Judges 16:20=  "And she said, The Philistines be upon you, Samson.  And he awoke out of his sleep and said, I will go out as times before, and shake myself.  And he wist not that the LORD was departed from him."

A story that I'm sure we all know well: Samson vs. The Philistines.  Time and again Samson would fight the Philistines and win...  What made this time different?  Samson had killed 30 Philistines at one time, then he'd killed many after they butrned his wife...  Not to mention destroying their crops, or the thousand that he killed with a donkey's jawbone.  Yep.  Samson.  The man that could rip apart a lion with his bare hands.

But was it really Samson?  The Bible says in several places in Judges chapters 13-16 that God was with Samson and that the Holy Spirit came upon him.  What does that mean?  It means that Samson wasn't doing the fighting: God was.

You see, Samson had been promised to his parents by God, for God.  God had create him to fulfill God's purpose, just like HE did us.  That doesn't mean that Samson was perfect, no, actually, Samson was far from it.  He had anger issues (not that in Judges 14:19 he went back home instead of immediatly forgiving his wife) and he visited a harlot (Judges 16:1), but God could still use him.  We aren't perfect, either, but God can still use us.

Why would God want someone to kill the Philistines?  Doesn't the Bible say "Thou shalt not kill"?  Well, yes, it does, but look back with me.  In earlier books in the Bible, God told His people Israel to utterrly destroy the surrounding people, including the Philistines, for their wickidness.  The people that Samson killed shouldn't have ever been born.  Keep in mind that the Bible says that the penalty for murder is death, and the Philistines were not idolters and sexually immoral, but that they killed their firstborn babies and children (sound familiar, America?).  God had also told Israel that if they didn't not kill all of the people whose land they were given, that the people would be a snare unto them.  In Samson's time, the Philistines were over Israel (Judges 15:11).

Samson allowed Delilah to sever his ties with God and the Spirit departed from him.  Samson walked into a fight with no strength.  Do not do the same yourself, because if you do, then you will be like Samson.

Judges 16:21= "But the Philistines took him, and put out his eyes, and brought him unto Gaza, and boutnd him with fetters of brass and he did grind in the prison house."

~Psycho