_ eware of lying signs and wonders which will increase in the end times

The pre-tib people are wrong about the antichrist, the Roman Church is going to be the main player in the last days drama, and Catholics should learn about their church and leave as soon as possible.  As I've been familiarizing myself with the scripture and historical information related to these things, my opinions have only gbeen getting stronger.  

DaveHunt's book, A Woman Risdes the Bast, is the best source I know of for an overview of the antichrist nature of the Roman Catholic Church, and his view of how it all comes together in the end is pretty much the same as my own, although he doesn't think the final antichrist is to be a ppe and I still do.  If some other candidate emerges who takes on the title that adds up to 666 as the popes do, I would accept his view of it, but that number is what makes the determination for me.    He also seems to put the revived Roman empire into the future while I put it back with the claim of the bishop of rROme to be the universal bishop over all the other bishops and the whole church, taking on the title Pope, which occurred in stages but most definitely in the year 607.  Throughout the MIddle Ages the Popes were growing as a line of Caesars unto themselves and taking on powers that subdued kings.  And they makde martyres of milions, tens of millions, of true Christians who remained outside that Roman Church..  They were a monster then and although the Reformation set them back quite a bit for the last few centuries, I expecct them to recover and be the final evil empire for the last seven years of planet yearth.

Lately I've been listening to a book about levitationi as performed by monastic in the late middle ages, as investigated by Carlos M. N. Eire, as it is one of the main miracles used to determine the qualification of the person for Catholic style sainthood and was common in the stories of many of them.   hey Flew, A History of the impossible, is the title of the book.  The stories, or many of them, seem credible, people going in to ecstasies mostly triggered by some religious object of adoration, actually fising off the ground from inches in some castes to the height of tall trees in others.  The author doesn't arrive at any way of explaining the physics infovolved in this, and I certainly can't, but it does seem to have happened fairly frequently in some cases.

I remember back in the eseventies hearing from a couple of friends who were  seriously into Transcendental Medidation, that they were learning how to levitate.  I  don't know if they succeeded or not but that's the only other time I ever heard of leviation beging a phenomenon associated with religion.  Or with anything for that matter.

Since levitation was must one of a number of other "miracles" some of the Catholic saint candidates experienced, things like clairvoyance, telephathy, teleportation, bilocation or being in two places at once, and I'm familiar with those phenomena from outther  sources, I class them all as what Watchman Nee called Soul Power, rather than spiritual powers.  That is, people who do not have the Holy Spirit, people who are not born again, can do these things and mistake them for something spiritual whereas something truly spiritual would require a perso to be born again.   These phenomena are also what I believe the charismatics istake for spiritual gifts, and in those cases ythey may in fact be born again but acting in the flesh rather than in the spirit.

Nee's concern is that nnonspiritual phenomena can be mistaken for spiritual, as coming from God, when they are arctually produced by the soul rather than the spirit, and that certainly does seem to be the case witht eh Catholic acceptance of such things as from God in their taking it as evidence for the santiliness of their special class of holy people.  Other wise they consider that it might be a deception of the devil, and Nee also says that the devil is likely to be involved in these things because it is in his interest to further any deception that is attributed to God when it has other sources.  Accortding to Nee the devil doesn't need to be the author of these phenomena, they are powers of the human soul that were active in Adam and Eve before the Fall but becaume inaccessible afterward.  Now theycan sometimes, and in some people, be brought out by practices that suppress or weaken the body, or on the other hand the strengthen the soul's ability to control the body, which allows these powers to be released from a sort of imprisonmentn in the flesh.  This certainly fits with the fact that a severe scedeticism was practicsed by many of the "saints" who levitated and exprienced other sould powers such as clairvonyance and telepaty and bilocationdifd idoesn't always mention whether a particular levitator practised such ascetic deprivations , such as sevree fastings to the point of emaciation,  wearing a hari shirt that irritates the skin, wrapping a chain around the body tightly and wearing it at all times, sleeping on hard surfaces and so on.  Suhch things should indeed weaken the body.  It is hard to impagine how anyone ever tolerated them but apparently it was a common practice in the monasteries.    Anyway, that fits with what Nee says is one way the soul powers can be released.   The body seems to become an inert thing, impervious to pain or sensation of any sort suduring an ecstasy, it stiffens in whatever posterur it was in when the levitation or ecstasy started and can't be moved until the experience is at an end.  Oddly, garments also stay in place and can't be moved either during these events, and any objects in the hands also are immobilized there for the duration, even a frying pan with eggs in it that Teresa of Avila was cooking when she suddenly launched into the air.  

These things are so abundanctly witnessed that it would stretch my credulity to have to auppose they are nothing but mass hallucinations or something like that.  Surely they are real although of course impossible to explain.  The task of the Catholic officials charged with deterining the canonicity of each case is to come to a conclusion abou t wherhether they come from God or the devil, or are some kind of fraud.  Some frauds were discovered but it is mainly the character of the person under scrutiny that is the determiner of whether the miracles, as they are caslled, were of God or the deil.  If the person was judged to be truly humble and holy then eventually their levitations and other miracles were accepted as from God.  

There are plenty of reasons other than Watchman Nee's explanation of soul power, certainly from a Protesta t point of view, a biblical point of view that is, because often these people would take off flying when adoring the so called Virgin Mary or celebrating her feast days such as the day commemorating her supposed immaculate conception, which of course never happened, or assumption into heaven, which also didn't happen.  These things are a complete violation of the biblical accounts and in fact are blasphemies as they usurp the characteristics of Christ.  Celebration of the Mass, which is also a blasphemy, is another occasion that triggered a levitation for some of these people.   And many of these saints  as described in Eire's book were living in the time right after the Reformation, after the Council of trent hasd compiled a list of hundreds of curses against all the Protestant doctrines, all the doctrines of salation.  No Catholic would dare believe any of them and that being the case  none of them could have been saved and if they weren't saved they n they weren't born again, did not have the Holy Spirit, or the quickened human spiritual faculty thgat had been lost  at the Fall, and cthrefore none of their supposed miracles could have been from God.  

BBut Satan would like us all to think so and it is a very compelling deception.   

