The God of blue sky and almond blossoms
When I was about 4 years old or so, I was playing one morning in my sandbox with my toys and something made me stop and look up.
I saw the most beautiful perfect blue cloudless sky through the spring almond blossoms of the tree over me.
Something told me "You are loved".
I saw the most beautiful perfect blue cloudless sky through the spring almond blossoms of the tree over me.
Something told me "You are loved".
I have seen and leaned many things since then but that instant stays with me and is my idea of God. He is as loving as any being could ever be. He is more fair than any human. He is more generous than any human. He is more intelligent than any human. He is more patient than any human.
When this world scares me, when it threatens me, when someone hurts me, I flee to Him.
I can't see Him. I can't feel Him. I can't really even know Him, but I do recognize when He talks to me.
It's like a spark of life and truth.
He makes me see things I cannot see.
He lets me know in the most intangible way, that there is something I need to do or not do.
He focuses my attention out of the blue.
He is my God of the Blue Sky and the Almond Blossoms.
He can be quiet, yet his creation shoults at me constantly.
He can be stern, yet though he slay me, yet I can trust Him.
There are many imposters constantly trying to mimic Him and entice me through lust and pride.
But his peace and truth and strength, they guide me and protect me.
He is my God of the Blue Sky and the Almond Blossoms.
As I learn more, I see how much I don't know and realize how much I don't know that I don't know.
The infinity of space, of the atom, of time, of the mind, of math, of thought.
These I will never master or understand fully.
What I think I know is nothing compared to what He has made.
He is the God of the Blue Sky and of Almond Blossoms.
Death will come to us all, and we shall all cross into eternity.
What awiats me there I have no idea.
but I do know that He is faithful to keep and hold me no matter where I go.
I know there is no place He is not.
He is my God of the Blue Sky and the Almond Blossoms.
Selah.
When this world scares me, when it threatens me, when someone hurts me, I flee to Him.
I can't see Him. I can't feel Him. I can't really even know Him, but I do recognize when He talks to me.
It's like a spark of life and truth.
He makes me see things I cannot see.
He lets me know in the most intangible way, that there is something I need to do or not do.
He focuses my attention out of the blue.
He is my God of the Blue Sky and the Almond Blossoms.
He can be quiet, yet his creation shoults at me constantly.
He can be stern, yet though he slay me, yet I can trust Him.
There are many imposters constantly trying to mimic Him and entice me through lust and pride.
But his peace and truth and strength, they guide me and protect me.
He is my God of the Blue Sky and the Almond Blossoms.
As I learn more, I see how much I don't know and realize how much I don't know that I don't know.
The infinity of space, of the atom, of time, of the mind, of math, of thought.
These I will never master or understand fully.
What I think I know is nothing compared to what He has made.
He is the God of the Blue Sky and of Almond Blossoms.
Death will come to us all, and we shall all cross into eternity.
What awiats me there I have no idea.
but I do know that He is faithful to keep and hold me no matter where I go.
I know there is no place He is not.
He is my God of the Blue Sky and the Almond Blossoms.
Selah.
Comments and thoughts on pre-trib rapture
A friend of mine recently published a YouTube video (See Above) on his thoughts on a pre-trib rapture and I found some arguments of his I wanted to comment on.
One of his strongest arguments for a pre-trib rapture is the "taking away of the restrainer" which he assumes is the "comforter" which is the "Holy Spirit" - but are these three things really the same thing?
In the Blue Letter Bible I use their Strongs references to analyze these words. In John 15:26, we see that the greek word for "Comforter" is different than the one used for "Spirit" in that verse. The verse clearly says that the "comfortor" is the "Spirit of Truth" which "Proceeds from the Father". So naturally the assumption that these are all the same thing is quite reasonable. But one thing I have had issues with is why is it that (see John 14:26) Jesus could not have the "comforter" come to indwel the disciples till he had left? It says there that the Comfortor is the Holy Spirit and the "Spirit of Truth" that "proceeds from the Father" whom Jesus "will send to you".
The problem I have with all this is that God is clearly omni-present. See Psalm 138:8. If God is everywhere and the Holy Spirit is part of the Holy Trinity - ie: God, then how can he be "sent" if He is omnipresent? Likewise, how can the "restrainer" be taken away if that is the omni-present God?
Contrast these two verses
Psalm 139:8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
2Th 2:7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way
How can the Holy Spirit be taken out of the way if He is omni-present?
I don't really have an answer for this but something that comes to mind is the fact that there are 7 spirits of god.
Rev 5:6 And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
These 7 spirits can be "sent" to all the earth. Could, what we think of the Comforter or Restrainer be one or the combination of these 7 spirits?
Isaiah lists these spirits:
Isaiah 11:2 And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;
It seems to me that either the Comfortor is God or the Trinity does not include the Comforter because God is omnipresent and cannot be "sent" or "taken away".
David also seems to associate the Comfortor with the Son in that he says that the Son cannot be punished a second time for sin and implies that the wrath of God would be punishing the Son a second time if spirit filled christians were on the earth when God's wrath is given. This wrath is not a sacrifice. It is judgement.
Jesus is not bodily there, only the Comforter who can be sent and taken away. I don't see the validity of this argument. If the wrath of god on a world filled with spirit filled Christians is a second "sacrifice" then why did Jesus, the "son of man", have to come in bodily form to make his sacrifice in the first place?
Also, this life is full of suffering. Jesus promised us two things: long life and suffering in this life. I don't think God sees the destruction of the body, even a horrendous death under a judgement of earth, as nearly as significant as the destruction of the soul. A Christian suffering in a tribulaiton is "no big deal" if his soul will live for eternity with God after that is over. Did God spare his own disciples? No. Why is the Church so special? This thinking is almost narcisistic.
David also makes the point that "enduring to the end" applies to poeple after the comforter is taken away. But this term is applied to the 7 churches in Revelation. If the Churches are taken out before the wrath and this enduring means while under the wrath, well then, how can this term apply to the 7 churches in revelation?
Now the reason I am not a pre-trib rapture dude (tentatively) is because of how I read the olivet discourse:
3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.
10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:
18 Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.
19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:
21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.
24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
25 Behold, I have told you before.
Now does this not clearly read as a chronological account of the end times? There is no mention of a rapture anywhere in this. There is no promise of avoidance of suffering. Indeed Christ applies the "Endure to the End" command to his disciples before the tribulaiton. He talks of the "elect" seeing this "abomination of desolation" and "fleeing" from an "abomination of desolation" and Jesus mentions the "tribulation" but for the "elect's sake" the days will be shortened - the days of the "tribulation". One could say that the rapture happens between verses 20 and 21 and the "elect" includes those that will be saved that missed the rapture but that is certainly not necessarily correct.
To me, there is a lot of suffering that happens BEFORE this including being hated by ALL NATIONS. That is not yet true but we are getting there.
Also we have the statement in
Daniel 7:25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
This clearly seems to say that the saints will be worn out DURING the 7 year tribulation, not before. This points strongly towards a mid-trib rapture which is what I (tentatively) hold to at this time.
This is really why I have a bit of a problem with the pre-trib rapture view.
I don't make a big deal about when Christ returns or even if there is a rapture because none of this has anything to do with our ability to change it. It will happen how it will happen and it is not even my job to even know when, only to believe and endure. Nor does our view on the rapture have anything to do with salvation or our duty to God on this earth.
It certainly is an interesting topic but what harm could a pre-trib rapture do?
Well, it could discourage Christians from being the salt and light they are charged to be no matter what. Clearly if most of the Church believes they wil escape all the wrath of the end-times they might not work as hard to change things as they could. Maybe that's what God wants for us - rest and peace - but that is not what Jesus seems to be predicting and it is not what we see historically for the church either.
Why would Jesus share all this horrible detail with the disciples if the Church will never see it happen?
This is not to say that a pre-trib rapture interpretation is unreasonable or incorrect but when one looks at the history of this interpretation it has only appeared in the last 200 years or so though I have heard it was believed in the early chruch days, I have not studied that extra-biblical data to know if that is true or not. Study Darby and the Scofield Study Bible and you will get some clue as to where this thinking came from and how it propagated so deeply into church thinking.
This controversy is not new and has been debated for over a century and has split entire denominations and I have attended both sides and been exposed to various eschatologies including preterism and amilenialism. I don't think it should be a central topic of teaching nor should it be a cornerstone of interpretation of the rest of the bible. This is about the extent that I want to argue about it.
David - you got my kitchen sink as asked for. Enjoy.
One of his strongest arguments for a pre-trib rapture is the "taking away of the restrainer" which he assumes is the "comforter" which is the "Holy Spirit" - but are these three things really the same thing?
In the Blue Letter Bible I use their Strongs references to analyze these words. In John 15:26, we see that the greek word for "Comforter" is different than the one used for "Spirit" in that verse. The verse clearly says that the "comfortor" is the "Spirit of Truth" which "Proceeds from the Father". So naturally the assumption that these are all the same thing is quite reasonable. But one thing I have had issues with is why is it that (see John 14:26) Jesus could not have the "comforter" come to indwel the disciples till he had left? It says there that the Comfortor is the Holy Spirit and the "Spirit of Truth" that "proceeds from the Father" whom Jesus "will send to you".
The problem I have with all this is that God is clearly omni-present. See Psalm 138:8. If God is everywhere and the Holy Spirit is part of the Holy Trinity - ie: God, then how can he be "sent" if He is omnipresent? Likewise, how can the "restrainer" be taken away if that is the omni-present God?
Contrast these two verses
Psalm 139:8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
2Th 2:7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way
How can the Holy Spirit be taken out of the way if He is omni-present?
I don't really have an answer for this but something that comes to mind is the fact that there are 7 spirits of god.
Rev 5:6 And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
These 7 spirits can be "sent" to all the earth. Could, what we think of the Comforter or Restrainer be one or the combination of these 7 spirits?
Isaiah lists these spirits:
Isaiah 11:2 And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD;
It seems to me that either the Comfortor is God or the Trinity does not include the Comforter because God is omnipresent and cannot be "sent" or "taken away".
