A Sane Approach to Demon Possession, Exorcism, etc

and Clicked on the wrong thing on a menu and totally messed things up.  I was watching this Lutheran theologian talking about demon possession and hoped I'd caught the URL but as usual it looks like I didn't or didn't get all of it, I can't see any of it here so have no idea.  

I wants to find a sane Protestant point of view about demon activity ahnd possession and I ran across him, A Dr. Gordon Cooper on a podcast titled Just And Sinner, the and being the ampersand which I can't find at the moment on mykeyboard.  It's been hard to track through his series for some reason, no doubt because I can't see to click on the right things, and when this oneof his series on demons came up I was very happy because I'd seen the previous one.  It just appeared out thof the ether as I was poking around You Tube and now I can't get it back having just lost it with that fateful click on that menu.  He's pretty good on the subject.  I didn't want any more Catholics and I don't want to hear from the Chraismatics on the subject.  Had enough of all that.  The problem is that the saner Protestants pretty much ignore the topic so I was very happy to find this guyu who is willing ort talk about it and takes it seriously while clearly rejecting the Catholics and Charismatics.

He is very aware that we are in a time when demonic activity is going to increase as the Church has lost its power in the culture and morality of a saner sort is alos out the window therse days, and of course he is quite right.  He thinks we should be prepared to encounter much more activity from the demonic realms.  I guess the devil doesn't like my knowing anything about him so he's making my usual difficulties even more difficult to keep me from finding him.  

Here

s another attempt at the URL 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5yjZJPnIdo&t=118

QWell, it doesn't work, for me anyway.  But I did find out this time that the title of this video, perhaps of the whole series is A Lutheran Approach to Exorcism.

Forgot what day it is

 Woopsie/.  I'm not doing Christmas this year but I suppose on a blog I ought at least to show some awareness of the date and wish all one and a half of my readers a a very 

Merry Christmas.          

Yousef takes a Turn Into Dangerous Territory

 Ouch.  Still listening to Yousef and for the most part finding his comments very good and courageous, for instance the admission that Islam is a religion of war.  Finally someone has the guts to say that, not a religion of Peace, no way, a religion of war, entirely war, all about killing everybody who isn't a Muslim.  

Then unfortunately it seems he thinks all religions are the problem and the solution to him is a secular Constitution that keeps them in check, at least that's one way he put it in an interview for Jerusalme Post.  No God above the Israeli Constitution in that case.  Which I suppose is his view also of the United States Constitution.  

He talks a lot about delusion, which I suppose he got from Buddhism, one of the concepts he's taken from various religions to put together his own personal philosophy of life.  But this is a delusion on his part.    Eventually it becomes clear that although he is being identified as a Christian he is really not at all a Christian and disagrees with much of Christian doctrine.

He seems to know that Islam is unique in its murderous objectives and yet he finds fault with all the other religions as well.  Pretty clearly, judging from more recent videos, he doesn't believe in God at all and simply chooses ideas he likes from any particular religion or philosophy and brings them together as if they could be united in one worldview.  He likes many teachings of jesus and often describes himself as dying to this or that in his own life, which clearly he gort from the teachings of Jesus, he likes loving your enemy etc.  

 In a couple of videos he tells a sort of parable of his own making about the shepherd and the sheep thta of course echoes the teachings of the bible, which so contradicts those teachings I found myself rather shaken with a sort of fear as I heard him tell it.  More than offense, though offensive it is, if you think of it as an answer to Christ Himself as it must be, and that is what makes it scary too, that he would make up a story that contradicts a major theme of God's own word.  In the Bibgle the good shephered is the trustworthy caretaker of the sheep, the sheep are God's wo-own flock and the shephered is ultimately God Himself.  Jesus refers to Himself as the shephered, the true shpehered who loves the sheep and protects them while the hireling shephered leaves them to the wolves.     Thy rod and thy staff tghey comfort me.  The rod protects against the wolves and the staff draws the sheep near to the shephered that's a line from the twenty third psalm The Lord is My Shephered.  

But Youself makes the shpehered the enemy of the hseep.  He's their worst enemy he says, and that is because ultimately they will be slaughtered for food, so all the love and protection is just a sham.  I guess he's making some point about not trusting authorities, oworldly aughotieis perhaps, although I'm reallynot at all sure what point he wants to make here.  But he's picture the phephered as the opposite of the Bible's view of the shpehered, as the enemy of the sheep.  Perhaps this is because he thinks of the sheep in terms of being raised for slaughter rather than the more common use of them for their wool, which I'm sjure is the context of the biblical referensest to the imagery.  he jumps to conclusions but in so doing he doesn't seem to fmind offending an entire religion and the God who inspired the Bible.

Wrongly.  he's wrong.  Let's make that clera.  

That little parable of his so unnerved me I started thinking of him as an antichrist, and he mayh well be.  He does a terrifica job of calling out Hamas and Islam and his own story is very compelling in many ways as a road to knowledge that his own people don't have and he wants to give them.  Knowledge that leads to an appreciation of humanity and a rejection of the narrowminded murderous focus of Islam, and a liberty that the Palestinians are in no position to understand without an education fo the sort he's been privileged to have.  Too bad he didn't really become a Christian because that would bw the worldview that would finally put together this puzzle of the nature of truth that he has been dedicated to learning throughout his life.  Too bad he didn't take it that far.  I reather doubt he still could but mayhbe it's not impossible.  At the moment he souns like thn antichrist to me when he gets into this thoughts about the human condition and religion.

The Great Insanity of Our Suicidal Political Policies

 This is the most insane thing of all going on now.  A civiolized country does not let criminals do whatever they want without restraint, and that includes people who shouot slogans inciting criminal behavior and lauding criminal behavior such as the loud demonstrations for Hamas we've been seing in the universities and the streets.  This is the big insanity of the day.  It's the same as Biden's being allowed to write laws that overturn our Constitutional standards and commit the treasonaous act of letting "migrants" come into the country unrestrained.  He should have been impeached already.  And the so called protestors who are not protesting acording to Constitutional principles but according to the lawlessness of the times should be imprisoned and in many cases deportexcdd. No civilized country shouild ever put up with these things and yet is t is happenening.  

Thew The Right Side is Clear but Humanity is Blind

It IS a complicated situation and yes I SHOULD keep my mo7uth shut because I'm hardly in a position to know anything beyond what I hear in the news and podcasts and so on, BUT I'm foolish enough apparfently to think I can take a position on it anyway.    By now perhaps, after hearing a few dozen more posdcasts than I'd heard when I first so humbly said I am not in a position to have an opinion.  Oh well.  

Just heard a few Piers Morgan interviews, debates really between the two sides, and was very disappointed in Mosab Yousef but very happy with Douglas Murray.  Yousef has a view I much appreciate but he goes off on tangents and loses me and no doubt most of his audience, especially when he gets to ranting angrily about those tangential things such as his own idea of what human identity is.  Hde did that on Morgan's show and missed a lot of opportunities to make the points that needed to be made.  

But the show with Douglass Murray was far more to the point, the many points.  His opponent was a name I couldn't hear well enough, Jake Udall?  Close or on the money?  I don't know.  But I love Murray and found Udall to be the usual emotion driven fact challeneged leftist Palestinian defender.  

Nevertheless Murray should, in my opinion, have answered the constgant accusation of Israel that they are indiscriminately killing civilizans.  Yousef has from time to time done a good job on that one but he missed it this time, and so did Murray.  Murray did say that those deaths are the fault of Hamas and that's the whole point but it needed to be driven home and he didn't do that.  

Israel is not committing genocide, they are defending themselves.  Hamas are committing genocide and most of the Palestinian civilians support them.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank was forced on them and must be maintained for their own security.  How nice it would be if Hamas disappeared and the whole ideology of hatred of the Jews disappeared and then there could be peace in the region.  Otherwise that is never going to happen.  Ever.

The charge of colonialism is ridiculous when Israel was legally established and had fairly bought any land they acquired from others already there.  Besides which a colony is an offshoot of an established nation, which of course the Jews don't have anywhere else in the world.  The whole point of their being in the land of Palestine is to have such a home base.    I could afrgue for their biblical right to the land which I regard as ultimately their  legitimacy but in this fallen world you have to start with the case for more proximate claims.

The deaths in Gaza are the fault of Hamas and nobody else.  Period.  

The lack of a Palestinian state is the doing of the Palestinians thesmelves and not Israel.

Etc.

Nboody has a solution to this problem because Islam is devoted to the murder of Jews and theJewish state and that's on their books and there is no doing waaway with that under the current public opinion that believes the Palestinian propaganda and blames everything on Israel.  

I daydream a lot about this sort of thing and one of my daydreams is that the Church is the solution.  Well, it's the solution oto everything but it hardly ever takes that God given role in this world as it should.  Salt and light, ha!

If the Church united behind Israel for all the right reasons, which they could discover by just learning more about the situation, they sholuld all stand up, WE should all stand up and declare it plainlty, even in the teeth of ridiculous and ammalevolent Arab opinion and UN opinion and all the rest of it.  Stand up and declare that righteousness is on the soide of Israel.  As Yousef does when he hasn't let his tangential rantings get the better of him.  He's not a Christian but he is enomored of Jesus teacings and likes to make use of them in this cause.  But I'd rather the Church did it.

Bombard the world with righteous enunciations of Islam, argue forecefully that there is a better view of things and that the Palestinians should give up Islam as their worse t enemy.  That IS their worst enemy.  Islam is the enemy.  Of all the Arab nations based on it for that matter.  Hammer the teachings of Christ into the heads of the Palestinians with ceaseless propaganda campaigns.  Wake them up.  They don't need to become Christians so much as they enneed to see th e falseness of Islam and how it is keeping them enslaved to poverty and abuse by their leaders and ignorance and so on.  Information blitze.  

Oh well.

Piers Morgan gets carried away with all the deaths in Gaza and loses sight of tghe fact that they are the inevitable produce of a war that is legimate and of the evil lies and manipulations of the media by the Palestinians.  He gets all carried away with the idea of proportionality as if that ever figured in any war ever before the forces of evil made it a factor to be used as a weapon against Israel.  That's the whole point of it.  Nobody wants babies killed bu that's the fault of Hamas and that needs to be shown to the world without letting up.  If the whole world did what they should do and condemned Hamas, or indeed Islam itself, instead of Israel, the whole thing would have a solution in no time.

