Economic Castles in the Air

I've been listening to some interviews with a Marxist economist, Richard Wolff. 

In an interview titled the Final Caste Against Donald Trump I just heard him say that taxing the rich stimulateds the economy but leaves the government without the revenuwe to pay its obligations.  This seems to me to be a simple logical error because the fact is that when the rich are taxed less it not only stimulates the economyu it grows the tax revenue, because there are more workers paying taxes and more workers earning more money so mpaying highter taxes.  It's fa fact that the tax revenue is hight.  In the reagan era when he cut taxes on the ricdh the tax revenue collected by the IRS was double what it had been before.  Shouldn't Wolff be aware of this?  Why isn't he?

He goes from there to how we are in debt to China, which I've also heard we are, to a frightening degree.  Seems we agree on that, or he agrees with the conservatives on that, but he has the wrong idea bout why, perhaps because he's a leftist who never faces the fact that it's the left that is always spending so much money it's the cause of the debt in the first place.

Not thta the republicans don't obverspend as well, but at least they make some effort to pay it down, which is trump's plan again when he gets into office.  this second time.

I suppose I'm sounding a lot more sure of myself rthan I have any right to.  I'm just repeating what I've een hearing from my own conservative sources.  I'm aware I know very little about all of this.  But I'm pretty sure I'm able to jusdge that this Marxist is living in some kind of seconomic lalaland as far as understanding the actual facts goes.  He talks in sweeping generalitgies and it's hard to know what exactly he's tlalkingabout.  I'll keep listening for a while though.

Years ago I made some effort to read Marxsx and amarxist wrigints.  I ended up with the impression that they never come down to earth, that it's all heady theorizing way above the level of actual nitty gritty reality.  

And this guy Wolff sounds the same.

 

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Friday:  This link doesn't belong here but it's not worth s separate post.  I still want to comeb back to this and say more about this economist, this Marxist Professor Wolff, and this link goes to a brief video about a leftist named Destiny who seems to hate us conservatives so much he hasn't the slightest sympathy for those who get killed such as the man at the raplly where trump was almost killed.  And he orestty much wishes us all dead, certainly censored so that not a word we ever eutter gets heard by anyonhe outside our own tight circles.  Such hatred the Left has for us.  This guy Wolff doesn't express that degree of hatred but since he manages to misreqpresent all kinds of things conservaiv in the economic realm I think it's fair to say he doesn't like us much either, he thinks we are stupid, because what he says we say is pretty stupid, although it isn't what we say.  Anyway I dstill hope to come back to him.    Meanwhile here's the link tgo the brief video o

www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2YqeGHwd_k

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 Bing Videos

No

ttps://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=richard+wolff+case+ag

End Times Update After the Election

 So Is the Rapture Now on Hold? – Pastor Mark Henry and Alex Newman

I was expecting God's judgment too, just as one of Jan Markell's guest pastors says he was, but instead God had mercy on us.  Many were praying before the election and God heard.  But that doesn't mean the evil powers aren't still at work, they're just regrouping around the new circumstanstance which are a temporaty setback in their plans as they see it.  And jusnot just as they see it, but according to Bible prophecy since at some point things are not going to get better but only worse down to the very end.  

This week's Understanding the Times radio show focuses on the global agenda, the bendhind the scenes machinations to promote the global agenda, even the demonic realm is brought into the discussion.  

TheUN is the subject of discussion for a long segment.  I was folling a lot of the demonic nature of the UN years ago for some time and hand't heard much about it since then, probably because I haven't been checking out the sources as I used to.  The UN is an evil organization and what often puzzled s me is how a Christian nation ever got itself involvwd in anything global like the UN or its precursosr the League of Nations.  A christian should know that this being a fallen world and the majority of nations being government by Satan rather than Christ, there is no good to be had in any league btween us and them.  We are forever at odds with them.  This ought to be obvious but for some reasonn it hasn't been.  

There is a movement to get us out of the UN, and maybe Trump will usher it along.