This poit  was intentedded to expose such a deception because it is a hard one to identify and even with this sort of knowledge  wouldn't always be easy to detect.    These things deceived many in the MIddle Ages and are very likely to be among the Lying Signs and QWonders we are warned to bewarde of in these last days.

God's judgment Romanism

 Of course I wish I were wrong.  I don't want America to go down forever under the judgment of God.  I want Trump's agenda of rescuing us to our former greatness to successd.  QWell, it looks like it is succeedeing very nicely.  I wish I could believe it will hold and truly bring us back to our former prosperity and strength for good, and yes our goodness.  I would love to be wrong when I say I just don't see how it can hold because we are under God's judgment and nothig is being done to deal with that.  Getting right with God is what is needed, and all the reasongable solutions to our problems such as illegal immigration, sleeper cells of our enemies, fraud against the taxpayer and so much more, just down't do anythig about our need to get right with God.  In fact it may just be undoing the destructive conditions that are part of Go'd judgment against us.  That's what I'm afreaid of, and try as I might I can't see it holding as long as the nation continues to ignore or deny that we are out of favor with God .  We can't win against God but that is unfortunately what it looks to me like we are doing.  Trying to do.    Godf would restore us very speedily to our former greatness and then some if we set our minds to confessing and repending of the sins of the nation and setting ourselves to try to undo them.  Confession and heartfelt rependatance would go a long way alone I think, but turning it back is going to be necessariy to get back into favor with God and I don't see any will to make that happene.  In fact I'm pretty sure that anyone reading what I'm writing here is perplexed at least by it, can't believe it, may even be angry at the thgouth of it, becaue we are so used to thinking of God as on our side.  A good God would n't be trying to destroy us.    Well, He did just that to the ancient Jewish nation, and to many other nations as well that had violated His laws, as reported in the Bible.  There's no reason to think He wouldn't continue that pattern with America now, along with all the other nations of the earth today as well but American especially because we started out as a nation comitted to Him and that makes us more responsible than other nations.

Well, I've said that many times alreaydy.  Again wish I were wrong, but he most likely scenario is that we are going to bo under just as Europe has, and all this is going to lead to the final judgment of planet earth, known as the Great Tribulation in the Book of Revelation, just before Christ returns.  

And that recognition always leads me back to Rome, the Roman Churchg which is false Christianity, which is clearly foreshadowed i b iblical prophecy to bye the vicious persecuting world power of the Antichrist riegn in those last seven years of the planet.

I recently mentioned gthe book here, Romanism and the Reformation by H. Grattan Guinness which analyzes how he sees it all playing out, and I just finished listening to another book on the same general subject, A Woman Rides the Beast by Dave Hunt, ritten in the nineteeies over ahundred years after Guinness' book, and so probably easier for a lot of people to read.  His end times scenario is different from Guinness' snf ZI figgrt gtom noyh og  I differ from  both of them on some points.  

Dave Hunt accepts the Reformers' view of the papcy as the Antichrist system but he doesn't thiink a pope is going to be the final Antichrist of the last seven years  He thinks the Antichrist must be a single person and not part of a line of successive occupants of an office as the popes are.  He thinks the ANtichrist will be like the emperor Constantine who held all the titles of the head of the Roman religions as all the emperors did, including one he added designating himself the vicar of CHrist, which is where Hunt says that papal title oritinanted.  

If Constantitne did hold that title in the Latin form Vicarivs Filii Dei, which I've shown many times here is the carrier of the infamous number 66 through the addition of its embedded Roman numerals, the I can see how another emperor type like him who took that same title to himself, could be the Antichrist rather than the Pope I've been confinced will hold that polisition.     It's possible but I'm still taking the position that he will be a Pope, who already possess that number in his title.  It could be either but Hunt's reasoning is faulty here because the emperors or Caesars were no less part of a successio of office holders than the Popes are, one Caesar folling another just as the Popes follow each other, and of course each one Caesar or Pope is also a single persons with his own characteristics.  The Popes are just aping the Caesars, and presiding over their own version of the Roman Empire which came into eistence after Pagan Rome falell.  Those who hold to an end times scenario along the lines of Dave Hunt's just skip over that vast period of the Middle Ages when the Popes persecuted torured and murdered true Christains in the illions, which is what the final Antichrist is eprophesided to do.  They keep expecing a Revivced Roman Empire to show up at the last minute, but in reality it apepeared ont eh sceine in the year 607 when the Bishop of Rome became Universal Bishop and from that point on began to usurp the roles of the Caesars and the roles of Chirst and GodHimself and rule over kings  and over a Europe now duggbbed the Holy Roman Empire.   Which voltaire said was neither holy , nor roman nor an empire.  But   that's what the revived roman epre was and is.    Yes Europe is also coming todgether as a politcal version of it and that's all goig to work together in the end, but the Roman CHurch is going to be the head of it all.  Wait and see.  If we're all around then.  when it starts to show its true final shape.

Knowlede of Islam might have helped stave off what we see building up against America these days, which has already pretty much destroyed Europe, but knowledge of Islam is a rare thing, and knowledge of the roman Church which used to be very big in the history of America, up until the early part of the etwentieth century, would have helped us remain the Protestant nation we started out to be, which is the whole reason for our prosperity and success in the world, and our goodness, but most people know nothing about Romanism, Catholics certainly don't believe such things about their church because all they know is it scomfortint presence in their own lives, at least for those who still enjoy it as their mother church, and Protestants have completely lost touch with the evils of Romanism and why it should have been a matter of urgent priority to protect the nations from its inroads.  Too late now I fear.  The so ccalled Protestant churches are far from Protestant.  hey re betrayers of teh Reofrmewrs and all the martyrs of Rome that brought about the Protestant Reofrmation.  

Somee books should be loudly recommended to the average citiczen and I think Dave Hunt's book is one of them.  The ignorance I found in the discussion of religion by Douglas Murray and tom Holland on the podcast 385 title Does God Exist, shouldn't exist if the truth had been kept in view.  But it was lost.  Maybe now they should read something to show them at no, Romanism is NOT Christianity, it is at best Christianitzed paganism, but it is paganism and the Inquisition is not Christian as they believe it to be.  As most people uforutnatley believe it to be.    Tom Holland came up with some ;prettuy wacko idea about how Christianity just keeps turning against its various manifestations as denouncing them as idolatries, and now even atheistm is using evangelical logic to do the same to the religion as a whole.    Yiki  Yikes.    Yeah, Murray, HOlland, read Dave Hunt's book or something on the same subject.  Pleasae.

