Adam, Let Go of Your Fig Leaf, There Is a Storm Brewing

By Teddy Donobauer

In Teddy Donobauer’s first book, Adam, There is a Glitch in Your Fig Leaf!, he discusses the “fig leaves” men try to hide behind. He shares how the success rate is unimpressive, for sooner or later, they are discovered. Some storm or another will rip away the disguise, and they will stand there naked.

Contrary to the title, this sequel, Adam, Let Go of Your Fig Leaf, There is a Storm Brewing, presents a call to all men to do the opposite: let go of your fig leaves. But first, Donobauer explains, you need to see them as such and see what they stand for.

Through personal testimony and Bible scripture, Donobauer delivers the message that unless you are saved by him, you will not be with him. When you know yourself as being saved, you will be where he is, in time and eternity. But the purpose for the offer of salvation is not to populate heaven with former sinners, but to populate earth with saints in the making.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664115361

Teddy Donobauer

The author’s search for his authentic self has been going on for 74 years. Through fatherless childhood and teenage years without other role models than ‘modern man’, he has meandered through a few occupations, educations, relationships and cultural environments in search of ‘Behold a man’. Most men he has met have been no better or worse than he found himself to be. But he was never alone. An inseparable shadow has followed him. And finally it dawned on him that shadows prove that there is a light somewhere creating it. Having seen that light he has borrowed the torch which he uses here to point to the Man of Sorrows, acquainted with the grief of being a man. Born and raised in Austrian mountains and on the West Coast of Sweden, studied Theology in UK and Sweden, Bible Teacher, Professional Chef, Caregiver, Auto-worker at Volvo, teacher of Philosophy and Religion and Languages. Married and lives in South Yorkshire in the UK. A Christian male in search of Man.

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Copyright © 2021 by Teddy Donobauer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Rev. date: 04/09/2021

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 But isn’t Adam just a myth?

Chapter 2 The First Leaf: I hate to fail

Chapter 3 The second Leaf: As his name is, so is he.

Chapter 4 The Third Leaf to fall: Are you not a king in Israel? I will see to it!

Chapter 5 The Fourth Leaf to fall: In the shade of Sheol

Chapter 6 The Fifth Leaf: The Fig Leaves of infirmity

Chapter 7 The Sixth Leaf The Alter Ego of Adam: ‘Ichabod’

Chapter 8 The Seventh Leaf: I say to one man go, and he goes

Chapter 9 The eighth Leaf: The Pride of life

Chapter 10 A Body you have prepared for me

INTRODUCTION

Before the storm

In my book: Adam, there is a glitch in your Fig Leaf, I touched upon a few ‘Fig Leaves’ that we as men try to hide behind. Our success rate is unimpressive, for sooner or later we shall be found out. Some storm or other will rip away our disguise and we will stand there naked. So contrary to the title, this book is a call to all men to do the opposite: Let go of your Fig Leaves! But first we need to see them as such and see what they stand for. Nobody throws away anything they do not see as superfluous.

The self made male always believes a bit more in Himself and his ability to ‘fix it’ than is wise. Victor, my own biological father, prided himself with a saying that became ingrained in other young men around him. To them he appeared as a true hero.¹ One of them was my Uncle. My father believed that ‘anything you truly put your mind to, you were bound to achieve. You just have to believe in yourself and your capacity and the sky’s the limit’. He died before the age of twenty-nine in a mountaineering accident. Faith may move mountains, but faith in yourself does not. And my Uncle Gernot was shaken to the core on seeing his hero dead. Our heroes all die, and how they die is the only thing many will be remembered for. We may for years live by proxy and let others live for us, vicariously, but ultimately we will discover that ‘naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."² The storm to remove every Leaf is the day of giving account for how we have lived in these bodies of ours. We may have given away our authority over the body, but we cannot ask anyone else to give account on our behalf.

