The Spiritual Principle We Overlook to our Peril: Sin begets Sin, in individuals and in society and in the churches. Thinking about the head covering again.

This is a subject that occure to me from time to time as a very important one though my grasp on it is pretty weak.  It comes up this time of what I heard about Wayne Grudem's research that found the violation of the principle of the roles of the sexes to be the beginning of a chur h's slide into other kinds of apostasy.   Liberalism to be specific.   Scripture is clear that women are not to be in positions of authority in the Church so women pastors and elders are a violation of God's order.    Apparently Grudem found that this kind of elevation or perhaps some earlier form of it came before other violations and the eventual slide into outright liberalism in a church.

There is a spiritual principle here but pinning it down is not easy.   We have a vague understanding that sin begets sin in an indivudal.  Also in society at large.  Once we've enacted laws against God's Law as we've done in America, we go on to enact more such laws until we find ourselves in a condition of lawlessness from which it seems we may never recover.

As I've noticed in myself, if I allow a sin in my life others follow, and stopping the trend is very difficult.  I've noticed this over and over.   There seems to be a time factor involved:  the spiritual effecrt has to run its course before I can get back on track.   I'm hopinhg there is a way to interrrupt the course, through ackno0wledgement, rep[entance, prayer and so on, but I don't have a clear grasp of this yet.

Scriptural principels that come to mind are the admonition in Proverbs to guard our hearts with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life.   Another is the principle that whoever has will have more and whoever has not will lose what he does have.  I'm sure there are others but these come to mind.   

The time factor is apparent in the concept of "the fullness of time" in which a sinning nation is understood to come under final judgment only after some point at which its sins have ripened to some standard that isn't defined, only that it will be after a certain number of years, such as the four hundred years for the sin of Canaan to be p8nished by the armies of the israelites.

David's sin with Bathsheba had some dire consequences starting with the death of their infant  son.  But there was much more that occurred over the following years as his son raped his half sister and then another son rebelled and tried to take his trhown from him, and many of his children were murdered.  

Trying to trace such a pattern in one's own life or the lifves of others is very risky and shouldn't be taken beyond whatever might be useful for repentance.   I'm not recommending it, just think it's an important principle we need to keep in mind .   

Small errors beget bigger errors.   What about the Arminianism of the Wesleys?  Their own lives were exemplary but aht doctrine contains seeds of serious error that may have sprouted in the liberalism of the Methodist Church in later years.  I'm beging vague and general because I don't know enough about the history of any of these things to be more speicfic but also I don't think it woulde help to be more specific, I'm trying to get at a general principle that we all need to be more aware of.

So lately I've been coming back to the abandonment of the head covering as a possible turning point in the direction of the rampant apostasies wer eare seeing in the churches today.  The general weakness of the churches is apparent so that where we should be functioning as salt and light in the culuture we've been failing miserably as the culture sinks lower and lower.   Sex roles is a pretty glaring issue these days, so a failure of the churches in this area  is where we should look for our influence since wse do have some responsibility for what happens in the culture.

Women pastors and elders is certainly a trend in many churches.  But what about the head covering?>  That's a clear emblem of God's headship order, a creation ordiance.   It makes my heart hurt to think about how that passage has been misinterpreted in such an aggressive way over the last few decades, which allows the error toi keep onb doing damage in the Church.

Even the best tachers will begin to accumjulate other errors on top of such an error.  I think we need to be watchful about this in particular.

BBut how do we reverse the trend?  I'm hoping it's possible.  First we have to see the problem.   Then we have to acknowledge it to God and ask Him for repentance.  I don't know even if that is possible.  Sometimes sin accujmulates beyond correction, in individuals as well as in churches as well as in nations.  But I wouldn't know where else to try to reverse a trend.  Perhaps scripture holds a solution I'm overlooking.

A Tribute Post to the Brothers John and Charles Wesley,. Plus John Bunyan Jusg Because.

I was looking for some devotional poetry and remembered that Tozer had regarded Charles Wesley, the great hynm writer of Methodism, as a "mystic" for his deep appreciation of Christ in his music.   So I looked up Charles Wesley at You Tube, hoping to find some of his hmns read as potery.  Did find one but most of sung to music of coruse.  Also found  a biolgraphy of John Wesley which is worth posting:

John Wesley | The faith that Sparked the Methodist Movement | Full Movie | Russell Boulter - YouTube

Boy was life hard in those days.  How easy we have it.  

And here's a video of some of Charles' hymns sung:

church_Wesley's Chapel London - YouTube

And how about some John Bunyan to round this out.  Here's Pilgrim's Progress as an audio book.  Bunyan was a Puritan, theologically closer to Calvinism than Methodism.

Pilgrim's Progress - Puritan John Bunyan / Full Classic Christian Audiobook - YouTube

These are "the old Paths" P prefer to almost anything in our day because the churches today are so compromised in so many ways.  Methodism has gone almost completely liberal as have many other denominationsa.  Wokeism has taken over some congregations.  Feminism certain reigns in many.  

Joel Osteen Preacher of the Self Over Christ

 Owwwwwww!   Had no plans ever to listen to Joel Osteen based on what I've heard about him, but I had to hear some of it just so I'd know.   Scary

This isn't Christianity, it's the opposite of Christianity.  Positive thinking, Word of Faith, etc.  Speak only positive things and they weill come true.  You have power over your own life by what you say so if you say negative things you will have a negative outcome, positive things will bring you all kinds of happineness, success, desired relationships, blessings galore and so on.   This is supposedly all in the Word of God, it's what He wants for you.

At the beginning of his talks he has the audience chant something that inclues the line "This is my Bible:  I am what it says I am, I have what it says I have, I can do what it says I can do."   All the positive self images I'm sure, none of the negative ones.

What struck me is how that is the complete almost exact opposite of the chant of a fourteenth century mystic who was seeking God, 
I am nothing, I have nothing, I desire nothing but Jesus Christ.'

While I don't have much faith in chanting anything toward receiving blessings of any sort whether having the abundant life in this world or having the presence of God, the aims of the two sdifferent Christian pursuers are clearly entirely opposite from one another.  In the one I'm seeking my own wellbeing, in the other I'm seeking to get myself out of the way so that I can know God.    Osteen is Me forcuszed, the old mystics were God focused.

TThere is apparently no 
deny yourself and take up your cross
 in Osteen's ministry.    But that is the formula, if it can be called that, for drawing near to God.  Losing oneself.  Scripture says that if we will lose oursr lives for Christ's sake we will find them, but we will lose our lives if we seek to hold on to our lives.  But this is exactly what Osteen is praeching.  Holding on to your own life and enhandcing your own life.   That is how people lose Christ and if you lose Christ that is to lose everything.    This is an evil doctrine.

It is hard to deny the self.  Self is always popping up no matter what we do it seems.  I know from personal experience that if I do manage to choose against myself in this or that I am blessed with wonderful experiences of God.   I learned that years ago and then lost it, but I know that is where I want to go.  It is God that is our happiness, nothing in ourselves is real happiness no matter how successful we are.  In fact many people come to Christ from a sense of the emptiness of all their achievmeents.  How amazing it is to find teachers who promote those worldly achievements that can only leave a person ultimately empty and bereft of the presence of God.  

Osteen, like Beth Moore, commands whole stadiums of people with his Christless message of self-fulfillment.  

The Latest on the COVID Situation

Jan Markell's latest Understanding the Times radio show covers the usual sad litany of lies and corruption but also gives useful information about available health services.   The statistics are staggering and depressing and didn't have to happen but the Powers That Be have suppressed the needed treatments and pushed the dangerous ones.  As usual but it's the most recent As Usual.  

Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste – Twila Brase (rumble.com)

When the Best Embrace the False Reading of the Head Covering Passage I Know the Church is Doomed to Judgment.

Ontinuing to pursue the controversies about Beth Moore I wanted to hear John MacArthur's assessment, especially since he'd become a target himsedlf for a quick response he'd given ito a rather unfair challenenge a couple years ago.   I   All there seems to be along these lines is a talk he gavve that was captured only by someone in the audience apparently on a phone camera.  the sound is  e echoy but not too bad and I finally gave in and listened to the wholed thing.  

It's a very good biblical discussion fo the role of women in the Church and in the family, including an analysis of the Curse of the Fall.  I wanted to post it for  that reason alone, but then toward the very end, starting aroudn 50 on the counter, he decides he must address the issue of the woman's head covering in 1 corinthians 11, sand I'm SO disappointed.