They who hate you ... Islam, Romanism Marxism etc

There is one glaring problem with our American provision of religious freedom, and that is that there are religions with a totalitarian bent who benefit from it and if they get power through it would abolish it altogether in favor of their own religious ideology which they would then impose on everybody else even backing it up with murdering the so called infidel or heretic.  Marxistm is opf the masame mindlset although not self identified as a religion, but I'm thinking of Islam i particular along with Marxism which together are discussed frequently by Mark Levin as the great threats to America , and ethe West in general.  And they are.  Although individuals should of course have freedom of conscience to bewlieve whatever they believe about God, or almost anything else, allowing such totalitarian tyrannies to have power of a political sort is a suicidal istake.   Europe is as good as deaD ALREADY BECAUSE OF THEIR SUICIDAL ACTIONS ALONG THESE LINES FOR DECADES NOW, AND aMERICA IS UNFORTUNATELY COMING UP FASTS BEHIND THEM IN THE RACE FOR BIGEST suicidal delusional of all time.

Thisd is all true and I'm not giving up on my interpretaiton of these thigs as God's judgment on America, just wanting to make it clear that I know how all this is playing out and why we are so easily focuses d on this aspect of the situatiob instead of on the supernatural aspect of it.  This isn't really the reason, people don't think readily about God's role in our daily affairs, certainly not unbelievers and not eaeven believings most of the time.  That goes for me too.  Coming to realize that I'd lost track of my understanding that we are under judgment was a wrenching experience because I'd been thinking so exlusivley along the lines of how we have to do something about these threats to our security.  But if those threats are part of God's judgmetn on the nation that changes the direction of how we are to deal with it.   And unfortunately although I know we can't succeed beyond some small and perhaps temporary relief by pursuing the aven;ue of throwing out illeal aliens and find ing ways to defang our enemies, if God is behind the destruction being sdone to the country, as it has already beeen done to Europe, the we can't roill back any of this until we deal with the underlying causise, which is our violations of His Law.  Lost of them, some of which I've spelled out here.  Few of which sound to me like anything the country is likely to try to turn back, we like them too much, even the conservatives.  I think some of them could be rejected by the churches, a lot better than we're doing already, but the nation as a whole isn't very likely to care much about divorce and gay rights and gay marriage.  Some of course do but even though it's understood as against God's law I dn't hear anyone talking about how it's briging down God's rwrath on the nation.  I suppose that MIGHT change some minds, if we could get that idea entrenched in our eunderstanding, that the nation is going to go under if we don't do something about how we're beein drowinging in sins of all kinds and even legalizing some of them.     Yes, if we COULD push back some of these sins yes, I think we'd soon find that the threat of Marxism and Islam would recede as threats, yes I really do.  Maybe because we'd have more aof a will to deal with them, or maybe because people on that dsinde of the fence now would experience a great awakening to ractitional ity, or maybe just mysteriously they would facde into the background and stop being a threat, just ecause we'd be getting back into God's favor.  UYes I believe that, but I don't have much hope of persuading anyone else of it.  Either others alreayd ssee it this way or they dont' and few are open to persudasion.    I'd like to be wrong.

But as often happens all this somehow led me back to the theme IU've often followed in my blog, the Anichrist Roman Church.   I've recently been listening to the book Romanism and the Reformation by H. Grattan Guinness, written in the late nineteenth century, in which he lays out a lot of detail about the evils embdfied in that so called CHurch.  Mark Lewvin has a book out On Power, but the Roman Church is maybe the biggest power mad institttuion i the world and he has noi clue whatever to that fact.  Islam is up front about their totalitarian viewsa but you have to know about the written doctrines of the Roman CHurch to learn the same about them.  And when you do you may discover how similar their views are to Islam's.  NBodoy has a right to believe anyting other than what they decree, or the papacy decreed, on pain of death when enecessary.  That's what the INquisition was all about.    Guinness qjuotes a long passage from some Romanist docyument or other that puts the Pope at the head of everything in the world, the ruler of everybody in the rowrold and certainly all the lesser rules of the world such as kings and queens and         Presidents and whatever.  He rules them all according to their written decrees.  It's kind of amazing to hear it all spelled out i such glroriouwly arrogant detail.  

They aren't acting on it these days because they lost their power at the Reformation and have to wait until they get it back.  Which they are going to if I understand the porophey cy of the end days rightly.  In fact as the USA sinks beneheath God's hand of judgment the less power their only real opposition has and if we don't straighten out we'll be part of the reason they recover their power and rise again to rworld domoiinance such as they had in teh Middle Ages, only this time it will be over the entire planewt.    Guinness can be awfully tedious and repetititous but he nevertheless covers the facts that reveal the true nature of the Roman pagan immitatio of Christianity.   At one point he reports that Pope Leo 13jhe  rote a condemnation of the United States Constitution, Declaration of Independnece and Bill of rights as congrary to the true attitude towatrd God that a suppoedsedly Christain nation should express.  If they were in power in the US, and hey, it could end up there, say godbye to our freedoms.  Say hello to the rack and the iron maiden and other interesting tortures of their own invention as I understand it.    Islam almost seems merciful by comparison in their methods of blowing people up and beheading them.   even throwing them off buildings.  At least it's all quickj.  Turture is long and drawn out and extracts as much pain as it's possibl to engender in the victim.   

I dn't know if Poes pick their namesakes by their character or achievements but I've had the idea that may be part of it.  Leo the fourteenth has already dared to act like he has a right to tell Ameriia what doto do about our immigration situation, being usjust as Marixst as all the others on that dside of the issue, nand he took as his namesake Leo the thirteenth who condemned the US constitution.  Maybe there's a theme there and we should pay attention to other ways he's going to assert his supposed right to tell us what to do.  