David also seems to associate the Comfortor with the Son in that he says that the Son cannot be punished a second time for sin and implies that the wrath of God would be punishing the Son a second time if spirit filled christians were on the earth when God's wrath is given. This wrath is not a sacrifice. It is judgement.
Jesus is not bodily there, only the Comforter who can be sent and taken away. I don't see the validity of this argument. If the wrath of god on a world filled with spirit filled Christians is a second "sacrifice" then why did Jesus, the "son of man", have to come in bodily form to make his sacrifice in the first place?
Also, this life is full of suffering. Jesus promised us two things: long life and suffering in this life. I don't think God sees the destruction of the body, even a horrendous death under a judgement of earth, as nearly as significant as the destruction of the soul. A Christian suffering in a tribulaiton is "no big deal" if his soul will live for eternity with God after that is over. Did God spare his own disciples? No. Why is the Church so special? This thinking is almost narcisistic.
David also makes the point that "enduring to the end" applies to poeple after the comforter is taken away. But this term is applied to the 7 churches in Revelation. If the Churches are taken out before the wrath and this enduring means while under the wrath, well then, how can this term apply to the 7 churches in revelation?
Now the reason I am not a pre-trib rapture dude (tentatively) is because of how I read the olivet discourse:
3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?
6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
9 Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.
10 And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
13 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
14 And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)
16 Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:
17 Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:
18 Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.
19 And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
20 But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day:
21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.
23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.
24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
25 Behold, I have told you before.
Now does this not clearly read as a chronological account of the end times? There is no mention of a rapture anywhere in this. There is no promise of avoidance of suffering. Indeed Christ applies the "Endure to the End" command to his disciples before the tribulaiton. He talks of the "elect" seeing this "abomination of desolation" and "fleeing" from an "abomination of desolation" and Jesus mentions the "tribulation" but for the "elect's sake" the days will be shortened - the days of the "tribulation". One could say that the rapture happens between verses 20 and 21 and the "elect" includes those that will be saved that missed the rapture but that is certainly not necessarily correct.
To me, there is a lot of suffering that happens BEFORE this including being hated by ALL NATIONS. That is not yet true but we are getting there.
Also we have the statement in
Daniel 7:25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.
This clearly seems to say that the saints will be worn out DURING the 7 year tribulation, not before. This points strongly towards a mid-trib rapture which is what I (tentatively) hold to at this time.
This is really why I have a bit of a problem with the pre-trib rapture view.
I don't make a big deal about when Christ returns or even if there is a rapture because none of this has anything to do with our ability to change it. It will happen how it will happen and it is not even my job to even know when, only to believe and endure. Nor does our view on the rapture have anything to do with salvation or our duty to God on this earth.
It certainly is an interesting topic but what harm could a pre-trib rapture do?
Well, it could discourage Christians from being the salt and light they are charged to be no matter what. Clearly if most of the Church believes they wil escape all the wrath of the end-times they might not work as hard to change things as they could. Maybe that's what God wants for us - rest and peace - but that is not what Jesus seems to be predicting and it is not what we see historically for the church either.
Why would Jesus share all this horrible detail with the disciples if the Church will never see it happen?
This is not to say that a pre-trib rapture interpretation is unreasonable or incorrect but when one looks at the history of this interpretation it has only appeared in the last 200 years or so though I have heard it was believed in the early chruch days, I have not studied that extra-biblical data to know if that is true or not. Study Darby and the Scofield Study Bible and you will get some clue as to where this thinking came from and how it propagated so deeply into church thinking.
This controversy is not new and has been debated for over a century and has split entire denominations and I have attended both sides and been exposed to various eschatologies including preterism and amilenialism. I don't think it should be a central topic of teaching nor should it be a cornerstone of interpretation of the rest of the bible. This is about the extent that I want to argue about it.
David - you got my kitchen sink as asked for. Enjoy.
The Art of Finding the truth
A recent issue at my church of misunderstandings, mistrust, and division has arisen that I feel prompts this article.
That issue is simply – how to assess information and resolve conflicts in a way that preserves relationships yet honors the truth.
I offer the following diagram to assist me in communicating my ideas on this subject.
That issue is simply – how to assess information and resolve conflicts in a way that preserves relationships yet honors the truth.
I offer the following diagram to assist me in communicating my ideas on this subject.
Let’s talk about each of these areas of processing that a person does when presented a piece of evidence.
Reality: This is what actually happened or what actually is observed. It reflects the truth in that it simply IS. It has properties such as self-consistency and a point in location and time.
Perception: This is what a person’s senses delivers to the brain and cannot possibly include all that reality presents but gives a pretty good approximation that the mind can then identify, store, recall, and categorize.
Memory: This is both the storage of the perception and the retrieval of historical context that influences the perception. Since everyone has a different history, memory plays a role in affecting the perception of something. Memory is also faulty in that the retrieval of an item can undergo re-processing each time it is recalled. This is because history is constantly being added to as we travel through time. The retrieval of the perception can also be faulty as brain cells die or by trauma or other things that can change the perception over time.
Emotions: These play a big role in that history and context can associate a perception with a feeling, be it fear, love, anger, empathy, etc. Emotions can also distort our retrieved perception of reality.
Opinions: Once all these factors affect a perception it becomes categorized into a tentative belief which I call an opinion. Opinions are easily changed as more perceptions arrive and as history and context are changed or built up.
Beliefs: Beliefs are strong opinions that become premises and the basis for future perception processing and are absolutely necessary for the mind to operate. Without a belief base, it is simply impossible to think.
Keeping these ideas in mind will help us to better understand how to find the truth of a matter, distinguish reality from perception from opinion and from belief.
So let us now introduce another diagram to discuss the process of how one should properly order their perceptions to best find the truth of a matter.
Reality: This is what actually happened or what actually is observed. It reflects the truth in that it simply IS. It has properties such as self-consistency and a point in location and time.
Perception: This is what a person’s senses delivers to the brain and cannot possibly include all that reality presents but gives a pretty good approximation that the mind can then identify, store, recall, and categorize.
Memory: This is both the storage of the perception and the retrieval of historical context that influences the perception. Since everyone has a different history, memory plays a role in affecting the perception of something. Memory is also faulty in that the retrieval of an item can undergo re-processing each time it is recalled. This is because history is constantly being added to as we travel through time. The retrieval of the perception can also be faulty as brain cells die or by trauma or other things that can change the perception over time.
Emotions: These play a big role in that history and context can associate a perception with a feeling, be it fear, love, anger, empathy, etc. Emotions can also distort our retrieved perception of reality.
Opinions: Once all these factors affect a perception it becomes categorized into a tentative belief which I call an opinion. Opinions are easily changed as more perceptions arrive and as history and context are changed or built up.
Beliefs: Beliefs are strong opinions that become premises and the basis for future perception processing and are absolutely necessary for the mind to operate. Without a belief base, it is simply impossible to think.
Keeping these ideas in mind will help us to better understand how to find the truth of a matter, distinguish reality from perception from opinion and from belief.
So let us now introduce another diagram to discuss the process of how one should properly order their perceptions to best find the truth of a matter.
Again, let’s discuss each of these ideas in this diagram.
Perception: Perhaps you hear someone say something or actually sense something directly. That perception must fall into one of 4 possible categories.
Fact: The perception is real and consistently lines up with context, history and your beliefs. It is, however, nearly impossible to know for sure that the fact is actually true – it will simply persist in your mind as true till something comes in to disprove that opinion. A fact in your mind is really just an opinion that you believe to be true, either strongly or weakly.
Opinion: An opinion is almost always something you heard said by another but it could also be a perception that does not fit your history or beliefs enough to fall into the fact category for now.
Hearsay: This is really an opinion of a fact from another. Gossip is generally the passing on of hearsay evidence and in a proper court of law, hearsay is inadmissible. Hearsay can very much be mistaken internally as a fact when it is actually an opinion and is the source of a lot of confusion and misunderstandings.
Biblically speaking, testimony is a first-hand opinion of a perception by someone and is acceptable as fact when confirmed by 2 or more witnesses. These witnesses can be people’s testimony or forensic factual evidence such as a DNA sample or a murder weapon left on the scene with fingerprints.
So a single opinion does not biblically establish fact but 2 or more do but only if those opinions are not hearsay and there are not conflicting facts.
When you perceive evidence that is not a person’s opinion, this makes you a witness to a fact and makes your opinion of it testimony.
So to help make this clearer let’s go through some examples:
Example 1“Sue told me she saw him in the closet just before you arrived but he snuck out before you could catch him in the act.”
Evidence: None. This is all hearsay.
Witness: Sue would be the only witness attested to here. You would have to talk to Sue to get the true facts to escape this hearsay evidence.
Opinion: This is entirely the speaker’s opinion except for the fact that the speaker said this directly to you.
Fact: The speaker said this – as best you can recall – to you at such-and-such time and such-and-such place.
Example 1:
Let’s say you are the husband of a wife that has a history of keeping secrets from you and you don’t trust her to necessarily be faithful. If this is your history, you might be inclined to believe that your wife was cheating on you and the guy who she was cheating with got away. You cannot call this fact but it is certainly likely to affect your perceptions in the future should more evidence come in to confirm your beliefs that your wife is cheating on you.
What should you do?
- You could ask your wife if what was told you was true.
- You could ask Sue if she actually saw this to confirm the hearsay from the speaker.
- You could look for other clues in the closet or around the bedroom to see if there is physical evidence of foul play.
- You could ask a friend or hire a PI to look into the matter for you.
- You could do nothing and just wait for more evidence, trusting your wife in the meanwhile.
If you pass this hearsay information on to your friends and neighbors it would be gossip.
If you start talking like your wife is cheating on you, it would be a presumption and if not communicated correctly could be slander.
Let’s say you did step 2 above first and confirmed from Sue herself that she indeed did see what was said. Now you have a witness but only one. It isn’t yet evidence that is admissible but it only takes one more witness to establish it as evidence.
Let’s say you next call in a PI to check over the bedroom and take fingerprints. Let’s also say that he confirms that somebody was indeed in the closet, that he was male, and that he left some hairs and fingerprints that the PI was able to recover and analyze.
Now you have two pieces of evidence that begins to make you suspect your wife was cheating.
How should you proceed?
- Call your lawyer and have him start drawing up divorce papers.
