This is a wonderful message tonight. Here we have another example in the Bible where God calls a woman and uses her greatly. He did this with Hatshepone. Hatshepone is Samson's mother. Her name means to follow the shadow or the turning shadow. It comes from the Hebrew history. not from the Bible. The Bible does not name her, but in history, the Hebrew histories name her as Hetzelpanai. Hetzelpanai. And of course her husband was Manoah, and Manoah is basically the same name as Noah, which means peace and safety. Manoah, if you want to put that preposition on the front of it, is from peace and safety. Now let's go to the 13th chapter of the book of Judges and look at this. This is a A very, very passionate woman in here. You can kind of equate her with Mary and with different ones in the Bible, you know, Elizabeth. Isaac's wife, Jacob's wife, all these women that were barren that God called for a very special purpose. It says, now the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. Arum. That's a bad word, evil. That means to be a snaky person. That means to be a Deceitful, liar, cheat, thief, murderer, all of that. And they did murder. They murdered their own children and sacrificed them to Moloch. They worshipped demon gods, Astaroth, Balaam or Maal. Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord, so the Lord gave them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years. Philistines means uncivilized, by the way, uncivilized, uncouth, vicious, scary, what we would call uncivilized people. And there was a certain man of Zora, of the family of the Danites, and you know of course Danite, Dan means judge, Dina is a feminine word for Dan, whose name was Manoa. And his name, of course, means safe, safety and peace, from safety and peace. And his wife was barren and had no children. Now this is Hatzelpeni. This is in Hebrew right here, Hatzelpeni. That T-S sound there is a doubled T-S, so it's H-T-S-T-S-E-L-L-P-O-N-I, Hatzelpeni. and that means shadow following me or shadow turning. She had borne no children and the angel of the Lord appeared to the woman, very special, the angel of the Lord Jehovah, the messenger Jehovah appears unto Hatselphani. And said to her, Behold now you are bearing, of course she knew that, and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and give birth to a son. going to have a son. According to the pattern, that's what bin means, bin, bin, according to the pattern. Now therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink nor eat any unclean thing. Now this boy is going to be a Nazirite in his mother's womb. a Nazirite in his mother's womb. Now a Nazirite is someone that takes a voluntary vow to be like a priest in service, like a priest in service. When a priest was in service, he couldn't have any contact with women, he could not eat any grapes, he could not drink wine, or eat any unclean thing. That were the, and of course the Apostle Paul took the vow of the Nazirite also. We have evidence of him going back to Jerusalem and and laying aside the Nazirite vow. He was a Nazirite for a while. Therefore, be careful not to drink wine or strong drink or any unclean thing. Number 6128, that's where it goes to. For behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a bayin, a son, and no razor shall come upon his head. For the boy shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the Philistines. He would begin to deliver Israel from the hands of the uncouth people, of the uncivilized, of the barbarians. Then the woman came and told her husband, a man from God came to me and his appearance was like the appearance of an angel of God, very awesome. And I did not ask him where he came from, nor did I tell me his name, that this basically is Jehovah, the angel Jehovah. Jehovah means he who shall become. The angel means angelos here, or melek here means messenger. But he said to me, Behold, you shall conceive and give birth to a son, and now you shall not drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing, for the boy shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb until the day of his death. And Manoah begged the Lord, entreated the Lord, begged Him, said, O Lord, please let the man of God whom Thou sent to come to us again, that he may teach us what to do for the boy who is to be born. And God listened to the voice of Manoah. And the angel of the Lord came again to the woman, as she was sitting in the field, but Noah, her husband, was not with her. You remember, the women did a lot of work, a lot of menial labor, a lot of menial labor, almost all of it. So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, Behold, the man who came the other day has appeared to me again. And Manoah arose and followed his wife, and when he had come to the man, he said to him, Are you the man who spoke to the woman? And he said, I am. Now there we are. You know what the I am is? I am. That is the title of Jehovah. That's the title that God gave to Moses when he said, who are you? Who do you say? And he said, I am that I am. I share, I am, I share. I let the woman pay attention to all that I said. She should not eat anything that comes from the vine, nor drink wine or strong drink, nor eat any unclean thing. Let her observe all that I commanded. This boy is going to be a priest from his mother's womb." A priest in action, basically. Then Manoah said to the angel, Lord, please let us detain you so that we may prepare a kid for you. The kid means a young goat or lamb, so that they could eat this tender young lamb. And we have several times when this happened. We know it happened with Abraham. And the angel of the Lord said to Manoah, though you detain me, I will not eat your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, then offer it to the Lord. A burnt offering, that means you're going to