Seeking God again
8 years ago
Sunday, August 31, 2014
I updated the previous post on the two legs of the Antichrist empire
I think my update makes my point a lot clearer so I'm doing a separate post to call attention to it.
Monday, August 25, 2014
Waking Up Among Wolves: The Antichrist Pt 2: Islam
UPDATE 8/31
Since I think I got this post rather garbled but don't know how to correct it without starting over, I'm going to add a short explanation, hoping that will say more clearly what I wanted the post to say.
I've been focused on the papacy as the Antichrist, with the Protestant Reformers as the main source for that viewpoint, Luther in particular. I don't usually bring in the prophecy of the Revived Roman Empire, which is based on the statue of Daniel 2, but the two are clearly connected. The Roman Church inherited the visible trappings of the Roman empire's pagan religion, the robes and headgear for instance, and the title Pontifex Maximus for the head of that religion, mixing it all together with some of the teachings of Christianity and calling it Christian.
The point of this post was to consider that there are two legs to the section of Nebuchadnezzar's statue that pertains to the Roman Empire, and since the two arms had significance in the empire of the Medes and Persians that followed Babylon, it makes sense that there would also be significance in the two legs of the Roman Empire. The Eastern Orthodox Church or the empire of Byzantium would be the likely other leg for starters, but Islam in the form of the Turkish invasions conquered Constantinople, the head of that empire, in 1453.
That makes Islam the other leg of the Roman Empire of the statue of Daniel 2, another politicized religion like Roman Catholicism, now already calling itself the Islamic State. A few decades ago Islam might not have been easily seen in this role but today it's a very reasonable interpretation as that religion has been growing and spreading just as it did in Luther's time under the Turks, killing Christians in Africa and the Middle East, beheading western journalists with their horrific bloody satanic zeal. Just as the Reformers in that day understood its spread to be God's judgment against the apostasy of the Christian church, those of us who see God's judgment on the West today can see it as God's instrument as well.
The West, meaning principally Europe and the U.S., are doing very little to resist the spread of Islam, and are of course absolutely blind to the wolfish character of the false Church of Romanism. Muslim-fomented uprisings in France are not being checked, and nobody is watching our borders where not only hordes of Catholics are being allowed to enter, who can be expected before long to acquire voting status, but Muslims very likely as well with their zeal to blow us all up if we won't bow to the Islamic State.
Of course all this is prophecy and it has to come about eventually that these two powers will dominate the world, but I'd like to think we could still muster a Christian opposition, which would have to start with a Christian Reformation or Revfival, that would push it all back for another century or two.
[This isn't too far-fetched when you consider that the Reformation rose up during the Turkish invasion and effectively quelled both that and the Roman Church as well for the next few centuries. As Isaiah 59:19 says, when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Lord will raise up a standard against him.]
I hope this makes the communication below a little clearer.
===========================
ORIGINAL POST:
In Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has a dream about a great statue, which only the prophet Daniel by God's grace is able to interpret for him. It is a statue of a man with a head of gold, his chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay. In the dream a stone is cut out "without hands" and smashes the feet, and the statue breaks up and is destroyed.
Daniel gives the interpretation that the statue represents a series of kingdoms yet to come, beginning with the head of gold representing Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, followed by lesser kingdoms and ending with the kingdom represented by the iron legs which will break in pieces and subdue all things. The feet of iron and clay will be partly strong and partly weak. The stone that smashes the feet and breaks the whole statue is the final kingdom set up by the God of heaven and it shall stand forever.
The labeled image above is a typical representation of this statue as presented in many churches and Bible studies, except that the chest and arms of silver are usually represented as Medo-Persia, showing the rule of the two kingdoms of the Medes and the Persians in the two arms. Next, Greece conquers through Alexander the Great, ushering in the Hellenistic period during which the conquered nations all learned to speak common Greek, which is the language of the New Testament; and the legs of iron are of course the Roman Empire, during which time Jesus Christ came into the world. The feet and toes as Western Europe divided into ten nations within a revived Roman Empire is considered to be prophetic of the world situation during the last of the last days.
This basic view of the prophetic meaning of the statue is the Futurist view, from the very popular Dispensationalist camp. A revived Roman Empire is regarded as the culmination of the series of earthly kingdoms, prophesied to dominate the world in the last days yet to come.
I held this view as I think the vast majority of Christians still do, until I recently encountered the historical interpretation of the last days, in which this revived Roman Empire has been recurrent throughout history, through the political aspect of the Roman Church. First in the form of the Holy Roman Empire, followed by attempts to revive it in the Second Reich and then the failed Third Reich, all at least covertly headed by the papacy of the Roman Church. Many consider the European Union to be the next attempt to revive it in power, and that may well turn out to be the case, although the Futurist system doesn't put the papacy at the head of this revived empire or see the papacy as the Antichrist. Even where these attempted revivals of the Roman Empire are recognized as pertaining to the last days, they are generally not connected with the Roman Church.
But neither does today's Reformed eschatology connect it with the Roman Church. Before I had the benefit of Reformed teaching, most of what I learned came from the Dispensationalist camp which views the Antichrist exclusively as a figure yet to come, who is to be revealed in the last seven years before the Second Coming of Christ. This is apparently due to the Dispensationalist or Futurist understanding of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel outlined in Daniel 9:24 - 27, meaning "weeks of years" or 70 x 7 or 490 years, 69 "weeks" of which are understood to have been fulfilled at the first coming of Christ, counting the time right down to His riding into Jerusalem on the donkey. That leaves one week or seven years to be fulfilled in the future, during which the final Antichrist is to reign for at least part of that period. This has led to all kinds of speculation about the possible identity of this figure among those who believe we are in the last of the last days, and various contemporary political personalities have taken their turn in the role. Hal Lindsey's blockbuster book of 1970, The Late Great Planet Earth, popularized this view of the last days, and the more recent book series, Left Behind, which envisions what would happen if the Church were raptured out of the world, has kept it in the public eye. This line of thinking has had the effect of keeping our focus exclusively on a future Antichrist who is rarely if ever considered in relation to the Roman Church.