But we're on course for the End now aren't we, and that just isn't going to happen.  Evil is going to grow worse and worlse all the way through the Great Tribulation and Armageddom and then Jesus will return and that will be the whoonly way the thing ends.  Because houmanity is lind, blind fallen corrupted untable to choose righteousness.

The only way we have of knowing the truth in this world is God's own revelation to us through His Word both the Bible and His Son Jesus Christ.  That's it.  And even many of us who have that great privilege of knowing these things midss it.  But it's there and even if no perfect  in most of our presentations it's there and it's the truth and if enough of us say it it would make THE difference.

They try to say that Israel's attack on gaza is the same as terrorism.  good grief the world has gone mad.  We US attacks on Dreesden terrorism?  Was there a question of proportionality inovlved in that?  how about Hiroshima?  No, war is war and it's aimed, in the hands of the US anyway, at peace, not conquest, and the ame is true of israel's attachks on Gaza. AWar is not terrorism, at least not a defenseive war which is what I'm talking about.  The making of equalivalences between good and evil is today's biggest confusion.  Same for insrtance with peopel

'

s inability to tell the differnece between the death pena to a criminal murderer and the killing of innocent babies in the womb, or the murder committed by the murderer himself.

------------------------

People can't tell the difference between innocent and guilty.  I pointed out to a friend that the Bible syas those who kill human beings are to be killed by human beings in return because human beings bear the image of God.  Her answer was that therefore even the murderer should be allowed to live because he also bears the image of God.  Good grielf people ar econfused.  There is no right and wrong, no good versus evil, no innocent versus Guilty.  And ofcourse we see it in the prosecution of Trump who is innocent of ninety nine person of the charges against him as well as the accusations that are treated as charges that have never acrtually beeen brought against him such as the accusation of inciting insurrectgion which he did not do, and prosecuting all those peopole who were just standing around in the building as insurrectionists who happened to support Trump olitically, while real criminals are set free.  We're certainly set up for the End.Some deaths are ritghteous and som are criminal.  Some enforce justice, some take innocent lives.  The Palestiinian defenders are trying to claim that Israel is out to take innocent lives just becfuawe innocent lives are being taken.  Can't think straight.  Don't want to think straight.  Partian self interest.l

The hardest thing to accept about the fallen wrold is that there is no way to cure it with any righrteous reasoning or any blitz of truth, we just hav eot do our betst to minimize it and even those methods are being compromised these days.    even in the Millennium which is also the fallen world though Stan won't be around to make it as bad as it can possib ly be, even then it will deteriorate after the thousand years into a slough of uhnrighteousness such as we are now seeing at the end of this world.

Maybe if Mosab Yousef can curb his love of his own philosophical musings he could finally get back to the taksk at hand sand continue to offer some strong truths to the war in Palestine.  He appreciates the struggle for trtuth and the work of self discipline and of dying to self, maybe he can bring it to bear now on tghe problem of his liking his own musings on the nature of reality too much.

Oh well, I keep finding things to respond to.  Two pro Palestinian guess on Piers Morgan and thewn Douglass Murray came on for a while.  At the end one of the first two I don't know wtheir names, refused to answer Morgan's question whether October seventh was a terrorist attack.  I don't  know why he couldn't just say no because that's what he obviously believes.  he thinks it was justified by israel's supposed colonialit occupation and aggression  so it's not terrorism even tbhough it targeted women and children and civilizans in general and that is the main part of the definition of terrorism which Murray made clear.  It's the TARGETING of civilizans that makes it terrorism, but Israel is not targeting civilizians despite tthere being many civilizan casualties in the war on Gaza.   Why are these guys even allowed to speak at all.  Murray is right epopele who hodl such veiws whould be sent back where they came from  they do not belong in the West where they oppose our very foundations.  But Britain is supoipidly leftist and so ins the US getting there along with all the rest of Europe.  The world has gone stupidly and dangerously leftist and that's going to be the end of it all.

Evil for good and good for evil says Isaiah.  

https:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9dLBLCR4a0

JPost News, Son of Hamas: 'Time to expose Muhammad' (youtube.com)

The Green Prince Mosab Yousef Who Spied for Israel and Now Defends Her against Hamas

 The man's name that I wrote as "Jusef" in a previous post is really Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Palestinian Arab who grew up in the West Bank as the first son of one of the leaders of Hamas, not just leader but its actual founder.  He was of course indoctrinated in its tenets and worked for the movement himself.  Until at the age of eighteen he was in an Israeli prison and saw the brutality of Palestinian inmaes against other Palestinians, which raised doubt in his mind that bore fruit over time as the Israelis sought to recruit him to their cause.  Eventually they won him over and he worked for them as a spy for ten years and is now a staunch defender of Israel against Hamas escpailly in this latest war that started on October seventh with the sadistic slaughter of Israelis by Hamas.

As I've listened to him through many interviews and talks he's given both in the past and now during this current conflict I've found him to be a very intriguing pesonality.  I binge on personalities I find intriguign .  At first he seems to be an unusually attractive gentle quitet humble character who is very likeable and it seemed to me almost angelic in his demeanor and thinking.  Later he's acquiringed a harder edge on him, in one talk at least using roufht langugage, crude language I don't like.  this after his living in America for years so I guess I can blame it on American culture.  

And he's acquired a philsophical turn tht I find to be false in most respects, a religious mix of many religions and philsophies that to my mind ends up predominantly New Age although with his own personal stamp on it.  Christ Consciousness for instance, Yoga for instance, Karma for instance.  For a while he was considered to be a Christian but his views are not orthodox and eventually he objected to the efforts of the orthodox to change his mind and stopped goinmg to church.   I don'tkinow if he even knows the orthodox salvation message.

But as a spokesman at this time for the iside of Israel he's mjuch needed it seems to me.  He has a powerfully passionate loyalty to Israel and a true understanding of the political and historical situation there.  He has come out speaking against the demonstrations in America on behalf of Hamas with a lot of anger and a grasp of the meaning of American freedom of Speech and our Constitution that I find impressive.

He aswers the charge that Israel is an apartheid state.  how could it be with a million and a half Arabs as part of its citizenry who all share equal civil rights with the Jews and all the other minorities?  They occupy all the offices of Israel.  Apartheid is a lie.  

To be continued

Ah well, I may yet add to this, or I may not, but I've continued watching videos of Mosab and although I haven't been able to capture the URLs I want to identify at least two of them I think are very good an informative:

An interview by Chris Cuomo, very thorough.

A talk he gave at a Jerusalem Post confeence.  This should be enough information to be able to search and find it.

And thank you, Mosab, for making it so clear in this last talk I mention above that the problem is Islam itself, because that is so often glossed over while political interests and other more worldly things are put in its place.  But no, as you make clear, it is never any of those things that is the rpbolem, the cause of the conflicts, it is Islam itself.  It is Islam that dictates the hatred of the jews and of all "infidenls" and all nonMuslims, it is Islam that is our enemy not the people of any particular trible.

He's particularly fiery at another one whose URL I can't get hold of.  I think the title starts with Son of Hamas and the host is something like Jordan Harbinger.  I hope it works.

This may or may not be the UROL to the Jordan harbinger show I mentioned

://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyqKTuqzKWs

Mosab seems to have rejected orthodox Christianity and therefore salvation through the death of Christ as well, which is sad and I cn only hope that eventually I might come to it.  He wants truth, and this is truth.  And in fact this is the only truth, the ultimate truth.  I hope he will eentually come to it.

Nevertheless he has some interesting ways of putting together his view of the world that sort of almost embrace a Chrstian view of things.  Sort of only.  He has a sense of the imperfection of the world and of all human beings which makes him tolerant andforgiving and generqaous toward everyone, which is wonderful.  And this without having any notion of the Fall or Original Sin which the Bible reveals to be the foujndation of all our ills and imperfections.   But he sees the imperfections and from that vantage point he can oppose the ridiculous utopian visions of the totalitarians whose self righteousness imagines an impossible perfection to which human beings can aspire.  No way is that ever going to happen and I'm glad to see that plain old common sense can see how ridiuclouis such ideas are.

He also appreciates the freedoms of the West, democracies such as Israel and the US, the Constitutuion ofthe US in particular, and that is also commendable.  He doesn't ave the most accurate historical context for these things, whicfh would come through the Christian perspedctive but he recognizes their importance and their potential as the only liberating forces in the political world.  Based on a recognition of impers=fection.  That.s what it's all about.  This is a flawed world, an imperfect world, a fallen world, and the whole point of the US Constitution as the framers saw it was to make provision against the tendensies to totalitarianism, to domination, in the human spirit in a fallen world.  That's the best we can do in a fallen world, preent the worldst in human nature from taking over.  And it works as long as we hold to the rules.   Unfortunately what is happening now is that the forces of totalitarianism are learning how to just ignore it and impose their will in spirte of it.  Yep, the Left.  

History of the Situation in Palestine by an Israeli Observer

Monday December 18  UPDATE:  It has been so encouraging, so hopeful, so comforting, to see the Arab voices I have been linking to in this and the previous post.  Jusef, I think that is his name but I can't read so I don't know for sure, what a wonderful human being, first son of t one of the founders of Hamas who finally fled from it after years of its violence and following his own conscience to help Israel, and in one interview I saw be identified as a Christian.  I hope that is true but it only came up in that one interview.  Sophia who was interviewed through Prager U, and J TV's interview with Mr. Achmad.   All names I could only partially digest.  I would nlove ot see the film based on Son of Hamas but I can't see my way through the pages at Amazon.  Even with the magnifier.  Maybe my eyes will be better on some other day and I can find it.  We'll see.  but it gives me such hope that people can follow their own God given conscience even when they've been raised and heavily indoctrinated in a sataonic evil violent murderous culture.  

***

SSome of my URLs work and some don't, because I can't see to get the tholwhole thing copied in some cases.  One I want to mention since it doesn't seem to be working is the talk he gave at the University of Michigan followed by a q and a so maybe it can be found with that information.

**At <ocjogam je cpmde,ms tje [rp [a;estomoam [rptests as odoptoc amd es[ecoa;;u ca;;omg Osrae; am a[artjeod state/  Tjos giu jas giuts amd je lmpws wjat je os ta;lomg abpit/  O wosj O jad doscisvered jo, a ;pmg to,e agp/

At MichSome of Forgot to mention, that movie is titled The Greeen Prince, which was his code name as an Israeli spy.

