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 

jTrump has been making me nervous lately

 Sure I'd like to see us acquirig Grelnland.  I'm taking this down as I originally wrote it.  I'll just sketch in that I am nervous when Trump threatenes something like taking Greenland by force.  Just threatening it, even if it is part of a netotiating strategy, bopthers me because it's just plain wrong, and you don't threaten to do something wrong even if you don't intend to do it.

The other thing that's making me nervous is that he told the Iranian protestors against their tyranical govern,ent that "help is on the way" but that help hasn't yet materialized and I worry that it may not.  I hope I'm wrong.

Update, Thursday:  Sounds like Trump got some kind of a good deal arranged during his time at Davos with the WEF.  P  Somethhing like sovereignty over part of Greenland though not the wholej.  

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aNSWERING aTHEISM

Bret Weinstein had Michael Schermer of Skeptic Magazoine on his podcast this week and among other things they talked about religion.  Both are atheists and flatluy j reject it all as simply false but they also find value in it as metaphor or myth or some such, something helpful to humanity even if falsae.  Argfuing with atheists isn't usually my thing because I'm not very good at it but now and then I'll take a stab at it.    I have little hope of success to any degree but oh well.  

When they dismiss the Bible as fiction I am pupretty such the whole thing is a lost cause.  As C. S. Lewis wrote, the Bible has absolutely none of the characteristics of fiction, none, and he should know because he was a professor of English literature.    But although that strikes me as a good start toward undoing atheism it just never happens.  D. S. Lewis; judgment ought to carry some weight, but it doesn't.  they are convinced because they are convinced and that is that.

In fact it's pretty certain that they don't bother actually thinking about the claims of scripture to be a revealer of truth, they impose their bias on it from the beginning and it's the bias that judges it all in the end.  There is no "science" here altnhough both these guys claim to have some respect for science as method, in fact there is no truly honest inquiry at all.    They alreayd "know" that the supernatural is false, so that when they encounter it in the book they just use it as an excuse to call the book fiction.  It can't be anything else.  The idea that if they took the book seriously and really thought about it they might discover that there's a lot there that proves its claims to be factual truth, so that they ight actually learn that the supernautral as revealed in it is in fact actual factual truth, that isn't going to happen.  They can never learn that the supernatural is true because they've determined from the start that it isn'tt trute.   And that is that.

Nobody has ever risen from the deatd , therefore Jesus did not rise from the dead.  Well, but nobody BUT Jesus rose from the dead, that's what the scripture says, and it certainly doesn't treat the event as a commonplace thing or anythig to be expected at all, but on the contrary as an event that blew the minds of everybody at the time, all of Jesus' disciples for sure.  They certainly weren't expecting Him to rise from the dead.  Thomsas refuse d to believe it altogether from the testomony of the others who hasd been to the tomb and found that He was not there but that the women had seen Him and then some of the others.  Thomas wouldn't believe them, he had to see for himself.  So Jesus allowed him to see for himself.  And that is supposed to be some help to the skeptcis who read the Bibld now.  All we have is witness testimony, and AJsus said to Thomas that those who believed the witnesses, those who believed although they had not seen, were blessed, thouigh He was kind enough to show Thomas directly nevertheless.  And now we have the story of Thomas as another witness to be believed or not by us.

Of course the virgin birth would be a stumbling block to these guys too although that subject didn't come up.  But Jesus was born of a virgin because He didn;'t have a human father, His father was God Himself who planted the seed in Mary's womb.  Jesus was both God and Man, as the creeds say, fully or truly or wholly God and fuly or truly and wholly Man.  Both natures in one person.    He as the only sinless human beineing who ever ived.  We are all born in sin inherited from our first patenrents Adama dn Eve, no doubt another scriptural fact they choke on, so that we are all doomed to Hell.  Only a sinless sacrifice taking on the death we deserve for our sins, could save us from Hell.  Only Jesus would do that.  That is how He is a Savior.  When He did d on the cross, he died for us.  AS A SINLESS HUMAN BEING hE WAS ACTUALLY UNABLE TO DIE, hE WAS IMMORTAL, SO THE ONLY WAY hE COULD DIE WAS BY DYING FOR THE SINS OF TOERHS.  hE DIED FOR MY SINS, i AM CRUCIFIED WITH hiM, AND hE SAVED ME FROM HAVING TO GO TO hELL.  rHAT MAKES ME hIS GRATEFUL SERANTG FOREVER.  aND FOREVER i HAVE NOW.

Son't know how long the caps lock was on, sorry about ithat.

Schermer is OK with us believers as long as we don't try to convert anyone else.  Golly gosh.  Jesus tells us we are to take the gospel message to others so that they might be saved too.  If they don't hear the message they won't have a chance to be saved.   Schermer wasnts us to keep silent because according to his bias we are wrong.  He's sure ov that, and since we are wrong we shouldn't be allowed to try to convince anyoothers of our wrong believfs.   I'ts only OK for him and others who believe in evolution to try to convince others of THAT, although that is the real lie and it can only take people to Hell to believe it.  But that's the way the world works.  