- Tell your buddies at the bar that your wife is probably cheating on you and you need advice.
- Pretend it will just all go away and say nothing to anyone about it.
- Ask your wife to have a conversation about it and present her the facts you have gathered in an honest yet understanding way.
It is impossible to know what the wife will do but the biblical path is to confront her with the evidence in a loving and understanding way when appropriate.
So let’s say you do step 4. Your wife has these options among probably others:
- Call her lawyer and start divorce proceedings.
- Confess it happened and that she is sorry and asks for forgiveness.
- Deny that it happened and offer whatever evidence she has that might exonerate her from the circumstances.
- Get angry and storm out of the room sobbing and saying “I don’t want to talk about it”
The next step would be to get a friend or two you trust that are reasonably objective in the matter and confront her together.
If she confesses or denies, you have gotten resolution for now. More evidence may come to light bringing up the issue again but for now, you have nothing to do but trust her.
If she still refuses to talk to you and your friends you would need to then get your lawyer or a church council to publically deal with the evidence and help decide what needs to be done.
Example 2:You receive a letter which is anonymous but has been delivered to several of your friends at the same time accusing you of molesting children and eating with perverts.
The letter is fact and states an opinion. You, as a first-hand witness know it is not a true statement but your opinion alone is not sufficient to be called evidence to others. Others may believe you and have concurring opinions but these are not evidence – they are hearsay and opinion only.
What do you do?
- Ignore it and hope it goes away.
- Ask around and find out who else got the letter and speak to each one that got it to tell them it is not true.
- You suspect you know who sent the letter so you tell your friends that they are the culprit and that they are lying.
- You ask those you suspect might have written the letter if they in fact did.
Choice 2 is probably a good idea but without any further evidence to offer, makes it pretty hard to convince anyone that it is not true unless you have already established a record of being truthful. At least they know your side of the issue.
Choice 3 is opening a big can of worms in that you are now spreading gossip – passing on hearsay or opinion as fact. It also violates the Mathew 18 process completely. This is because you don’t really know for sure who wrote that letter – you have no true evidence.
Choice 4 is logical if you have good evidence to be pretty sure your suspects are the correct ones but even with that, it can be perceived as an accusation even if you are just on a fact-finding mission. If your suspicions are correct, odds are very good they will deny writing it, else it would not have been anonymous.
To sum up:
It is important that one has established a certain level of trust with others to solve such difficult situations successfully. It is also very important that the steps you take to resolve that conflict maintain that level of trust.
A single person with a malicious intention can completely destroy a church or other social group in short order even by just making bad choices and it can be difficult to know for sure if someone is purposely causing trouble or just doesn’t know or appreciate the biblical standards that help mankind get along.
At some point confrontations like this do arise and resolving them successfully takes all parties working together to achieve the goals of unity and peace among a group.
The most important thing to keep in mind is to separate fact from opinion accurately and carefully balance the evidence to determine the true facts of the matter. Jumping to conclusions too early can permanently damage relationships beyond repair but if you have a snake in your midst, it must be rooted out cleanly and efficiently.
Some Rhetoric:
An art that has been lost due to our poor public school education is the art of arguing effectively. By effectively I mean accurately and without false ideas or statements creeping in. This requires a good understanding of grammar so that you use words in a way that clearly describes what you want. It also requires logic to be able to analyze language and evidence in a way that does not jump to conclusions, and recognizes false arguments from true ones.
There are many ways to argue and Rhetoric classifies many into various well known categories.
Some Rhetorical Categories
- Slippery Slope: If A is true, then it will cause B, then C and eventually to Z so if you do A, you have Z already.
- Hasty Generalization: Insufficient evidence to warrant the conclusion.
- Post hoc ergo propter hoc: If B happened after A, then A caused B. A similar error is if A correlates with B then A caused B.
- False Premise: Frequently people jump to conclusions based on false facts or premises.
- Genetic Fallacy: This is a case of a false premise. For example: “He is black so he must have done it.” One might call this hate speech but really the speaker has accepted a false premise and is proceeding logically from that point.
- Begging the Claim: Assuming a conclusion is true without proving it. Example: “She is bad because she is weird.”
- Circular Argument: Example: “The rocks date the layer and the layers date the rocks”.
- Either/or: Two conclusions are offered when more are possible.
- Pathos: An emotional appeal. Example: “I just couldn’t take the emotional pain any more. I just had to do it!”
- Ethos: Present an argument clearly and people will tend to believe you more.
- Ethical fallacy: Example: “God is not good because he kills people.” (How is it that the author of life who removes life from his creation evil?)
- Logos: Simply using logic to make your arguments, which is generally good if the listener can think logically.
NLP:
Neuro Linguistic Programming is a term that describes using language itself to persuade or confuse others. It happens often at the subconscious level and is associated with a corruption of languages.
For example: “You were inactive in indicating your income.” In-Active implies NOT active while In-come implies GAINING profit. The prefix is ambiguous and confusing in itself. The language causes the brain to get easily confused and can cause a person to simply accept a concept due to their inability to parse what was said accurately. Often these are passed off with quick sound-bites or in a peer pressure situation where asking questions to clarify what was said is either not optional or embarrassing.
Another corruption of language is redefining terms. For example, just before the COVID “pandemic” the word “pandemic” was redefined from its old meaning allowing the media and authorities to invoke panic with the word without technically “lying”. Lawyers do this all the time which is why we have dozens of different law dictionaries and “legalese”.
Wearing you down:
Have you ever sat down to completely read and comprehend a EULA or cell phone contract? The tedium of legal documents is often so bad that people will sign an agreement with absolutely no understanding of what they just committed to.
This is a form of fraud that is so rampant that is has caused us to literally sell our own souls to others without so-much as a thought.
The barrage of advertisements and news we get is a form of psychological warfare that turns our minds into jelly over time. When we fall into this trap we bypass our minds and become easily programmed to react emotionally to such things as trigger words or meaningless labels. “You right wing extremist you!”
Any effort to bypass your right to think through a communication is a form of fraud.
The 10 Commandments:
One of the most profound things a person can learn and meditate on is the 10 commandments in the bible. These laws introduce key concepts that individuals and societies that obey them benefit greatly from. Historically, any society that ignores enough of these falls into chaos and violence and eventually death.
Let’s review them and discuss the concepts they imply.
Love God with all your mind, heart and strength
This isn’t really one of the commandments – it is a summary commandment used by Jesus. God is a perfect being – all powererful, a perfect mind, all true, all love, all just, all knowing, all present. Etc.
Loving that which is perfect is to love all these attributes of God and doing that points you towards perfection and away from error. It is the key rudder for all that you do.
Even if God were a made up entity and didn’t exist, pointing yourself towards perfection can only help you.
Love your neighbor as yourself
This sets the standard for inter-personal behavior. It lays out a very simple ruler to assess if your actions and intentions are correct.
Jesus used this to summarize the commandments having to do with person to person behavior and attitudes.
The next time you do X to someone else, just imagine how you’d feel if someone else were doing X to you.
Have No Other Gods and no idols
This is telling us to not be enslaved by anything less than God himself – perfection.
It sounds negative but it is so common for us to fall into. Anything that takes your eyes off of the perfect God is an idol and worshiping them enslaves you to them. Staying free of idols frees your mind and spirit to obey and love God as you should.
Honor God’s Name
It is amazing how much power a name has. You’re parents named you and that implies ownership. God has special secret names for us in heaven. By honoring God’s name we keep him up front in our minds. This helps us to obey the other commandments and keeps God – the unique perfect being – in a proper perspective to ourselves.
Keep the Sabbath
God wants us to be like him in character. That means he wants us to rest just like he did on the 7th day. He rested, not because he was tired but because he is a God of peace. It is amazing how hard it is in our culture to obey this one. All it is asking is for you to take a complete break from the schedules, business, and labor of life on a special day once a week to think about and honor God. It really shows our selfishness and enslavement to “activity” as it is almost never kept.
Honor your Father and Mother
There is so much wisdom in this. It carries on through your life till your parents are dead and even after that, you can honor their memory, works and grave. It establishes the proper order of the family and reinforces the biblical concept of marriage – a man and a woman that procreate. It is a great guard against government taking the place of your family as well. It promises long life and we see how true this is when children fail to obey this one. Many die of accidents or drugs or other mistakes due to not heeding the wise advice of our parents. Think about it, who better than your parents can you trust? Not all parents are good but the vast majority care deeply for their own offspring. It’s a natural instinct.
Don’t Cause Death
If you go into the original Hebrew of this one you will see that “shall” is not there – which is a future tense verb. It really means don’t even be responsible for the death of the innocent. The God of life clearly loves life.
Don’t break your marriage vows
To me, adultery is just another word for breaking a promise. Jesus said let your yes be “yes” and your no be “no”. He was helping us to not make unnecessary promises we might break. When a society keeps their promises it saves tons of heartache and pain. When we break our promises, the lawyers make a good living and our relationships and reputation suffer.
Note that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount extended this to our thought life. This is holding us to our implied promise to obey the first summary commandment of Jesus – to love God with our entire mind – thus putting our thought life under His rule as well. This extension logically applies to all the commandments. Jesus said if you get angry at someone you have committed murder in your heart.
Don’t Steal
Theft, both individually or collectively, can eventually destroy an entire civilization and is always seen historically before a fall.
Can you imagine a world without locks and keys, without passwords and secret codes, without bars and chains?
Theft costs us much more than we can imagine and after many years of life I have come to realize the wisdom in God’s sentence for theft being to restore what was stolen 3-7 times the value of what was stolen.
We often think that accepting a welfare payment or similar “collective” gift is ok, but it actually perverts our conscience and is a method for control of the individual. Gifts from theft enslave us.
Don’t bear false witness
We have seen in this article how lying can cause so much pain and heartache. It hides the truth and forces confrontations and distrust that would much rather be avoided. This extends logically to not withhold the whole truth from one that is not your enemy and has a need to know. This includes telling the truth even when it hurts. Don’t let fear or sympathy force you to lie. The truth is what sets us free.