What the Reformers had to say about the papacy as Antichrist has been utterly lost in this theological system, and it may be due at least partly to its influence that the Roman Church is now widely accepted among nominal Protestants as just another Christian denomination, its very opposition to the gospel itself now lost or at least blurred in the minds of a majority of Christians.
However, today's Reformed theoloogians don't do a much better job with the last days or the Antichrist. I don't completely reject the Dispensationalist system -- the counting of the weeks of years is convincing to me for instance, so I can accept the view that there is yet a seven-year period in the future that will complete the work of redemption as envisioned by Daniel. I can consider this a possibility AND that the papacy is the Antichrist, a final expression yet to come. The Reformed position on the seventy weeks, on the other hand, makes the numbers as good as irrelevant, mere symbols and far from convincing ones. And along with the Futurists I too anticipate the revealing of the final Antichrist, although I look first to the papacy for this, keeping open the possibility that the Antichrist himself could be a Hitler type figure supported by the papacy, while the Dispensationalists pretty much disregard the papacy as a candidate for the Antichrist. If today's Reformed also followed the Reformers in their historical eschatology, which views the papacy as the Antichrist throughout history, I'd place myself more fully inside their camp. It's really the historical eschatology that has captivated me most recently, the eschatology of the Reformers themselves. (I think today's Reformed also fail to appreciate the role of Israel in the last days, though the Reformers themselves didn't make this mistake, as I noted on another of my blogs a while back.)
All that is to explain how Christians have been lulled to sleep by false theories about the Antichrist and the nature of our pagan opponents as represented in Nebuchadnezzar's statue. This is how it comes about that when you begin to contemplate the role of the papacy through history in its tireless efforts to undermine the true gospel, a viewpoint we could have learned from the Reformers themselves if they'd been taken seriously as they should have been, that's when you may experience what I mean by waking up among wolves. The veil of the irrelevant ditherings about the identity of the Antichrist to come in the near future falls away and we see that he has been there all along, waiting for his chance.
But even recognizing the papacy as the Antichrist isn't the whole story.
Why Does The Roman Empire Have Two Legs?
If the Dispensationalist / Futurist interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's statue offers an explanation for there being two legs to the Roman Empire they don't make much of it. Since they limit that symbol to the original Roman Empire which collapsed in the fifth century the most natural interpretation would be the division into the Eastern and Western branches, Byzantium or Eastern Orthodoxy in the East, and Rome in the West.
But here is where the Reformers' Historical Eschatology, seeing the Roman Antichrist ongoing in history, brings out a connection that both Dispensationalism and Reformed theology miss, though the Reformers themselves wrote about this, principally Luther.
According to Luther on Islam and the Papacy by Dr. F. N. Lee:
As Lee presents Luther's thinking on this subject, the Pope is THE Antichrist because he has set himself up inside the Church and taken the place of Christ Himself, but the "Turk" or Muslim is also a spirit of Antichrist in his outright denial of the Deity of Christ. It is also interesting that both arose in the seventh century, the papacy being officially established first in 606, and Islam originally given to Mohammed in the year 610.
Luther gives God's judgment on the Church as the explanation for the rise of the two apostasies.
Today these two legs of the antichrist empire are huge, a billion Catholics and well over a billion Muslims.
Interestingly, Luther judges the papacy as the worse of the two, since the "Turk" is up front about his opposition to Christ, while the Pope pretends to be His friend. F. N. Lee again:
And here's my other Waking Up Among Wolves blog post.
I've been focused on the papacy as the Antichrist, with the Protestant Reformers as the main source for that viewpoint, Luther in particular. I don't usually bring in the prophecy of the Revived Roman Empire, which is based on the statue of Daniel 2, but the two are clearly connected. The Roman Church inherited the visible trappings of the Roman empire's pagan religion, the robes and headgear for instance, and the title Pontifex Maximus for the head of that religion, mixing it all together with some of the teachings of Christianity and calling it Christian.
The point of this post was to consider that there are two legs to the section of Nebuchadnezzar's statue that pertains to the Roman Empire, and since the two arms had significance in the empire of the Medes and Persians that followed Babylon, it makes sense that there would also be significance in the two legs of the Roman Empire. The Eastern Orthodox Church or the empire of Byzantium would be the likely other leg for starters, but Islam in the form of the Turkish invasions conquered Constantinople, the head of that empire, in 1453.
That makes Islam the other leg of the Roman Empire of the statue of Daniel 2, another politicized religion like Roman Catholicism, now already calling itself the Islamic State. A few decades ago Islam might not have been easily seen in this role but today it's a very reasonable interpretation as that religion has been growing and spreading just as it did in Luther's time under the Turks, killing Christians in Africa and the Middle East, beheading western journalists with their horrific bloody satanic zeal. Just as the Reformers in that day understood its spread to be God's judgment against the apostasy of the Christian church, those of us who see God's judgment on the West today can see it as God's instrument as well.
The West, meaning principally Europe and the U.S., are doing very little to resist the spread of Islam, and are of course absolutely blind to the wolfish character of the false Church of Romanism. Muslim-fomented uprisings in France are not being checked, and nobody is watching our borders where not only hordes of Catholics are being allowed to enter, who can be expected before long to acquire voting status, but Muslims very likely as well with their zeal to blow us all up if we won't bow to the Islamic State.
Of course all this is prophecy and it has to come about eventually that these two powers will dominate the world, but I'd like to think we could still muster a Christian opposition, which would have to start with a Christian Reformation or Revfival, that would push it all back for another century or two.
[This isn't too far-fetched when you consider that the Reformation rose up during the Turkish invasion and effectively quelled both that and the Roman Church as well for the next few centuries. As Isaiah 59:19 says, when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Lord will raise up a standard against him.]
I hope this makes the communication below a little clearer.
===========================
ORIGINAL POST:
In Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has a dream about a great statue, which only the prophet Daniel by God's grace is able to interpret for him. It is a statue of a man with a head of gold, his chest and arms of silver, belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron mixed with clay. In the dream a stone is cut out "without hands" and smashes the feet, and the statue breaks up and is destroyed.