One thing Schermer says that must be answered his his claim that Jesus could not have been the true Messiah anyway because the Old Testament does not present a picture of anythig like Him in its portraits of God's appointed Savior to come, but presents a picture of a warrior king who will asave the Jews from the Romans.  It's a worldly vision of course, but Jesus said He is not of this world.  That is not clearly shown in the Old Testament as I recalls, but certainly there is a strong portrait of a suffering Messiah there, in Isaiah 53, where it says He was stricken for our transgressions.  He died for our sins, same thing.Upon Him was the chatisement for our peace.  We have peace with God because He died in our place and took our punishment on HImself.  Yes, Jesus the New Testmaent Jesus is definitely there in the Old Testament.

He is also there in the book of Daniel where Daniel is told that Messiah the Princew who is to come will be cut off, but not for HImself.  Cut off means He will be killed.  

In Isaiah Nine we find out that He will be called Almighty God, among His various titles.  Not a mere man, God and Man.  We are also told He will be born of a virgin.  And born in Bethlehem.   Yep, Jesus is there in the Old Testament.  In Luke 24 He says so Himself to a couple of His followers, that the Messiah was to surffer and die.  And that the scripture, meaning the Old Testament, which is all they had at that time, is all about Himself.

Yesah you can wist it to make it say what you want, although if you are honest you will see that it's really not there at all and that your forcing it is obvious, that it doesn't say anything remotly like what you want i t to say.  In fct if you read carefully you will find many statements that are threere specifically to contradict all such efforts.      It won't matter, if you want it to be false you will make sure it is false according to your own belief system.

And so much, or course, for John's efforts in his gospel, for which he says,  These things have I witten that ye might believe, and believing might have eternal life.  

Jesus is going to come back to earth a second time as the warrior King.  There are two advents, the first as suffering servant, the last as King to who the entire Earth will bow, and that may not be far off as we are told in scripture that the closer we get the ethe end the more iniquity will abound, which scertainly seems to be the scase in our time.  I guess it culd get wowrse.

I keep trying to remember another thing that was said on that podcast I canwanted to answer.  But  at least I want to comment on Bret's saying tht or was it Schirmer?  Anyway, that kiosher foods are outdated because pork is excoluded, presumabley for the danger of trichinosi or some uch.  This is typical flesly thinking.  God did not limit the diet of the Israelities for health reasons, but for spiritual reasons, to set His people apart from the heathen as His own holy people.  There is some kid that the animals called unclean were used as sacrifices by tsome heathen tribes.  I don't know about that but certainly all those foods are eaten by all sorts of peoples all over the earth.  And one way we dan know that it had nothing to do with health that the Jews were forbidden to eat poerk is that in the New Testament, the Book of Acts, Peter is specifically told by God that the food laws are now rescinded and that they , believers in Christ He is addressing but of course the principle applies to all, may eat of any of the heathen or unclean foods aswell.  If His eason for the restriction had been health He wouldn't have rescinded the restrictions.  Surely there was no less danger of trichinosis in Peter's time than in the time of Moses.

As for the Bible's being an sncient book that doesn't address modern scientific questions or other modern problems, it doesn't specifically address that cateogry of things at all, but we can nevertheless get help on such questions through God Himself because we have preayer and He seems to love to answer prayers for knowledge and wisdom.  

Unbelievers can't know God because fallennness we are all born into means taht we lack the spiritual faculty for knowing God.  That is what died when Adam and Eve disobeyed God's commandment not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Because they lost their faculty for knowing God their descendants are all born without that fofaculty.  That's why the physiclal world seems to be all there is to the person born into this world but not born again.  When we are born again by believing that Jesus died on the Cross to pay for our sins, then we will; be given the Holy Spirit and our spirirual faculty for sknowing God wil be 
quickckened regrenerated, brought back to life.  As an infant of course, a newborn, but it will row over time and become a reliable connection with God and things supernatural.  But those not born again are stuck in their fleshly bodiues without a spiritaul sense.  They can only know God by inference from nature or by believing the testimony of those who do hav spiritual knowledge.    Once they beleive then they too will be given the Holy Spirit.

Still can't remember something that is nagging at me.  Oh well.  I'll finish by mentioning that Uncommon KNoweldge podcast with Steven Meyer, Douglas Muray and Tom Haolland in which they talk about how very Christian is the cultural atmosphere of the west.  The idea of these atheists that Christianity needed to encounter enthe Enlightenment to change is just plain wrong.  Without Christianity the Enlightenement would never have come about.   We are CHristian through and through if only culturally for the most part, and even though the cultural expressions are dying all around us.