Don’t Covet
This pretty much covers everything else. Lusting for things leads to sin and that leads to death. Being unsatisfied with what you have does not lead to happiness but misery all around. This is why money cannot produce true happiness. We all have needs and God promises to provide for them. Comparing ourselves to others is not helpful because God made us each so unique that doing so just introduces envy or pride.
Many advertisements are based on envy. “You deserve X today! Buy now!” They promote covetousness.
There are other concepts in the Bible besides these such as the fruits of the spirit:
- Love
- Joy
- Peace
- Forbearance/Patience
- Kindness
- Goodness
- Faithfulness
- Gentleness
- Self-Control
We all fail to meet these standards yet they define the path and narrow road to life itself both individually and collectively.
Groups vs Individual Rights
Another area of confusion is the idea that a majority or sizable number of people has more rights than an individual or has some kind of moral superiority.
In the Mathew 18 process, adding people to the situation is not a way to “gang up” on the accused. It is a way to add witnesses that can attest to the accused refusal to repent or repair the damage caused. The accused always has the right to leave or restore the relationship, be it with another individual or with a group.
Peer pressure, democracy, and even government itself have introduced great problems when this truth is not acknowledged.
We somehow tend to limit individual rights but not so much for groups.
If one person does not have the right to steal from another, then nor do two people, or a group of people or the majority, or even the entire population. This is how the “rule of law” works. True law must honor this idea or it is not law – it is usurpation.
However, a person can voluntarily give up their rights to another and thus to a group. There are implied social contracts that we use every day to accommodate each other and there is nothing wrong with this, but don’t let these natural accommodations confuse you into thinking you must be enslaved to the collective or to other individuals.
We give up certain rights in favor of relationships – it’s a simple and fair trade and it is always our right to decide how to balance these things.
The whole revolution over “taxation without representation” was about a government abusing its collective power over people’s right to choose to participate or not. If you want the benefits of government, you must pay for it, but that does not mean that each individual must pay taxes for things they do not want or use. This is why all lawful taxation is “voluntary” in nature.
This gets into excise and apportioned taxes, the only constitutional ones allowed. Just remember, the rights of a group never exceed the rights of the individual in a free society.
Following Truth in Love is the only way to live this and the next life well. All other paths lead to chaos, paint and death eventually both individually and collectively.
New Agers, consider this
I was recently researching structured water and a friend of mine recommended a guy named Dan Winter to check out.
This guy is smart and very interesting. Like some others I know, he is into the occult, understanding things that the mainstream would never touch. Dan is very well versed in all things spiritual, physics, occult history and occult biographies. He was pretty fascinating at first.
I found he had all kinds of web pages all over the place; the main root appears to be at http://goldenmean.info/.
He had some wild ideas about how sacred geometry caused perfect reinforcement of energy fields to produce scalar waves and charge-collapse that he then attributed as the cause of neg-entropy, time reversal, bliss, healing, and transformation of the soul to enable inter-stellar travel, and of course, Dan was quite conversant in all the alien races and star gates, shamanistic practices, lay lines, aura sensing, occult history, interstellar warfare, etc. etc. etc.
Ok sound’s pretty weird huh?
Well I was trying to understand where this guy was coming from, assuming he was honestly trying to explain his ideas but it seemed like the lingo he used was always nebulous and not quite definable. Certainly he introduced his own vocabulary and would often reference other ideas or people as if everybody knew who or what he was talking about. Referring to things but never giving a verifiable source reference. After looking at several of his videos and reading several of his websites (pages really) I found the same idioms repeated and never did he get down to a level of clarity I could nail down.
Then I looked for Dan Winter on my search engine and found this article (http://danwinter.com/) which claimed that Dan had been successfully sued for plagiarism and was wanted in the US for not paying a $100,000 judgment against him. They claimed he fled to Europe to escape US authorities and that he was ordered by a judge to not publish any more websites, yet persisted to do so. They also claimed that Dan’s academic credentials were made up – something that should be relatively easy to prove.
Finally my curiosity peaked and I purchased his kindle book Planck Phire which can be found on Amazon.
It basically was a 1400+ page tome of a dump of everything he had in his web pages; same illustrations, same lingo, etc. I had hoped for more detail and clarity but no – none was to be found. It is as if his content is so repetitious that it pulls one into a trance.
I was very disappointed and got a refund.
I have had to come to the conclusion that this guy is a complete fraud and a good one. He has a lot of followers, mostly new-age and occult types that see the world similarly to the way he does.
To summarize Dan’s basic approach to life is: The universe is just a teeming variety of interstellar life forms competing for dominance and utilizing the powers of charge-collapse to create new life forms and travel the universe at super-luminal speeds. Mankind is just another one of these intelligent species and has the ability to be like a god, traveling the universe, living beyond death on his own terms, ever growing and creating without end.
It sounds wonderful but I realized it is just bait into a hollow and useless world view that will lead to death.
I came to these conclusions when I watched this YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4SRs_bMi6A) where the interviewer was trying to get Dan to answer some simple questions like “Where did you first get information on the history of alien species?” which Dan seemed unable to give a simple answer to. Every answer was a story and they all ended up in the same place – charge implosion creates souls, time, gravity, life, order, etc. but never really answering the questions given. I could see the frustration in the interviewer as he kept trying to rephrase the same questions yet getting nowhere with Dan.
Dan is simply a con, and very good at what he does. He pretends to know such a vast amount of knowledge that he intimidates followers into believing him without question and by avoiding straight answers, clear definitions, and source references, avoids getting caught with his pants down. He will constantly allude to “proofs” that aren’t. Just as correlation is not causation, so Dan’s seemingly inexhaustible knowledge lacks the articulation to truly communicate ideas with clarity.
What I noticed about this, and his friends, was that as our culture has fallen away from God, more and more people, seeking meaning and truth, are falling into occult, new-age, alchemy, shamanism and other world views and as these people connect over social media, they reinforce each other’s belief systems. This creates reinforced ideas such as reincarnation, soul fragmentation, fractal geometric magic, etc. An entire made-up history and world view becomes fact once enough voices join the circus of myth.
This post is dedicated to those people as I want them to consider the following very carefully.
I have proposed this to followers of Michael Parsons and the like in the past as I feel they are victims of the same massive deceptions going on.
First consider these biblical ideas:
The goal of course is to remove us as far from faith in God and the Bible as possible. It aims to find any possible, plausible alternate view of the world to distract mankind into division and to lust for godhood.
It’s not a new thing according to the Bible, and as the end times approach, we see the lies compounding into a very believable deception which is following a very predictable pattern.
Evolution and the Big Bang being two of the biggest initial lies that sets up a belief in spontaneous order, taking away the glory properly owed to the architect and creator of creation.
Then it leads to the usual “ye shall be as gods” lie given Adam in the garden. You can heal yourself, you can command the powers of creation for yourself, you can live forever on your own power, you can do anything you conceive of if you just believe and use the correct magic formulas to power. (Remember Babylon?)
Dan’s world view offers no real purpose to life. It leads to meaningless competition for power and survival with no end in sight. Knowledge becomes whatever you want it to be with no real constraints to reality or the will of God or to even logic itself.
Those following these lies will leave life without meaning or purpose and will perish with all un-repentant sinners in a hell they themselves have created by their vain imaginations.
We did not make ourselves and we will never really improve ourselves outside of the will of God. Only His redemptive power will change us and this world and the only path out of this fallen world is to simply trust and obey, cuz there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus…
This guy is smart and very interesting. Like some others I know, he is into the occult, understanding things that the mainstream would never touch. Dan is very well versed in all things spiritual, physics, occult history and occult biographies. He was pretty fascinating at first.
I found he had all kinds of web pages all over the place; the main root appears to be at http://goldenmean.info/.
He had some wild ideas about how sacred geometry caused perfect reinforcement of energy fields to produce scalar waves and charge-collapse that he then attributed as the cause of neg-entropy, time reversal, bliss, healing, and transformation of the soul to enable inter-stellar travel, and of course, Dan was quite conversant in all the alien races and star gates, shamanistic practices, lay lines, aura sensing, occult history, interstellar warfare, etc. etc. etc.
Ok sound’s pretty weird huh?
Well I was trying to understand where this guy was coming from, assuming he was honestly trying to explain his ideas but it seemed like the lingo he used was always nebulous and not quite definable. Certainly he introduced his own vocabulary and would often reference other ideas or people as if everybody knew who or what he was talking about. Referring to things but never giving a verifiable source reference. After looking at several of his videos and reading several of his websites (pages really) I found the same idioms repeated and never did he get down to a level of clarity I could nail down.
Then I looked for Dan Winter on my search engine and found this article (http://danwinter.com/) which claimed that Dan had been successfully sued for plagiarism and was wanted in the US for not paying a $100,000 judgment against him. They claimed he fled to Europe to escape US authorities and that he was ordered by a judge to not publish any more websites, yet persisted to do so. They also claimed that Dan’s academic credentials were made up – something that should be relatively easy to prove.
Finally my curiosity peaked and I purchased his kindle book Planck Phire which can be found on Amazon.
It basically was a 1400+ page tome of a dump of everything he had in his web pages; same illustrations, same lingo, etc. I had hoped for more detail and clarity but no – none was to be found. It is as if his content is so repetitious that it pulls one into a trance.
I was very disappointed and got a refund.
I have had to come to the conclusion that this guy is a complete fraud and a good one. He has a lot of followers, mostly new-age and occult types that see the world similarly to the way he does.
To summarize Dan’s basic approach to life is: The universe is just a teeming variety of interstellar life forms competing for dominance and utilizing the powers of charge-collapse to create new life forms and travel the universe at super-luminal speeds. Mankind is just another one of these intelligent species and has the ability to be like a god, traveling the universe, living beyond death on his own terms, ever growing and creating without end.
It sounds wonderful but I realized it is just bait into a hollow and useless world view that will lead to death.
I came to these conclusions when I watched this YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4SRs_bMi6A) where the interviewer was trying to get Dan to answer some simple questions like “Where did you first get information on the history of alien species?” which Dan seemed unable to give a simple answer to. Every answer was a story and they all ended up in the same place – charge implosion creates souls, time, gravity, life, order, etc. but never really answering the questions given. I could see the frustration in the interviewer as he kept trying to rephrase the same questions yet getting nowhere with Dan.