burn the whole offering up. Nobody gets anything. It's burned up. It's cremated. For Manoah did not know that he was the angel of the Lord. This is Jesus in his pre-incarnate form, the pre-incarnate Christ. And Melo said to the angel of the Lord, what is it your name, so that when your words come to pass, we may honor you? The angel of the Lord said to him, why do you ask my name, saying it is wonderful? It's God. It's wonderful. The wonderful means incomprehensible. The name Jehovah cannot be pronounced. The name Jehovah in the Old Testament was referred to as Ha-Lavar, the word, or Ha-Shem, the name. They never tried to say the name. In the New Testament it says, In beginning kept on being the word, the Jehovah, and the Jehovah kept on being an inseparable part of the Godhead because, that last Chi there, because the word, or God, kept on being the word. God kept on being Jehovah. So Noah took the kid with the grain offering and offered it on the rock to the Lord and he performed wonders while Noah and his wife looked on. Miracles. We see the Shekinah glory of God. You know when Jesus was on the Mount of Transfiguration with John and Peter, they saw him transfigured marvelously, wonderfully. And it came about when the flame went up from the altar toward heaven that the angel of the Lord descended in the flame of the altar. And when Manoah and his wife saw it, they fell on their faces to the ground. And the angel of the Lord appeared no more to Manoah or his wife than Manoah knew that he was the angel of the Lord. Jehovah-shamana. The Lord was there. They saw El-Penay. the face of God. So Manoah and his wife, we shall surely die for we have seen God. They did, they saw God in his physical form. But his wife said to him, if the Lord had desired to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering and a grain offering from our hands, nor would he have showed us all these things, nor would he have let us hear the things like this at this time. Again, the woman stands in. Women have a place in the Bible. Women have preeminence many times, and this is one time that they do. Remember the widow and Elijah? The widow and Elijah? Mary? Elizabeth? These special people? The Cellar of Purple, Lydia, Lydia, the Cellar of Purple. These were all special people. Then the woman gave birth to a son. She caught, eluded, and she kept seed, and she gave birth to a son and named him Samson. Samson means like the son, by the way, like the son. Child grew up, and the Lord blessed him. And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him. Now, we have God. Remember, the title of these messages, Dreams, Visions, and Hypnosis in the Bible. And this is all of it. God made me a hypnotist. There was an epiphany there when God showed himself to them through the angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord is a messenger, Lord Jehovah. And the Spirit of the Lord began to stir him. Rua Elhim. Ha Rua Elhim. The Spirit of the Lord. The Holy Spirit. In Mehe Nadan, between Zorah and Eshton. Here we're going to have, what we see in this angel, we have God personified in the flesh. Now we're going to see a person that is so powerful. Was he 85 pound slender little guy that had the power of like a atomic bomb? He may have looked like an average man. Maybe he looked like Charles Atlas or one of the great movie stars, Mr. America or something. Maybe he didn't. Maybe he was just that average looking guy. Then Samson went down, chapter number 14, went down to Temna. And he saw a woman in Temna, one of the daughters of the Philistines. Now, he's not supposed to mess with a woman, one of the Nazarite vows. But he sees the daughter of the Philistines, the uncivilized ones, the uncouth, the barbarians, the heathens. So he came back and told his father and his mother, and I saw a woman in Temna, one of the daughters of the Philistines. and therefore get her for me as a wife." Break the law. First of all, he's going to get a wife. He wasn't supposed to, but he's a Nazarite. Number two, she is forbidden. She is a heathen. Then his father and mother said to him, is there no woman among the daughters of your relatives or among our people that you go take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines But Samson said to his father, get her for me. She looks good to me. I like the looks of her. She's a hot potato. However, his father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord. The Lord put in his heart to desire that woman because he's going to use that woman. And he's going to use Samson to do what God wants him to do. The journey. The job. for he was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. Now at the time, the Philistines were ruling over Israel. And Samson went down to Timnah with his father and his mother, and they came as far as the vineyard of Timnah. And behold, a young lion came out roaring toward him. Now these are African lions. African lions. Because, you know, the African continent is tied to this one. The African lions are over here. That's the type of lion. It's not a mountain lion, not a cougar. It's an African lion. And the Spirit of the Lord, Ru'a Elohim, or Ru'a Jehovah, came upon him mightily, so that he tore him as one tears a little baby goat. Though he had nothing in his hand, but he did not tell his mother and father what he had done. Now, another problem here now. Now, he touches an unclean animal. He's going to get a woman. Now he's going to touch an unclean animal and he kills this unclean animal. So he went down and talked to the woman. And she looked good to Samson. He had a good looking girl. Beautiful woman. You know, how do we know what they actually looked like back then? Now later on in time in early Arabia, a woman that was extremely overweight was extremely valuable to them. They wanted a woman that was