Daniel gives the interpretation that the statue represents a series of kingdoms yet to come, beginning with the head of gold representing Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, followed by lesser kingdoms and ending with the kingdom represented by the iron legs which will break in pieces and subdue all things. The feet of iron and clay will be partly strong and partly weak. The stone that smashes the feet and breaks the whole statue is the final kingdom set up by the God of heaven and it shall stand forever.
The labeled image above is a typical representation of this statue as presented in many churches and Bible studies, except that the chest and arms of silver are usually represented as Medo-Persia, showing the rule of the two kingdoms of the Medes and the Persians in the two arms. Next, Greece conquers through Alexander the Great, ushering in the Hellenistic period during which the conquered nations all learned to speak common Greek, which is the language of the New Testament; and the legs of iron are of course the Roman Empire, during which time Jesus Christ came into the world. The feet and toes as Western Europe divided into ten nations within a revived Roman Empire is considered to be prophetic of the world situation during the last of the last days.
This basic view of the prophetic meaning of the statue is the Futurist view, from the very popular Dispensationalist camp. A revived Roman Empire is regarded as the culmination of the series of earthly kingdoms, prophesied to dominate the world in the last days yet to come.
I held this view as I think the vast majority of Christians still do, until I recently encountered the historical interpretation of the last days, in which this revived Roman Empire has been recurrent throughout history, through the political aspect of the Roman Church. First in the form of the Holy Roman Empire, followed by attempts to revive it in the Second Reich and then the failed Third Reich, all at least covertly headed by the papacy of the Roman Church. Many consider the European Union to be the next attempt to revive it in power, and that may well turn out to be the case, although the Futurist system doesn't put the papacy at the head of this revived empire or see the papacy as the Antichrist. Even where these attempted revivals of the Roman Empire are recognized as pertaining to the last days, they are generally not connected with the Roman Church.
But neither does today's Reformed eschatology connect it with the Roman Church. Before I had the benefit of Reformed teaching, most of what I learned came from the Dispensationalist camp which views the Antichrist exclusively as a figure yet to come, who is to be revealed in the last seven years before the Second Coming of Christ. This is apparently due to the Dispensationalist or Futurist understanding of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel outlined in Daniel 9:24 - 27, meaning "weeks of years" or 70 x 7 or 490 years, 69 "weeks" of which are understood to have been fulfilled at the first coming of Christ, counting the time right down to His riding into Jerusalem on the donkey. That leaves one week or seven years to be fulfilled in the future, during which the final Antichrist is to reign for at least part of that period. This has led to all kinds of speculation about the possible identity of this figure among those who believe we are in the last of the last days, and various contemporary political personalities have taken their turn in the role. Hal Lindsey's blockbuster book of 1970, The Late Great Planet Earth, popularized this view of the last days, and the more recent book series, Left Behind, which envisions what would happen if the Church were raptured out of the world, has kept it in the public eye. This line of thinking has had the effect of keeping our focus exclusively on a future Antichrist who is rarely if ever considered in relation to the Roman Church.
What the Reformers had to say about the papacy as Antichrist has been utterly lost in this theological system, and it may be due at least partly to its influence that the Roman Church is now widely accepted among nominal Protestants as just another Christian denomination, its very opposition to the gospel itself now lost or at least blurred in the minds of a majority of Christians.
However, today's Reformed theoloogians don't do a much better job with the last days or the Antichrist. I don't completely reject the Dispensationalist system -- the counting of the weeks of years is convincing to me for instance, so I can accept the view that there is yet a seven-year period in the future that will complete the work of redemption as envisioned by Daniel. I can consider this a possibility AND that the papacy is the Antichrist, a final expression yet to come. The Reformed position on the seventy weeks, on the other hand, makes the numbers as good as irrelevant, mere symbols and far from convincing ones. And along with the Futurists I too anticipate the revealing of the final Antichrist, although I look first to the papacy for this, keeping open the possibility that the Antichrist himself could be a Hitler type figure supported by the papacy, while the Dispensationalists pretty much disregard the papacy as a candidate for the Antichrist. If today's Reformed also followed the Reformers in their historical eschatology, which views the papacy as the Antichrist throughout history, I'd place myself more fully inside their camp. It's really the historical eschatology that has captivated me most recently, the eschatology of the Reformers themselves. (I think today's Reformed also fail to appreciate the role of Israel in the last days, though the Reformers themselves didn't make this mistake, as I noted on another of my blogs a while back.)
All that is to explain how Christians have been lulled to sleep by false theories about the Antichrist and the nature of our pagan opponents as represented in Nebuchadnezzar's statue. This is how it comes about that when you begin to contemplate the role of the papacy through history in its tireless efforts to undermine the true gospel, a viewpoint we could have learned from the Reformers themselves if they'd been taken seriously as they should have been, that's when you may experience what I mean by waking up among wolves. The veil of the irrelevant ditherings about the identity of the Antichrist to come in the near future falls away and we see that he has been there all along, waiting for his chance.
But even recognizing the papacy as the Antichrist isn't the whole story.
Why Does The Roman Empire Have Two Legs?
If the Dispensationalist / Futurist interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's statue offers an explanation for there being two legs to the Roman Empire they don't make much of it. Since they limit that symbol to the original Roman Empire which collapsed in the fifth century the most natural interpretation would be the division into the Eastern and Western branches, Byzantium or Eastern Orthodoxy in the East, and Rome in the West.
But here is where the Reformers' Historical Eschatology, seeing the Roman Antichrist ongoing in history, brings out a connection that both Dispensationalism and Reformed theology miss, though the Reformers themselves wrote about this, principally Luther.
According to Luther on Islam and the Papacy by Dr. F. N. Lee:
After Luther learned to trust in Christ alone for his salvation in 1517f, he increasingly saw both Islam and the Papacy as the two huge apostasies which the Holy Scriptures predicted would long obscure True Christianity -- until both would ultimately be quashed and vanquished.In 1453, Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium or the Eastern Empire, was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, conquered, in other words, by Islam. F.N. Lee continues:
In the Biblical Book of Daniel, Luther saw both Islam and the Papacy predicted.
