Flood Timing etc.

 Since I gave some of my arguments against creationist biological views in the last couple of posts, might as well ow give an argument or two against the geological gcreationist view as well.  Why not?  Now I can have both Todd Wood and Paul Garner rolling their eyes and snarling at me in my everactive imagination.

For this topic I rely heavily on one cross section of the area from the Grand Staircase in Utah south throught the Grand Canyon in Arizona, a couple hundred miles I think.  It shows all the strata to a depth aof almost two miles I think, on the north eled and up tot the Permian or about a mile at the south end.    It shows the cliffs tat the top left that form the Grand Staricase with its canyons, and it shows the Grand canyon cut into a mounded area at the other end, as well as the Great Unconformity beneath theGrand Canyon and a volcano on the far notrth end.

jI first used this cross section to argue that there is nop disturbance to the strata during their long millions of years, to prove that they couldn't be time periods on this very active planet with such a calm history, but now that I've heard from the creatinoists that great tectonic activity is supposed to have occurred during the Flood, which according to creationists is when the strata were laid down, this answers that idea as well.  There is simply no hnint toof the kind of bashing and crashing they desdribe during the period of the laying down of the sedimentary layers.  None.  There they are, all laid out obviously originally hoizontal and originally straight.    

They are only slightly move from their horigonatal straight position on the crsos section, as the entire block of land is show n to have been uplifted on the north, from which it inclines downward to the Grand Canyon area, interruptyed there by that mounded area where the land is pushed up above the Grat Unconformity, while the strata remain in place all as one unit or block over that mound.      This clearly shows that the tectonic upheaval that lifted the land on the north and made that mound on the right occurred after the strata were all in place, not during or before it.  The strata follow the contour of the entire land area.  You may be able to find the cross section at Grand Canyon Escalanate National Park, but the last time I found it they'd put some notes ove it which to my mind makes it less valuable as a resource although the main information may still be available.

The fact that there was no tectonic disturbance until all the strata were in place has implications first of all for the theory of evolution, since if you can get tyhat much disturbance in our time how could it have happened that it never occurred during those muillions upon millions of years as the so called time periods were passing over the surface of the planet?

But now it has implications as well for the creatijnist view of the tectonic activity that they think occurred during the Flood.  Surely it would have disturbed the strata during their laying down if that had been the case no?    But there is no sign of such disturbance.  ALL the disturbance to be seen on this cross section clearly occurred AFTER the strata were all in place from Cambrian to Holocene.  

Not only was the land uplifted as described abov after the strata were all in place, but the volcano erupted afterward, as can be seen in the fact that the magma rises from the ery bottom of the stack to the fvery top at the far left.  One straight line of magma from bottom to top.  The volcano erupted AFTER the strata were in place and the magma rose up through ALL the strata that were already there.

The upligting of the land to the north is no doubt what caused the breaking up of the land that created the cliffs that became the Grand Staircase, washing away whatever was loosened probably in the receding Vlood waers.  The upper strata were all washed away down to the Permian lahyewr from the bottom cliff of the Staircase through the Grand Canyon area.  The Grand Canyon itself I figure was cut at the same time as the mounding of that area aoccurred, also after the strata were all in place.  I figure the uppermost layers would have been strained by the mounding and started breaking up and washing away and that's when the canyon was cut into the south side of the mounded area.

So from all this I also conclude that the Great Unconformity formed after the strata were all in place as well, being as I think the diagram clearly shows, the ause of that mounding up in the Grand Canyon area above it.  Tectonic formces pushed strata beneath the Cambrian layer into that tilted position at that point and that pushed the whole bllcick of strata lying overhead into the mounted form, into which the canyon broke as a result of the strain on the upper layers from the mounding.  That's my theory.

I get a lot more out of this crosss section than just these points but I think they are enough to bget across why I don't accewpt the idea that there was a lot of tectonic activity during the Flood.  There is simply no evidence for it on the cross section.  

Of course I suppose you can always say it's the cross section's fault, it's just an artists's rendition after all.

   

faithswindow@mail.com

If I think of more that needsa to be said I'll be back later.

Junk DNA

 So according to creationists Junk DNA so called is really not junk, they've discovered that it has regulatory functions, turning genes on and off.  I've found that idea to be pretty puzzling.  It takes ninety eight perecent of the enome to regulate two percent of it?  Does not compute.  Am I missing something.?

Before I started jearhearing about this idea that jhunk DNA isn't really junk I'd been accepting the idea  without question and in fact finding it to be very compatible with creatinism.  Seems to me that all that dead DNA reflects the FAall, and [erpahaps the Flood.  It represents capacities the human being, and all animals foer that matter that also have a lot of noncoding DNA, once had many capacities and strengths we no longer posses since we've become vulneratlbe to all kinds of injuries, idseases and so on since the Fall.  I think of mutations as a major agent of the Fall, attcking healthy DNA and over time destroying it, being the main creators of junk DNA.  

