Ms. Smallback
I woke up Saturday morning with a song in my head. The song was ridiculous – a song I neither care for nor sing. Also, it was seasonal, and it wasn’t the season for this song. It was so clear and I was so annoyed that I put on a favorite playlist to get it out of my head.
Then Sunday morning I heard the song again, in my head.
Now God and I have this thing – maybe some of you have it too – but He gives me songs sometimes to get a message to me. I used to think it was random, but then I learned how to listen for His voice. Don’t get me wrong, I get random songs too. But as the years have passed along, there are telltales when it’s just random versus when it’s God.
Sometimes I don’t even know the words. Sometimes I don’t know the artist. Sometimes I haven’t heard the song in months or years and there’s no good reason for it to be in my head. And sometimes, it’s just obvious what He’s saying.
Sunday morning when I was cleaning my kitchen and the song popped back into my head, His Spirit asked, “What does red mean to you, Michelle?” The song was Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, and I hate that song. But as soon as God asked that question I knew the answer: CHIEFS!! That’s what red means to me on Super Bowl weekend in 2020!
Was God telling me the Chiefs were going to win the Super Bowl? Don’t laugh (too hard). He’s told me who is going to the Super Bowl numerous times since 2009, when I learned He uses national events as signs and symbols. He’s also told me who’s going to win the Super Bowl a few times.
But this time is different. The Kansas City Chiefs are MY team. I didn’t just start following them when it became popular. I’ve followed them faithfully for decades now, through wins and losses. I am no fair weather fan. I love football, and the Chiefs are my team. I was going to quit watching them when the anthem protests started. There are so many ways the NFL has been compromised since I first started following them, and that was about the final straw for me.
I prayed about it, talked with my husband about it, and pondered it. I didn’t watch pre-season in 2018 and was just about convinced I wasn’t going to watch NFL anymore, but there was this twinge. I love football. So my husband and I decided we didn’t need to be punished for their political garbage. We decided we’d watch them as long as it was free and we weren’t spending a dime on anything that the NFL would benefit from. Seemed like a fair compromise to us….
But anyway, these last two seasons have been harder for me to get a beat on the symbolism because I’m a diehardChiefs’ fan and they’ve been winning these last two seasons. I didn’t know if my favoritism would bias my perception; I assume it does. So I’ve stayed pretty silent and just watched, and waited, and listened.
BUT…. over the last few days I feel like the Spirit has given me insight that is not a product of my bias. And then Sunday morning the song! And RED. In fact, I had just posted on social media this last week this meme:
So YES, red means Chiefs to me! And there is no way, no rhyme, and no reason Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer should be in my head. I hate the song, haven’t heard it, don’t sing it, and don’t own it. Unless…. God put it there.
So as I pondered this, this phrase of the song came to me: “You’ll go down in history.” And I realized He was indeed telling me the Chiefs were going to win the Super Bowl.
I had already been doing a lot of pondering and praying about what this Super Bowl would symbolize. For example, in 2016 the Denver Broncos and the Carolina Panthers went to the Super Bowl.
Bronco comes from the Spanish word for “rough, or gruff”. Broncos represent horses, but specifically untrained horses with unpredictable behavior. They are known for their bucking and kicking, which is instinctive as a defense against predators. Also, horses are used in war and frequently represent conquest.
Panthers are predators. They are nocturnal, and move with stealth in the night. They move in the shadows and deliver deadly attacks.
In 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected President. It shouldn’t take too much to recognize bronco like qualities in his personality. He is unpredictable, even rough, or gruff. He is untrained in politics. He came to “drain the swamp”, and that included waging war against the Deep State. The Deep State players are predators, who do their deadly deeds in darkness.
The Broncos defeated the Panthers 24-10. Incidentally, in Biblical language, twenty-four is the number for new government, or heavenly government, while ten can represent an entire round of anything (e.g. plagues, commandments, nations, etc.).
But back to this Super Bowl. When I knew it was going to be the Chiefs and 49ers, I began praying that God would show me what it may represent. The Chiefs represent middle America. They’re in the heartland. [Contrary to popular belief, they weren’t named for Indians. They were named after the mayor of Kansas City whose nickname was Chief.] And the Kansas City fan base and home is called “Chiefs Kingdom.” The 49ers represent gold diggers, prospectors, those who are looking to make bank and change their fortunes.