Almost forgot to mention that near the beginning of the book about Romanism by Guinness he describes how they managed to manipulate their way into power over the kings of Europe.  By shutting down the churches in all the European nations in their role as ecclesiastical power, scaring the citizens of those countries into rebelling abaoistns their rulers which roforced the rules to do whatever the Poe wanted.    Interesting study in negagtive power, to invoke Mark Levin's discussions of that subject.

Oh how we need God to save us from all this, but that means we need to change a lot of things this country has beeinen doing for decades.  

faithswindow@mail.com

Later:  Just want to add that I don't agree completely with Guinness' end times scenario.  I already held a great deal of it before I read his book, about htthe historical fulfillment of the Antichrist, against the popular eschatology that believes the Antichrist is to be a single person who will be revealed only just as the end times final period of secen years starts to unfoled.    I think the Antichrist is the Pope and had been the Pope and releavled to be the Pope since the fall of the Roman Enmpire ehwhich allowed the Roman Church to rise in its place over Europe, and that the final Anitchirst of those last eseven years will be whatever Pope is in office at that time.  We already know who he is, what will be different is that he will have reclaimed the worldwide power of the Roman Church that was lost at the Reformation, will reinstate the Inquisition, probably have Islam somehow or other working with him, and murder the true Christians just as they've always done.    I haven't yet worked out how much of the standard or currely popular system I agree or disagree with beyond this.  Except that I think the first six seals have also beein fulfilled thorughtout history arenad are not part of the final seven weeks of years of the seventieth week os Daniel.  They don't have the character of wrath for one thing, they are the wsort of miseries that have happened throughout history, and the sixth seal sounds to me like an announcmenet that it is only at that time that the wrath of God will begin, and the kinds of events that occur in the eventh seal are definitely wrath, completely different kinds of things from the events of the first six seals.     Guinness thinks those six seals dcover only the period up to the beginning of the papal roman Empire.  I don't see much real support for that idea, they are the wosort of events, wars, famines, pstilences that occur throughout history, and he thinks that some of the events in the seventh seal prefigure the Protestant Reformation and I definitely don't see that at all.  But I haven't yet come to any clear conclusions about some of those events myself, I'm just hoping that maybe God will show me something that will give me some clearity about it all.  I have no clear idea of when the Raputre will occur for instance.  Guinenss doesn't mention the rapture at all but that's no surprise.    Anyway, I sisn't want to leave the prophetic elemtns concerning the Antichrist to be ignored.  Guineness does a great job of bringing out a lot of the earlier prophetic meangs from the Book of Daniel though.

They who hate you shall reigbn over you Eight Romanism

am are ideologicL e world.  In my list of the paganisms of Romanism in my previous post I managed to leave out the Inquisition.  That blot on history is attributed to Christianity by the world which doens't know any better.  They think Romanism is Christanity.  Well so do way too many of today's Protestant churches who have lost touch with their history so I guess th world has an excuse for getting it wrong.  The Inquisition killed some fifty million true Christians along with many Jews and other people groups.  They don't like atheists either.  But none of this is going on now and there is a delusion that it's all ended.  The fact is that it's never been repudiated and if Rome ever gains power again, as it will at the very end, the Inquisition will be revivd in far worse form that in it was during the Middle Ages.  When they have the power that's what they do and in that they are ideological sister to Islam.

The Pope even now has a place at the top of world politics and the last time I remember him being called outwas by an Irish preacher who stood up in the European parliament and denounced him as Antichrist.  That was Pope John Paul I believe, one of the more populatr Popes.     Leo is already acting like king of the world when he chides America for our immigration policies.  He of course want s to be sure that the Catholics among them are given their rightful spiritual sustenance.  He could turn out to be the final Antichrist.  Wait and see.

Murray and Holland on the Uncommon Knowledge podcast regard the Inquisition as one of the blots on Christianity that detract from its appeal to meaning seekers in our day.  That and the religious wars after the Reformation restored the original Christian theology that the Roman Church had interrupted.  The world doesn't have much sense of who the bad guys and good guys are in those wars and doesn't relaly care.  Unfortunately they may well side with the bad guys if it comes down to tiit.  

Muray would like to see something of the benefits at least of the Christian foundations of the West restored but he doesn't think actual belief is likely to be much of a part of it in our tie and he's probably right about that.   The liberal notion of rights, which are contrary to the biblical moral law in many cases,k  is much too popular with too many people to be given up although that is exactly what must be iven up if the West is to be saved from God's judgment which is what we are all suffering now and it's only goig to get worldse.  

But I keep thinking that so much has been lost that could be regained on the elvel of simple information about the teachings and history of Christianity without preacheing it at least for starters.  I became a believer simply by reading books about religion.  I didn't even really understand the gospel itself until after I was mostly persuaded to Christianity.  that came later for me but it's different for everyone.   I just recognized that it was true.  I knowq that's the hard part for someone like Murray and many  people these days but there's really not much holding that idea together if you spend some time thinking about it.   

faithswindow@mail.com

They who hate you shall reign over you

 Even when I know I am typing accurately, when I take special care and know I'm getting it right, still I get very strange readings of what I'v written.  This has to be a hacker.  I know I've had a hacker at times in the past.  Once when I was writing something in the Word program , which I no longer have, I got a message on the screen --this was back in the days when I could still see well enough to read it --telling me that there was another person editing what I was writing.  That was really creepy.  I have no help to deal with such things so if I have a hacker I have a hacker and some of what I write may not be what I myself wronte and I can't do anything about it except from time to time mention it so the readrer can give me a little grace now and then when something sounds crazy, crazier than usual.

I'm still reading Douglas Murray's book he Strange dseath of Europe, but also took time out to listen to that podcast again on which he and Tom Holland and Steve Meyer discuss "Does God Exist?  Tht's the Uncommon Knowledge podcast hosted by Peter Robinson.  

First a few quotes from the Bible, Hosea again since I've been reaing that a lot recently, that describe some of the things we in America have been experiencing during this IMmigratin roundup.    The =ives within and robbers without is on e form of judgment, and we've got the Somali theives within and many nations that have been cheating us for years without, as Trump has been resporting.  Another is , His strength is devoured by strangers.  Not straightforward but I think of the fact that we have so many weak irrational leaders, governors, mayors and other officials who are making suicidal decisions about the immigration situation just as they are in Europe.   They will murder your children.  How's that one for taking your breath away?     So there are a few ways a nation can come under God's judgment for violating the Moral Law, beisdes the one in my running title about those who hate us reigning over us which in a way is already happening.  Certainly is in Europe.  