Luther on Islam and the Papacy as the two legs of the image in Daniel chapter two
Christ, the Stone in Daniel chapter two, at His Resurrection shattered the Pagan Roman Empire -- in principle. Ephesians 1:20f & 4:8-10, and Colossians 2:12-15. Then, from A.D. 600 onward, that shattered Roman Empire divided into two legs -- as predicted in Daniel’s explanation of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. The left leg became the Western Roman Empire, under the Papacy in Rome. The right leg, the Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital Constantinople, later succumbed to Islam -- under the Turk Mohammed II.and his awesome armies in 1453.Islam! Well, haven't we been wondering and speculating where Islam fits into the end times? The Reformers, who lived in the days of the Turkish conquests, had it figured out long ago, but instead of benefiting from their insight, in my opinion we've been traipsing down rabbit trails.
As Lee presents Luther's thinking on this subject, the Pope is THE Antichrist because he has set himself up inside the Church and taken the place of Christ Himself, but the "Turk" or Muslim is also a spirit of Antichrist in his outright denial of the Deity of Christ. It is also interesting that both arose in the seventh century, the papacy being officially established first in 606, and Islam originally given to Mohammed in the year 610.
Luther gives God's judgment on the Church as the explanation for the rise of the two apostasies.
Today these two legs of the antichrist empire are huge, a billion Catholics and well over a billion Muslims.
Interestingly, Luther judges the papacy as the worse of the two, since the "Turk" is up front about his opposition to Christ, while the Pope pretends to be His friend. F. N. Lee again:
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther continues: “The Pope, with his followers, commits a greater sin than the Turk and all the Heathen.... The Turk.forces no one to deny Christ and to adhere to his [own Islamic] faith.... Though he rages most intensely by murdering Christians in the body -- he, after all, does nothing by this but fill heaven with saints....For reference: Chris Pinto's recent radio show on the same subject, Luther, Calvin and Islam . He quotes Luther from E.M.Plass, What Luther Says.
“The Pope does not want to be either enemy or Turk... He [the Pope] fills hell with nothing but‘Christians’.... This is committing real spiritual murder, and is every bit as bad as the teaching and blasphemy of Mohammed and the Turks. But whenever men do not allow him [the Pope] to practice this infernal diabolical seduction -- he adopts the way of the Turk, and commits bodily murder too....
And here's my other Waking Up Among Wolves blog post.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
The True History of Palestine and Israel
UPDATE August 10
So what else is new? Now we have a report of "Palestinians" protesting to the UN about Israel's determined defense of itself against the rocket attacks by Hamas. The usual accusation of unnecessary deaths is brought against Israel. Given their history of faking injuries and deaths to make Israel look bad, and their history of using their own people as human shields, my guess would be that these people are either deceived, believing the Hamas-produced propaganda, or part of the conspiracy themselves.
But for some reason the news media just love these victim complaints against Israel, love treating Israel as the aggressor when as usual they are in fact on the defensive, responding to the provocation of "Palestinian" attacks on Israel itself, aiming to take out as much of the ability of Hamas to launch such attacks as they can. And, something that just does not get reported in the mainstream media, when they are about to destroy a target in Gaza, the Israelis make sure the people who are in harm's way are warned so they can escape. If they don't escape, that is Hamas' doing, not Israel's.
The world just won't face the fact that Islam's objective is and always has been to destroy any people or nation that opposes Islam. Killing Jews and Christians is what their religion tells them to do [listen to Jacob Prasch below]. But we get only the media spin that makes such actions into ethnic struggles or blames the anti-Islamic side of the conflict.
We're in a time when the world just loves lies of all kinds.
http://news.yahoo.com/pro-palestinian-activists-march-un-headquarters-231139359.html
Original Post:
*******************
Israel again was put in a position of having to respond with force to the provocations of Hamas in sending rockets into Israel from Gaza, by the murder of Israeli teenagers by Hamas. Israel reports that the operation is now over because they located and destroyed the tunnels that had facilitated the attacks on Israel. As usual, Israel has been treated as the Bad Guy in the media, and our leftist-propagandized citizenry has fallen for it as usual. Evil evil Israel, look at these dead Palestinians.*
Nobody hears how before a raid into Gaza the Israelis sent warnings to the people there of their targets, advising them to leave and save themselves from the attack. They even made phone calls into the very buildings they planned to attack, telling the people there in their own language that the place was targeted and to leave to protect themselves. Hamas wouldn't let the people leave. They WANT victims to show the world how evil Israel is. They want to keep up the propaganda so they can continue to prosecute their often-stated goal of driving Israel into the sea, simply obliterating it from the maps of the Middle East altogether. Which their own maps already reflect. There is no Israel on their maps in case you haven't noticed.
Received a link to a video of Jacob Prasch speaking on the subject of the history of the Palestinian people, which answers the usual leftist revisionist blaming of Israel for their plight. I'd never heard of Jacob Prasch but found out he is a Jewish believer in Christ, and what he's saying is an expanded version of what I have known and believed about the Middle East situation for years already, so I'm happy to post the video. Googling him comes up with all kinds of objections to him I'm not going to track down. Nobody escapes controversy in the Christian community these days and I don't need to know what I think about those other issues right now. What he's saying on the video is the truth about the Israel-Palestinian situation that few know about any more and that is why I'm happy to post it here.
==========
*Does anybody remember as I do the video of Palestinian "victims" from some such operation by Israel many years ago now, that shows in an almost humorous way how the Palestinians try to set up Israel as the Bad Guy? This was a shot taken at some distance of a couple of Palestinians carrying a man on a stretcher under a sheet, when they stumble and the stretcher tips, and the man who had been lying on it lands on his feet and then all three start running. Sometimes they fake it, sometimes they let their own people be killed just to get the world to hate Israel.
