oUR oNLY hOPE

 THEY WHO WAIT UPON THE lORD SHALL RENEW THEIR STRENGTH.  tHEY SHALL RISE UP ON WINGS OF EAGLES, THEY SHALL RUN AND NOT WALK, THEY SHALL WALK AND NOT BE WEARY.

Isaiah 40:

tHERE'S OUR HOPE.

They who hate you shall reign over you FIVE

It's a painful experience listening to Douglas Murray's book, The Strange Death of Europe, which I've been subjecting myself too for a while now, because he does such a good job of capturing the insanity of the whole immigraing nightmare theat we in the US are going through but that Europe has been going through for decades already.  As his title says, Europe is pretty much dead ecause of their immigratrion politicies, and we could be on our way there very dsoon.  In fact we're problably already there and don't know it yet.  Trump and his administration are doing their best to turn it around, and succeeding far better than any of Europe

s efforts have done for them, but in spite of the successes the overwhelming impression , or at least my impression and no doubt sopme others' as well, is that we are barely keeping even with the forces that are doing the damage he is trying to undo, and could very well lose the battle altogether.  Funny how other Presidents have deported illegal immigrants and nobody complained, but if Trump does it, the whole howlinMost of us on the Right concentrate on this aspect of the situation , and I'm no exception, but what I'vbe been writing about here in the last few posts is how I've come to realize this is the wrong approach to the problem,.  g pack of liberal-leftist

This is a upernation problem, and we are looking at only itsThe human side is depressing enough but when I think of it as a problem that God is bringing about what little hope I can gather for human effotts to win the battle gives mway to a totla despair because I am only too aware of how impossible it would be to get anyone else who doesn't already think in these terms to see it this way, and that leaves us with no solutions at all.  

What Murray is showing in his book , I've come to realize, is God's judgment on EWurope, and on America as well, on the West in general.  Immigration is the main vehicle of His judgment.  We are being judged, destroyed, for our sins against His moral law.  We abandoned God decades agao, Europe earlier than America and America mayu claim some lingering hold on our Christian originas while they've lost theirs completely, but we're rae up to our necks in sin against God's law just as they are.  There is always a itime factor involved in God's judgments.  It can take years for sins to reach what scripture identifies as their time of fulfillment when judgmetn will fall on a nation, and clearly we re behind Europe, but not by a whole lot.   Is Europe completely gone?  It looks like it as I read Murray's gook, but on the other hand IF --that big fat impossible IF --they should suddenly wake up and seek the God they rejected, seek Him in earnest with a sincere desire to become the Christain peoples they once were, THEN I think they could be saved.  And so could we if we do the same.

But what a huyge IF it is. As soon as I even think of saying what I know would have to be done my stomach drops, my hopes drop,.  Even Douglas Murray would be offended.  Godback o that primitive stuff?  No way.    He wants the uman solution, the recognition that what is being doine is irrational and that human being can do better than that and reverse course if we are shown the irrationality of our thinking and our actions and wake up to practical necessities.  At least I think that must be how he is looking at it, he hasn't exactly said so, but then I'm a few hourse from finishing his book and don't know for sure if he'll have any solution at all to give in the end.

Yup, Gay marriage will have to go.  Gay rights as such will have to go.  Impossible, righyt?  And that's only  a tiny bi of what we've done to offend od.  Abortion a big one.  All kinds of sexual sins, rampant divorce weven among Christains, and that is a real trageidy.  Maybe the churches wcould wake up to that one, I've wondered about that one anyway.

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Bringing a foreign people against a sinning nation is one of the ways God bring judgment against it.   You shall plant crops but they will not surivvie, He says, or if they survive stanrangers will eat them.    Somewhere in Hosea I think that one is.     His strength is devoured by strangers and he doesn't know it, is also in Hosea, chapter seven I believe.    They consider not that I remember all their wickendeness God says also in Hosea.  

Not one among them calls upon Me, God says.  The implication is that if they did they might not have o suffer all this.  Is anyoe listening?   They are destroyued for lack of lknowledge.  KNowledge of God, knowledge of God's law.  Thtis quite clear from the context.  Hosea chapter four.  