It's not true, says Bret, as far as we know.  The resurrection that is.  Well, if he doesn't know he has no excuse for it because I know it's true and millions of other s know and have known ghtat istis true, and twe have no more evidence than he hasa.  He has us and he has the scripture and he has the entire history of Christianity.  He has the story of Thomas too.  He has no kexcuse.    I suppose God ight provide a rising from the edea d for him ,  He could if He wanted to, though I doubt He will.    So all he has is witness testimony the same as the rest of us.  Lots of people saw Jesus edead and then saw Him alive.  He stayed with the apostles for the next forty days, He didn't go to India or California or wherevewr, He stayed and taught them before He ascended to heaven and then sent the Holy Spirit.

How abourt Isaac Newton for a witness?  How about Johannes Kepler?  Watch the vido you can find on You Tube called The Beth   no, the Star of Bethlehem Star, about how a lawyer got an astronomy probgram and tracked down the star that the Magi followed to Bethleheme.    Kepler had been looking for that star himself using his mathematical geniue but according to this little film he was let astroy aby a wrong date in an important historical docuyment.  With that ccorrected it seems the star can now by found.

Greenland?

 As Trump has been upping his rhetoric about Greenland, even to the point of saying we would take it by force, I've been getting more and more nervous.  America doesn't do that sort of thing.  Yes, clearly Greenland occupies a very strategic location for American secureity, but why all this aggression about trying to get possession of it right now?  I didn't want to have to criticize Trump, as usual, but it's just hard to tolerate such aggressive talk.  Qhaatever happened to his famous negotiating tactics?  Did he give up on those and if so, why   He has a lot of patience with such tactics when it comes to dealing with the tarifs situation, changing his decisions quite frequencltly to accommocdate new developkments in that ongoing saga, but here he is showing a surprising impatience to get Greenland or else.  I've been on the verge of denouncing him for this.

But as often happens with Trump, it turns out that when you hear the whole story, meajing the whole story from his point of view, his rhetoric makes more sense.  That's what happenesd when I finally understsood why he was being so loud in denouncing Rob Reiner after he was so brutally murdered.  I still can't fully accept his doing that, but once I got a better idea of just how persistent and nastyh Reiner had been in denouncing Trump at least it made more sense and I backed off some.  I still don't think the politic thing to do is to denounce your enemy when he's just been murdered, but I guess if you're asked youi might have to say something along the lines that Trump said.  Reiner was a genuine nasty enemy.  Stilll....

trump isn't a genuine Christian.  He's got lots of sypathy for things Christian but if he were a true Christain he would take seriously what Jesus says about loving your enemy.  He might faily fail, as many of us do, the first time around, to obey the command, but if you are truly dsaved, born again, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, you can't hold on to your anger against an enemy without its eatibg at your consciewnce and requireing some attempt to bring your words into alignment with Jesus.  Even silence under those circumstances if you can't manage sometihgn positive.

Then just this morning I heard on some radio program or other that Trump referred to Russian and CHinese ships and submarienes off the coast of Greenland as a threat to American secirity.  The idea that there is in fact a real currently active threat in that area does make a big difference to my attittude to his aggressive positve.l ure.  I still think he'd best ramp up the neotiations rather than going into threats, but what I'm getting more aware of now is that he's not very good at getting people on his side because he leaves out the reasonable causes for his attitude.  I wouldn't have been so rejecting of his aggressive talk about Grenland if I'd had any idea the threat to our security was more than the usual fact that strategically Greenland stands betwene us aS rUSSIA, AND cHINA TOO, AND IS RATHER UNDER ACTIVE THREAT BY THEIR CURRENT PRESENCE IN THE AREA.     i DON'T KNOW HOW LONG THIS HAS BEEN THE Case, but it makes a diference to me that it exists at all, and makes the strategic position of Greenland more important in my mind.    I could still wish ehhe'd go about it in a jmore winning way.  He is able to do that in many situations.  I wish he'd been keeping it up with Greenland.  Not sure why it stopped.  

I foujnd an interesting video about the history anhd culture of Greenland on You Yune.  I found it by putting those terms into the search line:  Greenland HIstory and Culturej.  It's quite long and I haven't yet finished listening to it, but it shows tht there has been along history of Scandinavian contact and settlement of the island.  It came to a halt somewhere around the sixteenth century if I'm remembering correctly, but then the queen of Denmark inherited the isalnd and Denmark got invovled in it and there's some history after that invovlgin Denmark that I haven't hetyet heard through.  

The island is an awful oplace to try to live.  The Inuit live there and have lived there continuously through all the Sanidnavian comings and goings, tbut they are adapted to that way of live and it's hard to aimagine Americans wanting to move lthere and take it on with them.     

Cojldn't we just establish more of a military presence there or somethiong?  Why do we have to own the whole place?  Could't we have soeme area of it, buy it as our own colony without the whole island?  Wouldn't that help?  I don't know.  The aggressive rhetoric of taking it by force still borhers me ifeven if I have a better idea of why Trump is going there.

