Ministry Offices and Gifts Series

From the Intro of the study Imagine yourself on an archeological expedition to Mexico. You are to go to those ancient Aztec temple ruins and find the mummy of an Aztec king named "Hooba-hooba-snarfblat-foo-foo head" or "Hooba" for short, buried deep within the ruins of the Aztec temple named "No enter this-ol' temple unless you want a gazillion fire-breathing ants crawling into your nostrils and eating your brain" or "Oog" for short. King Hooba had a slight problem naming things with long names. That's why he was nuked by his people. They just got tired of trying to remember all of the long names and they revolted. To get rid of him, they fed him oatmeal until he exploded. Then they sucked out his brain and buried him deep in a secret chamber in temple Oog. You had packed all of the stuff that you needed in order to find his burial chamber. The most important part of your gear was the notebook that contained all of the secrets of the temple. Without that notebook, you would get lost in the temple and never find your way back out. You had spent over 20 years researching the secrets of the temple and wrote your findings in the book. So you set out on this long expedition to find King Hooba. When you reached Mexico, a guide (it should be spelled "gide", Oh well!!) met you whose name was Chichi. His job was to guide you to the ruins. It was a four-day trek into the dark jungles of central Mexico. Chichi skillfully guided you through trailless jungles over raging rivers using only a rope bridge to cross. He was sure to avoid those areas that were invested with the dreaded Tsetse flies. If one of these flies were to bite you, your brain would liquefy and run out your nose. If you blew your nose, you could literally blow your brains out. He led you through these mountains that were too steep and dangerous to traverse. In order to get past the mountains, Chichi took you through tunnels. There was a maze of tunnels in these mountains. They were hundreds of miles long. Some tunnels led to other tunnels while others led you nowhere. Still others led you into deep crevasses that meant certain death. He skillfully led you through the maze to the other side. The floors of the tunnels were littered with bones of those who dared venture into its depths without a guide. Just imagine, sinking deeper and deeper into this abyss of tunnels never to see the light of day again. Finally you emerged from the tunnels on the other side of the mountain. Below you was this enormous lush valley. It was covered by a carpet of grass. Trees dotted the valley. It was the most beautiful thing you had ever seen. There was a mist that blanketed most of the valley. Off in the distance you could hear exotic birds sounding off as if to warn trespassers to keep out. There was an eerie air about the valley. You couldn't quite pin it down but you could feel that something was dangerous about this valley. Even your guide was slightly nervous, but you had come to your final leg of the journey to the temple. You weren't about to turn around now.

(Story continued from Part 2 of the series) You had just completed finding the first two objects that were needed to open the rock door that has you trapped in the room. You couldn't help but wonder what the other objects were that you needed to find. You headed back to the ancient book to find out the next step. You sort of lost track of time. You had been so focused on getting out of this place that you couldn't remember how long you had been underground. Sitting down, you opened the book again and flipped to the last page. "Let's get this over with so I can get out of this place," you said out loud. As you were sitting there looking at the book, you realized that the room was lit but you had no idea where the light was coming from. You just assumed that there was a source of light and that's all you cared about. But now you began to wonder where the light was coming from. It seemed to come from all over. There wasn't a single source of light. It was almost like the ceiling was glowing. You got up from where you were sitting and started to walk around the room trying to figure out where the light was coming from. But there was no source of light to be found anywhere in the room. "Oh well," you said to yourself. "It's not important to find the source of the light. It's more important to get out of here." You wandered back to the place where the book was, sat down, and picked up the book again. Flipping pages again to get to where you had left off, you noticed there was a page missing. You hadn't noticed it before. Where could it have gone? You had to have that page or you would never be able to get out of here. You began to freak out. Beads of sweat formed on your forehead. "I don't want to be stuck in here forever," you thought to yourself. "That's it. I'm toast. I'm history. I might as well lay down right here in the middle of this room and wait to die." "But that page has to be here somewhere," you said as you began to search for it. You crawled along the floor on your hands and neez looking everywhere for that sneaky little page. After crawling around for a while, you stopped and sat back down. "Okay," you said to yourself, "think.. . if I were a ripped and torn page, where would I be?"