The enemies brought against a people to be their battering ram of judgmetn, are certainly not in the right, and they will be punished in the end too, there is nothing good about Islam but it makes an effecting battering ram against the weak sinsick West.    Just as Israel's enemies Assyria and Babylon would also be punished for their violence against God's people in the end, after being God's chosen battering ram of judgment against His people in those days, so will Islam be upunished.    In a way they are the "they who hate you " of my title for these posts, reigning over us already just because noody dares to do anything about the problem and they just go on egetting away with it.  All that,  the weakness, the ineffective reasponse to them, all that is prart of the jdugmetn we are experiencig.  It isn't goig to stop until we turn to God, confess our sins do what we can to correct them, which isn't going to be easy or maybe not even possible in many cases, excpet I hope at least in some of the churches, if enough of us did that I think we could turn the tide.  But it would btake personal sacrifice to do it with the strength of determiniation and perseverance needed.

Sometimes I've noticed how some of our sins are being directly targetsed by the use of Islam as the instrument of punishment.  They reject what we should be rejecting but of course they do it i the wrong way, with a hideous violence and hatred.    I'm thinking of the head covering for women for instance.  As I understand it from the Bible, first Corinthians Eleven, women are to cover our heads in the church service, while men are required to keep their heads uncovered, remove hats as they enter asnd so on.  Islam overdoes it by covering women to a ridiculous degree in some cases and with an attictude of domination over them and a winllingness to murder them for any deviation.  But there is dno doubt as I have studied the problem, no doubt in my mind, that we are dsupposed to be covering our heads in church at least.  I know there are many pastors who will , who do, refuse to see it this way although it was the practice of all the churches for two thousand years until about the mid twentieth century.  That ought to say something but no, they are listening to one very misguided if sincere man who said it's all a cultural thing and not boto be taken literallyu after all.  Geiting the churches to go back to that would be , well, probably impossible, but I've thought for a long time that tit could make a huge different to the state of the West if they would.  

Modest dress is another thing we should be doing and don't.  We seem to think we have a right to show off skib as much as possible elthough it clearly has implicationso f being sexually seductive and doesn't belong on the streeths for that reason, unless that's your job of course.    The Bbile spells out odest dress for women in the New Testament so at least in the churches there should be a big effort to be strict about it, although they tend to emphasize  avoidinbg lavish ornamentation and that wsort of thing and probably ever even gave much thought to the problems we have of showing skin back in tin the days of thye early church.  Not just showing skin but shoosing clothese that emphasize bodily shape and that sorty of thing.  Really, Christain men aren't any less susceptivble to women's bodies than Muslim men for pete's sake, and at least that much does get preached about from time to time.    But nonChrsitains ought to be more aware of the problem too.  It's not just a Muslim problem.  It's all prart of the West's deviation from our Chrsitain moral framework over the last centuriy or so.

So God has brought a viciously maniacally evil enemy tl fpunish us for these deviations, perhaps.  

And of course they throw homosexual off high buildingsj.  Well, here we are proud in the West of our great liberality in treating homosexualis as just as normal as heterocexuals and even extending the legal contract of marriage to them.   We are certainly being punished for that, but all that is required is to remove the special status, remove the marriage contract, certainly there is no idea of keep ing homoosexuals from normal citizen ship status like all the rest of us otherwise.    If they want to be Chrsitains, then they hve to ggive it up altogther, but if they want to remain nonChristains they are at least to be protetcted from harm.  But flaunting it, nope.  Expressing it in publisc.  Nope.  

Let's see how that one flies.  Not very far I would guess.

Are those the hardest ones to persuade people back to?  I don't know.  What about abortion?  That one may even be harder.  Or divorce.  Will surely at least the churches could manage to enforce that one, but on the other hand if they haven't been making much of it for so many years already there's problably not a lot of hope there either.  

Howpow about the horrible travesty of treating pornography ias a matter of freedom of speech.   Insanity.

Jus a few.  At least confesssing these things as sins to God woule e a huge start.  Even if we can't push them back .    Christinas ought to be able to do that much.

Sure, we can go on hopibng that our human efforts to make America great again will continue to be blessed by a merciful God, at least for a while.  But if al lthis is really a matter of God's judgmiong us for our sins, and surely it is, it won't win in the endj.  