Would Women's Covering Our Heads Bring Revival?

 When i think about our need for a great revival what often comes to mind is the qustion of women's covering our heads in prayer, about which I have an entire blog.  A very unpopular idea but I really think a careful ohonest assessment of One Corinthians Eleven as I've laid it out in that blog shows that it really is required of us, and yet we gave it up back in the sixties.  of course the sixties, when so much deviation from truth and reality took off.  

If it is a condition for revival how could it possibly be recognized by the churches at this late date.    

It wld tae the support of some prominent Christian leaders but the ones I think of are all committed to the idea that Paul was only referring to a cultural norml of his own daty and didn't mean it to become the practice of the Church in all times.  that idea was promited by one dr. Thomas Schriner and his work on that subject had an unfortunately large influence on the evangelical Church.  Huge.   I believe I showed in my blog how his thinking was logically so bad it's amazing the paper got any kind of acceptance at all.  It should never have been published.   But Shriner has a strong reputation and nobody wants to question him so it goes on doing its work of underminding the Church in an area that may be far more important than anyone wants to acknowledge.

John MacArthur is one who continues to promote Shriner's false thinking, quite aggressively.  I wonder if he has ever taken the time to examine the subject himself.  It's unforutnately true that it would take a John MacArthur changing his mind and promoting the head wcovering for women to have enough influence on the evangelical Hurch as a whole to further the conditions for revivial that God has given us.    It would also take his being convinced that we need and could have a really powerful revival and I'm not sure he does.   Or he thinks we've been having it although it has nothing of the power of the big revivals like the Lamphier and the Welsh revivals and the Hebrides.   I've prayed for Mad Arethur to get it but I don't pray enough.

Alister Begg is another wone whose view needs to change and could be influential.  There are certainly others but I think John MacArthur is probably THE one hwho could pull it off, influence the entire church.

Please Lord, let us have anoher Great Awakening.  Like the one before the Revolutionary War.  

Sunday:  It's been a long time since i brought up this topic here and now I'm remembering again how important I think it could be for the Church and how nobody is talkinga bout it at all.   I'f ve sometimes thought it could be at the root of many of the problems we've been suffering under for decades now, strting with Marxist feminism but including Gay rights and now this transgender craziness. anything to do with the perversion of god ordained sexuality in the culture.  the Church hpoollds onto some of god's ordinances concerning the headship of man over women such as requiring only male clergy and elders, at least in some of the churches, but the head covering is a big one that has been completely ignored and could be the cause of much of the current cultural degeneration we're seeing.  Yes I really think this is a possibility.  I believe God gave me the subject of the head covering to research and defend as a requirement, but I can't say he's led me to these conclusions about the culture, I just think they are very  likely.   Besides thinking that the Church's rejection of the covering may be the main reason we haven't had the revival so many have been praying for for decades.   i don't count the charismatic so called revivals, certainly not the Laughitng revival.  the very tone of those revivals says they are not of God.

It's up toGod to make use of this information if He is leading me to write it.  There's not much i can do with it except write it out here where few read it.  but god can do all kinds of impossible things so if He wants to make use of it I hope I'm doing what He'd like my part to be.

I'm sure a big hurdle for the acceptance of the head covering is the fear of alienating women.  it's sad when preachers and pastors fear anything along these lines bur t it does happen, fear losing their five oh one C three status if they promote a poltiical view based on teh bible, which is really something the Bible requries of them, or say anything that might alienate some people in the congregation and provoke them to leave, and certainly alienating women would have repersucssions.    but it's a matter of whether God wants it or not, and if He does then anyone who is truly a Christian should want it too and that would have to be the message.  

I hope anyone who sees this would pass it onene and pray about it.  

Jere's that new email addres my daughter is managing for me:

faithswindow@meil.com

new email:  faithswindow@mail.com

Helf the Country Still Believes the Lies.