There are many more such descriptions of what judgment brings on a nation throughtout the Old Testament, in the prophets but also in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.   As I say in my previous post  the solution to the immigration problem Murray is describing for Europe and we are experiencing here too, is not just a return to our Christian faith although tht would be a very good thing for the nation of great numbers did do just that, but something more active is called for to deal with this situatio and that's confessing and repengint for the sins which have brought down God's judgment on us, and doing what we can to undo them.  And as I also keep saying, that seems just about impossible.  But I'm prayig god might find a way to bring it about.   He's the God of the immpossible and if enough of us whant things to change there's still some hope.  

It's interesting and frustrating to read, listen to, unblievers talk about the history of CHristianity as they understand it.  They treat biblical concept s sometimes as metaphors that can be extended to apply o things other than they do in the biblical context, so for instance original sin is made to describe something like a nation's supposedly having been founded on slavery.  It happens to be a lie as it is used, but here I'm just talking about the use of the term itself where it doesn't belong.  Original sin desribes all human beings born into this world since the fall of Adam and Eve when they disobeyed God's comman not to eat the fruit of a particular tree.  We all inherit this original sin which in practical terms means we are born without the capaicty to know God, which was the first "death" they experienced as a result of their sin.  We are subject to death in many forms, injury and disease included, because of our fallen nature, our sin nature, which we inherit because of the original sin.   It only confuses things to apply the term to anything else.  It's very useful applied where it belongs for us to understand why we are in the predicament we are in on this planet.   

In the podcast I mention above Tom Holland gives his idea that Christianity has a form of atheism built into it as we are in recent years hearing an evangelical sort of atheism according to him.   He thinks this comes from the criticism of iddolatries in earlier forms of the relgion as he see s it, so that the Reformation was an expression of that tendency against the Roman Church, and now today's atheism is using the same logic to attack Christianity as a whole.  Well, no.  The Reforme ation was not the improvement of the religion either as is so comonly said by unbelievers, an improvmeent that Islam for instance has not undergone and needs to under go.  This is way off the track.  The Reformation attacked Romanism as false Chrtsiainity, a usurpation of the otiriginal belief system.  Romanism is false religion, false Chrsitainity, in fact as the Reformers came to understand it from their study of the scirptures, it is the system of Anticrhist, the Pope in every generation being the embodiment of that biblical character who is to reign over the whole earth in the very last days for a short bperiod of time.  He ruled over Europe during the MIddle Agesj, as a sort of Caesar figure over what they called the Holy Roman Empire, but not just caesar, the pops usurp the name and title and role of Christ Himself which is a bgreat blasphermy.  Yet they are treated by most of the world as ja legitimate expression of true Chrsitanity.  Most people have no knowledge of the khistory that makes all this clear.  It doesn't show up in Tom Holland's book for instance, he treats the Roman hruch as Christainity as usual.  Reallyh all it should take is a rough understanding of the scripotures to recognie that the Roman church is something else than the religion that grew from the life of Christ.   The weird vestments they wear should be a clue, red and purplsee robes?  That weird pointing hat of the bishops that Alexander Hisloep identified as the headgrear worn by the priests of the god Dagon, whom we encounter in the scirptures as the god of the philistines, the fish god, and well, the hat is shaped like the head of a fish.   The Madonna and Child imagery and concept come down from the religion of Nimrod and Semiramis, through other pagan religions in Asia and India to get taken up in Romanism as a major part of their system.  Veneration of Mary and belief in those apparitions and following her messages as so many of the popses themselves tdo, is blasphemy.  She is a human being and they've ade her into a goddess.  A human being in heaven can't hear all those people who ask her to pray for them in their rosary rescitation but she is treated as having that kind of power.  Only God can hear the prayers of rmillions of people simultaneously.  She can't hear even one.     And the rosary itself has a pagan origina, nothing to do with Christianity, found in ancient Nineveh I understand, and used today in some Muslim groups and even Buddhism.  I had a friend who became a bBuddhist and wore one wrapped around her forearm.   Nothing to do with Christianity, something papgan like all the other stuff.  Like holy water.  Superstititon.  Like lighting candles.  Like making the sign of the cross.    Romanism is paganism, compounded of the pagan religions of ancient Rome.    and yet of course it also incorporates a lot of Chrtistain biblical teachings as well.  So compromised by all he other stuff it would be a miracle if any Catholic could be saved in that system.

Holland also misuses the concept of being born again, I think to say that cultures may be regenerated or something like that.  Being born again is the thing that makes a person a Christain.  It is a gift of Bod upon believing that Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins agaist the Moral Law, for which we would otherwise have to die ourselves and pay for with an eternity of Hell.  That is what we are saved from, and when we believe that, believing it based ont eh testimony of the biblical and other believing witnesses, theyu we may recive the regeneration of the spirit that we lost at the Fall, or inherit from our first parents who lost it at the Fall, so taht our ability to be in touch with God through the spirt is now again part of our makesup.  It is lost to all of the fallen world, the once born as it were, but restsored to those who believe.  That's what it means to be regenerated, another biblical world.   Or at least Christaian word.   The Fall, original sins, sin, and the new birth are all important Christian concepts that need to be preserved in their  true meaning and not wildly applied where they don't belieong, if we have any hope at all of making the faith intelligible to unblievers.

Nopne of this is guaranteed to make anyone a believer but we dont'; need believers in the wront things.  

I think about Douglas Muraray and hoew much he needs Christ and how little chance there is that hell find Him.   Not just Murray of course.  I have family who don't believe.  It's very distressing.   I 've een wonderin if it would be possible at least to  get very noisy about at leas making the biblical facts available somehow to the world at large.  How of course is a problem in itselv but I eman istead of just beig evangelisgts and proselytizers, I mean treating the facts as facts that explain who ow this world is put together, what a human being is according to the biblical reveltation, who God is, His nature, His plan of recdemption, His reason for creating human beings.  It could all be treated as the hsitory ist is.  But of course that is just as silenced as everythig else that could save us.