John MacArthur | Response to Beth Moore and Women Pastors - YouTube

Who am I to disagree with John MacArthur?  He's probably the best preacher in the world today and I always get something out of his sermons.   I disagree with him about the Bible versions too so it's not as if I'm just a complete fan of his, but for the most part I am a fan.  He's the best.

As I think about it, getting this wrong is giving in to the very feminism he's so good at exposing and condemning.  To my mind this remains an open door to all the apostasies that have  been inundating the churches for years now.  It was eyeopening to me to hear, as I report in the previous post, that theologian Wayne gr4udem had identified feminist influences in the churches as the beginning of liberalism.   I'd wondered about that, it's seemed like an important possibility to me, and his research seems to have borne out my suspicion.

And to my mind the head covering is a hugely important emblem of that encroachment of feminism into the churches.    Beth Moore has the position she has because of it, that's my sad suspicion.  And it makes me cry.

MacArthur just gives the same old argument from culture that was foisted on the churches by Thomas Shrine.   It's been answered by many but I can't muster all that here and I don't remember a lot of it.  I think Michael Marlowe who called himself The BGible Researcher  did a particularly good job of showing that Shriner got it all wrong about the culturral  ppractices in Corinth at the time of Paul's writing.   But I can't make that argument here.

It's about the head, the literal skull that sits on top of our shoulders.  that's what it's about.  It's the symbol of authorityh that Paul is talking about.  It is not about appearing feminime or masculine.  There's isn't one shred of a hint in the passage that justifies that claim.  It's all about covering the head, the literal head as a symbol of the headship order ordained by God.   The hair that women tend to wear longer than men is given as a clue to the meaning that it's about the head and nothing else.  The long hair of women covers the head.   

I also  think it is particularly telling that we require men to remove their headgear on the basis of this passage.  And for all the centuries up until the twentieth century women were also required to cover their heads.  but all of a sudd3en when feminism was getting to be a force against the chur ches suddenly we stop requiring it, and it is justified by this flimsy and erroneous excuse for an analysis of culture that has influenced all the best churches in the co7untry and the world.   

It's particularly sad to me when he goes into some detail about the watching angeles who would be offended by a violation of God's ordinances.   As I see it that's what we are doing all the time these days, offending the obedient angels by not requiring that women cover our heads in the assembly.  IIt hurts.

Well, so much for any hopes I've had that it might be reversed and the churches start to find their way badck from the capitulation to the culture that is rampant these days.   Even if a church hasn't gone liberal and still maintains good Bible preaching it's got to be compromised in some way by embracing such a false view of a Bible passage.  

Down swe go.  All I can do is cry.

I'll add this thought.  If I'm wrong I want to know it and I'd be very very happy to be wrong about this.  I've prayed about it and will go on praying abou5t it in the hope that the Lord will give me a clear confirmation or disconfirmation of the wqay I think about this.   If I see clearly that I'm wrong about it IK'll come back and correct my statements here.

Beth Moore and the Role of Women in the Church; Which Gets Me Back to the Women's Head Covering As a Possible pPivotal Infleucne in the churches in the Direction of Apostasy.

The Wikipedia article about Beth Moore reports that she recently left the Southern Baptist Convention to become a member of the Anglican Church because the former holds a Complementarian view of the role of women in the Church while the latter are egalitarians.  complementarianism holds to the biblical view that women are under the headship of male leaders in the Church, while egalitarianism is the doctrine of equality of roles for both sex3es in the Church.  

Here is a video I found by someone whose name I didn't catch who lays out the case as I understnand it myself.  He quotes Beth as claiming that Complementarianism is not biblical but a doctrine of men, which is quite wrong as it is completely biblical.  

eth Moore Criticizes Male Leaders - YouTube

He also refers to Wayne Grudem's presentation of the evidence that liberalism in the churches starts with feminist egalitarianism, which is an interesting piece of information to me as I've often wondered if the fact that the churches have abandoned the head covering for women was a pivotal point in the degneration of the churchews today .   the head covering symbolizes male headship and the position of women as under male leadership.  That makes a prominent leader like Beth Moore a violator of the biblical order given by God.

She has apparently already endorced Critical Race Theory in the Church, although I'm not completely clear about that, and I know she strongly opposes Trump because of his locker room talk that got captured on video and spreade abroad.  Although that was a pretty objectionable incident the fact is that it was exposed by the Left to smear Tr7ump while they carefully protect Leftist politicians from that sort of exposure.  We know now, or at least some of the conservatives know, that Biden not only talked about what Trump talked about he actually did it and a woman complain4ed.   And we just don't know anything about the private lives of many other Democrats.  We found out about Kennedy's womanizing eventually but that's probably just the tip of the iceberg.

So this speaker is looking for Moore to keep sliding into Leftist positions.  

he recHe recommends an interview by Justin Peters of a Christian woman leader Susan Hecht about Beth Moore so I am listening to that and will post that information:

An Interview With Susan Heck On Beth Moore - YouTube

Susan Hecht sounds like a  trustworthy Bible teacher who should be the main reference for bible studies instead of Beth Moore.     this interview is a good overview of Moore.

So I think I should end this with another emphasis on the women's head covering.  It's such an emblem of the whole complementarian theology of women's role in the Church.  So many times I've wondered if  the abandonment of this practice has something to do with the drift into apostasy in so many churches.  there are certainly many churches where it is not practices but the church is orthodox in spite of irt, but since my own study of it led me to such a strong undeerstanding that we are in fact required to cover our heads in the sanctuary.    

We require men to UNcover their heads and that comes from the same scripture passage.  It was a theologian who is a part of a sstrong complementarian ministry who wrote the article that destroyed the time honored understanding of that passage as requiring a literal head covering, interpreting it as meaning just that women should take care to appear feminine in our dress and that sort of thing.  It's poisoned the churches.   I've  documented all this on my blog Hidden Glory.  I keep thinking this is a linch pin issue, that wif churches got back to requiring it we might see a reversal of the trend to apostasy and a revival of the Church with the power we've lacked for so long to have an influence in the culture.    

WelThis topic is not mentioned by ANY teacher I know of, including all those I particularly appreciate as true Bible teachers.  Out here in the cyber boonies I have no ability to influence anything in the church and I don't know if I could even function in such a role, but I nevertheless hope that what I say out here might be picked up by someone and passed on to someone who could make a difference.  It's up to the LORD and so far it's not happening.  Nevertheless I continue to think this is a pivotal problewm in the churches.

Beth Moore Different Impression

 The Wikipedia article on Beth Moore makes her sound a lot more legitimate than I got from listening to the recent series.  She's written books with good titles.  Her background is pretty standard evangelical Christian.  She worked with Kay Arthur whose Biblie Studies I've always considered to be completely legitimate and good Christian teaching.

So now I'm confused because my impression was of somebody who is rather unhinged.   And that first one I saw really is as crazymaking as I said it was.  

Nevertheless I'll have to come back to her later and review her case when my first impressions have died down.  

Maybe I'm Getting a Scrambled Brain From Hearing Too Much Beth Moore

Well, considering that I really don't have much patience with all this I need to keep what I say to a minimum.  Maybe I can come back to it later with more understanding than I have at the moment.  

I've listened to more of Beth Moore and I don't know if she's making more sense or I'm getting used to her.  She still throws in some silly non sequiturs.  I still want to call her the Queen of Gobbledygook.  But as with most false teachers she says some good things mixed in with the nonsense.  Same with that book Jesus Calling.  There are good messages all mixed in with its heresies.  In Moore's cae it may not be heresies, but it is a strange kind of disjointedness and to my mind ultimate meaninglessness.

This series I've been listening to is called The Art of Growing Up which is in itself an oddely inappropriate way of characterizing the passage in Ephesians 4 she's supposedly wrapping this theme around.  Growing up into the stature of Christ knit together with the Body in unity through our spiritual gifts == there's just something wrong about the way she turns that into a series about growing up in the  usual earthly sense.    Yes it is a kind of clang association on the term growing up.  The words don't mean the same thing in the different contexts.  

The Art of Growing Up - Part 1 of 4 | Beth Moore - YouTube

Growing up into Christ is about confessing and repudiating sin, where is that in her teaching?  It's about knowing the life and character of Christ so as to become more like Him.  All the talk about finding our purpose seems sort of related but it's so abstract and so easily taken over by the worldly context it's hard to know what to make of it.  