Late Wednesday Nov 13

It shouldn't be a surprise that so many believe a totally false long long list of crazy ideas about Trump and the lection,what trump is supposedly going to do in office and so on, but I still have this feeling it hs to be some kind of weird illusion , that so many people couldn't be so deceived.  But they are.  The crazy ideas they have about what is going to happen to them and the country are so far from the truth,k in many cases the exact opposite of the truth as a matter of fact, that it just seems humanly impossible.  Surely the truth would have broken through here and there but no it doesn't seem to have happened.  trump said one thing, the media said he said the opposite, or Kamanla said he did or somebody that got heard by the media,  total crazy lies and they were believed by those who heard them.  I know the Left is cut off from the truth and that they won't go loking for other points of view on their own either, but still it's staggering to be faced with the stark reality of the delusion.   Stuff in many cases we know the Left would enact if they had won the election are imputed to Trump.    I'm dgoing to have to come back to this.

 One of the women on The View went on a rant against Trump supporters, carrying on about how could we possibly have voted for this man who is an insurrectinist, an election denier, a felon of various tripes and so on, who is a fascist and a bully and I can't remember the rest and probably even got some of this wrong, but we all know the general list of complaints.    You'd think by now they would at least know how we would answer it but apparently they don't even know that much.  

Start with:  he isn't guilty of any of that, and all that stuff is just lies to smear his character.   We should probably spend more time trying to get across the answers but in any case the list doesn't really affect us, it's just the usual craziness from the Left.

Unfortunately they do believe their lies and trumped up criminal indictments.  Oh and don't forget the fake impeachmenets.  Maybe a few took all that seriously but more didn't.   I won'der if we can ever get back to taking seriously what all that used to mkean, the real importaoat of  impeachment, real rather than fake criminal charges.   too bad to see it all get trivialized and meaningless.

They have a fake Trump in their heads.   The problem is they don't mind saying things that could provoke someone to try to kill him.  It's pretty clear that god is protecting him and I know a lot of us are proaying for him so even all that malevolent murderous hysteria is just going to keep fizzling out into puffs of hot air.  There's a provergb in the Bible about hos a curse can't succeed unless it is deserved, and their curses are not deserved.  I've been counting on that one.

The saddest thing remains, to my mind at least, that half the country continues to be sealed off from the truth.  There are so many layers of lies enveloping them it woulud take  enormous work to begin to undo it.  They have a hard time even understanding that there would be one real lie shaping their thinking.  The very idea is just dismissed as conspiracy weirdness.  they'll even defend the removing of people who are sccuesed of spreading "misinformation " on social media despite it's being such a blatant denial of freedom of speech that used to be taken for granted in this country.  They'll rationalize it as necessary for the protection of the prublic against believing something that culd hurt them.  good grief.  Highly credentialed doctors were kidcked off social media for daing to mention that there might be a problem with Covid vaccines, or that some of the repurposed drugs like Hyudroxychloroquine and ivermetctin actually worked.  both of which are the truth while the excuse to ban them was the real imisinformation, but do any of tem know that yet?

Well, we have Trump in office now, that shuld help although as usual he'll be targeted in a million ways by the forces of evil the other side thinks are reall good.   I've done a lot of praying recently.  Guess I'll be doning a lot more.

Need to add:  Joe Rogan's interview of Trump was censored by the powers that be on the excuse that "it waasn't trending>'  What a ridiculous excuse.  The biggest podast on the itnerenet withthe Presdient elect of the USA iand it wasn't trending?   They don't even bother to rtry to make sense.   A He mentioend that to Elon Musk during that itnerview.  I thought it might be put up after the election but so far I can't ffind it.

Just looked again.  It's there.  On You Tube.  Yahoo.  Obviously they didn't want it to affect eh election so I guess it didn't.  We didn't need it.  but now I cn watch it at least.

Trump wanders all over the map when he talks and it takes forever for him to get back to the question he was asked, though pretty much he does get back to it.  Nevertheless he knows what he is talking about and I hope he has a chance to do what he knows needs to be done.