Kansas City would be playing against a high dollar, high profile San Francisco team. The west coast vs. the heartland. The gold diggers vs. middle America.
And according to the message God was giving me, the Chiefs were going to win.
What I learned from Super Bowl LVI
God is in the details. Sometimes we think God has no interest in what seem like trivial matters. Does God really care about an insignificant (in the scope of eternal matters) recreation or entertainment? Short answer: yes and no.
I don’t have space for the long answer right here, but here are some things either He showed me or I found anomalies.
For the Chiefs to make it to the Super Bowl, they had to win their divisional title, the AFC Championship. To do that, they had to beat the Houston Texans and then the Tennessee Titans. Each of those games was historical in its own right. To beat Houston, they had to overcome a 24-0 deficit, which if I understand correctly, had never been done in a playoff game. They also scored a franchise record 51 points.
Then they went against the Titans, who had just beat the Patriots to get to the AFC Championship game. They had to overcome a 17-7 deficit to win, which they did and won 35-24.
In the Super Bowl, they overcame a 20-10 deficit for a NFL record: the only team in NFL history to have three double-digit comebacks in post season. They beat the 49ers 31-20.
I need you to understand the Chiefs won the Super Bowl title by overcoming deficits. Three playoff games, including THE playoff game, the Chiefs came FROM BEHIND to win.
I do believe there are lessons to be learned in nearly any and every experience. But this, I’m suggesting, is bigger than a learning opportunity. I do believe it represents something of more magnitude. But I’ll get to that in a minute. For now, some more anomalies…
I am an amateur student of numbers, because God speaks to me in numbers in a variety of ways. So I study them, what they mean to God, how to understand them. My favorite source is E.W. Bullinger, who published an exhaustive work on the usages of numbers in Scripture and their inferred meanings in 1921. The book is called “Number in Scripture – Its Supernatural Design and Spiritual Significance”.
[My second favorite source is Ed. F. Vallowe’s “Biblical Mathematics – Keys to Scripture Numerics”.]
So here are some number anomalies from the Chiefs’ post season wins.
Chiefs vs. Texans 51-31 [20 point differential]
Chiefs vs. Titans 35-24 [11 point differential]
Chiefs vs. 49ers 31-20 [11 point differential]
Then we have another anomaly. The Super Bowl was played on the palindrome 02-02-2020, and it was Andy Reid’s 222nd game, and they won by 11. [111×2=222]
First playoff win was a twenty point differential. According to Bullinger, twenty is symbolic of expectancy. The next two wins were with eleven point differentials, and the number eleven is symbolic of judgment and disorder. The Chiefs won with a score of 31, and Bullinger explains thirty-one in Hebrew expression is “l), El, the name of God, and its signification as a number or factor would be Deity.”
As a nation, we have a group of people whose voices have been ignored and ridiculed for a long time. I think that people group is casually represented in the Chiefs.
The heartland of America, the Midwest, is replete with hard-working, tax-paying, God-fearing, ethically moral persons who believe they’re responsible for their own lives, their own welfare, their own families, and relish the liberty to be responsible for such. They value the sanctity of life and seek to both protect it and preserve it. They are representative of the pilgrims, the thirteen colonies, the people who came over and wanted to build lives for themselves in peace and security, and to be able to worship God as their faith convicts them.
As a nation, we have a group of people whose voices have been screaming peculiarities and accusations so loudly, no other voices are getting attention. I think that people group is casually represented in the 49ers.
The west coast of America is being overrun by people whose god is gold, currency, material wealth. They protest for their perversions and entitlements, and rail against liberties that don’t give to their whims. They do not value the sanctity of life unless it directly benefits them. They represent the elite voices of our society, those that think themselves above the fray and of more value than the “common man”.
Recall that the Chiefs overcame deficits. The odds were not in their favor. What kind of deficit has the common man been facing in America? Who has pitted itself against the common man? Remember that it’s called “Chiefs Kingdom”. What could that represent? As a believer, what do you think of when you hear Kingdom?