Dan is simply a con, and very good at what he does. He pretends to know such a vast amount of knowledge that he intimidates followers into believing him without question and by avoiding straight answers, clear definitions, and source references, avoids getting caught with his pants down. He will constantly allude to “proofs” that aren’t. Just as correlation is not causation, so Dan’s seemingly inexhaustible knowledge lacks the articulation to truly communicate ideas with clarity.
What I noticed about this, and his friends, was that as our culture has fallen away from God, more and more people, seeking meaning and truth, are falling into occult, new-age, alchemy, shamanism and other world views and as these people connect over social media, they reinforce each other’s belief systems. This creates reinforced ideas such as reincarnation, soul fragmentation, fractal geometric magic, etc. An entire made-up history and world view becomes fact once enough voices join the circus of myth.
This post is dedicated to those people as I want them to consider the following very carefully.
I have proposed this to followers of Michael Parsons and the like in the past as I feel they are victims of the same massive deceptions going on.
First consider these biblical ideas:
- Angelic beings have interfered with man in the past.
- Angelic beings have even inter-bred with man in the past.
- These half-breeds have caused lots of pain and suffering and God used the Israelites to wipe many of these demigods from the planet.
- Satan and his gang of fallen Angels and Demonic principalities have been around since creation.
- They know all true human history as they have lived observing it first hand for centuries.
- They work together in a coordinated way to deceive and destroy mankind.
- In the end, there will be a great deception, so amazing that it will fool just about everyone even the elect of God, if that were possible.
- The Bible fits all verifiable history.
- It proposes a young earth and a global flood and tells a story of continual battle between good and evil spiritual forces.
- God loves us but we are not God nor will we ever be as God – something Satan has aspired to since the beginning and lied to Adam and Eve to take dominion of this world from them.
The goal of course is to remove us as far from faith in God and the Bible as possible. It aims to find any possible, plausible alternate view of the world to distract mankind into division and to lust for godhood.
It’s not a new thing according to the Bible, and as the end times approach, we see the lies compounding into a very believable deception which is following a very predictable pattern.
Evolution and the Big Bang being two of the biggest initial lies that sets up a belief in spontaneous order, taking away the glory properly owed to the architect and creator of creation.
Then it leads to the usual “ye shall be as gods” lie given Adam in the garden. You can heal yourself, you can command the powers of creation for yourself, you can live forever on your own power, you can do anything you conceive of if you just believe and use the correct magic formulas to power. (Remember Babylon?)
Dan’s world view offers no real purpose to life. It leads to meaningless competition for power and survival with no end in sight. Knowledge becomes whatever you want it to be with no real constraints to reality or the will of God or to even logic itself.
Those following these lies will leave life without meaning or purpose and will perish with all un-repentant sinners in a hell they themselves have created by their vain imaginations.
We did not make ourselves and we will never really improve ourselves outside of the will of God. Only His redemptive power will change us and this world and the only path out of this fallen world is to simply trust and obey, cuz there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus…
A Prayer for the Community
Heavenly Father, the creator of all things and the giver of all life,
We beseech you to grant our community prosperity, peace, cooperation, grace, beauty and happiness.
Though our agendas are as unique as the talents and attributes you have blessed each of us with,
may our common objective be to do no harm to each other and to love one another as you have commanded.
Though we may differ in our perceptions of reality and of you, we acknowledge that none of us has a monopoly on truth.
May our community, through our cooperation, unity and joy be a beacon of light to the world
and may our fruit be multiplied as you desire to create a kingdom of love, liberty and justice as far as the eye can see.
We beseech you to grant our community prosperity, peace, cooperation, grace, beauty and happiness.
Though our agendas are as unique as the talents and attributes you have blessed each of us with,
may our common objective be to do no harm to each other and to love one another as you have commanded.
Though we may differ in our perceptions of reality and of you, we acknowledge that none of us has a monopoly on truth.
May our community, through our cooperation, unity and joy be a beacon of light to the world
and may our fruit be multiplied as you desire to create a kingdom of love, liberty and justice as far as the eye can see.
Note: This was my blog before I discovered blog support in Weebly.
The Prison of Conscience
My pillow offered me no solace.
My God was calling me again. Calling me to write this confession.
God is a god of freedom.
He holds our free will so strongly that He has allowed us the choice of Hell if we insist on it.
Christ, when he died and went to the underworld “set the captives free’.
What does this mean?
I think it means that he released the guilt of sinner’s from before the time of his death from the penalty of their sin and from the obligation to pay for their sins themselves.
It means that before then, the captives were bound by their conscience – they knew they had sinned and were worthy of where they were.
But Christ changed all that by simply giving the world a free pass.
It wasn’t free for Him; he had to pay the price of death for our sin.
But we were all released from the prisons of our conscience and allowed to live with God forever under His grace.
It’s such a simple and profound idea.
It’s so simple, it’s hard to believe.
This is the core truth from which came the American experiment in common law.
The self evident truths of Life, Liberty and the free pursuit of happiness, so long as we do not harm others, are the purpose of our republic. They define what is constitutional and right.
The very word “republic” comes from the Latin res publicus which literally means “the people’s thing”. It isn’t something the congress and courts invented or define. It is defined by the spirit of freedom in the people.
That means that any “law” that violates the purpose of a republic (ie: to promote life, liberty and the supremacy of conscience) is simply void.
It is the spirit of freedom in the people that the entire edifice of our government is built upon.
But like the prisoners in hell whom Jesus came to set free, so we too can be bound by our own guilt and pride. We can try to be God and FIX the world with our utopian dreams encoded into “law”; imposing our will upon others to force a better outcome.
Instead of being the meek that inherit the earth, we become the billy goats that create control structures to ensure safety and security for all instead of freedom and justice.
Each new generation invents control structures to keep us from being free and fully responsible for our actions.
Now we are entering the age of AI and the control structure will be a machine so intelligent and so omniscient that there will be no freedom left for us.
The dream of freedom from sin will be lost to the security minded nanny-tech-state of perfect monitoring and compliance with “the law”.
The very law that was designed for freedom will become our master.
Again, we must return to Christ, who granted us freedom from sin in the first place and rest in faith that He shall provide for our needs and our safety, not we ourselves.
My God was calling me again. Calling me to write this confession.
God is a god of freedom.
He holds our free will so strongly that He has allowed us the choice of Hell if we insist on it.
Christ, when he died and went to the underworld “set the captives free’.
What does this mean?
I think it means that he released the guilt of sinner’s from before the time of his death from the penalty of their sin and from the obligation to pay for their sins themselves.
It means that before then, the captives were bound by their conscience – they knew they had sinned and were worthy of where they were.
But Christ changed all that by simply giving the world a free pass.
It wasn’t free for Him; he had to pay the price of death for our sin.
But we were all released from the prisons of our conscience and allowed to live with God forever under His grace.
It’s such a simple and profound idea.
It’s so simple, it’s hard to believe.
This is the core truth from which came the American experiment in common law.
The self evident truths of Life, Liberty and the free pursuit of happiness, so long as we do not harm others, are the purpose of our republic. They define what is constitutional and right.
The very word “republic” comes from the Latin res publicus which literally means “the people’s thing”. It isn’t something the congress and courts invented or define. It is defined by the spirit of freedom in the people.
That means that any “law” that violates the purpose of a republic (ie: to promote life, liberty and the supremacy of conscience) is simply void.
It is the spirit of freedom in the people that the entire edifice of our government is built upon.
But like the prisoners in hell whom Jesus came to set free, so we too can be bound by our own guilt and pride. We can try to be God and FIX the world with our utopian dreams encoded into “law”; imposing our will upon others to force a better outcome.
Instead of being the meek that inherit the earth, we become the billy goats that create control structures to ensure safety and security for all instead of freedom and justice.
Each new generation invents control structures to keep us from being free and fully responsible for our actions.
Now we are entering the age of AI and the control structure will be a machine so intelligent and so omniscient that there will be no freedom left for us.
The dream of freedom from sin will be lost to the security minded nanny-tech-state of perfect monitoring and compliance with “the law”.
The very law that was designed for freedom will become our master.
Again, we must return to Christ, who granted us freedom from sin in the first place and rest in faith that He shall provide for our needs and our safety, not we ourselves.
Evolution: An impossible idea
A humanist correspondent of mine has been arguing evolution with me for many months. Somehow, a picture of some horses on a chart convinces him that he has proof of evolution. Having replied to him many times with detailed arguments he seems unable to grasp the impossibility of the idea. So in response, I felt it might be more productive to attempt a public article on the subject.
Definitions:
What IS evolution for this discussion? I see it as a process over time that introduces new genetic information into a species to eventually change it to a different type of creature. This is in contrast to the joining of two different genomes to produce a new unique genome but with no new information, merely a combination of the information provided by each parent. This is not evolution but is adaptation via combination which never produces a new type of creature but only variations within a type. Since most all advanced life-forms use sexual reproduction it seemed this definition would suffice.
Asexual reproduction would require some mechanism to mutate the genome to a new form over time as opposed to the exact copy that asexual reproduction normally creates.
Chromosomes are collections of DNA. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes with the addition of the X or Y chromosome to determine the sex. Monkeys, Apes,and Chimps have 24 chromosome pairs with the addition of the X and Y chromosome as appropriate.
Base Pairs are the building blocks of DNA and form either an A-T pair or a C-G pair. Since in a DNA strand a base pair can have the nitrogenous bases in either order we have 4 possible base pairs - A T C and G.
Codon's are 3 sets of base pairs together used to create amino acids that are in turn used to create all the proteins needed by the cell to operate its functions.
How would evolution happen?
For a DNA strand to be changed, at least one codon needs to change which means at least one base-pair needs to change. This can only be done by radiation as living forms control their chemical state to sustain life. A particle of the proper energy would have to hit the proper base-pair to create the mutation. Since base-pairs are not just atoms but entire molecules, and since there are only 4 bases that work in DNA, the radiation would have to convert an A, T, C or G base into one of the other three. What are the odds of this?
How could mutations be propagated?