Son of Hamas Co-Founder De

'Son of Hamas' Tackles University Antisemitism, Exposes Hamas 'Holy War' to Wipe Out Jews (youtube.com)

nounces Group at UN, Exposes 'Savage' Indoctrination of Palestinian Kids (youtube.com)

w.youtube.com/watch?v=pjOEJumoABg

UPDATE:  Son of Hamas Co-Founder Denounces Group at UN, Exposes 'Savage' Indoctrination of Palestinian Kids (youtube.com)Here's an interview wih the son of a  Ja,as ;eader"

on of Hamas Reveals Shocking Details About Hamas and the Israel-Palestine Conflict (youtube.com)

\\//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjOEJumoABg

 Free Palestine? No thanks! (The Israeli perspective) Français / Español / русский / Deutsch / عربي (youtube.com)

is URL seems to work to take you to that podcast with the Israeli man talking about the history of the Israel Palestine situation.

Added a fesw hours later:  I've very glad to have been able to post the URL to that talk because he is very good on the subject of the history of Israel.  He is, however, a liberal, as are both the Arabs I linked to in the previous post.  Overall I like their liberalism and don't see any diference between their beliefs and my own.  Certainly not on the subjects they are addresssing.  But this liberal ...  well, back up a big...

Thids video rolls over into another made by the same Israeli man and again I dn'tknow his name.  I don't know if he's said it anf I missed it or it's merely written somewhere below the video in which case I simply can't see it to read it.  Anyway, this is also a good video presentation of the historical situation so I was glad to see it turn up.  BUT he says a few things from his listeral point of view that annoy me, characterizing conservatives as fascists for instance.  Yikes that is REALLY annoying.  That is crazy ande false.   And as with most ordinary people he thinks the wars between the Protestants and Catholics were just religious wars of the usual sort that we don't need to bother to know more about, which provides another YHikes from me although in this case I can hardly blame him for an opiniohn that comes out of very vague politics and has no current life to it.

Then the video rolls over again this time to a video by Coleman Hughes, one of the current crop of black intellectuals, a very young guy who is probably not a conservative although I usually like a lot of his opinions.  It opens with his challeneging his guest for evading a question, in which he says it is clear thatg it was the Palestinian side that startecd the war in njineteen forty seven.  His guest, one of those reallyh really irritating ignorant liberals who have bought all the Palestinian propaganda, saying that the Jews started the war simply by being Zionists which is apparently an act of war to his mjuddled mind, by whicfh they dispolaced the native Palestinians from their homeland.  Oh groan.  Will we never get the facts straight.  Probably not.  There was never a Palestinian Arab people, EVER.  The Arabs in the region had scome there to work within the last few decades, they are wnot native to the region but ame from other Arab countries.  This is a malicious fiction that has turned them into native Palestinians.  

I'm listening to this guy, name I failed to get, bewing interviewed by Colleman Hughes, and I'm rapidly developing an ulcer.  As it were.  An ulcer of themind anyway.  Hi thinks the "Palestinians" are a real people who really did live on the liand before the Jews began settling it and then became a state, that they wree ousted from their homseland and that was the real beginning of the violence accoreding to him.  As the Israeli in the previous post I linked said, you can identify the origina of the Arabs by their hnames.  There is no such thing as a Palestinian name.  Their names show their origina in other states such as Syria or Egypt or wherever they came from THEY ARE NOT PALESTINIANS>  That is a fiction comjpletelyo invented out of whole cloth for the purpose of discrediting Israel.  Period.  STOP THE LIES.

Hughe also said something I think is wrong but I don't know for sure.  He said that Israel deported the Arabs they regarded as a fifth columen when the war started in forty seven, but I'd always heard that it was the Arab nameions that warned them to leave, and that was the origina of the refugees.  In any case they were certainly not native Palestinians being osusted by Israel.

This guy thinks it's racist to say that there is something about Muslime as such that makes it impossible for them to live in peace with other groups.  Well golly gee, how about their religious texts thaty tell them to kill everybody who doesn't agree with them or worship their god?  Golly gee the liberals are naive.  

s usual it seems that secular minds simply can't process information about religion and the Muslim side is driven by their religion.  they are not driven by all the po.l,itical interests the Left thingsks they should be driven by, that other groups are driven by.  It is NOT about land or political rules AT ALL, it is ONLY about what their religion tells them to do.  WBut this guy can't get that.

Sophia, the Arab Israeli in the previous post, thinks it is possible to be a peaceful Muslim.  I'll take her word for it that there is such a thing but what does she do  with the calls to murder the invidel in their own holy books?  What does she do with that?

My religion is also the foundation of how I want to live my own life, buty my religion tells me to love my neighbor as myself, even to godo good to my enemies and to die to myself rather than seek to preserve myself and so on.  I find all this very hard to obey but nevertheless it is what I am called to.  There is not a shred of a call to any kind of violence inmy relgion.  But their is in Islam.  And in Roman Catholicism I might add, since they don't stick tot he Bible b ut traditions as well which often contradict the bible.  The average Catholic tries to follow Jesus, or at least a lot of them do.  But the hierarchy has a different agenda which is at present muted because they are not in power.

  Islam too behaves according to whether or not it is in power and when they are not they seem pretty benighn, but at the moment the world is on their side and their true colors are flying.

2023.07 Expand Background Checks 2 (youtube.com)

I keep listening and this is just hopeless.  Trhis supposed Palestinian is just promoting all the Palestinian propaganda and Coleman Hughes apparently has no way to object to the propagandistic version of history, accepts that the Palestinains were in fact ousted from their ho,meleand by the zionists.  This is the fundamental problem in this discussion.  This is hopeless and my stomach hurts listening to it.

The URL pasted just above the previous paragraph is in the wrong place because it belongs to a different video podcast by Hughts and for some reason I haven't been able to geet it to post beneath that paragraph.  

That URL goes to an interview he did with Benny Morris about the history of the same area.

This interview does give a somewhat different angle on events in the area.  For the first time I gather that the people who got called the Palestinians were the Arabs who were in fact living there while the Jewish state was getting started.  According to both Morris and the Israeli of the previous post there were some seven hundred thousand of them at the end of the secdond world war, now grown to seven mill9ions.  In the early part of the twentith century the Jewish population int e region was maybe ten percent of the whole according to Morris.  

I have to ponder his remarks more but I do want to respond to Hughes saying that the origin of America was ugly with racism and I guess also attacks on the native population.  Balderdash.  That makes me angry.  What racism?  Are you talking about the Plymouth Colony?  What are you talking about?  Get some perspective.

I do have to admit that I'm getting a clearer picture of the situation from Hughes' discussions than I'd had, however.  I'd thought tht "occupation" just meant being on the land at all which the Arabs regard as their own, but now I understand that it means what happened as a result of the six day war in which Iareal gained control over the West Bank, an n area I now have a clearer picture of as well than I'd had before.  They are in fact militarily occupying that piece of land, and as the discussions have unfolded it's clear that giving it up would be very risky for Israel so even if they might want to do that they really can't.  

In any case I'm seeing more problewms in this situation than I'd seen before, and now what I'd really like to see is a protracted sidiscussion between many people on both sides untkil I get a really clear picture of the whole thing.  

Well, a few posts ago I said this situation was too complicated for me to dare commenting on it and I should have listened to myself.  I'm stopping now after seeing way too many podcasts on this subject, though I know I'm going t o watch more.

C Couple of Lovely Arab Voices on the subject of COctober Seventh

 This is so frustrating.  I want to recommend a couple of interviews I just listened to on You Tube but both eyes and ears are defeating me.  I may yet try again to copy the URL for them but my eyes are particularly bad today so I probably won't be able to.

All I can do is describe them and not very satisfactoritytly.  One is an Arab woman named Sophia who is being interviewed by a blond woman and the word Prager U shows up on the first screen before the interview.  That's really all I kow.  The arab woman is young, early thirties I think.  The blond woman is interviewing her about having grown up in Israel and her opinions about the conflict between Jews and Arabs.  

She gives a very positive view of her life in Israel, says she had many opportunities wshe wouldn't have had an a purely Arab setting, encouraged to go to school for instance where she ended up with an engineering degree.  She denies the accusation of Israel as an apartheid state and says it is in the Arab towns where the most separation is the case between the Arabs and the Jews while in the Jewish towns Arabs are not segregated out.  

The other intereview is by a young man at a podcast called J TV or something like that.  The first name of the interviewee I couldn't make out but his last name is something like Achmad.  he's an Arab who grew up learning to hate Jews and all infidels and eventually followed his own conscience out of that hatred and now opposes the Islamic jihad he once embraced and supports the Israeli poing of view.   I didn't catch the name of the interviewer.

After posting this I put J TV Achmad into the search line at You tube and the interview I am talking about came up.  Hooray for that much.

And another hooray.  Also on the search line at You Tube I put in Prager U Sophia Arab Israeli and got that interview as well.  

Ah well, I do have a complaint about the Arab man who explains hatred of the Jews in terms of envy by Islamists and the Left and the Right.  The exammple of hatred of the Jews by the Right that he gives is our objection ... and I am on the Right so I do say "our" objection ... is to the liberal Jews for their commmunist influence and I do share that objection .  I t has nothing to do with envy, it's a complainjt about liberal Jews, not about jews as such.  conservative Jews, especially religionus Jews are on our side.  There is no complaint there.  In any case objections to the liberals who were a strong influence in the sixties in particular for Cultural Marxism whichch no w dominates our politics have nothing whatever to do with envy and the idea is absurd.  Cultural Marxism has been a massive destructive force in Amerca and the west and the Left hnow embraces it.  And yes it did come from the liberal Jews.  But that is by no means all Jews and the idea is absurd and the idea that it's envy is absurd.Ironically, you could say, it's this liberal influecne in the culture, or should I say Leftist, that is behind the preo Hamas protests on the college campuses.

Well, now I'm into responding to this guy.  Ir t wasn't envy for the politlcal left either although as applied to the supposed Oppressed class of the poor and disadvantaged it is likely envy that fuels it.  

Next point is that he says something absurd about how religion can change biology, givin gthe example of p[riests and monks who are celibate thus defying their beiology, but boy is that a problematic stew of an issue since it is most likely that enforced celbacy on the part of Romanist priests that powered the rampant sexual misconduct over the centuries with mistresses and even monks and nuns having liasons, but also the growth in gay priests and their own sexual misbehavior which is now the huge controversy we're been hearing about for the last few decades.

I do think he's right to point out that Nietsche was not saying that God is dead in a triumphant sort of way but perhaps even lamnting it.  I think he was objeserving it as the reason for the development of vatrious ills in society and he trumpeted the coming Antichrist in an ironic way.  And I'm glad Achma poijnted that out.