So I see Junk DNA as most likely really junk, destroyed genes from a far stronger and in fact truly amazingly capalbe creature that no longer exists because of si.  Amazine how well we manage to functino on just two perecent of what we once possessed.  

That's how I think of it.  You can laugh now.

later:  

creationist modelor hypothesis

The original Kind would have had no junk DNA, just all functioning genetic material

The original Kinds would have had all heterozygous genes that are made up of two alleles.  That gives the maximuum variability ossible in the original two of sexually reproducing reatures.  

Oh, and the two individuals, male and female, would have had identical genomes except for the sex chromosome.

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Refering back to the previous post I need to come up with a neat principle to express the fact that all change possible is built into the genome of the species or Kind, you can't get any kind of change that would turn one species or kind into another because it's all coded for specific traits that belong to the species built by that genome.  You see the end of all possible change play out in scenarios such as I wa mentioning, where a breed or race arrives at a point of so many fixed loci it can become unable to breed with its former population;  that's a pure bred and it's also the condition ofan endangered species such as the cheetah.  They both have the same genetic situation and it's a situation beyond wihich further change or so called evolution is impossible, or at least sharply reduced because variability in the genes is reduced.  Genetic variability is reduced as phenotpic change occurs, because it is leading to homozygosity for traits.  Vaiability is a function of heterozygosity, that's why I'm sure the original Kinds all had nothing but heterozygous genes.

faithswindow@mail.com

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It belongs on the previous post I suppose but I remember that I'd followed out the ygosity  thoughts to answer the question about how the llama came from the camel and I still believe that's how it happened.  The Kind starts out heterozygous, meaing that three out of four of its offspring will have th dominant genetic trait between the dominant and recessive alleles of the genes.  So with a camel you'll always get a camel three out of four matings, one heterozygous, one homozygous dominant, dotty yeo hyryrtozoud.  hr outyh   The fourth offspring will be homozygous recessive but if only one gene is involved whatever its trait is will hardly be noticed in the population.    

And that should persist as long as the population stays large, all the animals being regular camels with the osccasional recessive noncamelish trait that doesn't make much of a blip on the radar.    But if a smallish number of those camels migrate away from the herd an get reproductively isolated from that original population, then it will have a different set of gene frequencies from the original population that will start to produce new phenotypes in the new population from generation to generation, and if there are enough homozygous recessive genes or traits in the new population that tend in the llama direction, which I suppose is in fac tthe case for that Kind, then eventually you will get your llama.

There are probably other combinations possible that would produce something not quite like a llama or the original camel.  Ghink of the wildebeest which as I understand it now has three distinct populations, the origiknal in the millions from which two others developed, no doubt by wantdering away from the main herd and getting isolated in a new location where inbreeding brought out a new set of traits from the original  trats of the main herd.  One of the new populations is smaller, has a sort of bluish cast to its skin and fdifferent shaped antlers ass I undersanditg.  The other population is different from both but I'm not sureh how.  All standard genetics in my humble opinion.  All it takes is randm selection of some smallish number of individuals in rpeproductive isolation.    I've alsways thought this could easily b proved in a laboratory setting with some small animal.  Let it populate freely then separate a smallish number and put them in a separate environmlent and let them breed and you

ll get a new trait popicture in that new population

I still picgture Todd Wood rolling his eyes.  Oh well.

How do we get different races of creatures

 I hate changing the subjecty in the middle of a sequence like the one about lying signs and wonders, but since Google messed up my blog I no longer have access to my other blogs in ofrder to keep things from iterfering from one another.   aND i JUST HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THIS.

tHIS IS  A RESPONSE TO THE LATEST lET'S tALK cREATION EPISODE IN WHICH gARNER AND wOOD ANWER READER'S OR i SHOULD SAY LISTENERS' QUESTIONS, AND wOOD ANSWERS A QUETSION ABOUT HOW THE PEOPLEL ON nOAH'S ARK DIVERSIFIED INTO THE VARIOUS RACES AFTER THE fLOOD.  hE SAYS THEY REALLY DON'T KNOW, AND CLAIMS THERE REALL    Y  really isn't such a thing as race anyway, which drives me razy.

Race is just one of the terms for a variation in a species that forms a population unto itself.  You can also call it a population as many do, or a variation or some such.   The problem is just that it's become a politically charged confusion that causes all sorts of mental gyrations in the attempt to avoid the hot button.  

