal being who always existed and was never created who chose to trigger the universe (or multiverse) into existence.

This, frankly, makes much more sense than a past eternal, non-sentient universe that just poofed life into existence. How do you get life from nonliving matter? What animates that matter?

But the questions don’t stop there. What triggers consciousness from inert, non-conscious matter? How do the fundamental “building blocks” of matter develop consciousness? It’s a complete mystery, and there is no mechanism known to modern science to explain it – other than the brute fact that human beings and (to some lesser degree) animals (and maybe plants) are conscious beings.

Consciousness is proven by the sheer fact that we are conscious of ourselves. It seems to “reside” in or be attached to the brain, but the brain by itself is not consciousness. The brain is a perfect, intricate receptacle for consciousness, but the brain and consciousness are not perfectly coexistent. They are not the same things, and science has no adequate explanation for that.

Because these things suggest looking outside the limitations of the material world for our answers, we have theology and philosophy, which can be “scientific” loosely in method and approach, but defies the limitations of scientific inquiry.

That doesn’t mean that theology and philosophy should be divorced from science (or that science should be divorced from theology and philosophy). All reality must ultimately cohere harmoniously, or we cannot call it reality.

But, I have digressed (only slightly) from the point, which is the mystery of the hiddenness of God.

Continue reading “Unveiling the Mystery of the Hiddenness of God” →

An Exploration of God’s Hiddenness in the Bible

The Bible on the hiddenness of God

kevingdrendel2 Comments

Divine hiddenness is an argument suggesting that God does not exist. According to J.L. Schellenberg, if a perfectly loving God exists, He would desire a genuine relationship with every person He creates. A loving relationship requires, at minimum, awareness that God exists, so a perfectly loving God would make Himself known. Some sincere and willing people who want to know God are unable to find sufficient evidence that He exists to believe in Him. Therefore, either God does not exist or He is not perfectly loving.

I don’t buy it. I think the argument is flawed, but other people have provided robust responses to this argument, so I am not going to attempt to provide a counter argument here. I am also unconvinced that arguments are the best way to achieve understanding.

On that ground, I am intrigued by the hiddenness of God, and I am intrigued that the Bible is forthright about the hiddenness of God. The Prophet Isaiah says it plainly: “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior.” (Is. 45:15)

The entire Book of Job is about God’s hiddenness. Job assumed that God existed and had blessed him until he lost everything. When Job sought God in the desperation of his circumstances, he lamented, “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him… I cannot behold him.” (Job 23:8-9)

David, who is held up in the Bible as a man after God’s own heart, lamented the hiddenness of God at various times in his life: “Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1); “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1); and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?… I cry by day, but you do not answer.” (Ps. 22:1-2)

Those last words were famously echoed by Jesus on the cross. Imagine, Jesus, who demonstrated and expressed the deepest and most intimate relationship with the Father, experiencing the utter absence of God at the moment of his greatest need.

I saw early in a world religion class in college when I wasn’t a believer that the Bible purports to be about the unfolding story of God’s encounter and revelation of who God is to mankind. Elsewhere, I have written about how God found in Abram a man who was able to grasp that the God of the universe is not like the gods of the provincial tribes and nations with which Abram was familiar. (For example, Abraham, Isaac and Paradigm Shift; and The Story of Abraham and Isaac Revisited: Introduction)

The revelation of God unfolded slowly as God needed to dispel notions of divine arbitrariness, capriciousness, brutality, and uncaring of the gods that Abram and ancient humanity understood. The gods of human imagination are no gods at all, and God is noting like ancient Near Easterners imagined.

While it is true that God is completely OTHER, the true God who made the heavens and the earth desires the benefit of and reciprocal relationship with the pinnacle of His creation. How does a God who is so completely OTHER than His creation communication Himself?

Consider a God who could make our universe with its vastness and detailed complexity down to the minutia of the precise intricacy of living cells and the unseeable building blocks of the physical world, like neutrinos, that are so small they can pass through your body and the core of the earth without hitting another particle. How does such a God who created such a world reveal Himself to finite creatures who live on a tiny planet in a tiny solar system among more stars, planets, and whole solar systems than such a creature can even imagine – how does such a God reveal himself to delicate, ephemeral creatures with limited perspective?