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om

They Who hate you shall reign over you Six The Answer

 Douglas Murray doesn't exactly give an answer to the problem of Europe's death in his book of that name, but he makes suggestions that are along the lines I thought Hhe might follow.  In chapter eighteen, I think, near the end of the book, he gives a variety of possible ways of handling the problem that could or should have been followed by those European leadrets who instead brought on the problem by their irrational policies.  

It's a list of reasonable avenues of decision that would have done something for the suffering immigrants while reserving European society at the same time.  He gives pros and cons.  Since nobody acted on such reasonable grounds and I know nobody is going to and my own thinking goes in such a different direction I'm not going to try to remember what all he suggested.  I just want to point out that he did come up with quite a few rational ways of dealing with the problem that apparently ntoobdy thought of or didn't have the will to pursue for whatever  reason.  His next chapter after this one is about what is more likely to happen since none of these things did or will happen, that is, what is going to happen in reality as the policies will not change and Europe is just stuck with the huge new population of foreigners who dontt want to assimilate, many of whom hold views of life completely at dodds with Europe's.  He is able to imagine some sort of more or less comfortable finale but it won't be Europe any more.  

Before he gest to these points, in Chapter sixteen he discusses the fact that Europe has long its own foundations in the Christian   Christian relagion religion  Sorry to repeat worsds but I knew I managed those.    He says much what he said in the podcast I've mentedned here a few times Uncommon Knowleedge number 385, Does God Exist,  saying that many simply can't go in the direction of actually believing the Christian revelation itself so there remains the question whther its benefits can be retained without it.   He mentiones that soemthing about how Christianity is presented in Europe makes it an undesirable choice for young people looking for some kind of meaning inn their lives, who end up choosing to become Muslimes.    

That people need meaning in their lives that Christianity once gave Ueropeans and can't be found in the new secular socieites of the West, is clearly a preoccupation of his that he thinks bears on this problem of Europe's 

Phone rang, got lost, sorry.

So Murray thinks Europe needs to recover something related to its foundational religion and that it would have some baring on how they deal with this massive immigration problem if they could, but I must admit I'm not sure how  he sees the connection working itelf out.    

This is of course related to what I'm saying is the solution tot he problem but not directly, since I don't think just recovering the religion is what is needed, but a recognizerition that all this is happening to them because theyy are in violation of God's law and something needs to be done about THA if Europe is to revcover anything of its nature as Euroep.    This isn't just a matter of choosing to follow a relition in anywy case since Christianity is supernatural and the effects of become a Christian are supernatural, you can't treat it as just another adopted philosophy even if it seems to be a highly rich source of eaning.  But recognizing that the continent is in violation of God's law and doing something about that doesn't necessarily require anyone to become a Christian believer, it just requires doing away with some of those revered liberal "rigts" they attribute to the Enlightenmenet, and that is what I think isn't  going to happen leaving Europe to sink into oblivion.   Only if enough Europeans cared enough to trhy to save the ship at almost any cost and actually considered reversing some of those supposed rights could Europe be saved.   I don't know how many it would take, maybe five or ten percent of the population fervently engaged would do it.  God takes care of nations that follow His standards of righteousness even if they don't believe in Him.  Buddhism interesting ly enough lists the commandments of Moses' second table of the Lw are items to be obeed, such as no stealing, no killing, no lying, no wrong sex.  They don't mean quite sthe same thing to them as taught to Christains in the ten commandments but I was surprised to saee the same aitsems on their list.    But of course the libetral laws aren't all part of the ten commandments.  Abortion , gay rights, well that one comes under adultery so maybe it counts, and I guess abortion counts as murder so maybe they tdo fit the send table of the alaw.  Anyway, abortion, gay rights, rampant divorce, pronography legalized, I don't know what all Europe needs to rollsl back but America has those things on our list.  And that's how I see America's only hope of being saved from going under just as Europe is doing or has done.  

Murray seems to have a view of the human condition much like the view I had before I became a beilever in my late forties.  I always resented the physicalizing of human life, the behavioristic pscyolgocies for instance, and evolution for sure although I could never find a way to argue effectively against it.  Or for it either for that mateter, since I'd tried both.  Evolution is not provable or falsifiable, it is just believered because it is believed.   It has a sort of plausibility and that is all it has.  

Anuway Murray seses us human creatures as worth far more than you'd ever guess from the explanations of our origins we get from the evolutionary lens, and that's how I always felt.  We are amazing creatures, the idea that somehow we just appeared in a long line of physicalistic experiments and will just go out like a light when we die is simply absurd to such a degree that I really don't understand how I ever believed it myself or anybodoy believes it now.  Even not having an explanation that counters that explanation doesn't change that fact.  We are more than that.  And Murray says that too.

But I found out who we are and he hasn't found it out and doesn't think he could ever accept the answer I found.  Well, perhaps he won't I don't know, but that's of course sad if so because it really is THE answer and ther eis no other although he likes to think there must be.   He only think s Christianity had value, great value, in its benefits to western culture, and of course those who benefited from tall that, but he can't bring himself to believe it is true.  QWeell, I couldn't iether,.  But then I did, and I'm SO glad I did.  I have that certainty he sees people used to have in former generations but can't imagine ever having again, but have that certainty.  I really do.  

I'm rattled b the fact that this was interrupted by a necessary phone call and I'm going to have to stop although it's a pretty garbled thing at this point and not what I wanted to write when I started out.  Mauybe I'll get a better start later.

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oUR oNLY hOPE

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

Isaiah 40:

Return unto Me, says the Lord.  I have torn and I willheal.  Returning means repenting of all the sins what brought on God's judgment, and seeking Him for mercy and protection and friendship.  That IS our only hope.

In First Chronicles seven fourteen, I think tht's right anyway, God tells the Israelities that if they , the people who are called by My name, will pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and leaheal their land.  