For evolution to happen, a mutation would have to occur in the DNA in a way that successfully transmits itself to the offspring. This means that a DNA molecule would have to be mutated in the post-fertilized egg before significant division has taken place. We have trillions of cells but mutations in a random cell has no effect on the host creature nor does it propagate to offspring. For the mutation to take effect on an entire body, it has to be passed to the offspring. Thus, to have a mutant child, the window for mutation is restricted to a very small number of egg cells and within a short amount of time (post fertilization but pre-division).
What are the odds on that?
Good vs Bad mutations
For a change in a species to take place, the DNA mutations not only need to be passed onto the child, but they have to meet several criteria:
When a mutation passes these requirements it must also have a mate that it is able to reproduce with. This means that the change cannot be so significant as to make it impossible to mate successfully with another member of its species. At the point of type-change, this would be the case, so at that point, both a male and a female would have to simultaneously mutate to form the new species so they could mate and reproduce that species. Thus, if for example, if a chimp was to jump the barrier somehow from 24 chromosome pairs to 23 to become human, two such chimps, one male and one female would both have to mutate to the same chromosome form to sustain the new species.
Ecosystem considerations
If evolution is true, all species are mutating at the same time. Somehow, from generation to generation the entire earths eco-system must adapt in lock step to preserve all the life forms. If the grasses all became poisonous, all creatures that eat them would die unless they too could evolve to sustain the food changes. All combinations of possible changes in all species must therefore always constitute a system of types that can coexist. To make this happen, the changes need to be small enough to not cause harm to other species yet significant enough to induce adaptation in dependent species.
Inorganic evolution considerations
If evolution is true, not only are living forms at all levels adapting and changing over time, the very elements and planets and solar systems and galaxies are changing as well. None of these changes can adversely affect life. A simple solar flair or comet impact, common events when considering millennia of time, could wipe out life as we know it and completely destroy millenia of evolution in a single instant.
Physical constant considerations
The rotational speed of the earth, the moon, the sun, the other planets, the gravitational constant, the density of water and its crystalline forms, the speed of light, planks constant, and an innumerable number of other factors must not only not change, but each be tuned to the needs of life. Presumably, if evolution is true, these would happen at a slow enough rate to allow adaptation but the adaptation would involve all life forms at once.
Conclusion
These few considerations are just a sample of what must happen for evolution to actually work. The probability of this is 0. Therefore, for evolution to work there must be some kind of guiding principle or being to make it happen. This is why I believe in God. He is essential to the equation for life to be rationally possible.
All observable data shows loss of information over time. We are loosing species not gaining them. Clearly what we observe does not support evolution. The amount of order in creation is astronomical an no amount of raw energy can account for it. Only massive intelligence can account for what we observe.
Definitions:
What IS evolution for this discussion? I see it as a process over time that introduces new genetic information into a species to eventually change it to a different type of creature. This is in contrast to the joining of two different genomes to produce a new unique genome but with no new information, merely a combination of the information provided by each parent. This is not evolution but is adaptation via combination which never produces a new type of creature but only variations within a type. Since most all advanced life-forms use sexual reproduction it seemed this definition would suffice.
Asexual reproduction would require some mechanism to mutate the genome to a new form over time as opposed to the exact copy that asexual reproduction normally creates.
Chromosomes are collections of DNA. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes with the addition of the X or Y chromosome to determine the sex. Monkeys, Apes,and Chimps have 24 chromosome pairs with the addition of the X and Y chromosome as appropriate.
Base Pairs are the building blocks of DNA and form either an A-T pair or a C-G pair. Since in a DNA strand a base pair can have the nitrogenous bases in either order we have 4 possible base pairs - A T C and G.
Codon's are 3 sets of base pairs together used to create amino acids that are in turn used to create all the proteins needed by the cell to operate its functions.
How would evolution happen?
For a DNA strand to be changed, at least one codon needs to change which means at least one base-pair needs to change. This can only be done by radiation as living forms control their chemical state to sustain life. A particle of the proper energy would have to hit the proper base-pair to create the mutation. Since base-pairs are not just atoms but entire molecules, and since there are only 4 bases that work in DNA, the radiation would have to convert an A, T, C or G base into one of the other three. What are the odds of this?
How could mutations be propagated?
For evolution to happen, a mutation would have to occur in the DNA in a way that successfully transmits itself to the offspring. This means that a DNA molecule would have to be mutated in the post-fertilized egg before significant division has taken place. We have trillions of cells but mutations in a random cell has no effect on the host creature nor does it propagate to offspring. For the mutation to take effect on an entire body, it has to be passed to the offspring. Thus, to have a mutant child, the window for mutation is restricted to a very small number of egg cells and within a short amount of time (post fertilization but pre-division).
What are the odds on that?
Good vs Bad mutations
For a change in a species to take place, the DNA mutations not only need to be passed onto the child, but they have to meet several criteria:
- They must be sufficient to make a significant enough change in the offspring to invoke the survival-of-the-fittest rule.
- They must be in a way that does not kill the child. Thus they must not cripple any critical system such as reproduction, self repair, structure, musculature, endocrine, lymph, brain, nerve, digestion, elimination, mobility, sensory, circulation, hormone, regulation or other such complex systems we see in nature.
When a mutation passes these requirements it must also have a mate that it is able to reproduce with. This means that the change cannot be so significant as to make it impossible to mate successfully with another member of its species. At the point of type-change, this would be the case, so at that point, both a male and a female would have to simultaneously mutate to form the new species so they could mate and reproduce that species. Thus, if for example, if a chimp was to jump the barrier somehow from 24 chromosome pairs to 23 to become human, two such chimps, one male and one female would both have to mutate to the same chromosome form to sustain the new species.
Ecosystem considerations
If evolution is true, all species are mutating at the same time. Somehow, from generation to generation the entire earths eco-system must adapt in lock step to preserve all the life forms. If the grasses all became poisonous, all creatures that eat them would die unless they too could evolve to sustain the food changes. All combinations of possible changes in all species must therefore always constitute a system of types that can coexist. To make this happen, the changes need to be small enough to not cause harm to other species yet significant enough to induce adaptation in dependent species.
Inorganic evolution considerations
If evolution is true, not only are living forms at all levels adapting and changing over time, the very elements and planets and solar systems and galaxies are changing as well. None of these changes can adversely affect life. A simple solar flair or comet impact, common events when considering millennia of time, could wipe out life as we know it and completely destroy millenia of evolution in a single instant.
Physical constant considerations
The rotational speed of the earth, the moon, the sun, the other planets, the gravitational constant, the density of water and its crystalline forms, the speed of light, planks constant, and an innumerable number of other factors must not only not change, but each be tuned to the needs of life. Presumably, if evolution is true, these would happen at a slow enough rate to allow adaptation but the adaptation would involve all life forms at once.
Conclusion
These few considerations are just a sample of what must happen for evolution to actually work. The probability of this is 0. Therefore, for evolution to work there must be some kind of guiding principle or being to make it happen. This is why I believe in God. He is essential to the equation for life to be rationally possible.
All observable data shows loss of information over time. We are loosing species not gaining them. Clearly what we observe does not support evolution. The amount of order in creation is astronomical an no amount of raw energy can account for it. Only massive intelligence can account for what we observe.
|
Dealing with deism |
A neighbor of mine recently gave me a copy of "The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine (yes by THE Thomas Paine of American Revolution fame).
I am about half-way through the work and am not personally impressed.
Deism has more faith than Agnosticism and less than Atheism. It is probably the most honestly rational religious viewpoint there is. It acknowledges God and his creation but denies the ability to know who God is. Atheists mark the height of pride, denying both God's existence and nature while Agnostics deny the ability to know anything.
So here are some of my shots at Paine's arguments:
I am about half-way through the work and am not personally impressed.
Deism has more faith than Agnosticism and less than Atheism. It is probably the most honestly rational religious viewpoint there is. It acknowledges God and his creation but denies the ability to know who God is. Atheists mark the height of pride, denying both God's existence and nature while Agnostics deny the ability to know anything.
So here are some of my shots at Paine's arguments:
- Paine makes the point that revelation can only apply to the first person and beyond that is hearsay. I can agree that this would be the case for specific revelation to an individual about himself, but the case of prophecy to one intended for a nation, such as Jonah for Nineveh, does not have this limitation. However, one can see the clear abuse hearsay revelation can cause. If a prophet is inspired to write down a revelation it is the best he can do to convey the message. To say that because abuse is possible with hearsay revelation does not remove the possibility of God using it as a means of communication. After all, a president doesn't talk to each citizen when he wants to communicate, he uses the press or other intermediate means of expressing himself, even to the point of not writing anything himself to do so. If all hearsay communication is invalid than no man can use the knowledge of the previous generation. This is unreasonable.
- Paine makes a similar argument about the gospels - siting that Christ never wrote anything himself and thus all the gospels are anecdotal. He thus dispenses with these works as unreliable - and by themselves, I would tend to agree. What Paine does not do is deal with the problem of the effect these gospels had on the early Church. Persecution of these ideas was intense and many gladly gave their lives in horrible ways so as not to deny the gospel. This proves that they believed what they heard. This was at a time when many first-hand witnesses of Christ's life and death were still around. For this all to be a fabrication is difficult to accept. The effect of Christ's life on history is marked and unique. No other person in history we know of changed the world so much in such a short period of time after his death.
- In a similar vein, Paine says that Christ could not impart to the nations over time his message from a single language because language is local and changeable. But how is it that we know perfectly well Euclid's mathematical concepts this day all over the world? The originals are lost but anyone who wishes to learn his precepts can find all of them written in a book in his language. The bible benefits from multiple translations and copies over centuries with scholars of all types familiar with the original languages. Surely Paine cannot be serious with this assertion.
- Paine postulates that all poetry in the bible is simply that - rhyme. He uses this assertion to dismiss all the prophetical works of the bible. This is terribly convenient because prophecy is the main attribute that sets the bible apart form other works - the fact that so many things written of history and specifically Christ are found to be accurate though written long before the event presents an evidence that makes it hard to deny the extra-terrestrial origins of scripture. A common theme of apologetic literature is to note how many prophecies Christ fulfills. Deists dismiss this with the siting of cases like "His name shall be called Emanual" when Jesus (or Yeshuah) is clearly not the name "Emanual". They do not note that there are tons of names for God and Christ throughout the Bible. He is not talking about a simple label His father gave him at birth - no he is trying to describe himself and no single name will do. Thus, Christ is certainly "God with Us" as much as he is our "Salvation/Yeshuah". A study of Hebrew roots will help support this point more solidly for anyone that cares to understand.