Lowry and McWhorter, Israel and George Floyd. Yeah a mishmash I guess

 www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNf40sBcvKk

I have no idea what that line above says, sorry, I can't read it.  I thought I was copying it from the address line at the top of the page I wanted to link here but after I copied it and posted it I found I was unable to click on it so I have no idea what it is or if it might take you to the page I hoped it would.  

the page I wanted to link is an Israeli guy talking about the history of the situation in Palestine.  I don't know his name and the only words I can make out of the tittle to the video at the top of the screen are "Free Palestine.  There are more wrods after that but I can't read them even with my wonderful new magnified r from the Services for the blind.

So I'leaving the top line in case it contains usful information.  If not maybe you can still find the video I have in mind with the information I've added.  I originally searched for history of the Israel situation and found thta one two or three down from the top.  I hope you can find it because he does a very good job of laying it all out.

I wanted to post something fairly comprehensive because I just heard Glenn Lowry and John McWhorter discussing the recent events there with two guys that were irritatingly liberal in their outlook and utterly historically obtuse.  As papparently so are Lowry and McWhorter.  Which is understandable ssince most people who aren't particularly interested in that part of the world just go by what they hear and what they hear is all filtered through the Leftt which is mired in "Palestinian" propaganda.  I would love it if Lowery and McWhorter got themselveas educated on this topic because they do a good job of exposing the trusth about things when they know what's really going on.

As they did in a recent podcast about the George Floyd incident.  a documentary came out recently titled the Fall of Minneapolis which shows veryconvincingly according to Lowry that Floyd did not die as a result of asphyxiation due to the actions of Derek Chauven but due to being overdoesed on meth and Fentanuyul.  I already knew the incident wasn't racist because of the similar dedath of a whity guy named Tony Timpa, but I didn't know that the police technique had nothing to do with it.    Their talk on this subject is titled the Truth About George Floyd's Death.  

The Israeli guy is wearing a light blue pullover knit shurt, just to help identify him better,and there are shifting scenes behind him.

The Jews are not occupying anyone else's land and they did not steal it.  This Israeli covers all that and more.  There was no Palestinian people in the nineteenth century, they were invented in the mid twentieth century for political leverage against Israeel.    theyh are poor because their leaders keep them poor and abuse them viciously.  And they are not to be distinguished from their leaders because they share the same ideology, the religion that commands the killing of Jews and other "infidels."  but particularly Jews.   This is a religious war, the poltical stuff is completely invented.  They couldn't care less about those issues the Left makes up on their behalf, they simply want to obey their "god" and kill the infidel.

The Meaning of Gaslighting

 OK I just heard one too many talk show hosts get it wrong about the meanjing of the term gaslighting.  No it is not just some specially egregious degree of lying.When

When the term started to be used frequently a few years ago I didn't know what it meant so I looked it up and found out that it comes from an old movie titled Gaslight.  I found the movie at Amazon and watched it.  Ingrid BBergman and Charles Boyer are the stars.  He marries her knowing that there is a fabulous treasure of gemstones hidden somewhere in her family home which he wants access to.  They move into the house and he explores the part of it where he suspects the jewels are hidden.  He goes out every night letting her think he is going somewhere else but doubles back ahnd enters the room he wants to explore for the treasure.  The whole point is that he doesn't want her to know he is looking for it.  

 this is back in the days before electricity and the house is lit by gas that runs through pipes from fixture to fixture in thevarious rooms.   When he turns on the light in the room he is exploring it causes the lights in the rest of the house to dim slightly and she notices that and wonders what could be causing it since she believes he has left the house and there is only herself and the housekeeper there.  The housekeeper is in on the plot by her husband and denies that the lights are going dim, as doeas her husband ewhen she tells him about it.  It is this deniial of an inconvenient truth that is the meaning of gaslighting.  He alsmost succeeds in driving her completely crazy with this particular denial of her

 perceptions but many others he has been concocking for the same purpose.

Of course it's about lies but the point of it is to make someone feel he or she is out of his mind by causing him to doubt his own perceptions/.

There you go.

Come soonb, Lord jesus

God said Jerusalem would become the center of world agitation at the very end and here we are, all of a sudden, seeing Israel surrounded by the most vicious hate from all directions of the blobe.  All of a sudden, completely unexpected.  Yes we've seen a rise in anti semitism over the last decade or so but nothing like this, a sudden gigantic emergence of virulent hatred directed qat Jews.  The source is no surprise, Islam is dedicated to eradicating Israel and the jews, it's on their books and taught to all tgheir children, but for the world to chime in as it has, including crowds in the US, THAT is shocking.

But God said Jerusalem would become a cup of trembling for the world at the lastand, here we are.  A stumbling stone for the nations.  All nations.  Led by Satan of course, who is the ruler of this fallen world and always busy stirring people up against God and whatever god is doing, and Israel is a major representative of God on this earth.  Christians should be as well, but we have no specific geography.  Israel is a piece of real estate, a place, a location, and the Jews are known as the people of the Old testament, chosen by God, so getting rid of them is a prime objective of God's arch enemy.  

Jan Markell has et another program on this theme this week.  Whatever questions I still have about the specifics of the Pre Trib Rapture scenario don't keep me from seeing the role of Israel in this end times countdown.  And it does make sense that Israel would be the focus of the Antichrist just waiting to be catapulted to center stage.  Yes I am sure of his identity but that isn't terribly important except that it changes the timing of things somewhat from the usual pre trib schedule.  A covenant with Israel is to launch the Seventieth Week of Daniel as prophesied inj Daniel ...9 I think, but I'm often getting the chapter wrong.This coventnat is n't mentioned in the Book of Revelation, only in Daneil, but the Antichrist is represented in revelation in Chapter Thirteen by the beast from the sea and it has emblems that identity it with the fourth besast of Daneil's vision so we know it's the same person.  

Jan's guests talk about how some churches avoid mentioning these things and suggest that it's just cowardice, fear of losing church members.  I hope not but it could be.  This is no time for Christians to be owards, if there eever could be such a time.  Aren't we told we are to lose our lives for His sake?  Clinging to any kind of worldly securty is disoedience.  The greats of the faith listen in Hebrews Eleven even lived in caves in order to protect their faith.  this is no time to be depending on worldlyh comforts.  Hey, I'm no paragon of courage, believe me, but I recognize my fear and am trying to pray against it and beg God to give me the strengrth to risk everythinjg.

I'm worn out.  I wish it were over.  The good for evil and evil for good fallen world is exhausting.  And it's all finally comning to the point of disintegration with no going back and a lot of us are falling apart.  A lot of unbelievers for sure.  

Should add to this a strong recommendation to listen to this week's Understanding the times radio show from Jan Markell's Olive Tree Views webside.  It's also at You tube at least for now.  It covers the history of the situation pretty well for those who know little about it.  There is a short section between the first and second parts of the show where the history of the idea of a Palestinian people is tra ced whowing that such a people never existed but was invented as a weapon against Israel inj the sixties.    Israel's existence on that land is legtimate from every possible point fo ivew from the biblical foundation going all the way back to Abraham to the fact that the land was not occupied by any people of any identity whatever and in fact was a wasteland according to mark twain who vicited the area in the late ninettenth century, and the fact that they purchased land where necessary as well.  That loand belongs to Israel, they are not occupying any body else's land.  This history has been bured under Leftist and Islamic lies.

As the radio show also makes clear, it needs to be understood that this is no ordinary pollitical conflict going on between Israel and the Palestinians or the whole Arab world for that matter, or the whole world for that matter by now, Islam itself prescribes the muder of the Jews and of all "infidenls"   this is no reaction to a supposed occupationm or any kind of pollitical oppression by anybody, this is engineered from the official supposedly sacred writings of Islam itself.  If Mustlims exist who do not follow all that , great, but that's because they either don't know about it or reject it, not because it isn't there if they ever decided to go back to their religious roots.  When they do they learn that they are ordered by what they supposed to be God himself to kill the Jews.  That is what makes all this so impregnable to reason.  There are no political solutions to this.  Two states would only give Islam more access to murdering Jews.  They HAVE two states, or did, in Gaza, but they didn't use it as a Paolestinain state in the sense of building it up to prosperty and success for the people, they gave it over too Hamas, they voted for Hamas, they show their allegiance to their religion and there is no way you will ever talk them out of that.  If God is telling them to take this position how are you going to get them to reject it?    But the Left continyues to spread the lies that it's just an ordinary political conflict, the have nots at the mercy of the haves, when they have had the means to become prosperous for a long timeand don't use it, they use it to try to destroy Israel because that is the whole meaning of their religion.   No sign the world is going to be waking up to this any time soon though.  \\

Well, I guess it makes sense that Satan gets his day in the end.  Not the VERY end at least, but the end of life on this fallen planet before He returns.

There is no earthly solution to any of this.  The only solution is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.  That's all there is.  And it's a lot.  It's the whole point of v3eing here in this miserable world.

 I must be extraordinarily obtuse about this premill pretrib way of thinking.  Often Jan Markell's program makes a big effort to clarify it and still I don't get it, don't get something or other and don't know what it is I'm not getting or why.    This latest program makes the same attempt and by fifteen mintues into the show I'm more confused than ever.  It goes by very fast for one thing and I guess I can go back and slow it down to tr to get the points I'm missing, whichI hope I'll be up to doing, but all I ever get out of these things is hearing the story repeated again.  And again.  

I gather there is more to this idea of Replacement Theology than I've understood.  Okay that's a start.  I keep thinking it's not replacement theoogy beause it's about fulfilling the messianic promises and those promises were fulfilled in the Church.  Yes?  No?  That leaves plenty of room ofor further dealings God is to make with ethnic or unsaved israel.  But "true Israel" as Paul uses the term, I understand to apply to believing Israel, which includes Gentile believers.  Ethnic Israel is a different lvel of things.   And ethnic Israel is what is dealt with in the seventieth week of Daniel, the great tribulation and all that.    Ethnic Israel is not replaced, because it remains to be dealt with, and True Israel is not replaced because it is the fulfillment of the messianic promises and is a separate level of the story.  Or seomthing like that.  What am I not Getting?