Monday the eighteeneth  had to add this url somewhere.  leftist economist carring on in his leftist way that wcould cdrive me incsane.  We need dialogue, debate but not formal debate, discussion.  ideas being considered and answered carefully.  Instead of this flat out declaration of a point of view tithout without any response from either one side or the other.  I think this guy is living in a weird la la land but I can't answer him.

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=https%3a%2f%2fwrichard+wolff+trum

God Isn't Finished With Him Yet

 God had mercy on us in this election for sure, thank You Lord, thank You thank YOu, yet for a long whiolele I couldn't get confinced.  I kept thinking this isn't going to hold, no matter how many called it for Trump, no matter how good it looked for our team.  I'm too used to the Left knowing how to pull off a fraud.   But eventually I saw that we did indeed win and I shouldn't have distrusted god, which is really what that amounted to.   

Swtill, I haven't had the strength to get into a celebretaory mood about it.  Certainly I'm happy but it's not a big enthusiastic kind of happy.  It's more like releif.  Huge huge releif.  Relif that the cou ntry isn't going to be destroyed beyond reportair imemmediately at least.    I know our enemies aren't going to stop though so there is no resting on laurels here.

Somehow the Left hads t to be brought to see how wrong they have been so they can sto p being our enemies.  They have to be brought over to the true side of American democracy, the true patriotism.  I think that's the next job for Trump supporters.  Trump is going to make the country prosperous again, strong again, safe again, but the rest of us hasve to go to work to bring us all together again.

Soon as I say that I realize it's impossible.  And what we really need, desperately need, is a Christain revival.  As the American framers knwew, as Joyhn Adams said, our form of government is inadequate for any but a moreal and religious people.  That's what we need more tnan anyuthing else.  

Here's a good one at You Tube:  Why Trump Won With Victor Davis Hanson

I think I'll atdd Bret and Heather today too as their podcast is all about the election and they coer the spectrum of issues.    One thing I've seen in many places including in their podcast is the repott that every county in th country shifted red at least to some small extent and nowhere was there a shift to blue.  even if the red didn't overcome the blue the fact of the shift is hugely important.  The country is getting sane again.

Election 2024: Rescued Republic? The 250th Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

Here's a discussion of how the Left is going to wreak vengeanonce for the Trump win:

The Enemies of Liberty “Will Not Go Quietly into the Night" (From Panel at the @danubenstitute)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7nRZqBOCyA

It Takes a Potemkin Village: The 251st Evolutionary Lens with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying

I Love Elon Musk

 watching him on Joe Rogan.  Thank You Lord for Elon Musk.  And Joe Rogan too for that matter since he iterviews a lot of peoiple in great depth we need to hear that way.   

Loveusk for hving a hat that says Make Orwell Fiction Again.  Wow, what a great slogan.  

he says if Kamala wins they'll take down X, his version of Twitter.  I hope not but he probably knows the truth about that.    After he sacrificed a lot to save us from the cCancel Culture he could lose it all.  

Have mercy on us Lord.

This is a source of all kinds of exposure of the evil of the left.  Wonderful if many peop.lele watch it.

Joe Rogan Experience #2223 - Elon Musk

This is voting day for those who haven't yet voted.  As Musk says in this interview, vote like your life depended on it, because it does.  If you are a conserfative especialy but they aren't going to leave the libeals lalone either.

AClouA Cloud the size of a fist, a smoking flax, a flickering falme of revival can it be?

 Some people these days seem to be thinking ether is a Christian revivla going on.  It's not my idea of a revivial but it is a kind of revival and could be toward the kind I khave in mnd if it holds up.   It comes off discussions like the one I just posted on with Holland and Murray and Meyer, where Christianity is being rediscovered as the foundation of western civilication, and there seems to be a more generally positive attitude toward it than we'd been seeing in the new atheist movement that followed on nine eleven.    