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They who hate you shall reign ovr you FOUR

 What got me started on this theme of Amerian's being under God's judmgnet was the recognition that what we are all mostly engaged in is purshing back the effets of God's judmgnet hat have already come upon the nation.  The MAGA movement is all about reotring America to our former prosperity and strength and standing in the world, and it certainly seems a righteous caue when you see how the forces arrayed against us, even our own govenemtn, have been working to destroy us, from within as wel as from without.  Open borders and massive illegal immigration are destroyers, they are also the product of corrupt lawless and evensheer evil ideologues.  Pushing all that back seems certainly to be a righteous thing to do that would amount to a genuine restoration of the best of America.    the problem is that at the same time I was reminded of how Nine eleven was GOd's judgment on the nation, although few ever acknowledged that and many denied it, even many pastors of Churchers you would think would know the Bible well enough to get that uch right at least.  God protestc people who obey Him, He brings peace and prospertyithyto nations who follow His law, but desruction and judgment to nations who transgress His law.  That message is on just about every page of the Old Testament, it would be hard to miss it.

We never repented of our national sins in response to the attack on the WtC.  Like Israel in Isaiah nine:ten we simply went about rebuilding what God had destoroyed, even with more duarable materials.  At the end of that passage God 's hadnd is said to be stretched out still because they didn't repent, but simply ignored Him, even perhaps ignoring the whole idea that they were under judgment, went about using human means to solve what they regarded as a human problem.  But the problem has a higher level to it.  It did then and it does now in America as well.  A supernatural level.  God was punishing Israel for their sins and wanted them to repent and turn to Him.  Same thing with us.  The WTC was a waring blow.  It could have been much worse.  It was a call to repentance and ot one word was said to that effet by anyone in public positiojn or power.  If I'm wrong I'd love to know it but I certainly don't remember anyting of the kind.  We sang a lot of God Bless America and went about rebuilding the World Trade Center and eery year we remember the calamitywith never a glance at God's role in it.  People seem to assume that Hefeels about it the way we do.  GBig istake.

I'd rather not think that MAGA is just a way of circumentin t our responsibility to God but I'm afraid that's what I've concluded over these last wfew days of thinking about it.  God is having mercyu on us in all this, that's for sure.  I suppose we could say that wemrica has had such belssings in the past back when we were a truly CHristiabn nation, that we still have blessings on the books we haven't yet run out of.  That could be.  But we've been piling up sins for quite a while now too and it's just a atter of time before they outrun the blessings.

And I don't mena to say that I now that's the best way to think about it, it's just one way that makes sense and might be true. B ut I suppose we could be more on the brink of disaster through God's judgment than any of us can guess.

There's SO much more to write but I have to stop for a while.  

They who hate you shall reign over you / European version

 It's hard writing about this because I have so little hope that I can persuade anyone of it, even if there were anyone reading what I write, which of course is iffy in itself.   Remembering how few CHristian pastors recognized tht the attack on the WtC on Nine Eleven was Bodf's judgment on the nation Keeps me on the pessimistic side.  A few gave that message, most did not.  

Then of course after it was understood to have been the work of Islamic Jihadists and one would have expected them to be regarded as our enemy, instead they have seemed to grow in favor in the country since then.  Mark Levin noted this recently and then again how they have settled into the country and are gubuilding their own commujities, all without changing anythibg in their view of America and the West and showing no dsigns of any interest in assimilating to the cultures of the West.  They want their own enclaves apart from the culture where they can follow thweir own laws and pursuie their own cultural pratices which are in most cases much at ods with ours.

Islam is only one part of the enemy force arrayed against us, but at the moment it seems to be the mbiggest and maybe most organized threat.  Our own supposedly homegrown American Left seems to be siding with them, withoutr enemies in general, against their own country.Of course they donb't think of it this way but that is in fact what they are doig.

I was just rereading the first part of Douglass Murray's book, The Strange Death of   ... wow now I can't remember if it's death of Europe or death of the UK, but he does talk about both, staritng with Britain which is ihis own home turf.  yhey got started down this parth of destruction deaces before it became much of an issue here but the language they used is very much the same as we keep hearing here.  Well we're a nation of immigrants after all, if youi object to the influx of immigrants you are racist, a white supremacist.  The way it is talked about makes it impossible for sane boices to beget a hearing. In fact anyone who dares to tell the truth about ythe dangerous sitatuion that is resulting from such large scale immigration as they have been experiencing for decades and we are now trying to cope with as well, gets fired from a job or voted out of office and generally gets called namesa and marginalized in the public arena.