So what else is new? Now we have a report of "Palestinians" protesting to the UN about Israel's determined defense of itself against the rocket attacks by Hamas. The usual accusation of unnecessary deaths is brought against Israel. Given their history of faking injuries and deaths to make Israel look bad, and their history of using their own people as human shields, my guess would be that these people are either deceived, believing the Hamas-produced propaganda, or part of the conspiracy themselves.
But for some reason the news media just love these victim complaints against Israel, love treating Israel as the aggressor when as usual they are in fact on the defensive, responding to the provocation of "Palestinian" attacks on Israel itself, aiming to take out as much of the ability of Hamas to launch such attacks as they can. And, something that just does not get reported in the mainstream media, when they are about to destroy a target in Gaza, the Israelis make sure the people who are in harm's way are warned so they can escape. If they don't escape, that is Hamas' doing, not Israel's.
The world just won't face the fact that Islam's objective is and always has been to destroy any people or nation that opposes Islam. Killing Jews and Christians is what their religion tells them to do [listen to Jacob Prasch below]. But we get only the media spin that makes such actions into ethnic struggles or blames the anti-Islamic side of the conflict.
We're in a time when the world just loves lies of all kinds.
http://news.yahoo.com/pro-palestinian-activists-march-un-headquarters-231139359.html
Original Post:
*******************
Israel again was put in a position of having to respond with force to the provocations of Hamas in sending rockets into Israel from Gaza, by the murder of Israeli teenagers by Hamas. Israel reports that the operation is now over because they located and destroyed the tunnels that had facilitated the attacks on Israel. As usual, Israel has been treated as the Bad Guy in the media, and our leftist-propagandized citizenry has fallen for it as usual. Evil evil Israel, look at these dead Palestinians.*
Nobody hears how before a raid into Gaza the Israelis sent warnings to the people there of their targets, advising them to leave and save themselves from the attack. They even made phone calls into the very buildings they planned to attack, telling the people there in their own language that the place was targeted and to leave to protect themselves. Hamas wouldn't let the people leave. They WANT victims to show the world how evil Israel is. They want to keep up the propaganda so they can continue to prosecute their often-stated goal of driving Israel into the sea, simply obliterating it from the maps of the Middle East altogether. Which their own maps already reflect. There is no Israel on their maps in case you haven't noticed.
Received a link to a video of Jacob Prasch speaking on the subject of the history of the Palestinian people, which answers the usual leftist revisionist blaming of Israel for their plight. I'd never heard of Jacob Prasch but found out he is a Jewish believer in Christ, and what he's saying is an expanded version of what I have known and believed about the Middle East situation for years already, so I'm happy to post the video. Googling him comes up with all kinds of objections to him I'm not going to track down. Nobody escapes controversy in the Christian community these days and I don't need to know what I think about those other issues right now. What he's saying on the video is the truth about the Israel-Palestinian situation that few know about any more and that is why I'm happy to post it here.
==========
*Does anybody remember as I do the video of Palestinian "victims" from some such operation by Israel many years ago now, that shows in an almost humorous way how the Palestinians try to set up Israel as the Bad Guy? This was a shot taken at some distance of a couple of Palestinians carrying a man on a stretcher under a sheet, when they stumble and the stretcher tips, and the man who had been lying on it lands on his feet and then all three start running. Sometimes they fake it, sometimes they let their own people be killed just to get the world to hate Israel.
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Islam invasion of the whole world coming soon?
As usual there's plenty of sad news in the world but the latest for me is what Chris Pinto reported on about the Muslim invasion of France. It's not new but it's getting worse every day and there is no will to stop it because France is just one of the western nations that has been completely paralyzed by Political Correctness. And it's probably God's judgment so it isn't going to get any better until they turn back to Him, which isn't likely to happen.
It's the last half of this show:
http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_BECK.ISLAM_07.28.14.mp3
At the end Chris gives his very sensible advice to France for dealing with the problem, very clearly a cure if they would or could do it. But that's the problem, nobody has the will to deal with these things any more. And I think that probably is God's judgment, in which case there's only one solution as I say above, which isn't likely to happen.
Sorry for such a bummer of a post. It's all I'm up to.
It's the last half of this show:
http://www.noiseofthunder.com/storage/NOTR_BECK.ISLAM_07.28.14.mp3
At the end Chris gives his very sensible advice to France for dealing with the problem, very clearly a cure if they would or could do it. But that's the problem, nobody has the will to deal with these things any more. And I think that probably is God's judgment, in which case there's only one solution as I say above, which isn't likely to happen.
Sorry for such a bummer of a post. It's all I'm up to.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
The Real Cause of the Santa Barbara killings: The Wicked Heart Unbridled, part 1
Wanted to write this when it first happened but it's the sort of thing that has to gel. The first reaction to the killing spree in Santa Barbara was the predictable blaming of the NRA for allowing the availability of guns. That was from the father of one of the victims and I was heartbroken for him as he lashed out at the only cause that made sense to him.
==================================================
UPDATE:
Blaming it on the NRA maybe isn't quite as big a factor in this mass killing as it has been in others just because three of the victims were stabbed to death rather than shot, but it's nevertheless still made an issue by some. Here's Mark Ruffalo, star of the recently released HBO film, The Normal Heart (which is of course about another of today's misunderstood Big Issues, homosexuality in the early days of AIDS). Perhaps he hadn't heard that guns only figured in half the murders this time, or perhaps he just wanted to get his face out there to promote his movie.
So we take away guns. Next time all the victims will be stabbed to death.
Because it isn't about guns, that's just one of the many blind alleys the media take us down after such events.
===================================================
My first thought was no, the problem is that society is behind what this young man did, today's society encourages his self-centered vengeful hatred and nobody's noticing; we're all pointing at the wrong villain.
And then there was a criticism that almost said that, but blamed it specifically on the movies and the Hollywood culture in which the killer had been brought up. This is the view of Ann Hornaday who wrote a column in the Washington Post about the sexism in the movies she sees behind the killings.