really fat. because they thought she was really healthy. Now maybe she was really fat, maybe she was just beautiful, who knows what she was. Maybe she had pretty blue eyes or something. The blue eyes and hazel eyes were greatly admired among these people because most of them had brown eyes, dark eyes. When he returned later to take her, he turned aside to look at the carcass of the lion and behold a swarm of bees and honey were in the body of the lion. The lion's unclean. Anything that touches the lion, the honey, is unclean. Another problem. So he scraped the honey into his hands. And he went on eating as he went. Now honey tastes really good. But also there are bees, premature bees, those little squawp looking things. Wormy looking little things in there. And when he came to his father and mother, he gave some of them to them and they ate it. But he did not tell him that he had scraped the lion out of the body of the lion, scraped the honey out of the bottom of the lion. It was unclean. They should not have eaten it. Then their father went down to a woman in Samson Bay to feast there, for the young men customarily did this. And it came about that they saw him, that they brought 30 companions to be with him. the best men at the wedding. And Samson said to them, let me now propound a riddle to you. Now, if you realize that now, the Hebrew people and the Arabic language, they love to make riddles and poetry. And this is what's going on here. You know, the Hebrew and Arabic language are sister languages, so to speak. And they both are very poetic. If you indeed tell to me within the seven days of the feast, and find it out and I will give you 30 linen wraps and 30 chains of clothes." Now this is a lot of money. This is a lot of wealth right here. Clothes were expensive. Every thread had to be made and every thread had to be woven. But if you are unable to tell me, then you shall give me 30 wraps of linen and 30 chains of clothes. And they said to him, propound the riddle that we may hear it. Propound the riddle that we may hear it. So he said to them, out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet. But they could not tell the riddle in three days. Then it came about on the fourth day that he said to Samson's wife, entice your husband, that he might tell us the riddle, lest we burn you and your father's house with fire and have you invited us to impoverish us. Is this not so? And Samson's wife wept before him and said, ìYou only hate me. You do not love me. You have profoundly riddled the sons of my people and you have not told it to me.î And he said to her, ìBehold, I have not told it to my father or my mother, so why should I tell it to you?î And she wept and she wept and she bawled and she squalled and she wept and she wept for seven days while the feast lasted. Now he's supposed to be making love to this woman for a week. The wedding feast was a time of communion between a woman and a man where they become one. It came down on the seventh day that what he told her, she pressed him hard so she told him the riddle to the sons of her people. So the men of the city said to her on the seventh day, before the sun went down, ìWhat is sweeter than honey, and what is stronger than a lion?î And he said to them, ìIf you had not plowed with my heifer.î Now what he said to them, ìIf you had not had sex with my wife.î Thatís exactly what he said. ìIf you had not plowed, if you had not been intimate with my wife, my heifer, you would have not found out my riddle.î Then the Spirit of the Lord came upon him mightily, and he went down to Ashkelon, and he killed thirty of them, and took their spoil, and gave the change of clothes to those who told the riddle. And his anger burned, and he went up to his father's house. But Samson's wife was given to his companion, who had been his friend, one of his best men at the wedding. God's going to use this woman in a miraculous way. Let me go over here and see how much time I've got on this. We can go a little bit further. He's going to use this woman. And He's going to use this woman to torture her people and to devastate them. And she now has, and I want you to understand something. When you have sex with somebody else's wife, you've uncovered their nakedness. The husband's un-nakedness is what it says. Now, when her father gave her to Samian's companion, his friend, and he had sex with her, he humiliated Samson. He humiliated him. He uncovered him. But after a while, the time of Wheat Harvest came about that Sompson visited his wife with the young goat and said to her, I will go into my wife in her room. I'm going to go in there and I'm going to have sex with her. But her father did not let him enter. And her father said, I really thought that you hated her intensely, so I gave her to your companion. He'd already consummated the marriage. He'd been with her for a week, even though she was balling and squalling all that time. He said, is not her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Please let her be yours instead. Now he knows he's a powerful man. He knows he's got the power of God in him and he's afraid of him. But he doesn't want to mess with his people either. This woman has humiliated him and I don't know what, is Samson going to kill her? What is he going to do with this woman? And Samson said this to them, this time I shall be blameless in regard to the Philistines when I do them harm. So Samson went and caught 300 foxes. And if you know jackals or foxes, they have tails. Okay. Jackals is what it probably is from the Hebrew. And he took torches. Jackal is a wild dog, you know. And he turned the foxes tail to tail and put one torch in the middle between the two tails. This is like a tin can and a cat or a dog. And when he had set fire to the torch, he released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines, thus