However, apparently there are those who see the whole history of Israel as having come to an end entirely with God's divorcing them for their adulteries against Him.  That's a different element of things I wasn't taking into account and it doesn't make sense to me because ...  well I'm sure there are scriptural reasons but I'm thinking of the historical reasons and the unfulfilemt prophecy of the seventieth week.  Historically the return of Israel to the land and statehood is jawdroppingly sidnificant and I can't see how anyone cojuld dismiss that as a Big Nothing as apparently some do.    The fact that Israel is the center of so much turmoil in the world in itself points to it as God's own piece of real estate which gathers all the forces of evil abgainst it.  Cup of trembling scripture calls it.  How can that be ignored?

Scripturally I think of the prophecy of Hosea in which God makes it clear that His adulterous wife is nevertheless loved by Him and invited back.  I don't see a total abandonment there.

I think I'll stop there.  I still have a million questions about other facets of the premill pretrib scenario but I'll leave those this time.

Something \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\We Turned a Corner Didn't We?

 Yes, now it does feel like it is all over, we're never going back to anything like what we used to think of as normal.  I suppose I'll go on hoping and grasping at straws for a while nevertheless, but it's hard to avoid the impression that October seventh changed things in such a fundamental way it will be hard to grasp at straws for long.  In itself it was horrific, but the finality of it comes with the reactions to it by the forces of evil, the increase in threats and claims by the bad guys when one would ordinarily expect a loud reaction against it all.  As I talk about in the previous post too.  

Jan Markll's weekly radio show Understaning the Times is all about this sense of finality and never going back that is felt by many of us.  This isn't a This Too Shall Pass moment, it's got to be the irreversible beginning of the End.   Part of her show was someone reporting on ... well no, giving a warning to Jews traveling anywhere in the world to be on the alert  because they are now targets in a way thaey haven't been before because it's all out in the open and stated baldly that their enemies are out to get them.  Warning to avoid their usual ways of dressing that identify them as Jewish and so on, and to keep alert as never before.  Travelers going all over the world.  ALL Jews everywhere.   Unprecedented.

Yes I'llhope and grasp a straws for a while, but recovery is looking about as improbable as ... well impossible really.

The Explanation of Absolutely Everything

The radical truth is that Christianity isn't just one of many relgioins, it is TH#E truth that explains everything.  I didn't choose Christianity because I liked it but because I believe that it explains everything, and of course it is wrong to speak of choosing it at all since from beginning to end it shows that God does all the choosing.  That theme is made very sharp and clear in the Bible although in our own lives it may not seem to be quite so clear.  I can see my own situation as having grown to appreciate this or that fact about Christianity without recognizing that God was doing the choosing of me by leading me that way.  But scripture is very clear that God chose Abraham and guided his life to the promised land despite Abraham's many excursions off the path of God's leading.  God also chose Moses when He appeared in the burning bush and called him to rescue His people from Egypt.  God called Joshua to take over from Moses, then alcalled all the Judges to lead the people in their various situations.  He chose Samuel the prophet, then David the King and so on and so forth.  We may be under the illusion that we had some kind of role in our own embracing of Christianity but we're wrong and the sooner we get it straightened out the stronger our faith will be.

But also God is in charge of everything that happens on Earth to everybody.  Thinking of God as able to change His mind makes it seem as if He could make things happen some other way than they do but that really isn't possible if you understand at least a litte about the nature of God and the Moral Law.  Scripture says here and there that God repents of this or that plan, but it also says that God cannot change and if He is in fact perfection itself, which He is, how could He change?  the only thing that makes it seem as if He can change is our own mental inadequacy for understanding the nature of God.  Scripture uses language that takes our mental inadequacy into account so that we aren't overwhelmed with concepts so far out of our realm of thought we'd lose interet in trying to understand any of it.

So I'mm watching with knots in my stomach the way things are going in this world, which do seem to me to be unprecedented expreassions of sheer evil tghat couldn't possibily have ever existed before, but of course I don't have the ability toknow that and could be wrong.  But I know I am among millions of others who are experiencing things pretty much as I'm experiencing them.  This is what makes us believe the End is very close of course.  But our sense of history may be far enough off that we're wrong and it's not so close.  Ther'es no way to know.  We just feel it is very very close.

I don't want things to keep going in the direction they are going, and know I'm not alone in this either.  I don't want things to get THAT bad as fast as they seem to be getting that bad.  I keep hoping we'll get a repreieve, that God will turn it back again, that the good guys will vanquish the bad guys once again as happened in the second world war, return us to a ormal way of life.  What a relief that would be.  But even as any of us thinks that it must be that most of us know it isn't going to happen, it really is going to keep going in this direction whether we are able to handle it or not.  Maybe believers will be raptures off the planet raptureD, let's get that d in there, beofore it all happens but there are lots of people who will suffer terribly after we're gone and I hurt for them and don't want them to go through it, let alone end up in Hell at the end of all of it.

But look how things are going.  Good and evil are being reversed to a breathtaking degre these days, more than everybefore in history or so it seems from here.  Evil ideologies lead to evil acts but then instead of the good guys rising up to defeat them the evil ideologies only flourish and grown stronger.  Surelyh Nine Eleven should have led to the vanquiaing o fht bad guys but it didn't.  They only grew stronger in inflouence and popularity.  Surely the evil that was done against Israel by Hamas on October seventh would result in Israel's pusing them back into a position of inability to continue with such attacks, but no, there is this uprising of the evil position against Israel with enough power behind it to suppress Israel's atempts to defend itself.  Has this ever happened before?  Anything like this?

The evil ideologies are the work of Satah.  Of course the vast majoirity ty of people dn't believe in Satan, and even CHristians or Bible believers who do believe in Satan wmaynot believe he is a real being but more of a principle and so defang the concept in that way.  But heis presented as a being, a person, in scripture and a bible believer should khnow that he is a person from that fact.  In any case Satan is winning the Great Battle between good and evil at this point in history, beyhond anthing I can imagine ever happened, or know from my general overview of history ever happened.  The hardest part to take is knowing that people who ordinarily seem normal and resonble are taking the side of Satan's evil and jjustifying it as good.  This does involved their being ignorant of facts at least so that if they really know the truth about what led to pre present moment one can belive they wouldn't accept it all so readily.  Can hope they wsoldn't .    If they knew the truth history of the Israeli Paelestinian situation could they really side with Hamas aainst Israel as so mahy are doing?  Could they?  Well Ikeep hoping they couldn't.

Marxism appears to be Satan's most powerful weapon againt good these days, succeeding beyond anything I could ever have imagined.  I've seen it coming in slips and moments since the sixtiies but never imagined it could get this far and there are plenty who haven't seen it coming and only see it in its fullblown manifestation that seems to have come about almost overnight, a matter of a few years.  What can they make of it?  Ig you fifn'y  see it coming for decades already how could you know what to make of it?

And since the Left has always embraced it in its earlier stages how are they going to re cognize that it's their own favored ideology that is responsible for the evil that is comingdown on us now?    It all seems to them to be a matter of comjpassion triumphing over authoritarianism or the self interest of a ruling class of Oppressors.  How could that end up in the evil we are mired in now?

As usual they make it the fault of the designated Oppressor of course.  Today it's the White Race and even the Hamas position seems to some of them to be just an expression of a racial minority against thie evil whiteness.   Even the Jews are classes as whites although historically they were no doubt one of the brownigsh groups of the Middle East.  As of course would Jesus have been, just to answer that ridiculous idea that we all think He wsas whtie.  No, every culture makes Jesus into whatever fits their own image.

But some of us have been carried above our own tribal identities by the rising tide of civilization over the last couple of milllennia in the West.  That civilization that is about to go under thank sot the satanic Marxism that is calling the shots these days.

Islam is not just another religion, it is Satan's masterpiece of evil, murder set in religious terminology.  Marxism isn't just another philoszophical mistake, it's Satan's masterpiece of a wrecking ball against Christian civilization.

That is what the White Race seems to stand for in this context too I think, and I'm not the onlyh one who thinks it.  The whole racial mess that has been building up steam for decades now has finally reached its real goal in the vilification of the White RRace as responsible for all the evil on the earth.  That's because historically the whtie race has been the main carrier of Christianity.  It's not that Christianity is a racial thing at all, ikt's not, ub thistorically it was carried most successfully in Europe and spread through the English speaking world in particular.  This allows some to identify it wilth the white race although it's just a meaningless flueke that there is any connection at all.  Christianity is catholic, meaning universal, it has no skin color.    

But because it is associated with the white race, however unconsciously in many cases, an attack on the white race serves Satan nicely as the outer shell as it were of his real target which is biblical religion and the Biblbicfal God.  the Jews are the first line of representation of this true God but the White Race represents it more fullyyu.   It's really God and Christ Satan wants to wipe off the face of the Earth.

\\Unbeleivers aren't in a position to see things from this perspective, and even many Christians don't put the whole big picture together.    But this is the raidical fact of Christianity that it is THE truth and explains ALL of history.  There is a real battle between Good and Evil that has been going on since the Fall in Eden and will continue until Jesus returns but most people are confusedc because they aren't looking at it for a wide ehough angle to see it as it really  is.  they think Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity as they think of it, is just a sectarian expression of religion while Islam is just another relition and so is Catholicism.  I don't wse any way at this late date to get the truth out to enough people to make a difference.  it really is going to take the return of Jesus to do that.

Rohr's Arrogance

There's so much scary going on in the world these days you'd think I wouldn't rate Richard Rohr so high on that scale but I do.  He's really really scary to me, that rewriting of the entire meaning of Christianity.  And I've been thinking about how arrogant that is, supremely arrogant, and he thinks he's so humblae and he calls traditional Christians arrogant, but that just makes him all the more arrogant it seems to me.  The arrogance it takes to rewrite the entire corpus of Christaint doctrine, even Catholic doctrine whichis bad enough it iteself, but true Christian doctrine.  How arrogant can you get?  And say it so dogmaticallyu that this is the truth, what hethinks is the truth and tradition is all wrong.  How arrogant can you get?  But he calls the rest of us arrogant.    Oh well it may not have been wroth a new post but there it is.

Hell and Fallenness and God's Wrath EWithout Restraints

I don't know how long it has been, over a year at lest, since I had the experience of fearing that I'd never been saved and was destined for Hell, a truly terrifying time for me which included the idea that I couldn't get saved now although I kept asking the Lord to save me.  I've never gone into the details about that and don't want to, just want to say that it was a very scary time and eventually I had an experience that convinced me I am saved and had been saved all along, just as I had thought was the case before all this happened.  

TThe point of bringing it up now is that it marks the \\\\a change in my view of things that is still with me.  I'd always thought of this world as fallen and of human beings as fallen and that this is the reason for Jesus' substitutionary death on the cross to save us, but during this experience which was so personal and intense the reality of Hell and of the fallenness of this world became  

Phone rang, forgot what I was saying.  Something about why I told that story.