Call it a population if you prever, all it menasa is that some bportio of a gene pool gets isolated from the main population or other populations of the same species and interbreeds within its own group until a general change occurs in its appearance that sets it apart from the other populations of the same species.  That's all it is and it follows ordinary porinciplesa of genetic variation.    Ten lizards were set loose on an isoland with no other lizards and over thirty years they developed a different appearance as a whole populatioin from the populatio on the mainland from which they were origianlly taken.  That's the principle in action.   How do you get Chinese people who look different from Tibetan people who look different from Indian people who look different from Arab people who look different from European pewople etc etc etc.  Same pirinciple.  

ddAs for the people on the ark you just have to assume that each of tof the wibves of the three sons of Noah carried a genome that had all the variety in it to make a new population after  the people had exanded into new populations from the ark.   Noah himself may have had sufficient variation in his genome for that matter.  So would his sons then.   It's a simplew principle.  I'll come back and spell out my understanding of it later.

faithswindow@mail.com

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I forget that ost of this comes from my own thinking and I shouldn't expect people to just know it as I seem to do above, although to me by now it's so obvious I don't get why everybody doesn't know it.  I keep having to try to persuade gthem and I get the impression nobody is nlistening or cares.  Todd Wood is not somebody I would expect to be interesed in anything I have to say, I take him to be the sort of person who wants to see us amaateurs firmly planted at the feet of the masters, tht is those with the higher degrees who supposedly know a lot more than we do although like him they often say they don't know much about a particular subject, even a subject aaaaaI think I do know a lot about.  Oh woe is me for thinking such a thing.

Over the last couple of decades I've made it abundantly clear to myself if to nobody else that variation is built into the genome and all it takes is the isolation of a small number of individuals in sexually reproducing animals to produce a new subspecies.  I came to doubt that natural selection has much to do with it, if anything;  oh maybe once in a while but not often.  What ost often happens is simple frandom "selection" of a small portion of a population that gets reproductively isolated from the other members of the population , reporudicng only within the new opopulation over a number of generations and that will give the new population an appearance different from all the others in that species.  That's all it takes.

Genetically what is happening is that the new group of individuals share among themselves a set of genenes that occurs in different proportions as compared to the original population, a new set of gene frequencies.  Where some alleles, or versions of a gene, abounded in the original population, they may be very limited in this new population so that the trait associated with the other allele will come to cominate the new phenotype.  Since every genene in the genome may be different in its percentatge of a particular allele in the new population all the traits may vary wuquite a bit over the generations.  The smaller the number of individuals at the start of the new population the more dramatic will be the changes.  Founder effect where a very few individuals breed together to make a new population may have the most dramatic effect.   

Founder effect is who breeds were often created in the past, until they realized that too many genetic diseases resulted from the limited genetic ix.  But it can be said that a pure bred animal is one that has the most fixed loci or homozygouds genes for its salient traits.  The problem is the same can gbe said for many endangered species. Honozyosity is he condition in which only one of the two salleles per gene is expressed and if this occurs in every individuals in the population that's a fixed gene that can't vary at all unless there is still the possibility of breeding with other populations.

Anyway this is what I think is obvious and that others ought to recognize as obivious.  repoructive isolation of a relatively small number of individuals, which will have their own set of gene frequenceies among them, is all it takes to create a new population,, or breed, or race or subspecies.  

As for skin color, which was the specific question Toodd Wood was answering, That subject came up in a book by Morris and Parker called Creation Science many years ago and gthere was a punnet square in that book illustrating how the genetic code for skin color could be held by Aman and eve ....  rewrite. ...  The book illustrated that just two genes for skin color possessed buy dam and Eve is all it would take to produce the entire range of skin colors in all the poepole that descended from them.   Just two genes.

I actually found this demonstrated on the interenet.  If you ut in the words, punnet squeare, Adam and Ev, skin color, i the search line at You tube you should get a video that demonstrates what I'm talking about here.   The narrative describes the genes as if they are igdentical but I would think there much be some differences in order to get the entire range of skin colors.  Anyuway he seems to be saying that both genes have an allele for the production of a lot of melanin and an allele for the production of a small amount, and when you look at them arraanged on a punnet square with sixteen possible combinations you can see that there is a huge range of skin colors that would emerge from just those two genes.

I remember that one of the gueses on Let's Talk Creation way back there somewhere said she thinks the effect of simple geographic isolation is underappereciated as a cause of diversification, so I gather that it isn't recognized uch.  Todd Wood had a mutation as his main explanation for the variations in skin color and I just can't figure out how that would work.  I tend to view mutations as nothing but mistakes that are teht result of the Fall or curse and contribute snothing of any real benefit to the carrier but ultimately only a huge collection of genetic diseases.    Geographic isolation of a set of gene frequencies that favor a particular skin color is really all it takes to get all the skin colors on the planet.