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Three Topics: nutrition and weight; UFOs: Significant Form in Art

 Quite a hodge pode for one post I know bugt these are going to be brief and I just want to get them down and don't want to spend much time on them.

Nutrition and weight refers to an ad I keep hearing on the radio bya nutritional dietitian who gives what she condissiders to be good advice on diet to prevent obsesity in children which she says is now an epidemic among children.  Her advice is just the same old same old tat I've come to understnad is what caused our obesidty problem in gthe firs place:  lean meat, low fat dairy the biggest cultptrit.  All that low fat stuff was a disaster.  Full fat foods are normal foods and they help to control weight because they lead to a feeling of satiety sooner than lean foods do.  You'd think by now that this would have become common knowledge but I guess nowt.  Also she's into whole grains and pure fruit juices.  There's nothing wrong with them in themselves but both are high carb and can add to weight gain.   

Second gtopic is UFOs.  I've written about this before but it's come up in refernce to something Tucker Carlson said, that some people find ludicrous and make Carlson foolish.  Carlson has been the topic of much discussion recently for some political positions he's taken and if his critics are right I agree with them about him but I'm just not familiar enough with Carlson to have formed my own opinion so I don't have anything to say about that.  But in discussing all that, some of his critics also mention that he has said he believes that UFOs are malevolent beings and that's what they think is so ludicrous and foolish of him.  But that in fact is what Christians think about UFOs and I've said that here myself many times.  UFOs do not act like anuything in the physical world and CHristians know there are demonic beings who are always out to deceive humanity in one way or another, and the behavior of these ofjects is much more like something in the spirit realm than anything in the physical world.    Jacques Vallee, a UFOlogist, n  who is not a CHristian, wrote back in the seventies or eighteies or soemthig back there, that UFOs do not behaeve like physical things but remind him of folklore tales of beings both living and mechanical, that can move at rtttremendous sppeeeds, turn corners without slowing down, appear and disappear at will and all that.  Altghough he wasn't a Christian, what he has observed fits in with what Christians believe, to which we applhy our biblical knowledge.These are not extraterrestrials, theyare demons putting on a show to mislead us.

It may help make this point to add that apparitions of "Mary" that are followed by millions in the Catholic Church, including the Popes, are understood by me and other Chrisitians to be the same kind of demonic phenomenon I'm saying is the ause of the UFOs.

Third topic is Significant Form i art.  This is a concept used by 

critic early in the last century to identify wat he considered to be the essential element in a true work of art.  I have a general idea of what he means by it but I've always wanted to see pictures in which he identified the significant form so that I could know for sure what he meant.  Whenever I ask what it means and get some art teacher trying to expoud it the discussion seems to beme to be completely wrong.  Bell had the aesthetic sense he is talking about as the clue to significant form, but not all of us do.  Maybe we could learn it if we had good examples shown to us and that's what I wish he had done in his book, just taken a number of pictures in which he sees it in order to show us what he means.  It is something in visual art that provkes what he calls the aesthetic emotion which is a kind of rapture or bliss in response to this arragngmene tof lines and colors he finds in some works of art, in fact it is what he considers to be only worthy of the name art, all kinds of pictures being called art having none of it.

Tha's all.

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Later.  Sigh.  Decided to look up anything beig said or taught about the work of Suzanne K. Langer, who wrote on the philsophy of art back it eh fifties, and to my mind said thingks  more or less along the same lines as Clive bell, although he used diferent terminology and I think may have written a criticism of his idea of significant form although I don't remember that at all clearly.    Anyway, I found an art teacher talking about Langer's point of view in the usual way that usually higts me as all wrong, or one of those ways since I guess there's more than one way to get this stuff wrong.

She reduces Langer's concept of symbolim i art to expressio and the idea of it as conveying feeling, but she seems to have in mind our own everyday emotions finding expressio in the art, whereas I do know from my own memor y of Langer's books that she thought of art as screating an entirely new feeling in itself, which is pretty much what Clive Bell is also saying.  Art creates the feeling, it is not just mimicking life.  ATL ALL.  It is creating a specifically artistic or aesthetic feeling in the viewer or hearer et .      Oh well.

Back to Creationism

 When I first discovered the podcast Let's Talk Creation, some months ago now at least, it was very exciting because they covered so amany topics I'd spent a fair amount of time thinking about on my own over the last twenty years.  I binged on their shows and wrote them a couple of emails they never answered.  It finally dawned on me that they were not at all welcoming toward my own thoughts on these subjects, and that was very disappointing to me beause for all those years I had no one to talk to about any of it and I tought they might at least have an opinion  they'd write me about.  But they didn't.   After hearing more of their podcasts I get the impression they really don't like my ideas.  It's of course tnot clear that they are responding to me but some of the topics are what I'd written about and they clearly had no interest in responding to my version of them.  Maybe my disagreeing with them about some of it wa off putting.  I guess that's possible.  Or j they just think my opinions are stupid or something.      