They point to various people who have personally turned to Chrsitainity recently too, such as Ayaan Hirisi Ali and russell Brand, someone I'm not familiar with, and others.   So far as I've gone on this rack it does seem to be mostly focused on societal ills and our need to find solutions to them, although a theme of personal discontent and even despair keeps coming up too.  

What I want of course is a Holy Spirit outpouring which knocks people flat on their faces for hours on end, riveted to the floor and to the church environment wfor starters wshere it usually comes about but I suppose it doesn't have to.   Certainly a lot of people have bveen praying fo ryears for revivial and this intellectual change of mind and heart I'm now hearing about could be the first move in that direction.  You can't very well knock people flat with the Holy Spirit who don't have the foggiest idea what chrfistianity is all about or who the Holy Spirit is or what to do with such an experience, so it makes sense that god would ease us all into a true revival by first geting people to think hard about the Bible's teachings and the differenct worlviews we have been living under for so many decades.  People are discovering that the moral basis of the west is very Christain and that's a very good thing because it is, and getting aback to the root of it would save the eweatst .  

This upcoming electgion makes it particularly urgent .  I hope the good guys win of course but even if we do something more is drastically needed if we aren't just to fall back into the mess we've been in for so long and that threatenes to get worse fi the bad guys win.   Certainly if they win we will even more desperately need a Christain revival if there is any hope of keeping America and the wetst in general from sinking into the totalitarian swamp.  

As the prophecy ministries say a lot these days, it may be that we are simply at the very end and we won't have a revival, we'll just see the Church raptuered and the world go into the Great Tribulation and jesus come back to reign.   Well, God's will be done bur t I would like to see a bgreat awakening foirst in which millions come back to God, and THTHEN those who won't will be the only ones left.  

I hope thi is what they think it might be.  Let it be the opening wedge of a great great revival Lord, please please please.  

Christian revival: Fantasy or reality? - UnHerd LIVE

NOTE:  THE URL goes to the last part of the discussion so you have to set it back at the beginning yourself.  Sorry about that, I do try to get it to start at the right place but I don't succeed at that.

Listening back to this as I always do again I hnote my many typeos abut also again I note that some of them are not my own errors but something imosed on the text by some alien entity, perhaps a bug in the software.   It keeps turning the world revival into Revivial and Christian into Christain.  It changes one form of a word into another form of it so that the sentence is not grammatical.    yes this is the kind of thing that could be a type by me but I just happene to know that in most cases it isn't.  

guess it doesn't do me h good to complain about it but who knows maybe it could.

Late Sunday

I don't want to start a new post although I'll be going somewhat off topic.  In my usual wanderings around You Tube I've been running across more of the discussion of religion by unbelievers, mostly from those who are positive toward it such as Peterson and Murray, but the main context is not the religion itself but social conflict.  This is particularly pronounced in the UK where Murray keeps tring to deal with the problem of the alien Muslim culture which has invaded that culturally Christain nation.   

It's a frustrating discussion.  The mindset that could have allowed or promoted the influx of so many Muslims is either naive to a degree of obtuseness I can hardly fathom, or malevolent to an equally incomfprehensive degree in the other direction.  That is the question of how it could have happened in the first place but now we have the same twwo alternatives in the rationalizations in defensvee of the rightness and googdness of this influx of a totally alien and vixiously antiChristain ideology.  ANaive or malevolent the midnleset is THE most destructive force in the western world today.  It's Marxism, its wokeness, it's that area of thought some have been calling HyperChristianity beause it purports to be the defender of the poor and downcast  which is of course a legacy of CHristianity.  But what they are calling the poor and downscast is really criminal and hostile and they cant't tell the difference or they simply deny it, are blind to it.    it's practically the formula for destroying western civilication civilization.   That we actually have to treat this mentality as a reasongable point of vie w to be debated in polite company is already midnd boggling.  Is this the definition of insanity?  

It's what the Left is doing and wants to do more of and justifies as ritght and good.  Sheer insanity.