We need to go back to the old ways.  There are some current preachers who are good but these crowd-pleasing entertainers should be avoided even when they are saying some true things.    The glibness is unerving even when something true is being said.    There's something wrong with it all and I'm having trouble pinning it down.

Beth Moore the Seducer and Entertainer

Here's Part 4 of her series on Growing Up, which that other one was part of also.  Here she's being what I'd call the entertainer and the distractor.  As in the other one she took a biblical messahge about groowing into the character of  Christ and made it into a messabgge about not letting yoruselve be treated as a child, here's she's doing the same thing.  Using the passage in Ephesians about growing up into Christ together with all the other memebers of the Church with all our spiritual gifts working together to unity in the faith, and while seeming to talk in that Christian context she does a lot of antics that are more about everyday life.  She's got a stage linbed up with props, a baby's high chair, a bicycle, car seats and a steering wheel so she can dramatize her pionts.  Again rather disjointed points but it's not as garbled and disconnected as the other one, more a case of taking scripture and garbling it with meaningless nonbiblical content.

It's supposed to be about finding our Christian calling, at least that's how she presented it at first, and I end up not knowing really what the message is supposed to be in the end.  I have to admit, however, that I have too little patiences to spend much time on this one.  It's not as clearly crazymaking as the other one but it's also not much of a Christian messabge either.  

Most of the people who are drawn to this sort of thing must not be genuine born again Christians.  How could they be?  The fare is empty of much in the way of Christian teaching.  

What draws people in such huge numbers to these "Christian" h seducers.  Interesting by the way that she has a short messabge about seduction which starts out seeming to talk about the kind of seduction a Christian should fear, being seduced away spiritually from Christ, but uses language and imagery to make it into an orderinary fleshly seduction although it's really not at all clear what she means since her terms are so general and abstract.    Anyway, SHE's the seducer.

As is Joel Osteen and all the Prosperity teachers, and all those who get these gigantic audiences.  There is no real attracttion here for the christian as far as I can see.  The attraction is just the usual attraction to entertainment with a sorta kkinda message about improving uyyo8uir life.  

After writing this I went back and heard more and she's now talking clearly about sesxual seduction.  It's a good enough message in itself but as I keep finding out in these videos it has no clear connection to the overall theme of finding our calling and even less connection with the scripture in Ephsians which is about Christians growing together into the characvter of Christ.  

I'm sorry to think that true Christians are being led away by these things.   

What's Driving You? | The Art of Growing Up - Part 3 of 4 | Beth Moore - YouTube

What On Earth Is Beth Moore Doing? Portentous Sounding Nonsense

Beth Moore is a current popular Christian teacher I'd seen in brief clip-s now and then as she came up in the preaching of teachers I follow, but I had no interest in finding out more about her until I realized she was a guiding light in a bible Study in my building.   I'd thought of her as a possibly biblical enough teacher who was wrong as a woman to comman a congregation of people but that was about it.  

Now wanting to know more about her I found a video at You Tube in which she's speaking to a huge audience for a fairly short time as sermons go, and watched it:

Your Freedom is Coming | Beth Moore | The Art of Growing Up Part 4 of 4 - YouTube

The experience needs a lot more discussion than I'm going to be able to give it here.  The experience was stunning.  I've listened to it three times so far to see if I can pin down exactly what she's doing and my conclusion to this point is that it's literally crazy-making, even technically speaking "schizophrenogenic."  

That is, what she says makes no logical sense at all.  It's a string of non sequiturs all passionately delivered as if she's saying something important.  They are often held together if at all by something I learned in basic Psy7ch yeyears ago is known as a "clang association," that is, ideas related by something incidental in the language, the sound of a word though the ideas themselves are not related to each other by meaning.  So sfor instance she starts out with a quote about how if Jesus drives all the passenbgers thrive.

Just the fact that the words "driv

es" and "thrive" don't rhyme perfectly was enough to derail me for a mome nt since it would have been easy enough to create an exact rhyme.  That made me think the dissonance was intendxded.  Dissonance scrambles your mind and that seems to be the intent and it goes on throughtout her talk on more than one level.  And this one is a side issue anyway because where she goes from that quote is into an impassioned statement about how she wants Jesus to be the driver of her desire.  

Eh wot?  What does hthat have to do with Jesus driving or leading "passengers" which presumably means His influence as leader is what we all need?  What does that have to do with jesus as driving our "desire?  And in fact what does that phrase mean at asll?

Then she abruptly switches to quoting Ephesians 4 where Payul is expressing his hope that the Ephsians will grow up into Christ our head, which of course means he wants to see them become more and more conformed to the character of Christ.  Already a switch from her passionately declared  statement about wanting Jesus to be the driver or her desire or however that went, to Jesus as our model we are told in more than one place to conform to as a model of charactedr.   

But from there she suddenly says she's going to say something very "bold" ahnd she hopes it will be heard in the Spirit rather than in the flesh "as some kind of permissiveness" or something like that.  So now one's ears are alerted to some kind of bold statmeent about our christian growth into the character of Christ.  Which is already miles from the idea that if Jesus drives all passengers thrive or the idea that she wants Him to be the driving desire of her life.  Now suddenly she launches into an admonition about how "we" let ourselves be talked down to as children  and don't claim our rrightful state of maturity and authority ovewr our children etc.  

Eh wot?

All this is delivered in a very portentous voice, very emphatic, very emotionjal.  All of it, each unrelated thought of it.  So many of bher terms are biblical that adds to the sense of the importance of her message although there is really no message here at all, just a string of wild images that bounce from onme to the next AS IF they are related though they aren't.  

SpeakiSpeaking portentous sounding nonsense was a technique of hypnosis promoted by a well known psychologist back in the sixties and seventies although I can't remember his name.  If an authority, or anyobody perhaps, speaks to you in what seems to be a tone of great seriousness but what is actually said makes no sense, it will put you into a hypnotic trance.  

Is

 that what is driving the popularity of 

Moore?  And is

 she doing this intentionally, consciousnly or is her mind just that scramblecd?   

She goes on from her impassioned statement about how we should not let ourselves be treated as children though we are grownups, which of course has nothing to do with growing up into the character of Cbhrist, on to images of the apostle Paul beaten up but managing to survive, given with a quote from the book of Acts, and something about how she is sure we would all want to identify with him without being beaten up, but only when he was being the hero and getting up to go bac k to his work, which has nothing to do with anything she's said before.  

Oh it goes on like that from one biblical quote and image to another until the auddience must be reeling.  What are they doing with this stuff?  Maybe getting somekind of message out of the fragments she tossses out, say lealearning that she shouldn't let their children talk down to them or something like that?  Or maybe that Jesus should be their driving desire?  Or that they should notice how they are unwilling to identify with Paul in his sufferings but only in his triumphs?  Which bit of this word salad are they taking to heart?  Beause I can't imagine they think there's anything continuous or coherent in her talk so I figure they must be picking out fragments and thinking they are getting the message.  But I don't know.  

What I do know 

is that in this particular talk she is talking portentous sounding nonsense.  Ande I don't know if this talk is typical, and I don't know if she is doing it intentionally or if she's just as crazy as she sounds.  That is, if you aren't just carried away and have the mental ability to notice that she isn't making sense.

Very Inspiring Book by Charles Spurgeon at You Tube: According to Promise

My eyes are too back to read the menus this morning but I really want to post the link to a book bty Charles Spurgeon I've been listening to at You Tube.  I hope I can see better later and come back to post the link but here I'll just say the book is "According to Promise" and I'm finding it a treasure house for me personally and suppose it must be that for others too.  As often happens the reader's voice and accent are a bit of a problem, for me anyway, and maybe i shouldn't mention it ut I don't want it to put anybody off listening to this book.    It's more a style problem rally, something that should be overlooked but I seem to be overly sensitive to such things.   

Back with the link when I can.  But searching on Spurgeon According to Promise at You Tube should do it.

Being Yoked with Unbelievers is Also a Cause of the Weakness of the Churches

A strong Church, a doctrinally  sound Church, a Church with pastor and members that pray long hours for each other and for revival.  How I wish.  

Besides all the bad teachings that are corrupting the churches there is this extremely bad pidea that it's OK to get together with members of other religions and cultus such as Mormons or Jews or roman catholics or Muslims and so on,, thinking it's a nice thing to include them and if the focus is on the Bibble then there's a chance they'kll learn the truth.