At the end of their latest pocdcast they coplain about people who don't accept their view of the Flood boundary, that is, of the point at which the Flood ends in the geologic record.  Some thjnk that although there are more strata of the same kind as found in the Geologic Column that they aren't nedcessarily Flood deposits but laid down after the Flood.  I guess there'a quie a bit of controversy about which blong to the Flood and which come afterward.  I have troubele with this whole line of controversity since I just can't accept that a layer of rock formed just as all those layers in rthe accepted Flood layers were formed, had some completely different kind of source.  It's got the same kind of sedimentary composition and the same collection of fossils and I can't see how it could have had any other origin than the Flood for that reason if nothing else.  What else could form such a layer but the Flood?  Anyway I guess there are scientiests who think it happened so I'm the odd man out as it were.  And I'm not persuaded by anything they said about it.  If it's go t the same basic propoerties as the Flood layers then it's a Flood layer and that's that to my mind.  

So I guess I'll remain at odds with them and they'll just try to ignore me if they even know my opinion, bwhich I'm pretty sure they do.    I probably take myself way too seriously for them, since I'm not a scientist, just a do it yourselver cretionist.  I've read a fair amount about geology and biology to come to my opinions, and spent twenty years off and on at debating evolutionists along these lines, so I probably do take myself a lot more seriously than tey hink  warranted.    So I'm without anyone to talk to as usual aboiut these things.  Not that I'd want to talk to someone who thinks my opinoins are just dismissible of course.

Besides telling anyone who has doubts about the Flood boundary controversy, they also clamped dsown on the idea that the Flood was a tectonic event, that during the Flood continents moved around banging and crashing into each other and so on.  That is to explain why we couldn't expect to see intact human settlements from before the Flood anywhere in the Flood frecord.  Well, I don't think we could either, but to my mind you don't need violen t tectonic crashings and bashing s to explain that, all you need is the Flood itrself, forty nights and days of rain all over the earth and the rising tides that washed up over the land and so on.  All you need to do is think about the recnet heavy rain in Washington and California which brought on floods which brlught on mudslides and washing   washed away cars and so on.   The water alone in the worldwide Flood would have been violent enough to to erase anything constructed by human beings on the land.  

However, I do think of the Flood as a tectonic event anyway, just not with all that movement and bashingds and crashings and mountbuilding and so on.  I don't know what brought on the Flood and nothing anywonwe has suggested makes that part of it clear to me, but something to do with the sea flloor which could be classed as a taectonic event would make sense as at least part of the explanation.  The Bible refers to "foundatains of th edeep" and I have no idea what that measn but that's the sea floor reerence  we have to work with from scripture.  dHow much water was stored in the atmosphere for it to rain forty days and nights continouously all over the earth, is another unknown but it must have been proigious.  None of this is easy to explain or understand.    But the sea floor no doubt had to change somehow as part of it and tha makes it a tectonic event in itself.  

I can't go with the idea that there was much if any tectonic activigty going on during the Flood just because of the cross sections I've seen that show that the strata are completely intact in manyplaces before any kind of disturbance occurs to them.  Ewven where the strata are broken up in a particular area you can still easily enough infer that they were all in place before the disruption ofccurred, whever it was that broken them up in a particular place.  In England and Tennessee we see all the time periods as it were, broken up and scattered across the land from one end to the other.  They're aLL THERE SO THEY ALL UNDERWENT WHATEVER     disruption hit them all at the tssame time.  All the strata were in place before anything happened to any of the stack anywerhe.  I think that can be well enough acrugued although it's onlyh obvious in a few placews such as the Grand Canyon area where the whole stack can be identified in one place.  So I've been working for yhears on the observation that the strata were all laid odwn horizontally during the Flood, all of them from bottom to top, beforte the kind of tectonic action occurres that pushed up the land here and there, formed mountains, broke up areas so that formations such as the Grand tarircaste in Utah were the result, formed canyons and so on.  That to my mind suggests that the tectonic jolts that caused and still cause earthwuakes and volcanoes began at the end of the Flood, perhaps after the water was drained or at any time during its draining or maybe just before it started to drain, in which case it was probably gthe trihgger for its draining.    This I can argue at great tlentgth.  And of course I've written about it either on this blog or the Fantasy of Evolution blog somewhere but it's hard to find anything any more because my eyes are so bad and I haven't been able to leave the usual markers to help out with it either.  

That's all the geological stuff I've thought about over the years, but I've also done a log ot thinking about the biologicl and genetic side of the questions.  jdd       I suppose I dshould go on to those here but as often happens I'm getting worn out  already  and have to stop.  Maybe I'll come back to this post later.