We don't know how to fight it, thay always have righteous toned answers to hurl at us, all in the service of keep ing the evil flowing in unchecked.   

This hopeless situation is what makes God's intervention in a great revival the only possible answer.  

 Yes when good is called evil and evil is called good, as aggressively as they are doing today, how is it possible to stop the torrent of evil that is engulfing us?  Who would ever have thought it could happen this way?  they sound utterly crazy those college students who are debating against Charlie Kirk, or those leftists who are taking on the Trump supporters, so self righteously adamang about something that is pure evil apparently without  a speck of doubt.   I could review the issues but I dn't have the stomach for it at the moment.  

Monday morning:

I hope the URL  at the obottom of this section goes to the beginning of the talk but it may not and you'll have to reset to the beginning yourself.  

This is an interview by Douglas Murray of someone whose name I keep forgetting, gilling I think is the last name, who has written on the subject of the beneficial effects of colonialism, which of course has earned him all sorts of hatred and threats from the Woke Left who so pricde themselves on their compassion.    

His view is that colonialism byu the ewest wasn't for the sake of conquest and subjugation of the conquered peoples but held the view that the peoples were deserving of something better than they had, which the west has.  They need to be lifted out of their backward state into civilization and all its benefits and they were regarded by westerners as equals rather than as inferios which is how the left mischaracterizes western colonialism.  Of course there will always ebe indiiduals who don't share the dominant philosophy but overall it was a benefolent attitude and not a subjugating attitude the wewst carried to the peoples it came to oversee.    Yes the idea is that western civilization is superior and the tribal peoples inferior as far as their culture and circumstances go but their human nature is the same as everyone else's and culture can be improved.    This of course the left vilivies as egocentric when it is nothing of the sort.  The very idea of anything being superior to something else , except of course their own point of view, angers them.   they call it white superremacy and nazism and all those other epithets they throw around these days.  This is the evil that calls itself good that I'm talkinga bout above.   that is so aggressive and indignantly morally superior themselves it is hard to find a way to shosw them how they are wrong.  In fact it is impossible.

So I think Gilling makes the right argument but wshat is left out of the discussion is the fact that the attitude the west carried to its colonized peoples was a Christain one.  There is no white supermreamcy, or scultural supremacy in the sense the left throws at us, not at all, it is Chrsrist who is superior to everything and everybody and we have benefited from Him and wnat to share Him with everybody else.  So that they can benefit too, be lifted out of their fallen miseries to enjoy peace and propsperity and liberty along with the west.  

This is what the Left wants to kill, Christianity itself, whether they know it or not, with their so called hyperChristianity which isn't any kind of Christianity at all.

this is such good stuff which like all the really good stuff in the world today and especially in the west isopposed by the Marxist Wokeist Evil it hardly stands a chance of being heard at all, being subject to immediate cancellation ssas "misinformation" and the like, let alone being used to better the world as it should be used.  It is heartbreaking to understand what is really going on in the world with all these incidents of the war between good and evil which the evil side seesms to be winning everywhere.    Listen oto it all if you can.  The curtain is either going to come crashing down soon in which case you won't be able to find it again, or God will intervene and save us.  I don't see any ohther alternatives and although I hope and pray for the latter I have no feeling of optimism abou tiit.

Uncancelled History with Douglas Murray | EP. 02 Colonialism

The God Question Revisited

 Listening again to the discussion at Uncommon Knowlege with Steven Meyer, Tom Holland and Douglas Murray that was the subjet of my previous post, I have a lo9t less of the feeling that they are spiritually close to the truth than I had then and more of the feeling that they are lost in the usual errors of fallenness.  I'm happy that Tom Holland has discovered the abiding influence of Christianity on the west and he's quite right about that, and I like Murray's willingness to take Christianity seriously and of course I'm happy with Meyer's views becaus he is the only true Christian there.