Turn from their wicked ways, that's the operative part and the part few are goinf to want to obey.  In today's world what God calls our wicked ways are often called "rights' of all trhings.  Aborytion, not a wicked way, it's a right.  Gay marriage the same, and rfrighteningly enough even murder by some these days.  Some surprisingly large percentage of people, mostly o the Left or maybe exclusively on the Left, I'm not sure, think it's just fine to murder your political opponent.  What a staggering thought.  How did we ever get to this insanely evil situation in America?  

Can we turn back from here?  Well, nothing is impossible I suppose, if God wills it anyway.  But well, highly unlikely perhaps.   So ameria like Europe, we're all just going under and that's the end of it?  

But God is sill saying, Return to Me.  Anyone listening?

tHERE'S OUR HOPE.

They who hate you shall reign over you FIVE

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

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

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

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

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

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

+

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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They who hate you shall reign ovr you FOUR

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

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

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

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

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

They who hate you shall reign over you / European version

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help, Lord.

faithswindow@mail.com

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

They who hate you shall reign over youTWO

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

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

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

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

Creationist Topics After the Flood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They who hate you will reign over you

 This is a message I've wanted to write but haven't been sure how to go about it.  It's a message I wish could be read by the entire nation.  WQow, does that sound arrogant.  But I do.  I think God would \\\\\has inspired it, but if nobody reads it then I'll know He didn't.  That's OK.  It's been on my ind and I want to be in His will so if I'm not then I'm not.  My mistake and that 's that.

This started up in my head aboua week ago, or was it two, with something Mark Levin said on his radio show.  How strange it is that Islam has only sgrown in influence in this country isince Nine Eleven twenty five years ago, something I've written about here from time to time. Yes it's strange but my explanation has always been that it's because we are under God's judgment.  The attack on the World Trade Center was God's judgment on us but we did nothibng about it except blame our human enemies and comfort ourselves as well as we can.  

God's judgment on a nation is a punishemnt for violating His law, for sin in orther words, national level sin.  When you understand that you are i violation of god's Law you don't ignore it, you repent.  You want the juydgment to go away, God's judgments ar hard to bwear.  The aattack on the WTC was very mild by comparison with what He could have done and we should have taken it to heart and tried to repair our relationship with HIm.  But nothing of the sort happened.

ot Not many at the time recnized it as God's judgment on the nation.  A few did, David Wilkerson comes to mind and I now there were some others but I'm notsure who any more.  IMostly what we heard from the Christain pulpits of America, however, was denials that God had anything to do with it, that God doesn't do such things, that God has nothing but sympathy for us in our suffering.  Well, God surely does have suympathy for us in that suffering, but at the same time He was trying to get our attention so we could address the real reason the attack happened.  Sure, our enemies hate us tand on thehuman level that'saenough of ane explanation.  But on God's level those humans werejjuust His agents of judgment.

AThis perspecive comes fro thje Bible.  Ony a biblically educated Christian would get what I'm talking about.  In the Old Testament Godd is shown to have puished His people Israel in many ways over time, mostly by bringing enemies to attackand destroy.  Assyria came gainst the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom of Judea was carried off captive by Nebuchadnear to Babylon where they remained captirves for seventy years.  

wasWhen God gave His law to the people through Moses He gave the warning that they would be blessed and prospered if they obeyed it but cursed and punished if they did not.  The title I put on this post comes from Leviticus 26where some of the blessings and cursings are spelled out.  Being ruled over by they who hate you has always stood out in my mind as particularly frightening although of course famine and disease and murdering armies aren't a pleasant thought either.  

The people sinned against God's covenant from the begining.  All thorugh the Book of Judges, soon after the people were stetttled in the land, they had trouble with the Midianities and the Philistines.  When they were given a leader, such as gideon and Samson and others, and recognized their sin, GOd gave gthem relief from their enejies.  But wards continued thorughtout their history.  And it was clear that it was because of the sins of the people that they occurred.  When the demolition of the northern kingdom by Assyria and then the captivity of the southern kingdom by Babylo came around, they had been warned many times over that they were at odds with God and needed to repent.  Isaiah and Jeremiah gave such warnings, although all the prophets

There is always a strong note of assurance at the same tine that God wants to bless the people, that if they will at least adcknowledge their sin and return to Him He will relent and bless them again.  they are His people after all andHe loves them.  That is why He is warnig them.  they commit idolatries and He punishes them but alwayso says Return to Me.  

America is not GOd's Chosen People in any way that can be compared with Israel, but on the other hand Christians are His people and America was a Chrsitain nation from its inception.  Besides that the Bible makes it clear that God rules over all the nations of the earth and brings judgmetn against them too.  N  Nineveh was an Assyrian city and God sent His prophet Jonah to warn them theat they were going to be punished for their sins.     

In America we're pretty weeak on the prophetic warning program.  It

s not a theme you hear much from any pulpit, a few but not many.   Jonathan  Cahn who opastors a Messianic Jewish Christian church, wrote a book title the Harbinger in which he pointed out soe uncannuy parallels between a paassage in Isaiah nine and events following the attack on the WTC.   In Isaiah nine God has sesent punishemtn on Israel and they are repotrted to  say:  The bricks are fallen but we will reuilding with hewn stone;  the sycamores are destroyed but we will replant with cedars.  Instead of repenting for the sins that had brought the judgment, they put all their effort into trepairn ght edestruction caused by the judgmetn of God, using stronger materians to proetect against fursther destruction, hewn stone over bricks, cedards which are hardier than sycamores.    the passage goes on to say that it certainly didn't do anything to bring the judgment to an ends end:  for "His hand is stretched out still."

And what I am saying is that His hand is still stretched out in judgmetn over the nation of America.  WQe never did anything to repent of our sins aaoinst God, even to acknowledge them, what we did, as Jonathan Cahn points out, is rebuild the ETC, layeing, guiess what, a hewn stone for itsfoundation;  and in a chaurch yard that was close to the disaster a sycamore tree was destroyed, and the chuyrch replaced it with a confier, a hardier tree like a cedar.    That's the uncanny parallel Cahn pointed out.