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A great miliary operation followed by thye usual smear tactics of the Left, just normal politics

 So they got  Nicholas Maduro and brought him to New York for justice.  And of course the principle I mention a few posts below is in action as awalways.  Whatever Trump or his administration do, or say, in this case do, is immediately attacked as probably a criminal act, or unconstitutional or the like, by the everlurking Left.  And protests by similarly minded around the world echo their sentiment.  Fortunately there are some protests on the right side that know it was perfectly legal, as with many such presidentaial actions questionsed and smeared by the Left it't's peffectly legal and has precedent in other actions by other Presidents.  They don't care.  If they can sow doubt in the mind of the unwary public, mostly o the left themselves because they listen only to the leftist media, they're happy wenough with their lies .   Here's where we can see how the nation has suffered from our loss of our Christian culture, such as in the posting of the Ten Commandments at court houses and that sort of thing, which midgfht remind such miscreants that a dire eternity awaits those who tell such lies.

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Think I'll note here that for some time I've heard the audio reader voice pronounce the word in the title as decidably, when I know I wrote  decidedly, because that is onle of my pet peeves and I would never have written it the way it gets prouncounced.   Well I've known I have a hacker for some time.  Guess that's one of the thinkgs it or he or she did.

jBret Weinstein Misundestands James Tour

 I'd already listened once to the Dark Horse podcast, was Darwin wrong? but had to listen again because it was rather a blur in my mind as I tried to recall the point of it.  I didn't listen all the way thorough and I'm hoping I don't need to but if I find out I made a mistake later I'll come back here and correct the error.  I've pretty sure, though, in fact very sure I did not make an error.  

The pocast isa response to an interview of creationist scientist James Tour as interviewed by Tucker Carlson in December, and after backing up a number of times bto be sure I was hearing correctly, and then going to the interview itself with Carlson, it's quite clear to me that Bret completely miun  misunderstood what Tour was saying.  He thinks he eeffectivelyt rebutted his argument but he was not rebutting what Trour actually said.   Tour was not as clear as he should have been.  He didn't grasp what Tucker was getting at so he didn't get the problem clarified but I think it's really clear enough.  It's a bit more clear in the original but I think it comes through in the podcast with Bret and Heather too.  

Tour is a creationist but Bret appreciates him as a scientiest and considers him worthy of a serious response.  He thinks Tour is only saying, however, that there is a problem  with the lack of transitionals in the fossil record, and that's the total misunderstanding.  Well, let's back up a bit.  Tour starts out saying that although we can see many permutations, has he calls them, we never see a body plan changhe ever.  The permutations he is talking about are the changes we do see in so called "miscroevolution" where many changes are observed all the time, including highly adaptive changes so that it is always used as foundational to the theory of evolution.  He is ONLY talking about this observatble form of "evolution" in living things, he is NOT talking about the fossil record at all, but he takes fatal misstep to the fossil record to say that many hypothesize these body plan changes from the fossil record but that in fact we never ever see them ... in the realm of observable changes in living things.  Bret misunderstand s him to be saying we don't see them in the fossil record.  But that is not what he is saying.  He is saying, though it could cewrtainly have been said much more clealry, that ALL WE CAN EVER HAVE from the fossil record is hypotheses, so ALL the claims that body plans have evolved come freom the fossil record and are nothing but hypothetical.  Where we never ever see such changes is in the observable realm of change in living things we see all the time which is miscalled microeveolution.  I'm the one saying it is miscalled.  It is not evolution at all, it is variation built into the geneome of a particular creature, variation buiilt into the structure of the genetic system.  He is not talking about the fossil record.  He simply made that one brief side trip to make the point that such body plan changes are hypothesised all the time but that in fact they are never seen in living things that nevertheless do show many changes.   The actual interview with tucker Carlson does make this cslightly clearer as he talks about microevolution specifically and that part was left out of Bret's excerpt, so with tucker it is cleaR HE IS REFERRING BACK TO THAT TOPIC OF MICROEVOLUTION.  hOWEVER, tUCKER IS ALSO CONFUSED AND TRIES TO PIN HIM DOWN TO FIND OUT IF HE IS REFERRING TO THE FOFSSIL RECORD AND THIS IS WHERE tOUR IS JUST NO T CLEAr enough.  I think if you listen very carefully you'll see that he is not talking about the fossil record at all, he is dismissing it as the source of nothing but hypotheticals in contrast to the actual changes we can observe in living things where his point is that nothing on the orfder of a body plan change is ever seen.

He chooses a huge body plan category, vertebrates to , sorry from invetrtebrates, and certainly that is never seen either, but I think it is very clear that we don't see body plN XHnfwa on  MUXH AXllamLLWE AXlw rhN RHr wirhwe.  Qw nwcwe aww NYRHINF     in the cat body plan blur into something in the dog body plan although thjey are verysimilare in their overall presentation .  You can tell a dog from a cat by their skeletaons I believe, without confusion.   Also a bird is a bird is a nitrd.  Look at the skeletons of every bird you can find illustrated in that form and thei are all clearly built on the same patern, limbs in the same place on all of them, etc.    A chicken is built like a penguin like a dove like a duck like a swan like an ostrich and so on.  There are some dratic differences such as in the beak and feet of the dubk and the long neck of the swan but the body plan is the basic proportions of tghe skelecton and those are superficial characteristics.