Those who see what is going on, see the real dangers and speak about it the most perisistently, nevertheless do not include God in their analysis of the problem, except to note that all these immigrants are antiChristian and we are losing our own religion along with outr western culture which is really the product of tht religion.  Maybe I'm ot listening to the right Christian sources enough lately but I don't hear anything about how this is all God's judgment on America and on Europe and on the HCristain nations of the West in general.  

It's certainly a  It's certainly a tricky message to give into a coungtry which has lost most of its knowlege of our Chrsiyain past and would regard what usesd to be understood as normal Christain concepts as very strange and ridiculous now.  And gthere are so clearly human players involved and we are so used to thinking in terms of human causes of human stuations , introducing God, whom nobody thinks about much any more, at least not in such large scale terms as ruling over nations, seems a lost causre.

Even people who are sympathetic to the idea that Christianity played a large role in the making of th West are not themselves necessarily believers and may reject the very idea of taking the religion itself seriously with all its supernatural elements.  Even Richard Dawkins the intrepid Darwinist atheist, confessed to being a cultural Christian but has no notion whatever of taking the relgion of that name seriously.  Douglas Murray who authored the book I mention above said on the podcast Uncommon Knoweldge a couple of year ago, episode 385, Does Got Exist, he can't consider the religion itself although he appreciates what a great influence it had in forming thje UK and America and Europe as well.   We've been through the nineteenth century, he said, as if that fact should make it abundantly clear whey we can supsedly never go back to the true religion.  And Tom Holland who awas another guest on that podcast and wrote the book Dominion with a subtitle referring to the christain revolutoi that built the west, does not identify himself as a believer although in studyijgn the history that led to his book he has d come to the concludsion that the west and the UK are far more Christian than he'd had any idea, and how he appreciates very uch the moral rframework of the West that has that derivation over the moral gframework of Greece andR Rome which he'd previously though had the greater influence, he still isn't a CHristian in the sense of believe what the Bible teaches.

Wghichh is all both good and bad, encouraging in a way but alwso very discouraging.  What we need, given that the West, the UK, America, are sufferin from all this destructive immigration among other destructive treands, is a revival of the true Christain religion.  Nothing else will save us.  Some pushback at the mroal level could slow it down a bit I suppose but if we want to save  America, let alone the uropean west which is so much further gone, there is no other solution whatever than a return to the religion that built us in the first place.  

Yes, the religion, the whole wsupernatural divinely authored religion that is found in the Bible.

There are a thousand paths that could be taken inn the elucidation of this melancholy fact and it can't be done by me because I don't have the necessary knowledge, and it can't be done in a blog post or ten blog posts anyway.  But if the west is to be saved WE HAVE TO GET BACK TO TH GOD OF THE BIBLE< THERE IS NO OHER SOLUTIO.

Christains at least should be taking this to heard.  If nobody else gets it at least we shold get it and set ourselves the task of doing whatever we can to bring it about.  Confession of our sins and the nation's sins, prayer prayer and more prayer, political efforts wehre possible to reverse the trends that have brought down God's wrath on us and so on.   I hope ad pray for that but I'm as weak as everybody else in motivation, hope, optimism, energy for the job.  

Help, Lord.

faithswindow@mail.com

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 Keep forgetting to add the email address:

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Also want to comment that after hearing the post read aloud of course I' m aware of myu many typos, but I also have the impresion that some of them aren't errors I would have made.  I have no way of orving it but it's particularly disturbing to think something else is alterning what I write.  An overzealous spelling program maybe.  Or a hacker?  I don't know.