- Paine postulates that the word prophecy in the OT really simply meant the ability to make music. This idea can be thwarted with a single quote:
Num 12:6
And he said, Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.
- Paine confesses that he has little patience with the scriptures and wishes to come to the conclusion of the matter as quickly as possible. I personally feel the same way when I read a good hunk of scripture in one sitting - especially parts that are difficult like the major prophets. There are so many possible ways of interpreting the poetic words that it can be very difficult to get any precise meaning out of it. But this appears to go away over time as I ingest the entire scriptures over many years of my life. I continue to learn of new ways to look at the bible and am shifting my views all the time - and it can be quite frustrating! God can't you just say what you mean and mean what you say? However we must keep two things in mind - God is not like us, and God could have a very good reason for revealing himself the way he does in scripture, and indeed the way he does in creation as well. I know God wants a very deep and personal relationship with us on a personal level. That doesn't come from shouting in thunderbolts from on high. It doesn't come from undeniable miracles done in plain site. It doesn't come from signs written in rock in your personal language that cannot be from a human origin. Paine completely misses the spirit-aspect of God. He seems to treat God as a cardboard cutout of simple logic and reason and totally discounts His emotions and intuition - as do many Christians who are not gifted in those areas. Creation is beautiful and God is clearly a poet among other attributes. Another point here is that scripture is described by itself as a living word. This means to me that the same verse could mean one thing to one person at a certain point in their life and also mean something entirely different to another person from a different perspective. This attribute is why I consider scripture holographic or fractal in nature. It is a higher form of communication than man does. It is divine and this attribute shows it.
- Paine clearly does not want to believe. It is very inconvenient and offensive to the natural man. The proud cannot see God and His statutes and judgments humiliate us. Paine expresses revulsion at all the descriptions of sinful acts of men found in the BIble. History written as it was and not cleansed for public consumption. But this is a mirror for us to see our true depravity. We like to think of ourselves as civilized and basically good. This to me is the core flaw in Deism. It is the Achilles heal that has lead this great nation to its current state. The founders simply did not realize how bad people really are and thus did not make a government with enough checks to endure. Indeed it may not be possible to do so given the abject state of mans character in the natural.
- One last point of Paine for now is his challenge of the canonicity of scripture. He has a point. Where does one draw the line of what is "The Word of God" and what is not? Historically, I believe it is done strictly from tradition - there is not hard criteria for why which books meet the canon while others do not. Being a backer of the Cepher project, I can relate to this issue myself. But even if the cannon is in question, there is a cohesiveness to the Bible that few books have. Reading extra-canonical literature is not a problem unless the canon missed some key thing God meant to tell us. If God indeed wrote the bible and He preserved it through history for us today, He certainly has the power to control the cannon through time and reveal further truth as the appropriate times come about. Without a cannon as a basis, Christianity would morph through time and loose itself. Sure, a myth or conspiratorial writing meant to enslave the earth would need this to do its job, but so would a saving message from God.
The scriptures, to me, are not like this. The scriptures have been stable for so many generations. Their historical points have been mostly confirmed by archaeology and history. One could certainly get into arguments about this assertion ad infiniteum which makes me reluctant to even state it. Verifying human history is among one of the most difficult tasks there is. This is because man is so corrupt - he changes the story at every telling.
But the scriptures are so well known now that no institution can change them without notice. It is, to me, as if God divinely preserved and propagated this set of books through history for our benefit. I would be more inclined to believe the mythological interpretation if I saw other examples that influenced so many people over such a long period of time. Myth does propagate and influence similarly to the scriptures but I don't believe it is taken quite as literal and as complete truth like the Bible is. I could certainly be wrong here.
This is far from the final word on the subject. What one reads greatly effects their world-view and I certainly have not read everything. So I continue to try to learn and discern what truth is and hold my God as able to preserve me in the quest till He has me home.
Jim Staley
I have been listening to Jim Staley videos (see YouTube) for about three weeks now. He is one of the best teachers of biblical concepts I have ever heard. He has a great balance of Hebrew roots combined with Holy Spirit sensitivity. My reformed friends very much disagree with his views. I have also been reading a bio of George Whitfield which champions his reformed views and has given me a nice review and overview of reformed thinking. I now feel, and have suspected this for awhile, that straight Calvinism lacks the left-brain side of thought. If God were strictly a logical thinker, reformed theology would certainly have to be right on. But when I look at the way God has made man (in His image) with the head, the heart and the gut brains along with the creative/emotive/subconscious part along with the ego/conscious/logical part, I see that the Word is truly deeper than Calvin could see. It is quite possible that Calvin is much more intuitive than most know him as because his institutes is simply so deep that most people take away the TULIP summary as all that there is. There appears to be a maturing of the church being caused by the current events taking place in and about Israel. The futurists are searching prophecy to understand current events and are reaching to the Hebrew roots of scripture for added understanding. This model is making more and more sense to me than is the old reformed view, which is certainly respectable, but could be proving to be inadequate for these end times. It appears to me that the futurists are going deeper than the amillennial/preterist reformed people. Jim Staley's series on the Bride of Christ I think raises some real challenging ideas that Reformed people simply can't handle. Comments invited. | I have been listening to Jim Staley videos (see YouTube) for about three weeks now. He is one of the best teachers of biblical concepts I have ever heard. He has a great balance of Hebrew roots combined with Holy Spirit sensitivity. My reformed friends very much disagree with his views. I have also been reading a bio of George Whitfield which champions his reformed views and has given me a nice review and overview of reformed thinking. I now feel, and have suspected this for awhile, that straight Calvinism lacks the left-brain side of thought. If God were strictly a logical thinker, reformed theology would certainly have to be right on. But when I look at the way God has made man (in His image) with the head, the heart and the gut brains along with the creative/emotive/subconscious part along with the ego/conscious/logical part, I see that the Word is truly deeper than Calvin could see. It is quite possible that Calvin is much more intuitive than most know him as because his institutes is simply so deep that most people take away the TULIP summary as all that there is. There appears to be a maturing of the church being caused by the current events taking place in and about Israel. The futurists are searching prophecy to understand current events and are reaching to the Hebrew roots of scripture for added understanding. This model is making more and more sense to me than is the old reformed view, which is certainly respectable, but could be proving to be inadequate for these end times. It appears to me that the futurists are going deeper than the amillennial/preterist reformed people. Jim Staley's series on the Bride of Christ I think raises some real challenging ideas that Reformed people simply can't handle. Comments invited. | I have been listening to Jim Staley videos (see YouTube) for about three weeks now. He is one of the best teachers of biblical concepts I have ever heard. He has a great balance of Hebrew roots combined with Holy Spirit sensitivity. My reformed friends very much disagree with his views. I have also been reading a bio of George Whitfield which champions his reformed views and has given me a nice review and overview of reformed thinking. I now feel, and have suspected this for awhile, that straight Calvinism lacks the left-brain side of thought. If God were strictly a logical thinker, reformed theology would certainly have to be right on. But when I look at the way God has made man (in His image) with the head, the heart and the gut brains along with the creative/emotive/subconscious part along with the ego/conscious/logical part, I see that the Word is truly deeper than Calvin could see. It is quite possible that Calvin is much more intuitive than most know him as because his institutes is simply so deep that most people take away the TULIP summary as all that there is. There appears to be a maturing of the church being caused by the current events taking place in and about Israel. The futurists are searching prophecy to understand current events and are reaching to the Hebrew roots of scripture for added understanding. This model is making more and more sense to me than is the old reformed view, which is certainly respectable, but could be proving to be inadequate for these end times. It appears to me that the futurists are going deeper than the amillennial/preterist reformed people. Jim Staley's series on the Bride of Christ I think raises some real challenging ideas that Reformed people simply can't handle. Comments invited. |
Some new thinking for me
I have been listening to Jim Staley videos (see YouTube) for about three weeks now. He is one of the best teachers of biblical concepts I have ever heard. He has a great balance of Hebrew roots combined with Holy Spirit sensitivity. My reformed friends very much disagree with his views.
I have also been reading a bio of George Whitfield which champions his reformed views and has given me a nice review and overview of reformed thinking.
I now feel, and have suspected this for awhile, that straight Calvinism lacks the left-brain side of thought. If God were strictly a logical thinker, reformed theology would certainly have to be right on. But when I look at the way God has made man (in His image) with the head, the heart and the gut brains along with the creative/emotive/subconscious part along with the ego/conscious/logical part, I see that the Word is truly deeper than Calvin could see.
It is quite possible that Calvin is much more intuitive than most know him as because his institutes is simply so deep that most people take away the TULIP summary as all that there is.
There appears to be a maturing of the church being caused by the current events taking place in and about Israel. The futurists are searching prophecy to understand current events and are reaching to the Hebrew roots of scripture for added understanding. This model is making more and more sense to me than is the old reformed view, which is certainly respectable, but could be proving to be inadequate for these end times. It appears to me that the futurists are going deeper than the amillennial/preterist reformed people.
Jim Staley's series on the Bride of Christ I think raises some real challenging ideas that Reformed people simply can't handle.
Comments invited.
I have also been reading a bio of George Whitfield which champions his reformed views and has given me a nice review and overview of reformed thinking.
I now feel, and have suspected this for awhile, that straight Calvinism lacks the left-brain side of thought. If God were strictly a logical thinker, reformed theology would certainly have to be right on. But when I look at the way God has made man (in His image) with the head, the heart and the gut brains along with the creative/emotive/subconscious part along with the ego/conscious/logical part, I see that the Word is truly deeper than Calvin could see.
It is quite possible that Calvin is much more intuitive than most know him as because his institutes is simply so deep that most people take away the TULIP summary as all that there is.
There appears to be a maturing of the church being caused by the current events taking place in and about Israel. The futurists are searching prophecy to understand current events and are reaching to the Hebrew roots of scripture for added understanding. This model is making more and more sense to me than is the old reformed view, which is certainly respectable, but could be proving to be inadequate for these end times. It appears to me that the futurists are going deeper than the amillennial/preterist reformed people.