I mentioned the lizard example above.  That's the pod mrcaru liszards, Pod Mrcaru being the name of the island they were released on I think, five pairs of lizards left on this island and not reinvestigated until thirty years later which it was found thta they had become a large popuolatio of lizards with very strong jaws, larger heads and toughter guts than the original opopulation on the mainland where they ahad originated.  The usual thinking is that they must have evolved those characteristics in order to eat the toughter food on the island, which is in fact what they were eating.  But tyhjere is no idea that the usual food they'd had on the mainland was missing, just that they had developed the ability to eat the touhter food and that's what they gravitated to.  That's how I explain it.  Evolution has nothing to do with any of this stuff.  The genetics is what determines the adaptation, not the other way aroundm, meaing it's not the environment that causes the genetic changes as in the usual idea of natural selection.  In fact what a costly way to get a new speicews if you think about it.  No, the simplesexual recombination of a new set of gene frequencies produced the larger head, stronger jaw and toughter gut and with those new capabilities the lizards took to the toughter food.

That's how I explain tDarwi's finches too.  They didn't evolve in order to eat insects or berries or nuts, they got isolated into separate smaller populations hich over time  by combing their own set of gene frequencies developed a particuolar kind of beak that wsa suited to a particular kind of food and they cgravitated to that food as a result.  Genes firsyt.

Onm the ark here were three reproducing couples who repopulated the earth after the Flood.  There must have been enough heterozygosity in their melanin genes to ctreayee all the known skin colors as the poiulations gree and split up and pspread around the planet.  

suppose Todd Wood is erolling his eyes or sneering at me.  Oh well.  

fa ofen leave out soejme very important poit so I'm wrackig my brain to try to remember whatever it might be this time.  NOthing scoming to mind.  Oh well.

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later.   Another example I like for this topic is ring species.  I think they too have an explanation in conventional biology that hits me as strange although I don't even remember what it is at the moment.   To my mind they are easily understood in the terms I'm laying out above, as what happens when a posrtion of a populatio migrates to a new location and reproduces in isolation over a number of generations.  This is how a new phenotypce or population of the species with a new appearance occurs.   From this new population another portion migrates away to a firther new location and the same thing happens so that this third populatio also developes its own peculiare characteristics that  differentiate it from the first two populations.  And so on from this population to the next and the next, each new poulation developing distincitve characteristics that differ from the other populations.   All this seems to me to be just the normal predictable effect of the way the genetic system is constructed, with two alleles for each variable gene.  Not all genes are variable fbut those that are are variable because of their having two different versions from which one from each parent is selected during the meiosis phase of sexula ecombination to create a new individual.  All that has to happen to make a new population is that you get a different mix of these genetic versions of each gene when the number of reproducing individuals changes and reprudiction is isolated from genetic input from any other source than the new popualtion.    In life this is often not perfect, there are hybrid zones, gene flow beteweeen populations and so on, but I'm just making the general point, it is the reporductive isolation of a new set of gene frequencies that creates a new breed or race or subspecies or population etc.

In an evolving lineage, such as a breed that becomes pure bred, you can see that there is an end pointbeyond which further change is sharply reduced or even impossible due to the proliferation of fixed genes in the breed or race or poulation.  I've used this fact as evidence that evolutio has a natural ending point, that change itself leads to a point where there is no more change possible just in the nature of the way the genetic code is constructed.  You get a lot of homozygotic traits and as loong as reporduction remains confined to this population reproduction brings out the pure breee without new variations.    

It always hits me as odd or even funny that this is the point at which conventional science has decided speciation occurs, because it is often the point at which rbreeding with former opulations has become impossible.  That'ssupposed to be the defining point where speciation begins, as if you could get new species at the very point where change has become impossible.    Funny, huhh?

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Lying Signs and Wonders part three

 To be warning people about the biblical concept, lying signs and wonders, I can only expect Christians who are accepting of supernatural phenomena to take it seriously.  To others it can only sound preposterous, impossible.  I'm so at home in the supernatural realm I have to make an effort to remember my own state of disbelief before it all changed.  Now I have to fight ipatience with people who think miracles are impossible or even that levitation is impossible although I have trouble with that one myselfbecause I can't find even a supernatural explanation for it, except of course that God can do anything He wants.  Or maybe that demons lift people, but that doesn't seem to be the case in most of the examples I'vew been reading about.  If that were the case the perso woudln't need to be in a trance or his body rigid and incapable of feeling anything or his closthoing immobile and all that.  Whateve s goig on in those things I don't have a clue.

I believe they are real just because I have read of hundreds and even thousands of witness reports that asound quite credible.  Even with that I suppose the fact that I already believe in soe pretty outlandish things by many people's estimagtes probaobably plays a part in keeping me open to such things.

There is nothing more irritatio than those people who respond when you tell them about a supernatural experience instantaneously come up with a contrary explanatrion along the lines of mental delusion, hallucination or some such.     Okay I'll try to avoid hyperbole, maybe not MOST irritating.  Maybe a hair shirt would be more irritating.  I don'rt know.