But they won't.  Most of them already know at least some of the Bible and it makes no difference at all, they think it justifies their false beliefs.  And meanwhile true Christians are compromised by their presence.  Asw I've pointed out many times "ecumenical prayer" which includes those other religions is like Elijah praying with the priests of Baal.   It's hard to grasp how off base Christians can be that they think God could bless such a  prayer.  Since the prayer breakfasts in Washington DC are of this "ecumenical" sort it's no wonder the nation keeps sinking lower and lower despite all their earnest prayer.  And the National Cathedral is a horror of liberal theology as well as treating all religions as the same.

I wish there was a way to get the message out to all the churches, but then that's just wishful thinking, isn't it>  Even if they got the message they'd just scoff at it as too narrow and fundamentalist or something.

Judgment, Revival Hope, Judgment, Revival Hope, Judgment, Revival Hope.

I've been saying for years that the US is under God's judgment, also that the churches are in such  bad shape we can't expect God to give us a revival.  But I keep hoping I'm wrong.  Couldn't the erring churches repent and reform, give up their false teachings about heaven experiences and Jesus Calling and the rest of the bad teachers and seek God from a pure doctrinal position and He'd give us a revival?  And if that happened then we could get somewhere pushing back the evils of the culture.

I still hope even when I keep finding out how much worse it is thanb eveb U gad tgiyggt,

Sigh

Come soon, Lord Jesus.

Do We "Throw Out the Baby With the Bath Water" When we Condemn All "Mysticism" as False?

Since I try to expose false Christian teachings which usually means experience-based practices that slight the biblical revelation, while at the same time I have positive things to say about a sort of "mysticism" that I think is legitimate, it can get confusing.  When I have to get into something like the Jesus Calling book as I  as I just did I do start wond3ering if maybe I should just completely abandon any defense of anything that goes by the name "mysticism" and maybe i should.  I need to pray more about that.  Even A. W. Tozer can be wrong after all even though Ihe bases his "higher life" teachings on the Bible and emphasizes the Bible as the foundation of everything we do as Christians.

Maybe I will eventually have to renounce my own arguments along these lines but since it has come up again I just want to make the case once more.   John MacArthur is always denouncinbg the "higher life" as a delusion and that sort of thing and I just heard a vid3eo in which he says that again.

So my defense is that all the "higher life" is is experiences that come to people who spend more than the usual amount of time pursuing the usual normal Christian biblical practices.   People who do say morning devotions, Bible reading and prayer for half an hour or so or even an hour, then maybe an eventing prayer time as well, aren't going to have this sort of experience.  But those who pant after God to the point that they spend hours in prayer and Bible reading and Bible meditation beecause they have an unusual passion or zeal for the things of God are very likely to have extgraordinary experiences of God.   No, not audible speaking, but inhtensified messages of great clarity through the bible, deep experiences of love for God that can carry you away, that can be called as the old mystics called them, "transports<' experiences of great peace, deep peace, experiences of "glory" as Jessie Penn Lewis described hers, and so on.    These come often with self-denial, denying self, taking up the cross and following Him.    These things are BIBLICAL.  And I think that's all Tozer is talking about.  When all you hear is debunkery of such things you are likely to get cooled down to the poinbt that you stop spending "too much" time with the Lord.   I think that's what tozer was complaining about in his introduction to his book The Pursuit of God.

Fasting is also biblical but we don't hear that preached much outside of charismatic circles where it gets used to promote some bad teaching.  This is too bad because it IS biblical, and it DOES promkote deeper experiences of God.  It brings more spiritual power, more self denial, more ability to actually do good in the world around us.  It can bring an "anointing" that draws people to the gospel, and anointing is another concept that is too often denounced by people who are so woreried about the mystical they quench every tiny way it might be expressed.

It is true that the extra passion and extra zeal that can deepen one's experience of God can also get demons involved and that has to be guarded against.   The most trustworthy of the mystics, in my opinion. are always warning about being misled and the need for special care and prayer against deception.

Reading or listening to Christian books is a legitimate part of the normal Christian life, but of course it matters WHAT books you are reading.  Jesus Calling is not the right direction.  Nor The Shack.  Nor The Prayer of Jabok.  Nor The Purpose Driven Life.  Etc.  But there's plenty of Charles Spurgeon out there, and J C Rule and i'd recommend that kind of reading myself.  I'm listening to a You tube audible book by SPurgeon, at the moment titled According to Promise.  It has som some very inspiring chapters in it that could carry a person away with "mystical transports" I suppose.

Jesus Calling Part 2

As I listened to various critical discussions of this book  in the end the one that stood out as the best expose of its heretical New Age character was Warren B. Smith as interviewed by Janet Medford, so I wanted to make sure I highlighted that one in a separate post:

Warren B Smith - Serious Problems With Jesus Calling - YouTube

The book Jesus Calling is one of the latest and maybe the biggest piece of heresy to be accepted by Christians.

It's disappointing to find out that Christians I know are enthralled with a teaching that seems to me to be herettical or close to it and it may take me a while to catch up with my o9wn impression of it because I really don't want to think that's true.  Although I want to keep up with the errors that are affrecting Christians it's such an unpleasant task to familiarize myself with such teachings I neglect the obligation.  

Then something happens so that i can't avoid it.  That happened recently as ai discovered that a group of Christians meeting for Bible Study used two sources I know to be false, and a couple others were referred to approvingly.  The book "Jesus Calling" is read as part of the meeting, and one of the materials that was handed out was a teaching by Beth Moore.  Both these teachings are at least close to heretical.  The more I find out about Jesus Calling the more outright heretical it appears to be.

My own gfirst take on it was, is this writer saying she actually heard these words from Jesus or is she just putting words in His mouth that she thinks express His thoughts or what?  In either case this is highly questionabhle to put it mildely.   My second thought was Why would Jesus need to talk through this woman and why would He need to say the things He says here if it is Him which I doubt.  the message that day was about the importance of thankfulness, a perfectly biblical idea but my question is Why do we need a special commm7unication from jesus to be aware of this biblical teaching?  We can find it in scripture and take it to heart from there.

Since i've been avoiding this kind of thing for a long time I wasn't familiar with this  so I've had to spend some time finding out more about it.  Fortunately You Tube has plenty of discussion of it.  Most of the discussion is repetitive but I did like the one by a yo8ung college student who went a bit further into it than the others I'd heard:

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE JESUS CALLING DEVOTIONALS - YouTube

As I was thinking about it I realized the main sign when it comes to content of any teachihing I suspect of being a heresy is that the gospel message is neglected or distorted in some way so as to obscure it.  That is a sure sign that the author of the teaching is demonic.  This colleege student Angela touches on this problem but doesn't go into depth about it.   She mentioned hearing Michael Horton, a Refored Pastor, had discussed the book so I wanted to find what he had to say:I ccouldn't find Michael Horton on You tube so I suppose he has a written article somewhere that I won't be able to find .  But there's a lot of discussion on You tube anyway.  Here's Justin Peters:

Justin Peters on Jesus Calling and divine revelation knowledge - YouTube

nd here's a former New Age practitioner Warren Smith being interviewecd on a radio show:

Warren B Smith - Serious Problems With Jesus Calling - YouTube

The book has New Age connections and Gnostic connections according to many of these videos.  The main thing is that this is not Jesus Christ talking.  I would think if we stopped to hear it a Chrtistian should be able to recognize that it's not His voice.  "Myh sheep hear My voice" He told us.  This is not His voice.    

Jesus Calling is heresy.  I hope the message gets out to more Christians.

Chris Pinto radio show on the Scarlet Beast of Revelation as Communism, and another on the Georgia Guidestones

Chris Pinto on his latest Noise of Thunder radio show talks about interpretations of the scarlet beast of the ook of Revelation as Communism as we are seeing it today, interpretations that go back to the early nineteenth century, Alexander Hislop being a major voice.  I've often mentioned his book "The Two Babylons" which traces the pagan religions from Nimrod to the Roman Catholic Church, but he also wrote a book titled "The Red Republic" which makes a connection between Rom and Communism and the scarlet beast of Revelation.  

 THE SCARLET COLORED BEAST - 07.21.2022 by Chris Pinto (soundcloud.com

And here's Pinto's previous radio show on the Geogia guidestones.  Somebody blew up the monument on July 6th and he goes into the background of who might have had the motive to do that.  Pinto did a documentary in 2015 by the way, called Dark Clouds Over Elberton, which is an investigtion into the Guidesones in which they managed to uncover the identify of the man who had them erected.  Few seem to know about this expos.  but of coruse there's a lot of globaility communist lore involving them that nneed s to be explored.