Our human nature deplores the storms of life since they are generally destructive and upsetting. The storm is out of our control and shows the futility of our prideful reliance on ourselves. They ruffle our serenity, they thwart our best laid plans. They ruin our sandcastles on the dreamt up beaches. They demote us from our lofty perches and bring us down low. The higher we aspire the lower we are brought. And the most galling thing of all is that they cannot be evaded. The reason is that they very often are harvests of things we have sown. Here is my observation: the self-made man praises himself of success in the peaks of life, enjoys the lulls of achievement but has no insight that the storms are also to a large extent, self made. Is there not something tragi-comic about a man preening himself at success but immediately looking for someone to blame if he fails? Remember sowing to the wind and harvesting a whirlwind?³ That is a biblical reference that has crept into the commonplace store of sayings that very many know. There are storms coming that are for humankind as a whole. But the storms I am focusing on in this book are those that are consequential to our own actions. The only unavoidable storm which will pommel us all is part of a larger plan. Thus says the LORD: Behold, what I have built I will break down, and what I have planted I will pluck up, that is, this whole land. And do you seek great things for yourself? ⁴

I have long suspected that our minor storms are trial runs for the large one to come. If we cannot stand under the small ones how will we weather the big one? ⁵ Before I start leafing through some of the remaining Fig Leaves of Adam I reflect on what the storms of life accomplish.

I believe that they show our mettle, bring out what we are made of, they illuminate our present character development. But I am not sure that they produce character or enhance it as such. The storm needs to be weathered through and lessons learnt once the storm is over. It comes as no surprise that such a scenario is described in the Bible. Here is the extended passage:

And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, also how he had executed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time." And when he saw that, he arose and ran for his life, and went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.

But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die, and said, It is enough! Now, LORD, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!

Then as he lay and slept under a broom tree, suddenly an angel touched him, and said to him, Arise and eat. Then he looked, and there by his head was a cake baked on coals, and a jar of water. So he ate and drank, and lay down again. And the angel of the LORD came back the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you. So he arose, and ate and drank; and he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights as far as Horeb, the mountain of God.

And there he went into a cave, and spent the night in that place; and behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and He said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah?

So he said, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life."

Then He said, Go out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD. And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice.

So it was, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave. Suddenly a voice came to him, and said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"

And he said, "I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; because the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left; and they seek to take my life."⁶

It is hard to imagine a worse storm to come after the peak and lull of success in a man’s life than this. Single and alone, our man Elijah had triumphed over four hundred ‘ Prophets of Baal’. The presence of these prophets in the land was a direct result of a blatant disobedience. "And it came to pass, as though it had been a trivial thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, that he took as wife Jezebel the daughter of Eth-Baal, king of the Sidonians; and he went and served Baal and worshipped him. Ahab did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel before him.⁷"

Ahab and Elijah share a significant period in the life of the kingdom of David and to say that they were like the proverbial ‘dogs and cats’ is no understatement. But their caterwauling reaches religious frenzy before we come to the text just cited. Elijah represents the conservative and Mosaic ethic and faith where God is the one calling the shots and men know themselves to be entirely subservient to the One God. Ahab has adopted the gods of his wife and has allowed the unholy alliance of the worship of sex with the worship of the Bull-god Baal. Temple prostitution, sexual frenzy acts in the name of Baal, and the burning of Children as sacrifice to the gods, was all part and parcel of that. Illicit sex produced children, these were sacrificed by burning as secondary sacrifices. (Whether we kill the baby while in the womb or just after birth makes no moral difference at all. The blood shed calls out from the ground and accuses the killer.⁸) It was the Israelite equivalent of Pro Choice already three millennia ago. There is nothing new under the sun.⁹ Sex without responsibility produces babies no-one wants and this surplus must be done away with. ‘Burn, baby burn’ has many of the sinister alarms of a defunct and depraved society. Notice also how Ahab is a forerunner for the much praised idea of ‘diversity’ and of the ‘multicultural’ influences in a society. Things raised to the sky by the unwary. They back-fired then and do so now.

Of course Elijah opposed Ahab to the utmost. Being a man of God he could do no other. No man of God can idly stand by and watch his nation going down into the vortex of sin. Being part of the nation no way exempts him from being under the national judgment. In his case he actually becomes part of the judgment in that through his prayers the rain ceases for three years and six months, and brings dire drought for the whole nation. ¹⁰ In a cat and mouse game that lasts the entire period of drought Ahab is seeking Elijah, and when he finally comes, the other prophets of God have been rounded up and killed by Jezebel. The voice of God must be silenced among the sinful nations. Strangely enough the exact same scenario is acted out in our time.

So the confrontation was unavoidable and chapter 18 in 1 Kings spells it out loud and clear.