Continue reading “An Exploration of God’s Hiddenness in the Bible” →

When You Are Bitterly Disappointed and Angry at the World

God waits to be gracious

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The Book of Jonah is an important story, but not for its historical significance. Whether the story is historical fact is not what’s important. If that is our only focus as we read and think about Jonah, we are missing the point.

Jonah is the story of a reluctant prophet. When God commands him to go to the wicked City of Nineveh and warn them to repent to avoid judgment, Jonah heads the opposite direction by ship. God stirs up a great storm, and Jonah is swallowed by a whale. After three days, Jonah prays and submits to God, and the whale vomits him up on the shoreline.

Unable to run from God’s command, Jonah heads off to Nineveh where he delivers the warning. The wicked people of Nineveh repent, and God relents from the judgment He planned, but God’s mercy on Nineveh causes Jonah to be bitterly disappointed and angry.

Jonah was disappointed because Jonah wanted what Jonah wanted. He didn’t want what God desired. He was focused on what he thought should happen. He thought Nineveh should pay the price for its wickedness, but God had different plans.

God was patient with him and went to great lengths to show Jonah His heart for a people Jonah despised. We might credit Jonah for his (reluctant) obedience, but Jonah doesn’t understand God’s sovereignty, mercy, and compassion, even at the end.

God’s determination to spare the people of Nineveh “seemed very wrong” to him, “and he became angry.” (Jonah 4:1) If it were up to Jonah, the people of Nineveh would have been destroyed like Sodom and Gomorrah. Jonah identified with God’s judgment, but he didn’t understand God’s compassion.

Jonah reminds me of Elijah, who was known for his boundless faith in (and preoccupation with) God’s power. Elijah is known for calling down fire to consume a sacrificial bull that he soaked with water, showing up the false profits who could not get their gods to consume a dry sacrifice. When Elijah exposed them for the false prophets they were, he agitated the crowd to march the false prophets down the mountain where Elijah slaughtered them.

I imagine Elijah and Jonah would have gotten along well…. Or maybe not. Though they are much alike, Elijah was a loner, and perhaps Jonah was also. Elijah complained that he was the last of God’s prophets, though 100 of God’s prophets remained in the land. Perhaps, Elijah thought he was too good for them.

Jonah and Elijah wanted to see God’s judgment. They wanted the people to burn for their wickedness. They were personally affronted when God showed patience and reluctance to rain judgment down on the people who deserved it.

Despite the awesome display of God’s awesome power summoned by Elijah’s undaunting faith before King Ahab and his prophets, the wicked Queen, Jezebel, was not moved. She ordered Elijah to be arrested and killed on sight.

When Elijah heard her decree, he fled into the desert, where he sat down under a broom tree in bitter disappointment and anger at the way things turned out.  

Couldn’t Elijah call fire down on Ahab and Jezebel? Why didn’t he do it? Elijah had just slaughtered all the King’s prophets after showing them up with fire from the heavens. When Jezebel wasn’t phased, Elijah fled in fear.

Elijah may have run in a moment of fear, but his fear turned to anger and disappointment, like Jonah. Both of them ended up under a tree that provided them shade. God ministered to both of them in their dejected state.

Elijah kept going south, all the way to the mountain where God met Moses on the Sinai Peninsula. In the cave where he took shelter, God came to him, asking, “Elijah, why are you here?” Then, Elijah let God have the full weight of his disappointment and anger:

“I have been most zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, but the Israelites have forsaken your covenant. They have destroyed your altars and murdered your prophets by the sword. I alone remain, and they seek to take my life.”

1 Kings 19:10

But, God was patient. He told Elijah to stand at the mouth of the cave so the Lord can “pass by”. “A strong and violent wind rending the mountains and crushing rocks” came, but the Lord wasn’t in the wind. Then an earthquake came, but the Lord wasn’t in the earthquake. After the earthquake, came a fire, but the Lord wasn’t in the fire. (1 Kings 19:11-12)

Finally, “a light silent sound” came, and the Lord said to Elijah, again, “Why are you here?” God was not in the mighty displays of wind, earthquake, and fire. God was in a still, small voice.

Yet still, Elijah was fixated on his own disappointment and anger and responded exactly as he did before:

“I have been most zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, but the Israelites have forsaken your covenant. They have destroyed your altars and murdered your prophets by the sword. I alone remain, and they seek to take my life.”