One clue that Tour is taling only about the living things and not the fossils is that he keeps using the term "genetic networks" as necessary to the changes we esee and all changes are dependent on those genetic networks.  I think this is the same thing as Steven Myeyeter says in his inerview with Joe Rogan some time ago, that you only get change where there is code of it and the change is built in  to the code itself.  To get a change FROM that built in chage requires a change in the code and changes in the code itself, which arte mutations, tend to degrade the code, they don't enhance it and eventually they lead to the destruction of the genetic ability to produce whever it was first designed to produce, it doesn't dhange from that first design to something else that is coherent at all.

Also he can't be talking about fossils because the evolution of body plans is assumed by evolutionists from the fossil record;  transitionals don't contribute anything to the formation of that hypothesis, and I think the first remark Tour makes is clear that they just look at the fossils and hypothesize that this or that feature, including body plans, evolved from this one to that one. Again, he's making the poit that it's all a hypothesis, so when he emphasizes that we don't see body plan changes at all somewhere, he's talking about in living things and not in fossils.  We see all sorts of changes of the sort called microevolution but they never involve a change in the body plan.  I keep adding that that's not evolution at all anyway, just variation built into the coded of the genome for that particular creature that possesses that genome, and it appears to be yrue that although many variations are seen in the populations that possess a genome among themselves that the body plan doesn't change.  In fact it is a sort of defintion of the creature itselfk.  I think this is all implied in Tour's comment.  In any case he's not talking about fossils at all.  Again, he only went there briefly to say that evolutionists hypothesize change in body plan from the fossil s but that it is never seen in reality, in what is called microevolution.   Then he himself gets confused when Tucker askes him a quetion about the fossil record and Tour doesn't clearly say that he's not talking about the fossil record at all, that was just a side trip for contrast.  

Anyway.  It's hard to get clear tabout this kind of misunderstanding but I hope I'm not oo far off. The Dark Horse Podcast where Bret and Heather are sidiscussing this is number 395 titled Was Darwin Weong?  A

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I'm legally blind and a family member manages the email.

I put the wrong episode number for the Dark Horse podcast.  I'll be very careful this time:  It's

305

I hope.  Cn't see it.  I'll go listen again.

evolutionary theory makes us all sick, certainly makes me sick

 KListening to cicaldi's Gloria as performed by the college of Northern Texas, or some such name, I found it under that name anyway, and it's such exquisite music it makes me discover once again how disusting the theory of evolution is.  No way coujld that ridicuous supposed system of mchanisms produce life capable of such music.  Or just about anythijg else this amazingly capable human being does  Ridiculous in the expreme    

Well, because of the Fall we are all born flesh, the spirit that connected our first parents to God having died with their violation of God's comand, and being but flesh we are easily deceived into believing we live in a universe that is purely phyiscal.  Our flesh is adaptted to this phyiscal universe and it seems to our limited minds that we must ourselves be a producet of it   But to think such a thing seems to require us to ignore such a plethora of evidence that we are something far beond the phyisical and its mindnumbingly Darwininan reduction to surviva iligy as to kill the very thought dead in the mind of any serious persons.  But  but but, but it doesn't.  It shouild.  It's laughable to hear intelligent people go on an d on about how this or that extraordinariyh exarted and nonpnyhsical expression oif uman life is just the product of adaptabiity to this or that environmental condition.    Byond laubhable into soul murder.    

A flshly being worships fleshly gods, thiknks flesly thoughts, reduces everythijg to thephyhsical, can't believe in God or anythig outside the phyhsical, must explaijn everthing by ikt.  Despite so much in our world that poits way beyond all that  

Music is only one obvious expression of it.  Sure they'll reduce even that to some adaptive function.  Yuck and yikes.  Especially high music like the Gloria or the Messiah etc etc  

I'm in pain at the thought.

This world a waystation to eternity

Even after years as a Christian it doesn't necessarily impress itself on your mind that a firm faith in bliclal theology presents a picture of this life in this world as leading to only one of two options at death, a blessed hapypy life for al eternity or a mserable life for all teternity.  That's it, no other options.  People who kow little or nothing about Christianity have their own notions that come from who knows where, about a happy afterlife for all but the most evil people or some such, or simple loss of all consciousness forever, as if one had never existed at all.  MaNY DIE IN SUCH EXPECTATIONS.  oFTEN SURVIVORS OF A RECENTLY DECESASED RELATIVE OR FRIEND SPEAK OF HIM OR HER AS BEING AGT PEACE, IN A BETTER PLACE, WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST EVIDENCE THAT THE PERSON'S LIFE WAS LIVED FOR EVWEN HALF A MINUTE WITH ANY SUCH AFTERLIFE IN MIND, NOT A SHRED OF PREPARATION FOR SUCH AN AFTERLIFE, OR EVEN BELIEVF IN IT.  oNCWE IT HITS YU THAT THE cHRISTIAN OPTIONS ARE THE ONLY OPTIONS IT BRINGS A SHUDDER OF FEAR FOR THE PERSON WHO DIED, OR AT LEAST IT DOES FOR ME.   