But Holland says some very odd things such as that Christianity contains within it a tendency to atheisim.  Partly he gets this from his assumption that Roman Catholicism is a genuine Christian experession which in its inception was revolutionary.  Why he thinks that I don't get at all.  But that's because I know Romanism to be the apostate deviation from the true Christianity of the early Church, usurpinjg its place inte world and ushiering in the Antichrist along with all the pagan religi8ous baggage of the Roman Empire and its legacy from babyolon.   The Reformation was a return to the true biblical Christainity of the early Church, it was no trend toward atheisims at all.  It was a recovery to of the truth from the pagan accretions and distortions of Rom. e    What the atheism of today is, which does contain the hyper Christian morality against Christianity they impute to it, that is just the fallen mind reasserting its native atheism now laden with the cultural baggage of Christainity, against God.  It's atheism and it's fallenness, the Christain aspect of it is pervasive and inescapable but it is nevertheless just an overlay.

Murray says a return to the original faith is not possible for many in our time and he's one of them, due to so many philosophical influences that have grown up in the ewest over the last century or so, and I'm not really sure how he finds that an impediment to faith in heimself.   But then I'm on the other side of the line and to me it's just a simple matter of believing what the scripture says.  If you can take it seriously at all surely you can believe it as written, as history told by trustworthy witnesses.  I don't see why not, but then I'm no longer where I was before I was a believer and it didn't look easy to me then and I guess that's where a lot of people are.  

It's a matter of truth.  Dawkins has that right, we believe what we are convinced is true and his problem is hethinks we believe on other grounds.  Mainly that we are irrational and believe what we want to believe.  The way some poepole think we must beleive just because it's comforting.  I suppose some do or think they belive for that reason.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali explains her own believe tf that way, but for me it is because I came to understand that it is true.  I don't think I could accept itj  as a mere comfort.  And besides, I don't think it weever was for me a comfort.  I didn't necessarily like it at all at first.  I likesd some aspects of it that I discovered in some writers such as a few of the Catholic mystics, but I didn't like Martin Luther at all at first.  Little of it appealed to me emotionally excpet the idea that God exists, and that was a powerful influence, it made me happy beyhond happy to think God exists.   I'm not even entirely wusure why it made me so happy but I do know that is what made me happy.

It was later that I finally  took the gospel itself seriously the fact of the need for salvation and what God did to save us.  And for that I think scripture is very clear.  Jesus did rise from the dead and many saw Him alive after His death.  That's all the evidence needed.  It's all there, there is no reason to doubt it.  Jesus even goes out of His way to make the point that we dhshouldb believe the witneses when He gives Thomas the direct evidence he needed.    If we believe the resurrection there should be no difficulty in believing all the other supernatural  parts of the story.  

I'm not all tht inspired by the science questions that Steven Meyer finds so important in determining the reality of God.  I'm interestinged in the smaller scientific observations I've listed here many times recently because I think they prove evolution to be false, and I suppose you can go from there to the reality of God easily ienough but that hasn't ben my frame of reference.

Does God Exist? A Conversation with Tom Holland, Stephen Meyer, and Douglas Murray

I'm still bvery taken with this quote by someone Roger I think he said, about climbing this dimly lit stairway which is our life and suddenly coming upon a window thgouth which we catch sight of another and brighter world, a world to which we belong although we cannot enter it...  \\

I had experiences like that and so do many others, before becomeing a bwliever.  It didn't make a believer of me and may not for the others either.  

Later .  Just ran across another interview with Tom Holland where he makes it excruciatingly clear that he think sthe Roman Church represents a revl;lutionary expression of true Christainity, and he even includes the papacy as part of this wonderful revolution.  Ouch.  this is so wrong it hurts.

JHe sees cycles of revolutionary cleansings of society followed by decay followed by renewal of the reformation in cleansing.  this is so wrong it takes my breatha away.  