They who hate you shall reign over youTWO

 Another sin of the nation that came to mind when I asked God abou t it was something I know I'd never have come up with on my own, and even now it's hard for me to convince myself it's a sin.  I am willing to accept that it is but it's been so long since anyone took it seriously I have trouble arguing for it.  This is the honoring of the Sabbath.  I remember when stores were closed on Sunday and when all of a sudden they were freed fro that obligation and all very soon sarted stayijng oprn ll night and it's been that weay ever since.   I son't remembe if the natiobn did much more than require that stores be closed on Sunday in recognition of the Sabbath, and it wasn't identified as the biblical Sabbath in any case hat I recall, but I do run across the practice in manyh old books.  Christian books.  bunyan's Pilgrims' PRogress, Rylesz Holijness, others.  At least in the UK Sabbth-breaking was regared as a seriious offense and I don't know if or when that stopped.   They forgbade all sorts of things on the Sabbtah ike sports.  Remember the movie Chariots of Fire?  The runner who would not compete on Sunday because of the Sabbath law in his country which he was determined to hoor.   I don't recall if we had any restrictions on sports here or not.  I never followed football so I wouldn't have known about that and now Sundays are crammed with football games.  

If this is a sin god is judging the country for what are the chances we'd ever give it up and go back to the old practice of shutting thihhngs down on Sunday?   It would take a massive Christian revival for any such idea even to cooccur to anyone let alone enough people to bring it about.   that measns the nation is just going to contiue under judgmetn for this and al the other sins we are far from likely to resicind.   We an do what Daniel did and acknowledge or confess them to god, but correct them I don't see happening.  The Jews even corrected their marriages to foreign women when they realized that was an offense to God and a violation of His covenant with them.  But I don't see us correcting anything.  That's going to leave us suffering from god's judgment until the nation is completely destroyed.  Yes, even with a great deal of mercy and push back at the same time apparently which is what we're getting with Trump's being in office now.  Another sin I forgot to mention was one that has been my own favorite for a long time that I managed to forget this time, the head covering for women in church. This one is for the churches exclusively.  Althoughj that biblical requrirement was extended to the cutlure at large wherever it was practiced, and it was practiced throughout the last two thousand years by all christian nations and hcnhurches until the middle of the twentieth century, I don't think the Bible requires it beyond church functions where women apparticipate in prayher and discussions of god's word.  It's something that would have to be discussed in the light of history for some time by the churches before we'd know for sure how to go about reapplying it, but at least it's clear from the passage itself, First Corinthians Eleven, two to Sixteen, that women are to cover our heads to acknowledge our place in the hierarchy of authority, while men are required by the same passage to uncover their heards, which is where we got the rule that women remove their hats whenever they eneter jnot onlyh church but any building at all.    

I've wondered for a long time, ever since I studied that passage and did a fair amount foof research on it and came to the conclusion that it's being violated in the churches these days, I've wondered if god might be withholiding revival for this reason, among others I'm sure, but this one too.   I could even seen that it played a rule in kicking off the whole feminist mvoement, even brought women into the pulpit in some churches which is clearly against god's ordinance, and had asnowballing effect on the culture bringing out all sort s of things in the sexual realm, marriage, the whole shebang from divorce to gay marriage.  Along with the Sabbath I'm sure there are very few in the whole nation who ahve ever given it a second thought as a sin that could have had even small consequances let along these sweeping ones I've been wondering about.  Somethining to pray about.

Mark Levein keeps talking about the growing power of Islam in America.  I think we need to wake up andco nsider doing sonething drastic if we want to push this back.  Political solutions aren't going to do it.  I hope god continues to bless us on that level of course, but I think wif we want to stop of the dstruction of america we are going to ahve to consider some preety drastic reversals of law and practice.  Wre talk about being a Christain nation but that's a joke in the light of the national sins I'e mentioned and I'm sure I only know a few of thejm.

Creationist Topics After the Flood

 tarting a new post means losing the prie position for the previous post and I want that post to continue to be seen so this is a reminder that it's there.  The nation is under god's judgment.  That was true at Nine Eleven and nothihg has happened to change that status.  We are no doubt accumulating judgment and all the noise and tumulet going on with the protests against ICE among a million other versiosns of the same mentality I regard as expressions of that judgmetn.  We need to pray against it by confessing the sins of the nations for starters.  The post I'm talking about is titled They WWho Hate You Ashall Rreing OVer YOu.  