=================================================
UPDATE
I agree completely with her about the effect of movies (and television) in conditioning "what we desire, expect and feel we deserve," especially what we desire. I could almost chronicle my own track into various sins in my young adult life by the movies I'd seen that presented sexual indulgence as a good and normal thing and self-restraint as prudish and even the road to madness, yes even back in the "innocent" 50s. Funny how every now and then we see an article lamenting how sexually active the very young are these days, that may mention the movies and other cultural influences, but is mostly amazed by it all. No surprise, check the media that is filling their heads.
=========================================================
Then a couple of the Hollywood men she was criticizing objected to her analysis:
I certainly don't agree with any of those. I do agree with Hornaday that it is influenced by movies, but I wouldn't limit it to that, and I wouldn't point to "white men."
What I'd point to is the culture's abandonment of the God of the Bible, which is aggressively reinforced, if not quite invented, by the movies and television. Clearly that young man was raised in the atmosphere in which everything is explained by psychology or political correctness -- and so-called science: the boy called himself an "alpha male," straight from the idea that we're just animals, and of course animals do whatever they please, don't they?
Blame the NRA, blame the white men, blame mental illness, but never ever blame the human heart. No, this society puts the human heart above everything. What we feel, what we desire, that's what life is all about when you get rid of culturally imposed moral restraints.* It's a frame of reference in which our personal passions are allowed to reign and the only checks on them are fallible human analyses and opinions. Nobody believes any more that the human heart is full of selfish passions ("The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"-- Jeremiah 17:9); we're all "good at heart," unless we're mentally ill.
Those analyses are part of the mindset that is the cause of the problem. This boy simply believed what we've all been taught for decades now. We're just animals (certainly nothing special: you could have been aborted you know, when you were just a "piece of tissue."); sex is a normal need and it's terrible to be deprived of it; we're told all the time that we "deserve" good things, nobody deserves bad things; there is no such thing as God, that's just a myth that weak-minded people need, and society will be much better off when we've all outgrown it and all those who still hold on to such lies have died off; trust your heart/instincts. I'm sure this list could be expanded greatly.
John Adams is often quoted as saying:
The case of Elliot Rodger may be easier to analyze than many of the other mass murders because he said so clearly why he was doing it: revenge against women who rejected him and deprived him of what he felt himself to be entitled to, their love and sexual interest; and against anyone else who seemed to conspire in his deprivation.
This also makes it easier to see that he is expressing the values this society drills into us now. What is mental illness? Simply giving his feelings free rein on the basis of what society tells him he's entitled to perhaps?
And of course what is the cure?
How about respect for the Ten Commandments? How about at least the affirmation that God exists and that He punishes sin, and that there is a Hell where people suffer for eternity for their sins? Hating, killing and coveting, and the lust that leads to adultery or fornication, are four violations of the Ten Commandments that Rodgers most clearly committed. But he and most of the generations brought up since the fifties and sixties, were not taught the Ten Commandments, or were taught that they are just the relics of a myth that the nation should do without.
This isn't the NRA's fault, this is society's fault, and the movies and mass media have a big part of the guilt. The human heart unbridled is evil, the human heart is fallen. We're all capable of mass murder when we're told to trust our hearts.
=================================================
UPDATE:
Is this such a strange idea? I'm sure it is to many these days since we've thrown out our Christian heritage. It used to be that the culture itself was imbued with Christian values whether individuals were Christians or not. Bit by bit these values have been removed, from prayer in the schools, to the liberalizing of the divorce laws, to the general acceptance of unmarried couples living together, to the legalizing of abortion, to the removal of the Ten Commandments and even Christmas displays in the public square, to the legitimizing of pornography as a Constitutional right, to the normalizing of homosexuality and the promotion of gay marriage, some of these things on the basis of a single person's objection, or the work of a minority lobby, on the bogus misreading of the First Amendment that has grown up in the last few decades.
But this isn't merely cause, this is also effect, all this is also God's work of judgment on the nation. You can read Romans 1 to see how God tolerates our rejection of Him up to a point but then lifts His restraints on evil, and the last phase is the rampant expression of homosexuality in a culture.
But think about it: a society that promoted the Biblical view of God's Law, that it defines what sin is and that we will be punished for it, that there is a Hell in which winners will suffer for eternity, just that alone -- without even going on to teach the gospel of salvation from sin and Hell through the death of Jesus Christ -- just that alone would put enough of the fear of God into the hearts of the citizenry to restrain these horrific murders that have been proliferating over the last few years, and promote a much safer and saner society.
===================================
If our abandonment of Biblical principles isn't recognized as the true cause, these killings are just going to continue.
==============================================
UPDATE: While I was writing this post, I checked in on Chris Pinto's site and found that he has a view of the situation somewhat like my own, at least in that he quotes the Tenth Commandment in his title to his radio show: Thou Shalt Not Covet. I decided not to listen to it until I've got my own thoughts better worked out, but I am looking forward to what he has to say. Here's the blurb for the radio show for May 27:
==============================================
*It's not that the only moral restraints are Biblical, but in Western Civilization they used to be and now we really have none. Other cultures have had their own religious and cultural and governmental restraints, also put in place by God for the purpose of keeping the passions of fallen human nature under control. They too may be starting to follow our lead and "letting it all hang out" as we said in the 60s. Or there's the opposite extreme, of course, where you get beheaded for even imagined adultery. And that's unfortunately the sort of law that's likely to replace our Constitution as human passion continues unbridled.
==================================================
UPDATE:
Blaming it on the NRA maybe isn't quite as big a factor in this mass killing as it has been in others just because three of the victims were stabbed to death rather than shot, but it's nevertheless still made an issue by some. Here's Mark Ruffalo, star of the recently released HBO film, The Normal Heart (which is of course about another of today's misunderstood Big Issues, homosexuality in the early days of AIDS). Perhaps he hadn't heard that guns only figured in half the murders this time, or perhaps he just wanted to get his face out there to promote his movie.
So we take away guns. Next time all the victims will be stabbed to death.
Because it isn't about guns, that's just one of the many blind alleys the media take us down after such events.