So here we are with Donal Gtrump as pResident and he is doing a great job of making america great again, really remarkable, and we have to regard thisa as God's mercy oi our nation.  He is working ahard to restore the nation after years of its being destroyed by various poilitices of the Democratic party, open borders that brought even criminals int who have raped and killed citizens and people who have benefited from our services paid for by American citizens and gotten us into trade deals that only hurt us and weakened our military and I know there is a long list but my ind keeps going off it.  Anyway the idea ishouild b dlear enough.  This is what Trump is doing a gerat job of cofrecting.  And again, this can only be God's mercy on the nation.

But will it hold?  I know a lot of us on the Right are worried that we'll lose Republican seat in Congress wqith the upcoming midterm elections and that would be a big setback for Trump's policies.  Unfortunately it's pretty much an established pattern that the incumbent administration loses at the midsterms, and even thoguhj trump is doing marvelously well it could happen this time too, and then we'll see more thof the left's destructions just take over, including impeachemewnts of Trmp that of course he doesn't deserve.  He hasn't deserved anythig they've thrown at thim that they call justice, ti's all made up political warfare, but it creates chaos and confusion and what needs to be done to gfix things doesn't happen and gets set back.   

Ghe left' hasn' stopped its destruction , in fact increased it, since Trump came into office for his secdon term.  They seem to be destermined to destroy the nation alogheter.  And the fact that they seem o have that much ability to succeed at is t as they pobviously have, and lahalf the nation aggreeing with them, mostly because they hear only what the leftwing media want them to thear,  the fact that they have that much power is what makes me thingk it's go tsomething to do with God's judgment on the nation.  hen God is happy with a nation He prospers andblses it, He doesn't allow enemies, internal or externalt to harass and destroy it.  We aren't quite at the point therehwere  They who hate you will reign over you  but if we are under God's judgmetn and we do nothing to push it back as usual, it could happen.

What can we do?  Well, for starters Chrsitains ALL Chrsitans should be praying our hearts out with fasting where possible.  And part of the parayer should be gthe acknowledgment that the natio is deserving of God's judgmetn.  We need to lay our snis before Him and convfess them and do what we can to turn them back, but at least the acknoweldgement would be a start and He would listen.

So, what are our sins?  I'm sure I don't have enough of a sense of them myself, but when I asked Him to spell them out I got a few I couldn't have listed myself, they just didn't occurrer top me.    I easily tthink of the effect of the Sixties with all its liberation movements, sexual liberation, gay liberation, women's libseration.  I think there was some cause for womn to object but the probjme is it got pushed by the Marxist point of view tand brought in anayalysis of Patriarthchy and all that which is really an attack on Chrsitainity.  But the liberations in general were really just one big Sin LIberation movement.  After the sixties it became comon for people not to get married but just live together and if that only lasted a few monehts they might go n to someone else and so on.  All that is a big violation of God's Moral Law.  Gay Marriage which only came about recently is a direct violation of God's ordinance of marriage between a man and a woman.  Marriage itself has been udner attack in the nation.  But we seem to have become all too accepting of it .  It;s just the way things are these days, we've adapted to, we hardly ever thing k of it as wrong at all, and of course for most people the idea of sin would be preposterous anywaya, the idea that we are offending God just utterly ridiculous.  But if we are, and I know we are, God is continuing to bring judgment against us for thesae among other sins.

WHn I askewd God to remind me of our sins He brought divorce to my ind which isn't one I would have thoguht of, but Jesus makes it clear in the sermon on the mount that God hates divorce and that remarriage is adultery.  I think it was in the fifties though I'm not very sure of dates, that laws pertaining to divorce were strongly relaxed and divroce became way too easy.  I think I recall that out of ten of my daughter's friends, nine had divorced parents.  It's no small sin.    And I might as well add here that tihte idea that there is any justivation for divorce in God's eyes is wrong.  There is this idea that there is a special exception for sexual sin but that's just a rmidsreading of the text.  Jesus sayid that divorcing one's wife  jexcept for the sin of formination, causes her eto commit adultery.  This is ead as if it said that fornication is an exception which is very strange sinsce what it says is tht if he cause is fornication then she isn't comitting adultery if she remarries, which is bovious,m rbecause she's already commiitted adultery.  It's a simple grammatical point.    I can think of all kinds of reasons a couple shouldn't stay tohgether, esepcially in the case of violence and abuse, but I think scripture doesn't aallow divoerce even in those cases.  I can'at argue in favor of it, I just think that's the case.  God wants marriage to remain marriage.  Children need an insact family foe one strong reason but tht'smy own easoning.  Anyway I'm not going to argue it just say that it's clear that scripture does j  The only justification for divorce given in scripture seems to be if a believer is marriage d to an unbeliever and the unbeliever wants to seprate, that's the only one I know of.  But again I'm not arguing any of this, I just want to say that he rampant divorce in the nation is no doubt oe of the reaosns we are under God's judgment.

Another He brought to my id was the Scopes trial.  Evolution.  Hm.  Evolution as the scientific law of the land.  Hm.  Of course it is a complete denial of the exisgtence of God or cousrse  we'd be under judgment for that.  It's an idolatry.

How about Jim Crow.  We paid for slavery but Him Crow stood for years and although it came to an ened we may still be under jdugmetn for it.    Same with aborion.  The Supreme Court recently finally removed Roe v Wade from its position of national sin and threw it back on the states where it has somehow continued with even greater numbers of abortions than before.  All that shed blood is certainly crying out to god for redress.  

So I'm thinking all this noisy drestructive activity against the peace of the nation by the Left is a congtinuation fo God's judgmetn and if we want it to stop  it isn't going to be done through politics or any human menas, ti's going to take our recognition that the nation is junder God's judgment aAND AT LEAST OUR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF WHATEVER SINS WE ARE AWARE OF THAT       Sorry caps lock onm,  at least acknowledge the sins.  Daniel confessed the sins of the Israelities in His prayer i Daniel Nine, each of us can do the same for America.  I guess only the born again Christains wer e really able to do this but if we all do it with real conviciton and fewrvor He may listen.

I know I made a mess of this wih typos, I just hope they don't make the gthinkg unreadable.  Sorry sorry orry, I can feel them happebing under my findgers but I can't do anything about them because of my blindndess.  Sorry.

Butr I would really like this message to get out to a lot of people.  I hope I'm not the only oe giving it but I haven't heard it coming from anywhere else lately.

faithswindow@mail.comept if he