Anyway, I did feel I needed to write abvout ghis as I was being led to the books I mention such as "They Flew" by Eire.  That came out of my reading Hunt's book, A Woman Rides the Beast", and in general pursuing more information about the Catholic Church.  Oh, H. Grattan Guinness' book, Romanism and the Reformation came before Hunt's book.  The Antichirst as a Pope has been one of my topics here since the beginning and I've strongly felt the Lord led me to it so I write about it from time to time.  It has bgiven me a perspective that makes me question the popular eschatologiy, Pre tribulatio rapture, which has also become a major theme here.   Enough of the scenario I hold at the moment is still future to remain Pre Trib, oddly, I just have a different view of the antichrist than the standard viewpoint, and I've also come to change my mind about the first six seals of the Book of Revelation, now seeing them as historically ongoing since the time of John's vision, and not part of the Seventieth Week of Daniel or last seven years before Jesus returns, known as the Tribulation.   I now also see the Roman beast of Revelation thirteen and the woman riding the beast of Revelation seventeen as ongoing since the popes gained power over the so called Holy Roman Empire, which is the revived Roman Empire rathern than some future revival, although it will have to come back to its former power at least for the very last act of the drama.

Sincew the lying signs and wonders are accepted by ERoman Catholicism as from God, that is the deception people need to be warned against because it lends credibility to the false Church and leads people awawy from slsalvation in Christ.   

Lying SIgns and Wonders, continued

 I wondered whether levitation was obe of the siddhis, or powers experienced in Hindu medidations, or Buddhist, so I searched on some relevant terms at You Tube and found out that yes indeed, levitation ois one of the siddhis.  So is the ability to make the body extremely small or extermeley large.  Levitation is the result of making the body weightless, and it is also said to be possible to make the body extremely heavy.  All these were listed as siddhis on one website, or You tube video I whould say.    Their method seems to be mainly mediation or strengthening the power of the mind over the body, mind over matter, and they may or may not be specifically seeking the siddhis.  Sometimes they occur inadvertently, depending on the type of spiritual practice, and are then rejected as irelevant to the quest, but in some disciplines they are actively sought.  

In the Catholic monastic context they were not sought at all but occurred apparently as a result of the extreme ascetic practices which suppressed the body, but also they were a respond se to emotional triggers as the person contemplated some adored religious object, such as the feast day of the virgin marry or the meaning of the Mass and so on.    In any case they were alsoways inacdvertent in that context, not soughtj.  

Both the Hindu and the Catholic contexts serve to corroborate Watchman Nee's understanding of them as latent powers of the soul once acive in Adam and Eve but rendered inaccessible as a result of their disobedience of God in eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  He says that these powers are sought in many of the pagan religions such as Hinduinsm and Buddhism, where some individuals are found to psossess the necessary abilities to bring them to expression.  Not everyone has this ability, but those who have it become the religious sages of their time.  

In Christianity they occur wherever concentrated practices  can bring them out.  The asceticism of the monasteries is one, but I also think of the Russian Starets who repeats over and over the line, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner, and in one particular accountj of this developed clairvoyance in particular as I recall, I'm not sure about other powers.

The atemempted scientific study of these things in the early tewentieth century, by J B Rhine and others, wasn't very successful, although Watchman Nee, writing ib that same time period seems to think they were successful.   As I recall there were a few blips in the sutdies as it were where it seemed there was some kind of power manifesting, some psychic power, telepathy and that sort of thing, but it never ewent very far.  I didn't read a lot about all that although I was interested in it for a while, so I don't know how they perpursuied their evidence beyond setting up testing for its appearance, but it seems they never hit on the idea of training the mind to control th body or suppressing the body through ascdetic practices.  Those seem to be the key to the manifestation to these things in a person who icis temperamentally suited to them.  

There is quite a bit of information aouabout the yogic practices that bring out such things on You Tube.  

In all these cases the pwoers are considered to be manifestatios of the divine, spiritual powers.  The only source of a conterary point of view that I know of comes rom Watchman Nee's book, the Latent POwers of the Soul.  For fallen humanity in this fallen world, all there is is midn and body, or soul and body, but Christians receive the quickening of another faculty, the spiritual faculty lost at the Fall of Adam and Eve, with the indewelling of the Holy Spirit, and thus have the only rue spiritual power humniytuy is capable of.  Only the born again can be truly spiritual.  All these other powers are just soul powers, mind and emotion, exercised in such as way as to e taken for spiritual.  The soul is considered to be mind, emotion and will, in schristian thinking about these things.  God is not accessible through these faculties or pexperiences, even if refined greatly by medigations as mentioned above.  God is only knowable through the psirit and in ono other way.  He may vebe inferred, and is by much of humanity, but not experienced by any means at all available to fallen man.  Only by believeing that Christ died for our sins on the cross and devoting ourselves to living for Him are we born again and begin to have the power to communicate with God.