===================================================
My first thought was no, the problem is that society is behind what this young man did, today's society encourages his self-centered vengeful hatred and nobody's noticing; we're all pointing at the wrong villain.
And then there was a criticism that almost said that, but blamed it specifically on the movies and the Hollywood culture in which the killer had been brought up. This is the view of Ann Hornaday who wrote a column in the Washington Post about the sexism in the movies she sees behind the killings.
Indeed, as important as it is to understand Rodger’s actions within the context of the mental illness he clearly suffered, it’s just as clear that his delusions were inflated, if not created, by the entertainment industry he grew up in. With his florid rhetoric of self-pity, aggression and awkwardly forced “evil laugh,” Rodger resembled a noxious cross between Christian Bale’s slick sociopath in “American Psycho,” the thwarted womanizer in James Toback’s “The Pick-Up Artist” and every Bond villain in the canon.She goes on with a feminist analysis of Hollywood, blaming "white men" whose fantasies she clams dominate the films:
As Rodger bemoaned his life of “loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desire” and arrogantly announced that he would now prove his own status as “the true alpha male,” he unwittingly expressed the toxic double helix of insecurity and entitlement that comprises Hollywood’s DNA.
Rodger’s rampage may be a function of his own profound distress, but it also shows how a sexist movie monoculture can be toxic for women and men alike.
How many students watch outsized frat-boy fantasies like “Neighbors” and feel, as Rodger did, unjustly shut out of college life that should be full of “sex and fun and pleasure”? How many men, raised on a steady diet of Judd Apatow comedies in which the shlubby arrested adolescent always gets the girl, find that those happy endings constantly elude them and conclude, “It’s not fair”?
Movies may not reflect reality, but they powerfully condition what we desire, expect and feel we deserve from it.
=================================================
UPDATE
I agree completely with her about the effect of movies (and television) in conditioning "what we desire, expect and feel we deserve," especially what we desire. I could almost chronicle my own track into various sins in my young adult life by the movies I'd seen that presented sexual indulgence as a good and normal thing and self-restraint as prudish and even the road to madness, yes even back in the "innocent" 50s. Funny how every now and then we see an article lamenting how sexually active the very young are these days, that may mention the movies and other cultural influences, but is mostly amazed by it all. No surprise, check the media that is filling their heads.
=========================================================
Then a couple of the Hollywood men she was criticizing objected to her analysis:
After being referenced in the piece, Rogen, 32, took to Twitter, "Ann Hornaday I find your article horribly insulting and misinformed," he tweeted. "How dare you imply that me getting girls in movies caused a lunatic to go on a rampage."So we have the NRA, mental illness or Hollywood's sexism, those are the choices we're given for an explanation of this horror story. The standard leftist explanation, the psychological explanation, the feminist explanation.
Apatow, 46, chimed in, "She uses tragedy to promote herself with idiotic thoughts." He later added, "Most of Earth can't find a mate-- someone to love. People who commit murder of numerous people have mental health issues of some type."
Hornaday has yet to comment on the Rogen and Apatow's comments.
I certainly don't agree with any of those. I do agree with Hornaday that it is influenced by movies, but I wouldn't limit it to that, and I wouldn't point to "white men."
What I'd point to is the culture's abandonment of the God of the Bible, which is aggressively reinforced, if not quite invented, by the movies and television. Clearly that young man was raised in the atmosphere in which everything is explained by psychology or political correctness -- and so-called science: the boy called himself an "alpha male," straight from the idea that we're just animals, and of course animals do whatever they please, don't they?
Blame the NRA, blame the white men, blame mental illness, but never ever blame the human heart. No, this society puts the human heart above everything. What we feel, what we desire, that's what life is all about when you get rid of culturally imposed moral restraints.* It's a frame of reference in which our personal passions are allowed to reign and the only checks on them are fallible human analyses and opinions. Nobody believes any more that the human heart is full of selfish passions ("The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"-- Jeremiah 17:9); we're all "good at heart," unless we're mentally ill.
Those analyses are part of the mindset that is the cause of the problem. This boy simply believed what we've all been taught for decades now. We're just animals (certainly nothing special: you could have been aborted you know, when you were just a "piece of tissue."); sex is a normal need and it's terrible to be deprived of it; we're told all the time that we "deserve" good things, nobody deserves bad things; there is no such thing as God, that's just a myth that weak-minded people need, and society will be much better off when we've all outgrown it and all those who still hold on to such lies have died off; trust your heart/instincts. I'm sure this list could be expanded greatly.
John Adams is often quoted as saying:
Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion, avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. [This seems to be properly attributed to Adams at this site but many quotes are wrongly attributed to him and I'm not completely sure of this one so I'm including this note as a caveat.]So now we're getting to the point, or perhaps we've arrived at the point, where human passions are being allowed to reign, unbridled by morality and religion. Some have noticed that the culture has been unraveling for decades now, and the mass killings by self-centered youth are an inevitable result.
The case of Elliot Rodger may be easier to analyze than many of the other mass murders because he said so clearly why he was doing it: revenge against women who rejected him and deprived him of what he felt himself to be entitled to, their love and sexual interest; and against anyone else who seemed to conspire in his deprivation.
This also makes it easier to see that he is expressing the values this society drills into us now. What is mental illness? Simply giving his feelings free rein on the basis of what society tells him he's entitled to perhaps?
And of course what is the cure?
How about respect for the Ten Commandments? How about at least the affirmation that God exists and that He punishes sin, and that there is a Hell where people suffer for eternity for their sins? Hating, killing and coveting, and the lust that leads to adultery or fornication, are four violations of the Ten Commandments that Rodgers most clearly committed. But he and most of the generations brought up since the fifties and sixties, were not taught the Ten Commandments, or were taught that they are just the relics of a myth that the nation should do without.
This isn't the NRA's fault, this is society's fault, and the movies and mass media have a big part of the guilt. The human heart unbridled is evil, the human heart is fallen. We're all capable of mass murder when we're told to trust our hearts.