GEORGIA GUIDESTONES & THE GLOBAL AGENDA - 07.15.2022 by Chris Pinto (soundcloud.com)

Dawkins Says Geologist Kurt Wise A Disgrace to the Human "Species"

 Kurt Wise, who has degrees in Geology and Paleontology, one from Harvard,  has famously said that even if all the evidence in the universe supported evolution he would be the first to acknolwledge it but still be a Young Earth Creationist, which is what got himj such an excoriating denunciation from Dawkins.  

Of course Dawkins doesn't believe the Bible himself but you'd think he could grasp the thinking of someone who does.  I could be wrong but as a Young Earth Creationist myselelf I understand WQise to be saying that no matter how much evidence there may seem to be that we have no answer to, nevertheless because we know the bible to be Go'ds word we know it is wrong, and maybe someday we can prove it's wrong.  Meanwhile we stand with God even if all the  world is against us.

I personally think cbiblical creationists have shown in ma ny ways that it's false but because the evidence of any historical science is mostly a matter of imaginative reconstructions that can't be proved we can't get anywhere showing them that it's false.

Mutational Variation is a pipe dream for starters, then natural selection cuts it down anyway.

 Yes, natural selection, and indeed any kind of selection whatever, the most common most likely being simple geographic isolation of a portion of a population, means a loss of genetic diversity to the new populationj as compared with the parent population.  This reduction in genetic diversity means that evolution has a natural limit bewyond which no more genetic variation is possibl.

But they always think that mutation imakes up the difference, insofar as they notice there is a problem at all, which of course they don't, I've tried to point it out for years.  Mutation is  always the answer and my answer to that is that it doesn't matter what the cause of the variation is, natural selection MUST reduce genetic diversity, that's how it works.  Mutation or not mutation there is a limitation to evolution built into the processes that bring about change.

But this idea that mutation could contribute anything positive at all is crazymaking.  I just watched a couple of videos making that claim.  Oh golly gosh, mutation is the CAUSE of variation.  WSigh.  If you have a population of black mice a mutation may occur that makes one white and on a white background that mouse will survive predatory birds while the black ones will be picked off, so the white mice will proliferate.

Sigh.
First the idea that mutations just popp up when need3ed is a biizarre article of faith.  If mutations so easily cam along to save the day for any species surely they would have saved the dcheetah long ago by now, but no, the poor cheetah goes on generation after generation with no mutation coming to the resue, endangered as always by 8its genetic depletion.

No.  Plain old Mendelian genetics is all we need to explain variation.  In a word, heterozygosity.  When you have two alternatives for a gene you get vriation.  The recessive alternate may not appear in the phenotype for some generations but when it does if it is beneficial it will proliferate in the populationj.  So once in a while black mice on a black background will get a white individual in its midles.  It will be eaten by a big bir.  but if a few more appear over time and they wander onto the white sand near the lava flow it is the black mice that will get eaten.  

You don't need anything more than normal heterozygosity for this kind of variation to occur in any population.  A And heterozygosity is really what genetic variability IS.  It's when you get a population of homozygous genes for asalient traits that become the only genetic gype in the population that you can't get variation.  This is the natural limit to evolution.  It's the common situation in engangered species and it is alwso what used to be the definition of a purebred in domestic breeding.  The more fixed loci or homoZygous genes the more a breed will "breed true.
   And that's what breeders used to want, until it was disocvered that this genetic condition usually brings genetic weaknesses and diseases with it, so they've had to modify their standared.

Ha ha.  They've got such an investment in their fake theory I guess there's no may to get them to see the truth.  

Sigh.

Confined to the Spiritual Outskirts By Orthodox Biblical Christianity, Mysticism Contains Depths Too Many Never Get tEven An Inkling Of

Every now and then an excellent Bible expositor will tabe a little jab at "mysticism," such as in mocking what he considers to be an unwarranted mystical interpretation of a particular biblical text.  Sometimes the expositor is undoubtedly right, if there really is such an interpretation which in some cases I've heard I really don't know, but the impulse to mock the "mystical" does grate on me.  It's an unfortunate word because it covers both good and bad "mystical" experiences, but we're stuck with the word as Tozer seemed to know.  He put together the book "The Christian Book of Mystical Verse" and felt it necessary to use the term although he was at pains to explain that it is nothing more than expressions of biblical truth experienced at a depth most people don't have or even think of pursuing.

I don't want to get into this subject beyond once again pointing it out as a neglected area of Christian experience, an area Tozer says is too often cramped and shriveled by a zealous attendance to the truths of biblical faith.   If you don't seek God beyond the usual level of daily devotions and Bible reading and medication you'll never discover that God can be known in personal experience beyond anything you can imagine.  Just try a few days of intensifying the usual prayer and Bible reading with fasting, with an aim to know god better.  You might be amazed.

 <a href=The Pursuit of God | A.W. Tozer | Free Christian Audiobook ->THE PURSUIT OF GOD by A W Tozer</a>

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Hint:  If you don't know that the Song of Solomon is about the love between God and His saints you just don't get it.

Hitchens vs Dembski Debate

 The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the only  right way to have this debate between believers and atheists is to argue from the Bibl3e.  Philosophy is a lost cause for the Christian point of view.  There is no value in defending theism as a general principle wince it can support antibiblical and therefore antiGod  positions such as evolution.  There is simply no point in this.  Debski tries to do this here and it isn't until the very end when he finally starts to argue from the Bible that he makes any worthwhile points in this debate, as I see it anyway.   

Hitchens gets away with all sorts of things thta should hvae been soundly squashed early on from the Biblical perspetive.  Dembski says he is sticking to the philosophical perspective because he believes that's what the rules of the debate require, meaning that's how you have to argue for God's existence.  But why?  The Biblie gives plenty of evidence for God's existence and I think the Christian debaters make a big mistake not to work out their best arguments from that source.

Hitchens makes arguments against the idea of a loving Creator God based on the evils and destructive elements in this world and the universe itself, and it isn't until the very end that Dembski finally says that this world is not the world God originaloly created but the broken world of death and deisease and destruction and sin that was the conseque3nces of the Fall, the original sin of our ficrfirst parents in eating of thte forbidden rtree.  As Paul says in Roma ns 5, death came through the sin of the one man Adam, and sin and death have reigned in the human race ever since because we are all descended from Not exactly part of the debate problem , Adam.  So all arguments that this world doesn't look like the lovely place created by a loving God is easily answered from the Bible.  It ISN'T that original lovely created place.  And the reason is sin, disobediencde of God.

Hitchens makes a couple of comments I have to answer:   I get so tired of hearing this lie that Israel is occdupying lands that are not theirs.  No, they bought whatever belongs to anyone sle and own it rightly, but the fact is that there were very few people living in that area when the Jews cam e to settle the land.  Mark Twain described it as a barren wilderness.  and the "Palestinians" today are NOT natives of that area, they are a motley collection of Arabs from all over the Middle Easy who cfame to work for Israel cdas it was building up its land and settlements.  They were made refugees by the Arabs that attacks Israel, who warned them to flee before the attack.  They are not Palestinians and never were Palestinians.  

He also informs us that we're only half a chromosome away from chimps and that we are all  covered with hair at some stage in the womb.  Well, I looked up the hair, it's not ALL of us but SOME of us who get this hair coat in the womb and if you think it makes us look like chimp babies you'll be disabused of that notion when you read that it's "fine" and "downy" hair.   And although half a chromosome doesn't seem like much of  a a difference I think we really need to know more about this supposed massive similarity.  In any case the similarity can be accounted for by the similairties in body structure which is what DNA is all about after all, there being no reason whatever to assume genetic relatedness on the basis of phyisocal similarities though this is what the evolutionists are always doing.   Design similarity is enough of an explanation.  W DNA makes the bodies needed by animals and humans to navigate this physical world.  Each animal has it's own particular body plan and ours although similar to chimps is not the same body plan at all the way say all cats have the same body plan or all dogs or all tri.lobites.  The proportions are too different.  