It sensitized me to the reality of Hell and the fallenness of this world in a way that has become a permanent fixture in my mind.  It's always there now, coloring most of my thoguthts in a way it never was before.  Almost everything I think includes the idea that it's occurring in the context of fallenness and nobody knows it and if they did they'd take it all more seriously or think of it differently in omse sense or other.   When people say things that imply this world is just going to go on and on until the sun  finally burns out in the distant future or takes a political position that implies things could change for the better in some way that denies the reality of our sin nautre., (I either want to tell them otherwise or I feel hopeless about anyone ever getting it.

The idea includes the fact that this world is temporary and that God has told us Jesus is going to return and that will bring it to an end.  That, of course, is what so many Christians are now feeling is here right now, the End Times, the prelude to the final act of the drama of Planet Earth that I've also written so much about.

Even nonbelievers are feeling that things are far worse these days than has been the case forever.  That may be an exaggeration in all our minds since there have certainly been some terrible times in history that we've not learned much about, but still, open calls for the extermination of the Jews?  Really?  How can that ever have occurred even on this benighted planet?  How?  

But a main part of the theme of fallenness is that God is judging us and that the worse things get in terms of our violations of God's :aw the more of God's wrath comes against us.  People who don't believe in the Biblical God impute an increase in evil and even natural disasters to human causes which gets us insane theories about coimate change that are going only going to make it all worse.  Correction:  making it all worse just takes us to more of God's wrath even though we aren't caling it that.  

If the terrorists had any notion at all of the true God and His Law their eager violence against the Jews and other "infidels" would get quickly dampened by the knowledge that they are facing a terrible Hell and not seventy virgins.    If the people who are pushing all this transgender stuff had any notion of God's Laws they'd know that theyu too are storing up God's wrath against themselves.  They'd rather blame other people for their supposed transphobia, and all that, but no, it's God who makes the rules, in fact God's Law just IS, it's not something He applies as He decides in each case, it's part of His nature and acts inexorably against every violation of it.  The Eastern religions have an imperforce idea of it in the notion of Karma, but the point is that we're talking about a Law that operates in this universe that cannot be affected by any attempts we make to undo its effects.   We can repent, change and do good works and then we will be accumulating better things for ourselves but that isn't going to eradicate the bad things.  The only thing that can eradicate the bad things is Christ's death on the cross in our place IF WE BELIEVE IN HIM and put all ourt our trust in Him.

I rtI think of this heretic Richard Rohr whose teachings I've been listening to so avidly for a while now.  He denies God's wrath, he denies the crucifixion as atonement for sin, says it's too violent to be what God intended, in these and other ways he denies the Bible as God's word although he likes to say how much he appreciates the Bible.  A lot of the Bible he simply rewrites to suit his preferred idea of how things ought to be , but some of it he simply denies outright.  He ridicules the idea that God is masculine, attributin gthat notion to us tribal human beings who must think in such terms, whereas in reality it is God Himself in His inerrant Word to us who identifies Himself as masculine.    And much more than that.  He either rewrites the whole revelation of simply pooh poohs it out of existence as he substitutes his own philsophies in its place.  

And that shakes me up when I think of people actually beleiving what he is teaching and trying to live by it.  Cathllic teaching is already problematic since it is few Catholics who live entirely for Jesaus or even know the gospels at all according ot the traditions that Rohr is denyhing them, so salvation for a Catholic is very iffy anyway,bbut if they follow Rorhr they are simply digging their own tunnels to Hell.  AND very probably adding to the stored up ratath that is coming on this Planet even before they die.

What could save us and save the planet ?   Well, believing in Christ for sure, but also taking the Law seriously and repenting of it and turning back as much of the vioollations of that Law as we can before it is too late.  Gay marriage is bfiringing wrath on us, abortion is bringing wrath on us, pornographny is bringing wrath on us, anything done by our government that violates God's Law is bringing God's wrath on our nation.  

When I look at it all this way I know it's all over.  Nobody is going to change at this late date, or to be more accurate, not enough are going to change.

Upping the End Times Ante As it Were

 hEARING ABOUT THE SUPPOSED OFFENSE OF iSLAMOPHOBIA WHEN iSRAEL HAS JUST BEEN SUBJECTED TO A VILE VICIOUS MURDEROUS ATTACK IS MAKING ME LITERALLY SICK.  mY STOMACH CAN'T TAKE IT.  tHE LIES ARE FRIGHTENING.   iSLAMOPHOBIA?    wHAT?  wELL, MAYBE i SHOULD JUST SAY THAT YES INDEED i AM FOR SURE iSLAMOBOBIC  iSLAMOPHOBIC.  hOPE THAT GOT IT SPELLED RIGHT.  yES i'M iSLAMOPHOBIC.  bECAUSE i KNOW THAT iSLAM IS A RELIGION INVENTED BY THE DEVIL THAT IS OUT TO MURDER ALL WHO REJECT IT, STARTING WITH THE jEWS.   

iT SEMS WE ARE LIKELY IN A NEW PHASE OF THE eND tIMES WITH THIS AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE OF THE PERPECTRATORS AGAINST THE VICTIMS.  tHE HEAT HAS BEEN TURNED UP.  i HAVE AN ADOPTED jEWISH NAME THAT I beolieve God told me I should not give up.  My daughter has that Jewish name and even my gransons have retained it, due to a legal situation that I'm not going to go into.  And they are a quarter Jewish anyway, enough to get them thrown into Hitler's concentration camps.  

They aren't saved and that worries me.   But with this latest upping of the evil lies in the world the danger is now much broader than anything in my own private life.  

And now we have Biden interfering with Israel's ability to wage war against their enemies by insisting on humanitarian moves in behalf of Gaza.  The reversal of everything true and good keps on keeping on.  I feel the bottom dropping out of my stomach as I sit here.

Some soon, oh come soon, Lord Jesus.

more rohr, groan mORE aNTICHRIST rELIGION

 He likes to say how the Reformation was needed and so on but he never says clearly exactly what abourt it was needed, and then he goes on to say how it didn't help anyway because it was just as dulalistic in its thinking or even more so than the cathjolic Church had been as if dualistic thinking was the reason for the Reformation.  GGroannnnn.  

So I'll just say it to get it said.  The reason for the Reformation, although it started out to be a long list of complainst s about corrupt practices such as indulgences, as per Luther's statement he nailed to the door of the Wittenberg Church, it turned out to be about basic theology and particularly thye fact that the Catholic Church teaches a false view of salvation.  The Reformation as expressed by all oits leaaders, showed that salvation is by faith alone WITHOUT WORKS, but the Catholic Church still teaches that works are needed, and has had on its books, in the Counsil of Trent deckisions, a long list of curses or anathemas singling out all the tenets of the Protestant Reformation for cursing.  Fodder there for another Inquisition any time the Roman Church may again have the poloitical posewer to do so, to persecute and murder more dissidents, as if fifty million durin gthe Middle Ages wasn't enough already.

Does Rohr ot know these things or is he being disingenuous?  I vote for the later.     latter

Later:  Back to the so called universal Christ which is absoluite nonesssense but I can't seem to let this stuff go.  He says that the Latin on our money which says E Pluribus Unum and means Out of many, one, the one part means Christ.  Huh?    Weird and here I thought it meant something about how America is a melting pot, meaning that we transform a great diversity of different kinds of peoples and their cultures into one American culture, which used to work but doesn't so much any more thanks to Marxism and the substitution of multiculturalism for the melting pot, an entirely different concept that produces nothing but doconflict and division.

Anyway here he goes aain with his ridiculous idea of the Universal Christ which he says began at the Big Bang while Jesus of course only began two thousand years aGO.  BUT ACTUALLY jESUS AS cHRIST OR gOD INCRARNATE   HAD NO BEGINNING BECAUSE hE IS gOD, gOD THE sON WITH gOD THE fATHER AND gOD THE hOLY psIRIT, ALL THREE gOD IN THREE PERSONS.  tHE bIG bANG IS THE BEGINNING OF CREATION, NOT gOD WHO PRECEDED THE bIG bANG BY FOREVER.    sO HE'S ALREADY CONFUSED.

hE NEVER EVEN MENTIONS THAT THE WORD cHRIST MEANS aNOUINTED.  ANOINTED, i REPEAT IT BECAUSE i THINK i MISSPELLED IT THE FIRST TIME, ANYWAY, tHE aNOINTED, WHICH IN hEBREW IS mESSIAH.  aNOINTED, mESSIAH, cHRIST.    wHILE CERTAINLY ALL CREATION WAS THE WORLK OF jESUS cHRIST, IT WASN'T THE WORK OF cHRIST BUT OF THE sON OF gOD WHO BECAME cHRIST.  wAS ANOINTED TO SAVE THE FALLEN HUMAN RACE THROUGH FAITHT IN hIM, WHICH WILL IN THE END ALSO ENTAIL SAVING THE ENTIRE CREATION.    bUT cHRIST IS A SINGULARITY, THE TERM REFERS TO AN ANOINTED PERSON, IT'S NOT A PRINCIPLE THAT APPLIES TO ANYTHING OUTSIDE OF hIM.  hE IS THE cHRIST.  jESUS cHRIST MAY NOT BE A FIRST AND LAST NAME BUT IT'S HOW SCRIPTURE SPEAKS OF hIM IN ALL THE GOSPELS AND LETTERS, OR IF THERE ARE ANY EXCEPTIONS i DON'T KNOW WHICH AND THEY WOULD ONLY BE A MATTER OF INAPPLICABILITY, NOT SOME OTHER MESSAGE.  aNYWAY, jESUS is THE christ.  the christ.  \

BUT OF COURSAE rOHR KNOWS NOTHING OF THE TRUE SALVATIOHN.  hE TAKES ALL THE TRADITIONAL cHRISTIAN WORDS AND REDEFINES THEM INTO SOME KIND OF SYMBOL.IC MEANING, DEPRIVING THEM OF THEIR TREUE LITERAL MEANING.yES cHRISTIANITY IS TRANSFORMATIVE, IT MEANS WE ARE BORN AGAIN BY BELIEIVNG IN hIM, NOT WHATEVER BIIZARRE MEANING HE GIVES TO THE TERM.  wE AREN'T SAVED BY LEARNING NOT TO THINK DUALISTICALLY OR WHATEVER STRANGE MNOTION HE HAS ABOUT THAT, WE ARE SAVED BY BELIEVING IN jESUS' DYING ON THE CROSS FOR US ALONG WITH hIS LIVING A PERFECTLY SINLESS LIFE FOR US.  iF WE BELIEVE IN hIM AND PUT OUR TRUST IN hIM THEN WE ARE SAVED WHICH MEANS WE HAVE ETERNAL LIFE.  wE ARE NOT SAVED, WE DON OT HAVE ETERNAL LIFE, IF WE DO NOT BELIEVE THAT hE LIVED AND DIED FOR US.  fOR US TO HAVE ETERNAL LIFE.  lITERAL ETERNAL LIFE.  nO SUCH CONCEPTS HAVE ESCAPED rOHR'S LIPS THAT i HAVE HEARD AND i'VW HEARD AN AWFUL LOT OF HIM BY NOW.