 Holland on the Great AwokeningLater    Just

later:   I didn't quite say what this so called hyperChristainity means.  It's a reference to the woke trend going on now, the antishite racism, the transgender stuf etc.  The idea is that these ideas make use of a sort of Chrsitian morality against Christianity, and I think that's true enough and a good obeservation.  That was also the case with the moveme4nts of the sixties, gay rights and feminism for instance, later gay marraige.   The moral attitude is definitily Christian, this concern about rights of minorisites, th last legitimate expression of which, if I may say so, ws the Civil Rights movement of the sixties.   None of these other movements has anythign Christian about them at all .  In fct it strikes me as ver odd swhen people critidize them as not being Christian in the sense that they have no concept of forgiveness.  That's certainly true but that's not the place to start to criticize them for not being genuinely Christian.  The point is that these are all violations of biblical moraltiy in one way or another and therefore there is nothing Christain about them whatever.  Even feminism although that has genuine Christain aspects to it, is not Christain in the form it started taking in the sixties with the Marxism framework that took it over.    But you can't call anything Christain that demands rights and freedoms for what the bible clls sin.    Without even referencing the bible though you can point out that the idea that abortin is a right is indefensible just because no sane societ would call murder a right.  They have to completely obscure the fact that it is murder in order to carry on about "reproductive rights' and all that inasanity.    But you don't ned to point to the Bible to say that murder is not a right.

Some Seriour Thoughts by Unbelievers on The God Question

Wonde4rful things pop up on You Tube fairly frquently despite its being a leftist bastion of cancel culture and wokeness and all that craziness.  I can't navigate anywhere else so I'm stuck here but grateful for how much really good stuff comes up nevertheless.

Theatest I just litened to is a \n episode of Uncommon Knowledge with guests A\Douglas Murray, Tom Holland and Steve oh drat I keep forgetting his name.  But all three of them are deep thinkers and whatever they say is rivieting.  For me anyway.  

This one is The God Question and each of these men has written a book relating to this subject.  All have conlcluded to one degree or another that Christianity is the philosophical cultural foundation of wester civilization, even having coming from points of view that would put them at odds with such a conclusion.   

Theyreno belivers and talk about Chrisitanity ass a body of concepts.  They addresss the question of how theis perspective relates to the question of belief.  I keep wanting to argue with them about this or that, particularly with Tom Holland, because they miss the whole point of belief.  They do know this though and that's important.  

To summarize, they see how the moral framework of estern culture is thoroughly Christain even though belief in the resurrection is not necessarily part of that.  

It's a great discussion even if I think they go offf the rails here and there.  

Toad the end someon quoted someone, I don't believe in God but I miss HIm.  Apparently they can relate tot aht feeling.  I remember something like that feeling myself from the years before I became a believer.  I was a pretty committed atheist but I did from time to time have to admit that I felt a pang of loss from the time I gave up my pretty shallow childhood believe in God about the age of Ffifteen.  A pang of loss but I became an atheist.  For the next thirty or so years.    I well remember the first Christmas I experienced in church hafter becomeing a believer, sitting there hearing the old carols sung and actually believing them and knowing their meaning for the first time in my life, tears streaming down my face.  

Why can't they believe in the resurrection?  It seems an odd sort of stubbornness to me.   The disciples themselves didn't believe in it either at first but their coming to believe it by witnessing Him alive ought to carry some weight with readers of the account.  They saw Him alive.  He even appeared to do called doubtingg Thomas.  Then he believed too.  It's all there.  They are honest people.  

These are highly intelligent men and men of ddeep feelings too.  Very touching.

\Does God Exist? A Conversation with Tom Holland, Stephen Meyer, and Douglas Murray

Just want to add a couple remarks I remember from the discussion.  Both might have come from Douglas Murray but I'm not sure.   All of them agreed with the sense of strangeness of Christianity.  I thought that was an interesting observation.  Yes there is a strangeness to it and certainly to unbelievers committed to the contemporary secular mindset.    The other remark I remember was the poignant statement that everyone has had an experience like looking out a window at an entirely different world and feeling That is my true home.   Yes.