Abnd then he ends with an objection to the authoritarian nature of God.  He wouldn't want to have a father who had authority over him every minute of his life and would never go away.  And he thinks all religion is authoritarian  the way Islam is or Roman Catholicism.  Well I agree that those two religions are totalitarian buty that's because they are pagan religions.   Romani Catholicism killed fifty million true Christians in six hundred years of the Middle Ages.  There is nothing Christian about that.  And Islam prescribes murdering all non Muslimas.  That is nothing at all like true Christianity which was recovered at the Protestant Reformation.    The liberties and rights of individuals in western civilization all come from True Christianity if only through the cultural versions of it.  No,not from rationalism.

As for God being authoritarian, it's hard on us as fleshly human beings because we are at odds with God, but through faith we are a new creation that is in tune with the Creator God so that there is nothing but perfect agreement between our nature and His.  The fleshly unregenerate human being is always at odds with God but salvation is the recovery of our essential alignment with Him so that all our thoughts are as His thoughts and we can enjoy Him forever more as the Westminster catchism tell sus.   

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Sam Harris Attacks Religion" From an Abysmally Ignorant Position

For a few weeks at least, I've been listening to atheist talks and debates against 
religion" and it's pretty depressing both how ignorant the atheists are and how much hatred they bear against believers, believers in any religion but  of course the fact that they hate Christianity is the most depressing thing.   Christianity built western civilization and they have no idea.  They attribute the rights and freedoms so recently won in the history of the world to their own rationalism.  They are abyssmally ignornat.  

TGhis talk by Sam Harris is introduced by a guy who is nearly beside himself with hatred for "religion".

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apparently some years ago holding forth against religion.  I don't know when this was but apparently during the Bush administration.  I gather this atheistic aggresion there is so much of on the internet got started as a restul of the attack on the Wtc on Nine Eleven.  But instead of focusing on Islam they attack all 

religion" and treat Christianity as essentially the same kind of thing as Islam.  This is pernicious ignornance, scary scary evil ignignorance.  

My eyes are worse than usual today so I know this post is already a horrendous mess.  I hope I'll be able to fix it later but I don't know.

All I think I'll answer her is one thing Sam Harris said and maybe do more in a later post.  He is chiding George Bush for referring to our "god give rights" and complains that golly gosh Mr Bush which god are you tlaking about.  Poseidon?  The ignorance here is glaring.  It is our own founding documents, our American documens, specifically the Declaration of independence, that says our rights are God Given.  "We hold these truths to be self evidence, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights..."  Remember?  Why argue against Bush. when it's right there in our aMAmerican founding documents.  And if you haven't noticed, all the nations of Europe are likewise dedicated in one way or another to the same Creator God.   Not Poseidon but the God of the Bible, the God of Christianity.

No the Restrainer is Not the Holy Spirit and TGhere Is Nothering to Be rfestrained about the Antichrist Before the Tribulation

 Ah well, it seems to bbe my spiritual gift to raise questions about other people's theologies.  Oh well.  An odd one I admitg but it's where I alwayss gravitate.  ANYWAY, this time it's again about Jan Markell's eschatology.  This week's radio show had a guest who gave the usual interpretation of the Restrainer. I'm sorry I didn'g look up the verse first, it's the verse where Paul stells the Thessalonians that the Antichrist won't be reveals until "he who restrains 

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The problem is that this is interpreted as if it said the power or existence or activityh of the Antichrist can't occur until this Restrainer is "out of the way."  But all it says is that this Antichrist won't be REVEALED until then.  And surely it needs to be recognized that Paul is using very cryuptic language to avoid saying exactly who this Restrainer is, but why?  The popular interpretation is that He's the Holy Spirit or the Holy Spirit in the CHurch, but this makes no sense because there is no reason whatever why Paul would find it necessary ro be so careful about his language if it was the Holy Spirit.  No dire consequences would follow from identifying the Holy Spirit as the Restrainer.

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But dire consequences wouldcertainly follow if the Antichrist was to be a usurper of the role of Caesar, which could certainly be said of thePope in the seventh century which is when the Bishop of Rome assumed that role, and the Restrainer was Caesar himself since Caesar would be threatened by such a claim.  

This is one bit of the Pre Trib Rapture scenario I definitely reject.  I think the Roman Church was rthe Great Apostasy and all this happened in the Weventh century and the Roman Church under the papacy continued to reign throughout the next millennium until the Protestant Reformation.  Certainly we can suppose that the Great Apostasy could resume in the last days just as I would assume that the papapc6y will again be in the ascendant and will no doubt be the seat of the ANtichrist during the Tribulation.  

I mighr as well add here that the Pre Wrath position does make some sense to me, and that was sdiscussed on Jan Markell's radio show troday too.  Nevertheelss that one also has problems, questions and doubts in my mind.  All of the different eschataologies have some problem or another as I see it.

Supposedly the First Horseman of the Apocalypse can't ride until the Church is Raptured, the first horseman being the antichrist, the Church being the possessor of the Holy Spirit.

What is "Our Blessed Hope?"

 I have bcked off the Pre-Tribulation Rapture end times scenario but that doesn'[t mean I'vew arrived anywhere else yet.  I have questions and doubts about all the different eschatologies and in some cases, ull preterism and Amillennialism for instance, I reject them completely.  

ere's another problem I have with the Pre-Tr4ib rapture position:  Jan Markell is always saying that the Rapture is "our blessed hope" according to Titus 2:13, but as I read that passage it's not talking about the Rapture or it may or may not be, it's not all t that definite as she claims it is.   It ways we are waiting for the blessed hope of the "florious appearing of our Lord and Savior Jesus Chirst."  That's the Second Coming.  to attribute that to the Rapture is simply to assume the Pre-Trib Eschatology, but in any eschatology we all anitcipate the blessed hope of Jesus' appearing to take us home to be with Him.  I don't know why Jan is so adamant that there is only that one way of reading it.

If we are to escape the events of the Tribulation then the blessed hope would be the Rapture, band I find that argument convincing, but it's nevertheless true that the tibus passage is talking about the GLORIOUS return of Christ and that's not the Rapture.

Why Do GOod Christians Always Forget the Meaning of the Fall?

 John Lennox is probably the best, though certainly at least one of the best, debates against the atheists on the side of Christianity.  I heard him against Richard Dawkins a while back and here he is in another debate though I don't know who he is debateing this time as I've only heard his talk.  As usual he's excellent.

BUT.  Why is it that so many otherwise good solid orthodox Christians stumble on the Problem of Pain>  Ireally don't get it.  He said that this is the biggest problem he's had to face in his Christian life.  Why?   Surely the Fall explains it all.  The Fall is certainly orthodox theology, why is it so often forgotten in this context?

This world is not the world God created, this is a world destroyed by sin and by judgment for sin brought by God, especially in the worldwide Flood of Noah.  From the moment our first parents disobeyed God by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which He had forbidden to them, we hvave been subject to every kind of injury, disease and death, every kind of suffering and pain.  All these things are the death that God said would be the consequence of their disobedience and because we are all the genetic descendants of Adam we inherit the death that he brought into the world.    Jesus has brought us healing for the Fall but it isn't yet a full healing and won't be until He has returned and reclaimed His Creation.

A Blast At Science's Contemptible Misrepresentation of Christianity

 I'm SO tired of hearibng this from the smug "science" people  and stheists who  attack "religion" as a mental aberration.  Richard Dawkins carries on in this way and here's someone else, another scientist, doing the same thing.  I don't know who he is and I don't care.  I heard about half a minute of this video and had to write this post:

Steven Weinberg: All Time Best Arguments Against Religion #1 - YouTube

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PuhLEEZE stop lumping Protestant Christianity with Islam for starters, there is NO similarity between the two "religions>"  None.  Zip, nada, none.    RThere is also very little commonality between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.  Whther they are guilty of this charge orf not I'm not even going to speculate, I'm only concerned to correct the complete misrepresentation of Protestantism.

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This guy says the main conflict between science and "religion" is tin the method of approach to trtuh.  Supposely all "religion" decides questions of truth on the basis of authority, and science does not.  Again I'm not going to consider to what extent this charge may or may not be true of Islam or Roman Catholicism, but it most certainly is false concerning Protestantism.