HIS ISN'T BOUND TO ONE HISTORICAL STORY THAT HAPPENED IN iSRAEL, HE SAYS.  yIKES.    HE ALSO SAYS SOMETHING REALLY STRANGE ABOUT HOW SUPPOSEDLY SOME PEOPLE THINK gOD ONLY ENTERED CREATION WITH THE BIRTH OF jESUS.  sO STRANGE i DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO ANSWE RIT DIRECTLY.  nO, GOD 8IS SELF EXISTED, hE HAS ALWAYS EXISTED, hE NEVER BEGAN TO EXIST, hE HAS ALWAYS ALWAYS EXISTED, AND THAT MEANS THE fATHER, TTHE sON AND THE hOLY sPIRIT, ALL THREE HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED.  gOD DID NOT BEGIN WITH TIME, TIME IS CREATED BY gOD, hIS CREATION BEGINS WITH TIME, BUT gOD PREEXISTGS TIME, A AND THAT MEANS ALL THREE fATHER sON AHND hOLY sPIRIT.    sO WHEN HE SAYS THE cHRIST GEGBEGAN WHEN TIME BEGAN HE'S PUTTING hIM IN THE CATEGORY OF A CREATED THING NPOT TREATING HIM AS gOD hIMSELF.  bUT THE cHRIST IS gOD hIMSELF, AS IS THE sON OF gOD.  aND NOW jESUS TOO PARTAKES OF THE DIVINE NATURE HAVING BEEN CONCEIVED BY THE hOLY pisRIT.  hE IS gOD AND mAN BUT ALL DIVINE IN THE UNITY.  iHOPE i HAVEN'T WRITTEN MYSELF INTO A HERESY HERE.  cERTAINLY jESUS REPRESENTES US HUMAN BEINGS FOREVER AND WE NEVER BECOME DIVINE.  aNGELS NEVER BECOME DIVINE AND NO CREATED THING EVER BECOMES DIVINE.  bUT THE MYSTERY OF THE gOD mAN IS NOT EASY TO COMPREHEND SO IT WOULD BE EASY TO GET IT WRONG.

bUT rOHR GETS EVERYTHING WRONG.  i STARTED OUT GIVING HIM SOME CREDIT WAY BACK THERE BUT NOW i DON'T THINK HE GETS EVEN ONE THING RIGHT, i CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING ANYWAY.

DAY nOV 3

nOW i FIND HIM GOING ON ABOUT SOMETHING HE CALLS THE TRUE SELF VERSUS THE FALSE SELF.  hE SAYS THAT WHEN jESUS TOLD US THAT IF A GRAIN OF WHEAT FALLS TO THE GROUND AND DIES IT BRINGS FORTH MORE BUT IT MUST DIE THAT WHAT HE REALLY MEANT WAS THAT OUR FALSE SELF MUST DIE SO THAT THE TRUE SELF CAN LIVE OR SOME OT THE FORE.  qELL WHLE jESUS WAS NO DOUBT TALKING ABOUT DYING TO SELF AS WELL AS LITERALLY DYING IN OUR BODIES, AND ABOUT hIMSELF DYING ON THE CROSS TO SAVE US, THERE IS NOTHING IN ANYTHING hE SAID TO JUSTIFY rOHR'S NOTIONS.

fOR ONE THING rOHR THINKS IT'S WRONG OF US TO THINK OF jESUS AS THE ONLY cHRIST.  hE EXTENDS THE cHRIST TO eVERYTHING, ALL CREATED THINGS AS THE fIRST iNCARNATION.  THE WAY HE MISAPPROPRIATES TERMS IS STAGGERING.  tHERE WAS ONLY ONE INCARNATION.  iT REFERS TO GOD hIMSELF BECOMING mAN.  nOTHING THAT IS CREATED WAS INCARNATED, IT WAS MERELY CREATED, MADE BY gOD, MADE BY jESUS.  bUT THERE WAS ONLY ONE INCARNATION, THE BECOMING HUMAN OF gOD hIMSELLF, gOD THE sON.

hE QUOTES cOLOSSIANS ABOUT HOW WE ARE HID IN cHRIST TO REFER TO THE TRUE SELF THAT IS REVEALED WHEN THE FALSE SELF DIES.  oF COURSE HE HAS DENIESD THE fALL AND HAS NO NOTION WHATEVER THAT ONLY BELIEVERS HAVE THE hOLY sPIRIT, ONLY BELIEVERS ARE BORN AGAIN, WE ARE CHANGED WHEN WE BELIEVE.  BUT TO rOHR EVERYONE IS INDWELT BY THE hOLY sP8IRIT.  sO pAUL IN cOLOSSIANS IS ACTUALLY SAYING THAT WE BELIEVERS ARE HID IN cHRIST BUT rOHR IS SAYING ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE.  tOTAL MAGLING OF THE TRUTH.

hE'S ALSO SAYING THAT THE FALSE SELF IS TRIBAL AND RACIST AND HE PRETTY MUCH CHARACTERIZES ALL cHRISTIANITY THAT WAY.  aLTHOUGH WE ALL RECEITE THE CREED ABOUT ONE HOLY APOSTOLIC CHURCH, A TERM THAT BELONGS TO cHRISTIANITY AT LARGE THAT WAS STOLEN BY THE rOMAN cHURCH SO THAT NOW PEOPLE GET CONFUSED IF YOU USE THE TERM "CATHOLIC".  aLL IT MEANS IS UNIVERSAL AND THAT IS WHAT cHRISTIANITY WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO BE, UNIVERSAL.  iT APPLIES TO ALL HMAN BEINGS.  gOD hIMSELF BEAME A MAN TO LIVE A PERFECTLY SINLESS LIFE AND THEN IN OUR PLACE TO GIVE US ETERNAL LIFE.  tHAT'S IT.  

rOHR ON THE OTHER HAND SAYS HE IS ENVISIONING A UNIVERSAL CHURCH YET TO COME, A CHURCH FOR ALL HUMAN BEINGS.  uM, WELL, YEAH, IN THE SENSE HE IS UNFORTUNATELY TAKING ABOUT IT, THAT UNIVERSAL CHURCH IS GOING TO BE THE RELIGION OF THE aNTICHRIST.  i ASSUME THE PAPACY WILL HEAD IT OF CORUSE, AND THE PAPCY IS THE aNTICHRIST AS THE pROTPTESTANT rEFORMERS DISCOVERED.    sO THERE IS rOHR DECLARING THAT HIS VISION IS OF THIS UNIVERSAL CHURCH.  hM.

mAYBE IT WOLD BE RIGHT TO SAY THAT rOHR'S REDEFINED cHRISTIANITY IS GOING TO BE THE FOUNDATIONAL cHURCH OF THE aNTICHRIST IN THE END.  iT'S THE MOST THOROUGH REWRITING OF THE WHOLE SYSTEM THAT i'VE EVER ENCOUNTERED

sO ACCORDING TO rOHR SALVATION IS SIMPLY FINDING THE TRUE SELF, LETTING GO OR DYING TO THE FALSE SELF WHICH IS TRIBAL AND RACIST WHILE THE TRUE SELF IS UNIVERSAL AND LOVING.    hM.  wELL, TRUE SALVATION, WHICH IS BEING BORN AGAIN UPON TRUST IN cHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION, DOES IN FACT MAKE A NEW PERSON, A NEW CREATION, AND HAS THE SEENDS IN IT FOR A FAR MORE LOVING PERSON ALTHOUGH WE STILL HAVE THE FALLEN SELF TO CONDEND WITH IN THIS LIFE, WE HAVE TO GROW OUT OF IT MORE OR LESS SLOWLY OVER THE REST OF OUR LIVES.    sO AGAIN rOHR JUST TAKES SOME cHRISTIAN TRUTHS AND MAKES THEM MEAN SOMETHING ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, APPLYING THEM TO UNSAVED PEOPLE, WITH APPARENTLY NO GRASP AT ALL OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE TRULY SAVED.

.E ALSO CHARACTERIZED UNSAVED PEOPLE, PEOPLE WHO IN HIS TERMS HAVEN'T YET "GOT IT" AS ALWAYS STRIVING TO BECOME WORTHY OF SALVATION.  bUT THAT IS OFCOURSE EXACTLY WHAT THE rEFORMATION DID AWAY WITH, THE WHOLE IDEA OF WORKS RIGHTEOUSNESS.  tHAT WAS lUTHER'S SPIPHANY, THE MOMENT HE UNDERSTOOD THAT HE COULD NEVER BECOME HOLY ENOUGH AND DIDN'T HAVE TO, THAT JESUS HAD DONE IT ALL FOR HIM.   bUT THAT OF COURSE IS NOT THWAT rORHR IS SAYING.  rOHR IS SAVYING TGHAT WE ARE ALL SAVED, IT IS OUR TRUE ESELF, WE JUST AHVE TO  REALIZE IT.  yIKES.

wELL, NEXT IN THE VIDEO LINEUP i HAPPEN TO BE WATCHING COMES A WOMAN TALKING ABOUT rOHR'S CONCEPT OF THE uNIVERSAL cHRIST, SAYING AT FIRST SHE THOUGHT OF THE TERM AS TAKING SOMEHING FROM cHRIST AND APPLYING IT TO OTHER RELIGIONS, BUT NOW SHE SEES THAT HE IS DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT, FINDING THE cHRIST WITHIN EVERYTHING OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT, AS IF THAT MADE ANY KIND OF IMPORTANT DIFFERENT.  iF THERE IS ANY DOUBT ABOUT THE HERETICAL NATURE OF THIS WOMAN WHOEVER SHE IS, SHE TEHN GOES ON TOE QUOTE tEILHARD DE cHARDIN AND THE HERETICAL FALSE GOSPEL OF tHOMAS.  oNE OF THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS.  aH WELL.