burning up both the shocks and the standing grain, along with the vineyards and groves, set the whole place on fire. Then the Philistines said, who did this? And they said, Samson, the son-in-law of the Temanite, because he took his wife and gave her to his companion until the Philistines came. up and burned her and her father's house with fire. They were going to burn them down, and they did. Now Samson's mad again. And Samson said to them, since you act like this, I will surely take revenge on you, but after that I will quit. And he struck them in Tisley with a great slaughter. And he went down and lived in the cleft of a rock in Etham. And the Philistines went up and camped in Judah. and spread out in Lehi. And the men of Judah said, why have you come up against us? And they said, we have come up to bind Samson in order to do to him as he did to us. And 3,000 men of Judah went down to the cleft of the rock in Etham and said to Samson, do you not know that the Philistines are rulers over us? Why have you Why are you inciting our enemies, our rulers? And what then is it that you have done to us? And he said to them, as they did to me, so I have done to them. Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. And they said to him, we have come down to bind you so that they may give you into the hands of the Philistines. And Samson said to them, swear to me that you will not kill me. And they said to him, no, but we will bind you tight and give you into the hands, and surely we will not kill you. And then they bound him with two new ropes and brought him up from the rock. Now, an old rope can break. I'm going to tell you this. I worked at Sunland Refinery back in the 60s, 1960s, from 65 to 71, I think. We had what we did a work over on those towers and things out there. And they had some coke towers out there. And I was six foot two, weighed 240 at that time. And they wanted me to go down in this coke tower and chip it all out. You had to go down there without any equipment or anything. They didn't care whether you died or lived or whatever. You'd choke to death down there. All this coke would fall out the bottom of it. And I went up there and I looked at the chair you were going to send me down on. I said, this chair, these ropes are no good. You need to get new ropes on this." He said, get down there, just do it or get out of here, go do something else. I said, well I'm not going to go down there because I said I'm not going to risk my life for you. So they had a guy that was even bigger than me and they put him on that chair and he fell down there and it killed him. The ropes were no good. They needed no ropes. Well, that didn't bother them one bit, they just got another one. Bind me fastly to the ropes, and brought him up from the rock. When he came to Lehi, the Philistines shouted as they met him, and the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of Jehovah, came upon him mightily, so that the ropes that were on his arms were as flax, that is, burned. With fire in his hands, the rope and the bonds dropped from his hands, and he found the fresh jawbone of a donkey. Now he's going to touch the jawbone and use it for a weapon, and it is from an unclean animal. Again, an unclean animal. I want to tell you something while I'm on this still. You know, a lot of times they used camel leather and donkey leather for shoe leather on their sandals. And when Moses stood on Mount Sinai, God said, take off your sandals, for on the ground that you stand is holy ground. And he took his sandals off because they were probably made out of camel or donkey hide. Unclean. So he reached out and he took it and he killed a thousand men with it. And Samson said, with the jawbone of a donkey, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of a donkey, I have killed a thousand men. And here again is this Hebrew-Arabic type poetry. And it came about when he had finished speaking that he threw the jawbone from his hand and he named the place Ramath-Lehi. The high place of the jawbone. The high place of the jawbone. And then he became very thirsty. And he called to the Lord and said, Thou hast given me great deliverance by the hand of your servant. And now shall I die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised. He was totally wore out and totally dehydrated. And God split the hollow of the place in Lehi so that water came out of it. And when he drank it, his strength returned and he revived. Therefore, he named the place En-Hak-Kavur, which is in Lehi to this day. Water came out of the dry jawbone. So he judged Israel 20 years in the days of Philistine. Samson was a worldly man, and yet God used him. He was never really dedicated to what he was supposed to do. He was rebellious, and yet God used him. Reminds us a bunch of us preachers, doesn't it? God uses us in spite of us. And church members out there and deacons, all of you, God uses us in spite of us many times, and God used Samson. Paul said the Old Testament was given unto us for parables, examples, that we should not follow the same way they did. And a lot of things in Samson's life, you can see the glory of God and God's power, you can see him doing God's will and yet fighting all the way, going around the mountain so many times. But through it all, God used him. like He uses us many times. Our Father, I send this message out for you to use it to honor and glorify yourself. Please, wherever it goes in the world, the information in here, please let them feed your sheep, and may it feed your sheep. I pray especially for different ones in my life, Kathy and Steve in Missouri, Nancy in Pennsylvania, Donald and United Kingdom, Max and New Zealand and all of our new students in the Philippines and Australia. Father, I pray that you help me feed them, help me inspire the