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The word Dawkins likes is "faith" to stand for the most vilified method of "religion."  Supposedly "religion" applies "faith" every question of every kind.  Yikes.  Again leave aside Islam and ROmanism.  I doubt it's even true of those two false religions but it most certainly is not true of Protestant Christianity, which is TRUE Christianity.  The biblical definition is "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseeen."  THAT's how we use faith.  Fiath is our necessary posture toward GOD and toward the things of God.  We are exhorted over and over again in scripture to believe, believe in what scripture is telling is about GOD, not in anything else.  Believe in Christ, beliecve He is the Messiah, believe in tghe miracles He performed, believe in the accounts of his life and in fact all the accounts of the Bible.  WE ARE NOT ASKED TO APPLY FAITH TO ANY OTHER QUESYIONS.  Certainly not to scientific questions.  And it is so utterly ridiculous and annoying that the could think such a think I'm having trouble sstaying calm as I write this.

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Faith is necessary with things of the spirit that we cannot observe.  We must trust those who have witnessed them and lived them, that's the only way we can know about them.   The miracles were cddone to authenticate the claims of Christ to be Christ.  We weren't there, we have no choice but to believe or disbelieve what tthe writers of the Bible report about them to us.   Jesus was willing to show thomas His wounds to prove to Him empirically that He did indeed die and rise again, but He also said "blessed are those who did not see and yet believewd."  We are to truth trustworthy people.  Thomsa  had refused to believe what the other disiples had told Himj.  He was blessed to get the direct proof, but the majority of believers don't get that kind of proof.  We are relegated to treusting the witnesses, and there are scroes and scrores of switnesses who in my judgment are utterly trustworthy, from the writers of the Bible to the people they write about to people who have believede tghe Bible accounts from that time on.

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WE DO NOT USE FAITH TO DETERMINE THE TRUTHS OF SCFIENCE.  In fact it was biblical treuth that was the original impetus to empirical science and if it had not existed we woudl still be flouding ing around with the old weird "science" of the Early Greeks an Romans and Aristotle

It's no doubt all about the Creation-Evolution debate, which they think is about science but evolution is barely a science at all because being a historical science, about events in the past that can never be replicated or tested, it has to remain noothing but speculation.   And since it contradicts the Bible we reject it both on the basis of our faith in the Bible and on the scientific reasoning creqationists have brought to bear on evolution's claims.    Faith has nothing to do with true science, science that is based on observation, but evolution is not based on observation, it can't be, it's purely invention. 

The Molecular Basis of Life

This is just plain astonishing.  I've seen many of these by now but wanted to post this one because it includes more of the story than some others I've seen.  this stuff is mind-blowing.  Microsopic molecules, proteins and whatnot, behave like sentient beings, craetures with minds that obey some kindof commands to perform their complicated tasks for the replication of DNA.   

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I dn't know why I can't get the video to come up for me burt here's the URL to the page:

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The Molecular Basis of Life - YouTube

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The most mind-boggling thing of all of course is how all these processes result in the features that make up a living organism.  How does the production of a protein by a gene result in a trait such as, oh, hair color or whatnot?   I don't think I've ever seen anyone even attempt to explain that.

Some Odd Manifestations of the Holy Spirit, Or . . .?

An odd little topic here. John MacArthur preached in a sermon I heard recently at You Tube, about the various thingsx that are attributed to the Holy Spirit in the charismatic churches. He listedn falling over backwards, laughing uncontrollable, shaking and quaking, the hiccups, jumping up and down and other things. I hadn't heard about the hiccups as an effect of the Holy Spirit, but all thhe rest is familiar to me from my time in the charismatic movement.

Some of it I'm sure he's right about, that that these things are not the work of the Holy Spirit. The laughter I know isn't. Watchman Nee wrote about that in his book Soul Power and made it quite clear that it comes from the flesh or from something in the soul left over from the powers God originally gavbe to Adam and Eve, but it doesn't come from the Holy Spirit.

Falling over backwards has always seemed to me to be unlikely but I'm not completely sure of that one. However, shaking and quaking have always seemed to me to be genuine manifestations of the Holy Spirit and I've experienced them many times. When you spend a lot of time with the Lord in prayer you may get the shakes and the quakes and I think that's a good sign that it's from God. The Quakers and the Shakers wer eaptly names for that particular experience. As I've spent a lot of time seeking the Lord in the last few months I've had that experience a few times after prolonged periods of prayer. Surely it is something that happens to us as a result of the Holy Spirit's working in us.
As for the hiccups, that one is very strange but I've also had bouts of the hiccups in this same period of intense seeking of the Lord, though I hadn't had hiccups for many yhears. I didn't connect it with my spiritual practices though until MacArthur mentioned it. Now I don't know. An odd one, that's for sure.

Dawkins Series on Darwinism

Well, it's all here, all laid out to be taken apart:



Darwin observes the variations between isolated populations of various species and sees no reason why a Creator would need to make versions of each Kind with small variations. This was within the cultural context of the day that considered each variation to be a separate creation by God. AAs I recall, there was also the idea that not only were they separate creations but some of them were created long after the Creation Week of Genesis. Im'm not enitrely sure about that, but at least they were considered to be separate creations.

Then he went on to ponder the structural similarities of various creatures, the fact that limbs, whether arms or wings or flippers or whatnot, are constructured with the same parts and funcdtions although in different proportions according to their different uses. This suggests to him that they are all related to each other.

It is Nature Red in Tooth and Claw, according to Dawkins, that persuaded DCarwin to the theory of Natural Sepection as the mechanism fore ecvolution from species to species. Those that succeeded best eitherat catching prey or escapting being caught would pass on their characteristics to their offspring in greatter numbers.Mbr> Mbr> According to Darwin it is modern genetics that clinches darwin's theory absolutiely , so that he can call it a Fact.

More Evolutionist Witlessness -- Imaginative Guesses Ordained As Science

Dawkins, like other evolutoinist thinkers, seems quite content to explain whatever he wants to explain in evolutionitic terms by whatever he able to dream up off the top of his head. So believe in God or gods becomes people's need to explain scary nature and somehow gods does the trick for them. That is enough to make Dawkins satisfied that he's arrived at something scientific it seems. No need to inquire whether that is in fact how the human mind works at all, which I strongly doubt. All he knows is that people believed in gods and it doesn't bother him to impos3e his own wild imaginings on them and call it science. That's all evolution is anyway, wild daydreams callsed fact. So whatever they want to explain they just imagine themselves into the situation and don't seem to think twoice about the inadeuqacy of their own modern minds to imagine themselves into another completely different cultural situationb or even into an animal's situation. Since there is no way to test their imaginary scenarios they get treated as scientific fact.

Even in Ebven in imagining our own time we get it wrong all the time, but imagining themselves into wholly different contexts is all it takes to make a fact out of a mental exercise? I think of something Jordan Peterson has talked about, how we would naturally expect that in the more liberal cultural and governmental systems where women's equality is strongly supported, that women would become more like men in their job preferences, but when this has been studied it turns out that no, women oddly enough don't fit the expectations, tin fact they grravitate MORE to traditional female roles even in jobpreferences, such as nursing over engineering and that sort of thing. Liberal expectations turn out to be wrong. So how is it imagining situations in the ancient past is just about ordained as Fact when there is no way to study it as this current situation is studied? Modern man's arrogance toward the peoples of ancient times.

Ande it most certainly is not Science. But then Evolution istself is not science, being founded on exactly the same sort of mental operations. Dream it up, call it fact. That's all there is to it.

Dawkins ignorantly attributes the ending of slavery in the west and the improvement of women's rights, to rationalistic thinking, though in fact both were brought aboutg my Christians. Certainly slavery was as the abolitionists in America and Wilberforce in particular in England were acting from their Christian principles. Dawkins thinks it's a matter of finding a verse here and there that can be used against slavery while there are others that suppo0rt slavery in the Bible, but the Christians who ended it rad the Bible as tending against slavery in its e3ntirety. As for women's rights, Jesus is known for his acceptance of women in a way none of th4e Jews of His day were, and that is the basis for mmost of the western equality movovements. The Bible accommodated the universal practice of slavery while ven in ancient Israel liberalizing laws for dealing with slaves and setting dates for them to be freed. You don't just forbid a universal practice that is a major part of the economy, that is a modern impositionj on the text. God is much wiser than that, He deals with people according to our weaknesses, and even in the New Testament Paul has to approach a slaveowner with careful appeals to his Christian belief to request theat he consider rfreeding a slave of his who is also a Christian. As for women's rights, it should be remembered that in the biblical context we learn that women were subjugated to men because of Eve's disobedience of God in e3atin gof the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Ever since the Fall women have been subje8ugated to men and you can see that in every culture up until very recently and certainly see it in Muslim countries still. It was the influence of Christ that brought women into the modern world with rights, Christ who pay id penalty for original sin and began the process of freeing us from the effects of the Fall.