aGAIN, HOW ODD IT IS THAT THE VERY TERM cHRIST IS MISAPPROPRIATED IN SUCH WAYS AT ALL.  iF YOU GIVE A P\MOMENT'S THOUGHT TO WHAT THE TERM MEANS THERE IS SIMPLY NO WAY YOU CAN USE IT AS THEY DO.  tHE aNOINTED oNE.  tHE mESSIAH.  tHE cHRIST.  oNE BEING ANOINTED BY gOD FOR THE GREAT TASK OF SALVATION.    yOU CAN'T HAVE TGHE cHIRST in EVEWRYTHING, THAT MAKES NO SENSE CONSIDERING WHAT THE TERM MEANS.

ii THINK rOHR MAKES A GOOD CANDIDATE FOR THE fALSE pROPHET, THIS DRAGONISH TWISTER OF TRUTH BY SUCH A LAMBISH SORT OF PERSONALITY, MEEDK AND MILD, TWO LAMBS HORNS.    BUT HE HAS TO POINT TO THE aNTICHRSIT.    AMBYE HE ALREADY HAS.  aND HE HAS TO DO SOME MIRACLES.  wELL, THAT KIND OF DISQUALIFIES IHIM AT LEAST AT THE MOEMJNT.

jUST ONE MORE THING.  rOHR TALKS A LOT ABOUT HOW WE IN THE WEAT HAVE THIS OR THAT IDEA, THE IDEA FOR INSTANCE THAT WE KNOW WHO gOD IS AND WHAT gOD IS LIKE WHEREAS FOR INSTANCE THE bUDDHISTS SIMPLY CLAIMED A HOLY IGNORANCE AS HE CALLS IT, SAYING THEY DIDN'T KNOW.  hERE AS IN ALL THESE POINTINGS TO THE wEST AS THE SUPPOSED AUDTHOR OF VARIOUS NOTIONS rOHR FAILS TO RECOGNIZE THAT IT IS THE bIBGLE THAT GIVES US OUR KNOWLEDGE.  tHE BIBLE TELLS US WHO gOD IS, THAT'S ITS PURPOSE, THE bIBLE TELLS US WHAT SALVATION IS, WE DIDN'T MAKE IT UP, IT'S IN THE bIBLE.  wE CAN HAVE CERTAINTY ABOUT SOME THINGS BECAUSE THE BIBLE HAS THAT CERTAINTY AND GIVES IT TO US.  jOHN SAYS HE WROTE HIS GOSPEL IN ORDER TO PERSUADE US TO BELIEVEW BY PROVIDING US THE EVIDENCE ON WHICH WE CAN BELIEVE.  hE WROTE ONE OF HIS LETTERS TO ADSSURE US THAT WE ARE SAVED,   iF WE MEET HIS CRITERIA WE CAN KNOW THAT WE ARE SAVED, THIS ISN'T SOMNETHING WE HAVE TO MAKE UP OR SPECULATE ABOUT, jOHN WRITES IT OUT FOR US, THE bIBLE TEACHES US ALL THESE THINGS.

No end to it yet I guess.  Now he's talking about how Buhism came up with a very refined observed understanding of the self as if that's what Christianityshoud have bene doing.  But of coruse that has nothing to do with what Christainity is all about.  Boddhism couldn't do anything to save us but they did deveop a refined psychology as it were.  Yes a psychology.  Psyche means what we mean by the sould.  Fallen human beings have a soul.  What they don't have is the Spirit which communicates with God.  We have a sort of broken spirit that communicates with the spirit realsm, meaning the real of the demons, but not with God.  We have to be born again in order to communicate with God because it is that faculty of communicating with God that we lost at the Fall and being born again restores it to us.  But Bddhists don't get bgorn again.  they can only operate in the realm of the self or soul or demonic, they can't know God.  

Saturday:  now I find him saying more about the meaning of Christ and he gives the cofrect definition of it as Messiah and Anointed but then says it means "sacred" and that it applies to matter and spirit ottogether or some such.  He also says that Christ is ternal but then he goes on to say it began at the Big Bang so I gues s he's confused about the meaning of eternal.  Anyuway Anointed means appointed by God, it does not mean "sacred" and you can't applyu it to anything other than Jesus who was appointed by god to be our savior and anointed to signify his being the chosen one.

He also laughs at the apple as if tht's the meaning of the story of the Fall, the lowly apple itself.  No, Mr. Rorhr, the apple is there perhaps to show that a very small sin has huge consequences.  Any disobedience at all rends the fabric of all creation.  You are foo  You misss the whole poinmt of the apple.

Then how he sees everything flowing out of the dance of the Trinity, whichmakes it all he says the body of CChrist and sacred.  Oh dear oh dear.  No, the creation was made by god,k 9it is not God, it is separate from god, made not begotten, while we sayof Jesus Christ that He was begotten, not made.  

We,k he says, meaning the Church I suppose, Catholic church at least, have taken it upon ourselves to define what is sacred.  Well, no WE haven't.  The thing he misses over and over and over, or ignores really, is that it is the Bible that tells us what all these things mean and the Bible is God's own revelation to us.  We don't decide anything or when we do we become heretics as he has become because he is the one making everything up.  He claims to take it from the bible butg only by twisitng it all out of shape can he claim such a thing.

And he's teaching a lot of people this heresy.

g this read aloud I found of course all the typos and they are many and some pretty bad but I also found myself saying something I need to correct:  I meant to say that we all repeat the creed about the one catholic church and I forget how it is worded but instead I said holy apostolic church and that is not what I meant.  We call ourselves catholic, the Christian Church is catholic and the Roman Church stole that term, misappropriated it to itself.  Oh it will certainly be universal in the den  end of course, when it heads up the final worldwide universal religions of the Antichrist.

Eventually he gets around to all of it perhaps if you can stand to listen long enough.  I finally find him talking about the atonement, the understanding of salvatgion and redemption that I'm calling orthodox, that all Protestants beleive, and he calls it a late development.  Really?  Doesn't scripture say Christ died a ransom for us?  Doesn't scripture say we are crucified with Him and now Christ lives in us?  Doesn't scripture say over and over and over, check out John at least but all of them say it, BELIEVE and be saved.  

And aren't we told in no uncertain terms in the Letter to the Hebrews that without the shedding of blood are no sins purged?  We can't be saved without a sacrified and that sacrifiece is clearly built on the model of the animal sacrifiecs of the Old testament, which in themselves couldn't atone for sin but show us to the sacrifieces of  sacrifice of Christ which can purge us from our sins.  And throughout the New Testaemtn we find the phrase about how our sins are forgiven by the shedding of blood.  What is that but the atonement, and it's in scripture, it's not a late addition.

Sins forgetven through his blood, I think that's the phrasing.  Through His blood our sins are forgiven.  

I doS keep feeling I have to get this said because otherwise his heresies are just going

Well, he keeps going on and maybe I should try to keep answering him but it's wearing me down.  He says where Paul keeps using the phrase In Christ that means it's about the universal Christ and not about Jesus Christ and he refers to Ephesians and Colossians for examples, but if you read the first chapters of those two books it's pretty clear it seems to me, VERY clear, that it all refers to Jesus Christ.  We are in Christ meaning in Jesus Christ when we believe and those who do not believe are not in Christ, nor is anythign else in creation in Christ, only the believers who are to bethe Sons of God as the first chapter of the gospel of John says.

But this is indeed very wearisome and this is an awfully long post.  I'll try to bring it to an end with the remark that his kind of thinking must be attractive to  many people because it sounds so sophisticated, whereas the simple gospel of Jesus Christ sounds puny to him and he conveys that denigrating valuation of it.  Oh just the ordinary gospel of christ, nah.  Naaaaaaa.  But if this is the case then I've got to say he's failing at his objective to cut down the ego because such sophstication builds up the ego in all those who find it so complelling and the simple gospel of salvcation through Christ so puny.

Sunday the fifth.  Hoo boy.  Another Rohr rewriting of scripture.  Guess what, now we have a "vulnerable" God, and in the scenario that includes this new version of God guess what, the violence of the crucifixion no longer fits.  Yes, it's violent, the crucifixion and in this newer truer scenario golly gosh it just doesn't fit.  If there was any doubt left about whether or not one could eke out a message of salvation from his heresy, her's the proof that you can't.  

This is in a video of Rohr titled An Evening With Richard Rohr.  

And I just watched Jan Markell's latest, and may do a bpost on it but since Rohr is transforming religion it seemed to belong here to point out that the Great Reset of Kalaus Schwab is transhumanist and in keeping with Jesus saing that it will be like the days of Noah, which included the hybridization of human beings in the angel human breeding that produced the Nephilim, they are planning to create a new human being .  genetic technologyh and Ai and all that.

As Rohr says such things as "poor litle old Jesus" and "vulernable God" and "god is like Santa Clause, making a list of who's god and bad" and so on it hit me that this deserves him the identity of the dragon with the Names of Blasphemy on its heads.  These notions of god are blasphemy.  And again he says a lot of things that come straight of the bible are false, imputing them to the early church fathers instead or theological tradition.  But the wrath of God is in the Bible, we didn't make that up.  

Oh, here he says it in so many words what he means by the crucifixionn.  Certainly not our salvation, not His dying in our place that we might have eternal life, but the "image" of the crucified, or "God's solidarity with human pain."   Really, all this shouldbbe understood to be blasphermy .  That's what it is.   Blasphemy, a falsification of God, , lies about God.  a Trivialisation of God.He mischaracterizes and trivializes God but also mischaracterizes what believers are taught from the Bible.    He makes the mistake of concluding thta because the Trinity isn't in the Bible through that very word that it's not in the Bible, but it's there in many separate verses that characerize the concept completely

He claims thesacrificial meaning of the cross, the substitutionary atonement, is no longer in force, because the letter to the Hebrews says there is no more sacrifice for sin.  Odf course completely misreadeing that.  Then he says that if God can't love His creation unconditionally there's some kind of problem here.  He can't demand the shedding of blood to make us lovable.  He is so twisting eerything I cnan barely make sense of it.  Anyway he's dcompletely done away with the atonement.  Having done that there is no more salvation for anyone who accepts his way of looking at it.  Amazing though how he takes every orthodox point and trashes it completely.   He denies it all.  Yes he knos the orthodox point of view, I keep listening and discovering that he does, and yet he trashes it all in favor of his preferred rewriting of it.  It turns my stomach.