Jim Staley's series on the Bride of Christ I think raises some real challenging ideas that Reformed people simply can't handle.
Comments invited.
Seeking but never finding
I've been reading an interesting book entitled Energetic Processes, Interaction between Matter, Energy & Consciousness. This was recommended to me by a Christian Radionics Practitioner.
A typical sentence in the second chapter:
A typical sentence in the second chapter:
Stable electron lepton and proton-and-neutron-comprising quark elementary particles, and the massless energetic messenger boson (photon, gluon, graviton, Higgs, and other) "guage" particles mediating their interactions, are all seen as local excitations, standing wave systems, or wave packets, arising out of, being sustained by, and interacting back with the background quantum ZPE field.
I read weird books like this because I really want to understand the next level of physics and how the enemy is working on man to deceive us. The New Age Movement has birthed a ton of ideas, many of which I find to be close to confirming to ideas in Christianity. However, knowing the occult origins of most of this, I know that it's source is most likely demonic disinformation.
This particular book attempts to couch New Age ideas in a scientific format to appeal to the reasoning of scientific oriented readers. It is a more acceptable form for people to get into spiritual ideas without humbly submitting to our Savior.
God is beyond reason, but he is a reasonable God.
I believe the auras, chakras and other psychic/spiritual ideas and images people are talking about and are using for healing or self-power-trips are real. They are part of the higher order matrix of creation. The things "unseen". The are usable by people with predictable and repeatable results.
What these people are doing, even when attempted in a scientific way, is trying to figure out this next level of reality. Unfortunately they are purposely ignoring the user manual - the Bible.
It's like trying to understand an extremely complex device you have never seen without the shop manual. It is extremely difficult - and dangerous.
In this second chapter entitled "Engineering the ZPE from a Post-Cartesian Unified-Field Idealist-Monist Perspective", the author really is just saying that we "live and breath and have our being in God" from a quantum physics view.
However, the god of these people is not that of the gospel but one of the pantheistic types of gods. They are correct in these aspects:
I like the ideas in this book because they give me a glimpse into the spirit realm, however erroneous. Even their model shows we are immortal in the spiritual realm. If we are indeed sub entities of God himself, we shall never die. However this idea does not rule out the possibility of heaven and hell.
They see beyond death but they are coming in the wrong way. They think this spiritual realm is simply another world to explore with rules that are meant to be broken. Psychic warfare, astral projection, remote viewing, etc. are just new areas to explore.
I do believe that 2 Baruch Chapter 50 is telling us that the world is in for a change that will open our eyes to the spiritual realm and possible allow us more leeway within creation to move into higher dimensions. But as the prophecy says, the righteous and the unrighteous will find two entirely different worlds awaiting them.
Be sure to get your robe first. Then ask the God consciousness if it's ok to seek Him with all your heart, mind and strength.
This particular book attempts to couch New Age ideas in a scientific format to appeal to the reasoning of scientific oriented readers. It is a more acceptable form for people to get into spiritual ideas without humbly submitting to our Savior.
God is beyond reason, but he is a reasonable God.
I believe the auras, chakras and other psychic/spiritual ideas and images people are talking about and are using for healing or self-power-trips are real. They are part of the higher order matrix of creation. The things "unseen". The are usable by people with predictable and repeatable results.
What these people are doing, even when attempted in a scientific way, is trying to figure out this next level of reality. Unfortunately they are purposely ignoring the user manual - the Bible.
It's like trying to understand an extremely complex device you have never seen without the shop manual. It is extremely difficult - and dangerous.
In this second chapter entitled "Engineering the ZPE from a Post-Cartesian Unified-Field Idealist-Monist Perspective", the author really is just saying that we "live and breath and have our being in God" from a quantum physics view.
However, the god of these people is not that of the gospel but one of the pantheistic types of gods. They are correct in these aspects:
- There is a creator.
- He is all that there really is - He is all of reality.
- He has created many spiritual and vibrational entities within himself.
- These entities are separated from each other into multiple dimensions.
- Each entity has a different perspective and purpose and work independently of all the other entities within a matrix of allowed interactions.
- This creator entity has no overarching purpose but to randomly explore all the possibilities of life through multiple viewpoints simultaneously.
- Every sub entity is in fact a piece of the creator whole - and is thus a limited personification of the whole.
- Thus we are each part of God and we are free to explore Him by breaking the boundaries set for us in this quantum creation.
- The information we are getting from spirit guides and restored memories is true and useful for the receiver.
I like the ideas in this book because they give me a glimpse into the spirit realm, however erroneous. Even their model shows we are immortal in the spiritual realm. If we are indeed sub entities of God himself, we shall never die. However this idea does not rule out the possibility of heaven and hell.
They see beyond death but they are coming in the wrong way. They think this spiritual realm is simply another world to explore with rules that are meant to be broken. Psychic warfare, astral projection, remote viewing, etc. are just new areas to explore.
I do believe that 2 Baruch Chapter 50 is telling us that the world is in for a change that will open our eyes to the spiritual realm and possible allow us more leeway within creation to move into higher dimensions. But as the prophecy says, the righteous and the unrighteous will find two entirely different worlds awaiting them.
Be sure to get your robe first. Then ask the God consciousness if it's ok to seek Him with all your heart, mind and strength.
So what is wrong with gay mariage?
Wearing velvet-collared three-piece suits with white flowers in their buttonholes, the smiling couple of seven years hugged and kissed after they became "husband and husband".
From http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/28/world/europe/uk-same-sex-marriage/ The world is created with existing laws. Laws like gravity, electricity, biological requirements for life, etc. One is the law of sexual procreation - ie it takes a pink one and a blue one to make another one. When man creates a rule in accord with physical and moral law, he protects himself from danger and error. For example, when you see a sign next to a cliff that says "Don't walk within 20 feet of the cliff" it is creating a safety barrier to prevent you from falling to your death off the cliff. You could choose to disobey the sign but if you walk off the cliff, you cannot chose to disobey the law of gravity. It will take you to your doom whether you believe it or agree with it or not. When man makes laws to reinforce marriage as defined in the Bible, it adds protections to prevent harm and error. You can chose to break those laws and, for awhile, it may appear (like when you begin to plummet to your death off the cliff) that you are OK. That your gay marriage is the beginning of a new and happy life for you. But gay marriage can in no way yield the unique fruit of straight marriage - that is - children from the womb and a stable base from which to raise a family. There are consequences to our decisions far beyond the span of our lives. What you decide to do today may change the life of your son or your great-great-great-granddaughter. In the case of gay marriage, you will never have a blood-related child. You can only adopt and you can never display for your adopted (or artificially inseminated from another mate) child what a functioning, procreating family looks like. There is an interesting rule: Do unto others what you would have done to you. To test this rule there is the simple question: Does doing X make the world a better place or not? And a useful corollary to this is: If everyone did X would the world be a better place? So apply this question to gay marriage - if everyone did gay marriage would the world be a better place? The answer is yes only if you believe removal of the human race from earth is a good thing. Longings of MetamorphosysI just finished watching a Star Trek Next Generation episode that featured a Christ-like alien that was meta-morphing into a new species that was pure energy. It leaves you with this good feeling that everything will be OK.
I think those that perceive we are soon to change to a higher consciousness may not be too far from the truth - but they may be in for a surprise! In my reading the Cepher (a collection of Biblical and Apocryphal books) the most intriguing chapter in the entire collection is this one (chapter 51) from Second Baruch: 1 And it shall come to pass, when that appointed day has gone by, that then shall the aspect of those who are condemned be afterwards changed, and the glory of those who are justified. 2 For the aspect of those who now act wickedly shall become worse than it is, as they shall suffer torment. 3 Also (as for) the glory of those who have now been justified in My law, who have had understanding in their life, and who have planted in their heart the root of wisdom, then their splendor shall be glorified in changes, and the form of their face shall be turned into the light of their beauty, that they may be able to acquire and receive the world which does not die, which is then promised to them. 4 For over this above all shall those who come then lament, that they rejected My law, and stopped their ears that they might not hear wisdom or receive understanding. 5 When therefore they see those, over whom they are now exalted, (but) who shall then be exalted and glorified more than they, they shall respectively be transformed, the latter into the splendor of angels, and the former shall yet more waste away in wonder at the visions and in the beholding of the forms. 6 For they shall first behold and afterwards depart to be tormented. 7 But those who have been saved by their works, And to whom the law has been now a hope, And understanding an expectation, And wisdom a confidence, Shall wonders appear in their time. 8 For they shall behold the world which is now invisible to them, And they shall behold the time which is now hidden from them: 9 And time shall no longer age them. 10 For in the heights of that world shall they dwell, And they shall be made like unto the angels, And be made equal to the stars, And they shall be changed into every form they desire, From beauty into loveliness, And from light into the splendor of glory. 11 For there shall be spread before them the extents of Paradise, and there shall be shown to them the beauty of the majesty of the living creatures which are beneath the throne, and all the armies of the angels, who are now held fast by My word, lest they should appear, and are held fast by a command, that they may stand in their places till their advent comes. 12 Moreover, there shall then be excellency in the righteous surpassing that of the angels. 13 For the first shall receive the last, those whom they were expecting, and the last those of whom they used to hear that they had passed away. 14 For they have been delivered from this world of tribulation, And laid down the burthen of anguish. 15 For what then have men lost their life, And for what have those who were on the earth exchanged their soul? 16 For then they chose (not) for themselves this time, Which, beyond the reach of anguish, could not pass away: But they chose for themselves that time, Whose issues are full of lamentations and evils, And they denied the world which ages not those who come to it, And they rejected the time of glory, So that they shall not come to the honor of which I told you before.' May the Lord grant his seekers wisdom to see what He reveals and to follow in His paths in all their ways. May those blinded by spirits of deception realize in time the judgement that is pending and may they avoid the error of a lifetime. May those who long for justice and peace find it in the depths of His grace and mercy and may we all be united in one place, each a brick in the temple of God, each being as we are and yet doing the continuous will of the Father, with the Son, by the Spirit. Amen |