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.