tHIS IS OF  COURSE WHY WE ARE EXHORTED IN SCRIPTURE TO BRING THE GOSPEL OF SALVATON TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS WE CA, SO THAT AS MANY AS POSSIBLE CAN SEEK AND FIND THE HAPPY AFTERLIFE THAT COMES ONLY FROM THE SALVATION GIVEN THROUGH THE DEATH OF cHRIST OJ THE CROSS.  bUT MANY REJECT THE GOSPEL OF COURSE, AND MANY OTHERS KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT.  qWE CAN'T DO ANYTHIJG ABOUT THOSE WHO DOH'T KJOW EXCEPT SEND MINSSSIONARIES WHIC OF COURSE THE CHURCHES HAVE DONE SINCE cHRISTI'S CRICIFIXION, AND OTHERWISE TRUST THAT gOD WILL DO THE RIGHT THING FOR SUCH PEOPLE WHO NEVER HEAR, AND WE KOW THAT gOD CAN NEVER DO ANYTHING buT THEW RIGHT AND JUYST AND MERCIFUL AND KID TGHING SO WE CCAN SAFELY LEVE IT ALL TO hIM,.  bUT THOSE WHO REJECT THE GOSPEL AFTER HEARING IT MAY WELL RAISE A SHUDDER OF FEAR FOR THEM .  

i'M WELL AWARE OF Y OWN SPIRITUAL INFERIORITY AS i SELDOM HAVE ANY IMPACT ON ANYONE i TALK TO ABOUT THE GOSPEL.  i'VEW BEEN LEARNING MORE LATELY ABOUT HOW i AM NOT LIVING THE cHRISTIAN LIFE AS i SHOULD AND TRYING HARDER BUT AT MY AGE THAT'S HARD.  iF i HAD BEEN LIVING MORE AS i SHOULD ALL ALONG, MORTIFYIJG SIN ISTEAD OF FALLING INTO IT OVER AND OVER FOR INSTANCE, DAILY CONSISTELTLY PRAY8ING AND READING THE bIBLE     and so on, syruggling against sin instaeed of indulging in worldly  attitudes, I might have more infoluence on unbeievers, but being such a rotten example of a Christian myself makes me also a rotten evangelist.  I'm lately feeling thins very mournfully.    So many friends and family can rightly just brush off whatever I say becaue I'm not living in ay way apprecialy different from their way.   It makes me cr to think of it, but at least the Lord is letting me have an unexpectedly lo9ng life and if He continues to allow it maybe I'll improve.    I'm sure I'm saved, at least most of the time I'm sure, but saved by a thread I'm aftraid, not having doe the world to strengthen my spiritual qualifies, and it hurts to think of all those in my orbit who are goig to Hell and I have no ability to do aything to persuade them out of it.  In some cases I'm afraid to say anythihng agt all because I don't want to provoke anger at thew gospel, but even when I getget a polite hearer it seems to go nowhere.  That is certainly my  fault.  I listen a lot to realy good Christian gbooks but listening is't doing and I keep goning on as if I'd heard none of it.  I'm probaby exaggerating a lilttle, but not much.  Every day I see so much sin I comitted oand could have avoided if I'd been walking in the spirit, wrong words spoken, or unspoken good words, stuff like that.  

Yes this world is a waystation for immortal souls who should be spending all our time preparaing for it to end in the best possible way and it's scary to think how many don't.  Ifg you've heard and not believed over ammay experiences of it, well, you ade your choice, but others have not paid enough attention or been presented with enough information to make a reasonable choice and say the silliest thigs about what they expect of death.  Some even think they are saved algthough they haveb't the slightest notion of what salvation really means or how  it is brought about.  Just somethng vague like oh I haven't been such a pbnad person, of course I'm going to heaven  Of course they wouldn''t like heaven if they were going there but that's anoternther subject.

You have to be prepared for heaven.  GThe Christain life is a transformed life.  Even when it isn't obvious it's still a transformed life it it is real.  Chritiaity is the tranformation from the flesnly life of the Fall we inherite from our first parents Adam and Even to the regenerated cspirit that puts us back in touch with God that they lost when they disobeyed  If you do not have that spiritual renewal, that new borth, you cannot be saved, because that is what makes you fit for heae, changes you from a merely fleshjly creature dead in the psirit, to a living spiritual person adapted to the spiritual life of heaven, though even then if the psiritual life isn't ived as much as possible in this falen world the fit isn't going to be all that great eithet and God will have to do some lopping and pruning.  

Idon't think 'm writing this as clearly as I should, and I now I had the caps lock on for a long time too, sorry about that, but I think I needed to say something along these ines and hope it's helpful to someone somewhere.

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