Thaiss is what makes the souls powers, the siddhis, lying wsigns and wonders.  They are not necessarily brought about by demionic influence although that may bget involvwed in them under some circumstances, and certainly as Nee points out Satan is very interested in finding wAYS TO GET PEOPLE TO EXPRESS THESE POWERS BECAUSE THEY CAN BE TURNED TO WORSHIPING HIM IN VARIOUS WAYS, WHICH IS HIS NEVERENDING QUEST, TO DISPLACE gOD IN HUMAN WORSHIP.  tURNING cATHOLICS TO mARY INSTEAD OF cHRIST IS CERTAINLY ONE WAY THIS OCCURS.  hE'S ALREADY SUCCEEDED IN GETTING THE cATHOLIC cHURCH TO OFFICIALIZE A LONG LIST OF FALSE DOCTRINES THAT REPLACE gOD AND cHRIST WITH DSOULISH AND DEMONIC SUBSTITUTES.

tHE ONLY SAFE HAVEN FROM ALL THIS IS BELIEF IN cHRIST'S DEATH ON THE CROSS TO PAY FOR OUR SINS AGAINST gOD'S LAW, MAKIBG US BORN AGAIN AND FIT FOR ETERNAL LIFE.  oTHERWISE EPOPEOPLE ACAN ONLY BE EDECEIVED by these things.

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_ eware of lying signs and wonders which will increase in the end times

The pre-tib people are wrong about the antichrist, the Roman Church is going to be the main player in the last days drama, and Catholics should learn about their church and leave as soon as possible.  As I've been familiarizing myself with the scripture and historical information related to these things, my opinions have only gbeen getting stronger.  

DaveHunt's book, A Woman Risdes the Bast, is the best source I know of for an overview of the antichrist nature of the Roman Catholic Church, and his view of how it all comes together in the end is pretty much the same as my own, although he doesn't think the final antichrist is to be a ppe and I still do.  If some other candidate emerges who takes on the title that adds up to 666 as the popes do, I would accept his view of it, but that number is what makes the determination for me.    He also seems to put the revived Roman empire into the future while I put it back with the claim of the bishop of rROme to be the universal bishop over all the other bishops and the whole church, taking on the title Pope, which occurred in stages but most definitely in the year 607.  Throughout the MIddle Ages the Popes were growing as a line of Caesars unto themselves and taking on powers that subdued kings.  And they makde martyres of milions, tens of millions, of true Christians who remained outside that Roman Church..  They were a monster then and although the Reformation set them back quite a bit for the last few centuries, I expecct them to recover and be the final evil empire for the last seven years of planet yearth.

Lately I've been listening to a book about levitationi as performed by monastic in the late middle ages, as investigated by Carlos M. N. Eire, as it is one of the main miracles used to determine the qualification of the person for Catholic style sainthood and was common in the stories of many of them.   hey Flew, A History of the impossible, is the title of the book.  The stories, or many of them, seem credible, people going in to ecstasies mostly triggered by some religious object of adoration, actually fising off the ground from inches in some castes to the height of tall trees in others.  The author doesn't arrive at any way of explaining the physics infovolved in this, and I certainly can't, but it does seem to have happened fairly frequently in some cases.

I remember back in the eseventies hearing from a couple of friends who were  seriously into Transcendental Medidation, that they were learning how to levitate.  I  don't know if they succeeded or not but that's the only other time I ever heard of leviation beging a phenomenon associated with religion.  Or with anything for that matter.

Since levitation was must one of a number of other "miracles" some of the Catholic saint candidates experienced, things like clairvoyance, telephathy, teleportation, bilocation or being in two places at once, and I'm familiar with those phenomena from outther  sources, I class them all as what Watchman Nee called Soul Power, rather than spiritual powers.  That is, people who do not have the Holy Spirit, people who are not born again, can do these things and mistake them for something spiritual whereas something truly spiritual would require a perso to be born again.   These phenomena are also what I believe the charismatics istake for spiritual gifts, and in those cases ythey may in fact be born again but acting in the flesh rather than in the spirit.