I think the Chiefs’ victory point deficits represent an expectancy of the end of disorder by the gold diggers, the elite of our society, the elevated and favored ones. The winning score represents this victory will come by the Deity of the common man: God. The Chiefs won their first Super Bowl in fifty years. Fifty is the number of jubilee, or deliverance from bondage. Could it be that the common man’s jubilee is about to commence?
Reid’s 222nd game on 2.2.20 is fascinating. Two is the number for division or witness. (among other things) 222 is 111×2, and their last two games were won by 11 point deficits. It seems to signify victory over disorder and chaos.
When I watched the game, the commentators seemed pretty favorable toward San Francisco. Before the game even started, the commentators said the 49ers’ coach was concerned if the officiating was going to be called on the Chiefs’ defense, because they said they seem to get away with holding. I thought that was interesting in the light of current politics. How about we play the game before we whine about not getting calls?
The 49ers’ coach, Kyle Shanahan, is a generational coach. His dad is a well-known and successful NFL coach as well. This nepotism is rampant in politics. Andy Reid and the Chiefs are perceived outside of the usual favored NFL teams.
After halftime, when the score was an even 10-10, the interview with Andy Reid had him focused on the strengths and weaknesses of the game and adjustments to be made. The interview with Shanahan had him focused on a perceived wrong pass interference call. Shanahan felt that there was not pass interference on a call that was made against the 49ers, when even the rules expert agreed with the call. I thought that was reminiscent of current politics as well. Remind you of any particular politicians that are consistently whining and complaining about perceived officiating calls?
Overall I thought there were uncanny parallels from the current circumstances of polity in America, and the circumstances that led up and concluded in this NFL season.
Maybe the takeaway was simply the similarities that were analogous. Or maybe there is something to the inferences that can be drawn. Maybe looking at some of the interesting anomalies are predictive for matters in the spiritual realm as well, or maybe not. Maybe some will think I’m reading too much into something irrelevant and meaningless.
Regardless, all that aside, I think my favorite aspect of this is how God reveals things to His people who have ears to hear and eyes to see. Why would He do that? In Jeremiah 33:2-3 [NASU] we read,
Thus says the Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it, the Lord is His name, “Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.”
There is a beauty in walking in friendship with God. He speaks to us. He shows us things…. if we seek Him, if we wait on Him, if we want to know what’s on His heart. That’s what friendship is. When I get together with my few intimate friends, I tell them things I am doing, things I am planning, things in my heart. They don’t necessarily want or need to know those things, but it builds relationship and trust and understanding.
The implications and inferences I can draw about the Super Bowl aren’t the main point (for me). They’re interesting. I’ve had about ten years of trial and error at understanding what’s on the mind of God in some national events, and about three decades of learning how He speaks to me. I’m pretty confident now when I think He has revealed His heart and part of His plans to me.
(I was the one at the Super Bowl party when the Chiefs were losing that was not concerned. I already knew they were going to win.)
Why didn’t God just tell me who was going to win the Super Bowl? Why did He give me a song? He could have told me. He’s told me things before, even the Super Bowl. Again, intimacy. God is personal. He tailors His language to our personality. He spoke in a way to me that He knew I’d have a gradual dawning of the revelation, and that is so fun for me. He knew I’d get a kick out of looking at the details and seeing if He was saying something in them. He’s told me before who was going to win, but this time it was MY team, so He did it a little different. He gets pleasure from our joy.
Is the Super Bowl important in the scope of things.Nah. Not really. But Psalm 138:8 tells me God will perfect (accomplish) that which concerns me. He knew I cared, so He cared. Think of how you like to tell people special news that will thrill them. That’s what God did.
Does God need a Super Bowl to foreshadow His future plans? Nope. But He does it anyway. There are so many misconceptions about God. I’m sure I have several of my own. But if we’re patient and if we’re looking and if we want to know and understand our Maker, He will break them all. He does want us to know and understand Him. Walking in friendship with God is the highest prize of life.
[I don’t have enough space or time here to answer the inevitable questions about the ongoing controversy of the NFL, the halftime shows, the human trafficking that occurs at that time, and all the other ways darkness uses the NFL, but I’m aware of them. Today my focus was on what I see God doing. I’m happy to address the other if you want to send me an email.]
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E-Mail Ms. Smallback: M.Smallback@cox.net