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I must be awfully naive.   I jist  dn't expect to be ridiculed for mentioning tht God answered my prayers with information that I asked Him for.  Not by Christians anyway.  The more I think about it though, the more I see ow they might very well ridiculoe me.  Think I'm making myself out to be some kind of prophet maybe.  To my mind all I'm doing is giving God the fglrowy for what seems to be a very good helpful idea rather than igoring Him and taking the credit myself.  And I assume other Christians live the sme way and hear from God the same way when Tthey ask Him for this kind of help.    

Paul Garner and Todd Wood went back to their topic about the aftermathj of the Flood, on their podcast Let's talk Creation.  Episode 129.  I know the number because it's one of my favorite topics and I'll want to listen to ait again, no doubt a few times.   

They are answering some critics of a three part series they did a while back on this topic and I have to say I am not impressed with the critics at all.  In fact overall I'm getting frustratied with the Christian creationist camp.  I  have so wanted to find people to discuss some ideas with but I keep finding how far away from my way of thinking about these things other creationists are.  Even when we're sort of in the same ballpartk they are pursuing differing angles on the question.    I've often tried to anser to myself why I didn't spend more time learning about the creationist views.  There are a few websites out there where I could have spent a lot more time than I ever did.  I got some ideas from them but surprisingly little in the end.  I've thought part of it was that they get too technical for me and I think tht's true, but it's more than that.  I like thinking things through on my own an that's true too but that's not it either.  I think closer to the truth about it all is that I got started in a debate format where I did my own reearch and came up with my own ideas and when I hewcked out the creationist sites they weren't pursuing the same ideas i the same mway I was and I juist kept going back to working through my own.  SOmetimes I recognized that we were on the same page and sometimes I got some good leads from them but on the biggest issues for my purposes I worked it all out myself and ended up in some other place than the creationists did.  And I've been learning that is the case from this podcast by Wood and Garner.  I enjoy their discusseions but I don't see things the wa they do and I have the gall to think I could be right and they wrong.  

To really spell out my point of view would take a lot of work and I suually just ive a post or two on a particular topic.  But I can see now that unless I do that work of producing all the evidence and the line of reasoning that got me where I ended up creationists just aremtn' going to take me seriously at all.  Theuy might not takeme seriously anyway  of cours.  I get my evidence from some rather odd places and I certainly have no field experience in iether geology or biology so it's all reading and thinking which doesn't get many points in the sciences.  

Oh good grief, I'm suddenly so tired I can't keep sitting here.  I'll have to come back to this later.  Sorry.

Paul had some good answers to the criticism that they were trying to cram too many post Flood events into too little time, pointing out thta many of those events would have been simultaneous offor one thingl.    That's one I don't want to get into here more than that excpet to say that my own model, and yes I think I can claim to hae a creationist model, has a LOT of those events all happening simultaneously.  The three hundred years from the Flood to Abraham as given by the Msasoretic text of the Bible is plenty oftime for what I have in mind.

I also still object to the idea they have that there was a great deal of tectonic upheaval during the Flood and I have eveidence for my point of view on that one I hope I have the energy to spell out some time sooh.  

Same with their idea that the Flood ended around the end of the Cretaceous period.  I thik all the sediemntary strata through the Cenozoic were laid down by the Flood and I think I can produce evidence for that too.  Some time.

Some of the evidnece I have in mind could take hundreds of pages to spell out because some of it needs to be argued against conventional interpretations That I think are wrong, but there's quite a bit that can just simply be demonstrated with out all that argument.

I'm not familiar with he Columbia River Basalt but found the discussion ineresting and Paul's answer to the critic very good.  

The idea of the floating debris raft as the vehicle for transporting the aimals dispersiong from the Ark into the rest of the world came up again.  I thijk Todd's way of talking about it is a lot better than the critics' but I don't think the raft idea is at all necessary because in my scenario the continents haven't been separating for enough time for them to have a whole ocean between them needing the secure cort of conveyanfdce they have in mind.  But I don't want to get into that one right now either.  All these things take a lot of discussion and too much space on a blog post.  

The one I tought I might give a more careful answer to is the one about the rapitidity of diversitfication of the animals as they spread out from the Ark to their eventual preferred haitats.

But again I'm tired and going to take a break.  Back soon I hope.