Nee's concern is that nnonspiritual phenomena can be mistaken for spiritual, as coming from God, when they are arctually produced by the soul rather than the spirit, and that certainly does seem to be the case witht eh Catholic acceptance of such things as from God in their taking it as evidence for the santiliness of their special class of holy people.  Other wise they consider that it might be a deception of the devil, and Nee also says that the devil is likely to be involved in these things because it is in his interest to further any deception that is attributed to God when it has other sources.  Accortding to Nee the devil doesn't need to be the author of these phenomena, they are powers of the human soul that were active in Adam and Eve before the Fall but becaume inaccessible afterward.  Now theycan sometimes, and in some people, be brought out by practices that suppress or weaken the body, or on the other hand the strengthen the soul's ability to control the body, which allows these powers to be released from a sort of imprisonmentn in the flesh.  This certainly fits with the fact that a severe scedeticism was practicsed by many of the "saints" who levitated and exprienced other sould powers such as clairvonyance and telepaty and bilocationdifd idoesn't always mention whether a particular levitator practised such ascetic deprivations , such as sevree fastings to the point of emaciation,  wearing a hari shirt that irritates the skin, wrapping a chain around the body tightly and wearing it at all times, sleeping on hard surfaces and so on.  Suhch things should indeed weaken the body.  It is hard to impagine how anyone ever tolerated them but apparently it was a common practice in the monasteries.    Anyway, that fits with what Nee says is one way the soul powers can be released.   The body seems to become an inert thing, impervious to pain or sensation of any sort suduring an ecstasy, it stiffens in whatever posterur it was in when the levitation or ecstasy started and can't be moved until the experience is at an end.  Oddly, garments also stay in place and can't be moved either during these events, and any objects in the hands also are immobilized there for the duration, even a frying pan with eggs in it that Teresa of Avila was cooking when she suddenly launched into the air.  

These things are so abundanctly witnessed that it would stretch my credulity to have to auppose they are nothing but mass hallucinations or something like that.  Surely they are real although of course impossible to explain.  The task of the Catholic officials charged with deterining the canonicity of each case is to come to a conclusion abou t wherhether they come from God or the devil, or are some kind of fraud.  Some frauds were discovered but it is mainly the character of the person under scrutiny that is the determiner of whether the miracles, as they are caslled, were of God or the deil.  If the person was judged to be truly humble and holy then eventually their levitations and other miracles were accepted as from God.  

There are plenty of reasons other than Watchman Nee's explanation of soul power, certainly from a Protesta t point of view, a biblical point of view that is, because often these people would take off flying when adoring the so called Virgin Mary or celebrating her feast days such as the day commemorating her supposed immaculate conception, which of course never happened, or assumption into heaven, which also didn't happen.  These things are a complete violation of the biblical accounts and in fact are blasphemies as they usurp the characteristics of Christ.  Celebration of the Mass, which is also a blasphemy, is another occasion that triggered a levitation for some of these people.   And many of these saints  as described in Eire's book were living in the time right after the Reformation, after the Council of trent hasd compiled a list of hundreds of curses against all the Protestant doctrines, all the doctrines of salation.  No Catholic would dare believe any of them and that being the case  none of them could have been saved and if they weren't saved they n they weren't born again, did not have the Holy Spirit, or the quickened human spiritual faculty thgat had been lost  at the Fall, and cthrefore none of their supposed miracles could have been from God.  

BBut Satan would like us all to think so and it is a very compelling deception.   

This poit  was intentedded to expose such a deception because it is a hard one to identify and even with this sort of knowledge  wouldn't always be easy to detect.    These things deceived many in the MIddle Ages and are very likely to be among the Lying Signs and QWonders we are warned to bewarde of in these last days.

God's judgment Romanism

 Of course I wish I were wrong.  I don't want America to go down forever under the judgment of God.  I want Trump's agenda of rescuing us to our former greatness to successd.  QWell, it looks like it is succeedeing very nicely.  I wish I could believe it will hold and truly bring us back to our former prosperity and strength for good, and yes our goodness.  I would love to be wrong when I say I just don't see how it can hold because we are under God's judgment and nothig is being done to deal with that.  Getting right with God is what is needed, and all the reasongable solutions to our problems such as illegal immigration, sleeper cells of our enemies, fraud against the taxpayer and so much more, just down't do anythig about our need to get right with God.  In fact it may just be undoing the destructive conditions that are part of Go'd judgment against us.  That's what I'm afreaid of, and try as I might I can't see it holding as long as the nation continues to ignore or deny that we are out of favor with God .  We can't win against God but that is unfortunately what it looks to me like we are doing.  Trying to do.    Godf would restore us very speedily to our former greatness and then some if we set our minds to confessing and repending of the sins of the nation and setting ourselves to try to undo them.  Confession and heartfelt rependatance would go a long way alone I think, but turning it back is going to be necessariy to get back into favor with God and I don't see any will to make that happene.  In fact I'm pretty sure that anyone reading what I'm writing here is perplexed at least by it, can't believe it, may even be angry at the thgouth of it, becaue we are so used to thinking of God as on our side.  A good God would n't be trying to destroy us.    Well, He did just that to the ancient Jewish nation, and to many other nations as well that had violated His laws, as reported in the Bible.  There's no reason to think He wouldn't continue that pattern with America now, along with all the other nations of the earth today as well but American especially because we started out as a nation comitted to Him and that makes us more responsible than other nations.