During the next several weeks we are going to take a look at each one of the spiritual gifts mentioned in the Bible. We will take each one and see what it is, who has these gifts and how they are to be used in the church. The first two gifts we are going to look at are the gifts of Wisdom and Knowledge. There is a lot of stuff in the Bible about wisdom. Solomon devoted much of his life to teaching others about it. Of course, he was da man who had it all when it came to wisdom. God granted him wisdom because of all the things that Solomon could wish for. He told God he needed wisdom in order to be able to lead the Children of Israel wisely. God said that he could have picked riches or fame but he chose wisdom. Of course, God gave those things to Solomon anyway.

Exerpt from story in Part 3 You grabbed the two stone tablets (see “Cheesy Picture”) with the pictures etched into them and ran out of the room to see if they fit someplace on the stone pillars. You thought it was kinda strange that there would be a picture of a cartoon bear in this ancient place, but this is Ron’s story and I guess he can do whatever his twisted mind can think of. You ran over to the next pillar and set one of the pictures on top. You waited . . . And waited. . . but nothing happened. “Oh man, this isn’t working.” you said. You walked around the pillar looking for something else that might work. On the back of the pillar towards the bottom was a rectangular hole that looked to be just about the same size as the stone tablets. You grabbed the tablet with the bear on it and tried to fit it in the hole. AHHHHHHHHHHH!!! It didn’t fit. But don’t panic, I have one more chance on this thing. Grabbing the next picture, you stuffed it into the hole. SUH-WEET!! A perfect fit. As soon as the picture was seated completely, a black cube-looking stone rose from the center of the top of the pillar. You stared at the cube for a while trying to figure out how this thing was going to get you out of your tomb. You had one more tablet left. You went to the last pillar in the circle. You looked for another one of those rectangular places to put this tablet like the last one, but there were none that you could see. “Dude!! Where am I supposed to put this one?” You stood up and looked at the top of the pillar, hoping to find something. There was a lot of dust on the top of this pillar, so you started wiping the dust off. As you wiped the dust off, you noticed that there was a rectangular indent in the top, sort of like the slots in a toaster. “Maybe this is it. Maybe the stone tablet will fit in the slot.” You tried it. The first try didn’t work. So you flipped it around and tried it again. This time it fit just right. As soon as you put it in the slot, it began to disappear into the pillar. It took about a minute or two until the top of the tablet was completely flush with the top of the pillar. As soon as it stopped sinking into the pillar, the sides of the pillar opened up making it look like some radar type thingy. Well, that was the last one. Each one of the pillars were set and ready to go. But for what? What was going to happen? Would you finally get out of here? How was this contraption going to move the stone in front of the door? You waited and waited, but nothing happened. You began to lose hope again. But wait, you had one more object to find. “What was that other thing I was supposed to find?” you went back over to the book and looked at the matrix again. You still had to find the object that represents something about encouragement. “AHHHHH. I’ll never get out of here!!” Well, you had to try at least. So you began to look for another thingy. “Well, let’s see. What should I be looking for? Hey, maybe. . .nope, that won’t work. Ummmm. . . How ‘bout . . . No, that doesn’t make sense either.” So you started wandering around the room again. Maybe it’s in the other room. You went back into the treasure room and began looking again.

(Story continued from part 4 of this series) Last week you found the last object you needed to get yourself out of this room. Now all you had to do was to find where the last object belongs. You went back to the center pillar and began looking for a place to park this last object. On one side of the pillar you noticed a slot much like the one you found on one of the outer pillars. It was about 6 inches wide and about an inch high. “This must be the place to put this tablet,” you said to yourself. You shoved it into the slot. As soon as you stuck it into the slot, you heard a “click”. It was totally silent in the room for about 30 seconds. All of a sudden the center pillar began to disappear into the ground. The floor between the outside pillars started to glow with a soft bluish light. The light became brighter and brighter. You figured it would be a good idea to get off that part of the floor and stand on the other side of the room. As soon as you reached the other side of the room, the floor that is now glowing brightly with the blue light started to open up. The pillars around the outside began to change. The tops of the pillars started opening. When the tops of the pillars were fully opened, strange rods of iron began to come up out of the pillars. The rods continued to grow until they were about 5 feet from the top of the pillars. Then everything stopped just as suddenly as it had started. There was a dead silence in the room. You were sweating bullets. Your knees were knocking together. You imagined the room was going to blow up or something, sending you into orbit around the planet Xexon. You wanted out of this room, but you didn’t want to be the first human satellite. That’s not exactly how you thought you would spend the rest of your short life.