More Atheist Evolutionist Witlessness

How do these guys get away with it, KI mean the atheists, Dawkins and the rest of them. Mostly they are misrepresenting the opposition but the opposition does nothing to answer them, at least not anywhere near sufficiently. I've heard some really senseless answers to Dawkins from people who talk about their religious feelings, their sense of the presents of God and so on, but you'd think they'd know that isn't going to fly. Dawkins is wrog when he answers back that members of other religious have the esame experiences, but the audience doesn't know that. Some young guy reporting on the Ham0Nye debate was super impressed by Nye's sceincey talk. He doesn't discuss the points Nye made, he's just impressed that he was talking science, or really sciency talk. So part of the problem with this area of disc ussion is that people really just don't know much. ,br>
Dawkins is always sying that faith is without evidence and of course I want to answer for Christianity but a big problem is that Dawkins lumps together all the "abrahamic" religions which is already ab gig bogus concept, and then includes all the other religions of the world. Answering for Christianity I'd say that the Bible is tons and tons of evidence. that is what it was written for, to be evidence, evidence of the existence of the Craetor God, of the nature and charater of the Creatioor God, of His plan of redemption. It explains all the issues and events Dawkins and others complain about but they don't take any of it seriously so how can that be dealt with? If they start out dismissing it all as ancient fables with no reality, then go on to assault it from a modern moralistic perspective, not even known ting that their own morality derives from Christianity, it is hard to know where to start to answer them.

Dawkins thinks the doctrine of Original Sin is morally represhenisible somehow. When I first encountered good biblical discussions of it I wI loved it, to me it explains why the world is in the bad shape it's in, why there is murder, war, criminal behavior of all kinds,. How does evolution explain that? Dawkins and Hitchens when he was alive both attack the atonement of Christ for sin as if that too were a horrific moral offense. Good grief I wouldn't have thought it possible. Jesus died in our place because the penalty for sin is death. If we die for our sins we got to hell, but the sinless Son of God can die for us and save us al.

Different Creationist Views of the Timing of Volcanism, Plate Tectonics etc,.

Creationist Andrew Snelling giving the current creationist view of how the Flood occurred in relation to volcanism and plate tectonics. he also discusses problems with radiometric dating: ,br>

the idea is rthat the biblical "foundatins of the deep" that were broken up at the beginning of the Flood were volcanoes that broke up the cone continent that existed at the time into the continents we have today. This put the continents in motion on the tectonic plates which rought about further volcanism on the land and pushed up the high mountains etc.

So I see how that theory works but I keep remembering my favorite cross section of the Grand Syaircase to Grand Canyon area where a volcano at the far north of the Staircase clearly started after all the strata were in place, meaning after the Flood or at least at the very end of the Flood, rather than at the beginning.l Of course this could be a later volcano caused by the tectonic movement which was caused by the volcanism that began the Flood, but I \\it seems to me that there's too much turmoil in this scenario to explain how the strata could ever hve been laid down as apparently placidly as we see them in theat crsoss section. The way I put it together was that the strata were laid down by the Flood \, possibly by high tidees but also by precipitation out of the standing water at the height ofof the Flood, to account for their being laid down one on top of the other, and for the fact that all the disturbances I see everywhere occurred AFTGER the strata, the Geological Column, wwere all in place. this is demonstrated in theat cross section, but also the William Smith diagram of the strata of England, and various outher locations.

Snelling mentions that Steve Austin figured the Grand Staircase was carved by the receding Flood watgers, and that's the conclusion I came to also. Also the Grand Canyon itself. But the timning of the tectonic movement and the volcanoes is a different problem. I'm convinced it all occurred at the end of the Flood as I've explained emany times.

Thoughts on Ham-Nye Debate 3

Seems what Nye meant about turbulence was more about why we don't see a fish trying to escape the Flood by leaping up into the layer above. I'd guess that's because they were all dead by tghe time the layers were in place, encased in thick sedimentas as they were. Nothing was doing much leaping at that point. Some creatures that were still alive during the deposition of the sediments left their footprints in the wet sediments, and according to someone I heard recently, Snelling or Wise I suppose, their bodies were found after their footprints in the layer just above.

Is Nye being purposely obtuse when he keeps failing to understand Ham's point about historical versus observational science? It's so obvious. If you can't observe it all you have is imaginative speculations. We can observe variation within Kinds, but we can't observe evolution from species to species, that is merely assumed. So whedn Nye keeps carrying on about the importance of teaching science and conflating these obvious differences he's either being disingenuous or he's really that obtus4e.

I still think my own two arguments smash evolution to smithereens so that all the unanswered questions are for a future science without evolution. Evolution is dead if you recognize that the strata simply cannot be time periods but had to have been laid down in rapid succession, and certainly it's dead if you recognize that natural selection, or every kind of selection which inclucdes every kind of geotgraphic and other modes of ireproductive isolation, actually depletes the genetic potentials in any new population, because if evolution needs anything to be true it's an increase rather than a decrease in genetic potentials. Mutations have to be selectedd to and it's selection that utterly totally absolutely defeats evolution.

Thoughts on Ham-Nye Debate 2

Bill Nye's thirty minutes starts about an hour into the video. At about 1:05 pr sp he wonders why6 there isn't evidence of the turbulence he'd expect to see in the sedimentary strata if the Flood were true. Funny, I think thre should be evidence of disturbance to the strata if they actually epresent time periods of tends of millions of years but there's no such disturbbance. You can see this looking at the strata in the walslls of the Grand Canyon and you can see it on my favorite cross section of that area. Such nice neat straight parallel layers of sedimtary rocks, no sign of any appreciable disburbance to any of them. there is, however, turbulence galore durin gthe draining of the Flood, as I've argumed it, and he mentions that draining episode as a source of such turbulence alhtough that gets confusing, is he talking about the end of the Flood or during it or what? Anyway there is plenty of disturbance to the uppermost layers of the strata as shown on that cross section, the caring of the stairs of the Grand Staircase, the cuttin gof the Grand Canyon etc etc. All in present time, not a bit of it during the laying down of thestrata.

He sthinks there shouild be if the Flood were true. I'm not sure why. I guess we all imaginew it according to our own presuppositions and he likes ot imagine anything that disqualifies the idea, but the point is it's all imagination, there isn't anything but speculation or imagination that's possible with such a past event. However, I think it's been shown in a million ways that water lays down such layers, and there isn't any way at all to 3explain how long ages of time could do it and preserve it. A Flood would lay them down in rapid succession, the accumulated weight would preserve them.

then he goes on to wonder how the interestingly unique animals of Austrailia got there if the Flood story is true. Funny he doesn't mention Pangaea. Wasn't that idea current at the time? If all the contginents were together in one continent at the time of the Flood, which I argue, was the case, then for whatever reason those particular animals emigrated from the ark to that area and berfore it separated. This causes some problem for my own timing but I'll deal with that later.

Some Thoughts on the Ham-Nye Debate

Decided to watch this old debate, not sure if I saw it at the time, but wanted to get a sense of the categories used in such debates. I thought Ken Ham did a very nice job in his opening half hour presentation. He spent quite a bit of time on the distinction between observational and historical science, which is cruscial to this debate, and he covered the question of Kinds and how observationally there is plenty of evidence for them but no eviddence whatever for the idea that one Kind evolved into another. Which is an illustration of how we can know facts from observational science bu when it comes to historical science it's all speculation.

You'd think that much would be acknowledged b y now but don't we sstill hear this ridiculous idea that creationists reject Science, conflating the observational with the historical as if there were no distinction? Wes houldn't fly on airp.llnaces because we reject "Science."
But of course we don't remect science at all, we reject the sp[eculative raporiting os fhistoryical science, but accept the obvious factual basis for the observational or hard sciences. They really should give up that one.

KEN HAME- BILL NYE DEBATE 2=14

And they also insist on confounding what they regard as Microevolurtion with the idea of evolution from species to species although as Ham points out there isn't a shred of evidence for that idea. We observe the enormous variations that occur in many species but that's all we can observe. That's the end of what science can acrtually claim, bur that doesn't stop them from bgoing on to affirm their belief, faith in evolution from species to species based on no evidence whatever. They really need to stop claiming that there's a ton of evidence of evolutionary theory beause there is not. For variation yes, but not for the thoery of evolution. >