Well, I've said that many times alreaydy.  Again wish I were wrong, but he most likely scenario is that we are going to bo under just as Europe has, and all this is going to lead to the final judgment of planet earth, known as the Great Tribulation in the Book of Revelation, just before Christ returns.  

And that recognition always leads me back to Rome, the Roman Churchg which is false Christianity, which is clearly foreshadowed i b iblical prophecy to bye the vicious persecuting world power of the Antichrist riegn in those last seven years of the planet.

I recently mentioned gthe book here, Romanism and the Reformation by H. Grattan Guinness which analyzes how he sees it all playing out, and I just finished listening to another book on the same general subject, A Woman Rides the Beast by Dave Hunt, ritten in the nineteeies over ahundred years after Guinness' book, and so probably easier for a lot of people to read.  His end times scenario is different from Guinness' snf ZI figgrt gtom noyh og  I differ from  both of them on some points.  

Dave Hunt accepts the Reformers' view of the papcy as the Antichrist system but he doesn't thiink a pope is going to be the final Antichrist of the last seven years  He thinks the Antichrist must be a single person and not part of a line of successive occupants of an office as the popes are.  He thinks the ANtichrist will be like the emperor Constantine who held all the titles of the head of the Roman religions as all the emperors did, including one he added designating himself the vicar of CHrist, which is where Hunt says that papal title oritinanted.  

If Constantitne did hold that title in the Latin form Vicarivs Filii Dei, which I've shown many times here is the carrier of the infamous number 66 through the addition of its embedded Roman numerals, the I can see how another emperor type like him who took that same title to himself, could be the Antichrist rather than the Pope I've been confinced will hold that polisition.     It's possible but I'm still taking the position that he will be a Pope, who already possess that number in his title.  It could be either but Hunt's reasoning is faulty here because the emperors or Caesars were no less part of a successio of office holders than the Popes are, one Caesar folling another just as the Popes follow each other, and of course each one Caesar or Pope is also a single persons with his own characteristics.  The Popes are just aping the Caesars, and presiding over their own version of the Roman Empire which came into eistence after Pagan Rome falell.  Those who hold to an end times scenario along the lines of Dave Hunt's just skip over that vast period of the Middle Ages when the Popes persecuted torured and murdered true Christains in the illions, which is what the final Antichrist is eprophesided to do.  They keep expecing a Revivced Roman Empire to show up at the last minute, but in reality it apepeared ont eh sceine in the year 607 when the Bishop of Rome became Universal Bishop and from that point on began to usurp the roles of the Caesars and the roles of Chirst and GodHimself and rule over kings  and over a Europe now duggbbed the Holy Roman Empire.   Which voltaire said was neither holy , nor roman nor an empire.  But   that's what the revived roman epre was and is.    Yes Europe is also coming todgether as a politcal version of it and that's all goig to work together in the end, but the Roman CHurch is going to be the head of it all.  Wait and see.  If we're all around then.  when it starts to show its true final shape.

Knowlede of Islam might have helped stave off what we see building up against America these days, which has already pretty much destroyed Europe, but knowledge of Islam is a rare thing, and knowledge of the roman Church which used to be very big in the history of America, up until the early part of the etwentieth century, would have helped us remain the Protestant nation we started out to be, which is the whole reason for our prosperity and success in the world, and our goodness, but most people know nothing about Romanism, Catholics certainly don't believe such things about their church because all they know is it scomfortint presence in their own lives, at least for those who still enjoy it as their mother church, and Protestants have completely lost touch with the evils of Romanism and why it should have been a matter of urgent priority to protect the nations from its inroads.  Too late now I fear.  The so ccalled Protestant churches are far from Protestant.  hey re betrayers of teh Reofrmewrs and all the martyrs of Rome that brought about the Protestant Reofrmation.  

Somee books should be loudly recommended to the average citiczen and I think Dave Hunt's book is one of them.  The ignorance I found in the discussion of religion by Douglas Murray and tom Holland on the podcast 385 title Does God Exist, shouldn't exist if the truth had been kept in view.  But it was lost.  Maybe now they should read something to show them at no, Romanism is NOT Christianity, it is at best Christianitzed paganism, but it is paganism and the Inquisition is not Christian as they believe it to be.  As most people uforutnatley believe it to be.    Tom Holland came up with some ;prettuy wacko idea about how Christianity just keeps turning against its various manifestations as denouncing them as idolatries, and now even atheistm is using evangelical logic to do the same to the religion as a whole.    Yiki  Yikes.    Yeah, Murray, HOlland, read Dave Hunt's book or something on the same subject.  Pleasae.