1 Kings 19:14

Elijah’s disappointment, anger, and indignation turned toward God. “They destroyed your alters and murdered your prophets!” Elijah said. It’s everyone’s fault but his. It’s ultimately God’s fault, right? Because Elijah knew what God could do. God could have destroyed Ahab and Jezebel in a ball of fire, but He didn’t.

In similar fashion, God asked Jonah twice, “Why are you angry?” (Jonah 4:1 and 4:9) Twice Jonah responds exactly the same way: “It is better for me to die!” (Jonah 4:3 and 4:8) It’s the same pattern for Elijah and Jonah.

At the end of Jonah, God asks the rhetorical question, “Should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh?” But, Jonah doesn’t respond. (Jonah 4:10) Jonah didn’t want God’s compassion for Nineveh. He wanted them to burn.

We don’t know what became of Jonah, but we do learn the rest of the story of Elijah. God sends him back to Damascus to anoint a new King and pass his prophetic torch to Elisha. (1 Kings 19:15-18) When Elijah pronounced God’s judgment on the wicked King Ahab, the King humbled himself and repented, and God spared him (just like Nineveh). (1 Kings 21:27-29)

Eventually, Ahab’s son, Ahaziah, took over, and Elijah continued with his righteous taunts. Ahaziah sent fifty men to summon Elijah before him, and Elijah called down fire to destroy them. (2 Kings 1:10) Ahaziah sent another company of fifty men to summon Elijah, and Elijah called down fire again to destroy them. “(2 Kings 1:12)

Elijah is the prophet who called down fire. He was a man of great faith. He had great confidence in God. He was a firebrand, himself, in his sense of God’s righteousness and communication of God’s righteousness to the false prophets, the unrighteous and wicked leaders of his time, and even on the remnant of God’s prophets who escaped the sword only hid away in a cave.

Jonah had similar confidence in God. After the people of Nineveh repented and God relented, Jonah said, “I knew it! That’s what I said! That’s why I went the other way, because they don’t deserve it! Just take my life.” (Jonah 4:2-3)(my paraphrase)

Jonah and Elijah are held out in the Bible as God’s prophets and men of great faith, but they are flawed. They are self-righteous. They have a hard edge. The desire judgment, and they don’t love as God loves.

Their disappointment and anger stems from their desire to see the wicked people destroyed. God’s desire is ever to save, to have compassion, and for people to repent so God can show mercy. God’s great desire is not to judge, but to be gracious:

Truly, the Lord is waiting to be gracious to you,
    truly, he shall rise to show you mercy;
For the Lord is a God of justice:
    happy are all who wait for him!

(Isaiah 30:18) God’s justice is ultimately to be gracious and to show mercy. Justice and mercy are not divorced from each other; they are intertwined. His judgment is meant to bring us to repentance so that He can have mercy on us.

When we have our act together and have great faith, our temptation is to desire judgment for its own sake, but God is not like that. Jesus, who was the exact representation of God in the flesh, shows us God’s heart when his disciples returned from traveling the countryside to tell people about the kingdom. The disciples wanted to call down fire on the people who rejected them and refused to welcome them, and Jesus rebuked them.

When we find ourselves disappointed and angry at a world full of sinners who deserve judgment, we need to think of Elijah and Jonah and the counterexample of God in dealing with Nineveh and Jesus in rebuking the disciples. God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.” (Exodus 34:6-7) God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. (Ezekiel 18:23 and 33:11)

We can laud Elijah and even Jonah for their faith and (ultimately) their obedience, but we need to recognize that they didn’t understand God’s heart of compassion for people. They didn’t understand God’s desire for mercy and grace. God ultimately wants more than our raw belief and cold obedience; He desires “mercy, not sacrifice.” (Hosea 6:6 and Matthew 9:13)

God wants out hearts, and He wants us to see the world as He sees it. He wants us to love even our enemies (the wicked) and to sacrifice ourselves for the good of others as He sacrificed Himself for us in Christ. Thus, Jesus emphasized forgiving as we have been forgiven and showing mercy as God has shown mercy to us:

“Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

(James 2:13) When we are tempted to be judgmental and righteous, we need to remember that God has been gracious to us, and He desires – above all – to be gracious to the world. When we are bitter and angry at the sin in the world, we need to remember that Jesus came into the world not to condemn it, but to save it, just he saved us.