=================================================
UPDATE:
Is this such a strange idea? I'm sure it is to many these days since we've thrown out our Christian heritage. It used to be that the culture itself was imbued with Christian values whether individuals were Christians or not. Bit by bit these values have been removed, from prayer in the schools, to the liberalizing of the divorce laws, to the general acceptance of unmarried couples living together, to the legalizing of abortion, to the removal of the Ten Commandments and even Christmas displays in the public square, to the legitimizing of pornography as a Constitutional right, to the normalizing of homosexuality and the promotion of gay marriage, some of these things on the basis of a single person's objection, or the work of a minority lobby, on the bogus misreading of the First Amendment that has grown up in the last few decades.
But this isn't merely cause, this is also effect, all this is also God's work of judgment on the nation. You can read Romans 1 to see how God tolerates our rejection of Him up to a point but then lifts His restraints on evil, and the last phase is the rampant expression of homosexuality in a culture.
But think about it: a society that promoted the Biblical view of God's Law, that it defines what sin is and that we will be punished for it, that there is a Hell in which winners will suffer for eternity, just that alone -- without even going on to teach the gospel of salvation from sin and Hell through the death of Jesus Christ -- just that alone would put enough of the fear of God into the hearts of the citizenry to restrain these horrific murders that have been proliferating over the last few years, and promote a much safer and saner society.
===================================
If our abandonment of Biblical principles isn't recognized as the true cause, these killings are just going to continue.
==============================================
UPDATE: While I was writing this post, I checked in on Chris Pinto's site and found that he has a view of the situation somewhat like my own, at least in that he quotes the Tenth Commandment in his title to his radio show: Thou Shalt Not Covet. I decided not to listen to it until I've got my own thoughts better worked out, but I am looking forward to what he has to say. Here's the blurb for the radio show for May 27:
Despite having a privileged existence (with $300 sunglasses and a BMW), this young man was not satisfied. The Bible warns that envy is as "rottenness of the bones" (Proverbs 14:30) and that covetousness is as idolatry (Colossians 3:5). But is this event indicative of an even greater problem in American society? Are we a country that thrives on discontentment and inspiring others to lust for things they don't have?The only analysis that makes sense of such events is such Bible quotes, and particularly the Moral Law, specifically the Ten Commandments that represent God's standard and will be the final judge of all of us. But the standard must be applied to the whole cultural milieu to be explanatory of such killings ("a country that thrives on discontentment.")
==============================================
*It's not that the only moral restraints are Biblical, but in Western Civilization they used to be and now we really have none. Other cultures have had their own religious and cultural and governmental restraints, also put in place by God for the purpose of keeping the passions of fallen human nature under control. They too may be starting to follow our lead and "letting it all hang out" as we said in the 60s. Or there's the opposite extreme, of course, where you get beheaded for even imagined adultery. And that's unfortunately the sort of law that's likely to replace our Constitution as human passion continues unbridled.
Friday, May 16, 2014
A pastor's sermon on the Heaven stories
I just got a comment on my post about finally reading the book The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven from a Pastor Ken Burkett who included a link to a sermon he gave on the subject of the Heaven stories.
From about a third of the way into his sermon he covers so many solid biblical points it seems like a very valuable resource so I decided to recommend it. He mentions many books that have come out in recent years on such experiences, more than I've touched on here. He also confronts many of the logical problems and contradictions between the various accounts as well as with the Bible.
He acknowledges that there's no reason at least in some of the cases to doubt the sincerity and honesty of those who had the experiences, but he stops short of suggesting that therefore it had to be a spiritual fraud concocted by demons. I think it's necessary to draw this conclusion myself, however, because people do need an explanation for how the people could be sincere but the accounts be false.
The whole sermon is a good overview of all the problems involved in these extremely popular accounts, and his perspective is thoroughly Biblical. He concludes that if people read the books and don't see contradictions with the Bible they just don't know the Bible and need to put down the book and go back to the scriptures.
That's the problem with this whole phenomenon right there.
From about a third of the way into his sermon he covers so many solid biblical points it seems like a very valuable resource so I decided to recommend it. He mentions many books that have come out in recent years on such experiences, more than I've touched on here. He also confronts many of the logical problems and contradictions between the various accounts as well as with the Bible.
He acknowledges that there's no reason at least in some of the cases to doubt the sincerity and honesty of those who had the experiences, but he stops short of suggesting that therefore it had to be a spiritual fraud concocted by demons. I think it's necessary to draw this conclusion myself, however, because people do need an explanation for how the people could be sincere but the accounts be false.
The whole sermon is a good overview of all the problems involved in these extremely popular accounts, and his perspective is thoroughly Biblical. He concludes that if people read the books and don't see contradictions with the Bible they just don't know the Bible and need to put down the book and go back to the scriptures.
That's the problem with this whole phenomenon right there.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Is Nero Caesar the Antichrist?
Heard a preacher on the radio saying that the early Christians who were persecuted under Nero regarded him as the Antichrist and that his name Nero Caesar can be calculated in Hebrew or Greek, it wasn't clear which he meant, to add up to 666. When I've looked it up I've found it very hard to find a clearcut proof of this, it usually involves adding a letter or a title and I'm still not clear whether it's in Hebrew or Greek that it's supposed to be calculated. Here, see the Wikipedia article that discusses this. The original is Hebrew but it's worked back from the Greek, and there's even a form in Latin. I don't find any of this very convincing, especially considering how convincing the Latin title of the Pope is that so clearly adds up to 666 without any fuss or bother.
This is a favorite view of Preterist eschatology, which interprets much of New Testament prophecy as over and done with in the past, which is of course the case with this view of the Antichrist. No need to think about it any further, no big final Antichrist in our future, all over and done with. I wonder who might have a vested interest in promoting this viewpoint, hm?
If I find a convincing calculation for Nero, OK, but even if I did I could only think of him as the first of the line of official Antichrists, the papacy having picked up the role down the centuries to the present. This could be justified since the papacy in so many respects is clearly a continuation of Roman paganism, from the weird garb to the title "pontiff" from "Pontifex Maximus" to the godification as it were of the Pope with his supposed infallibility and kissing his ring or foot or whatever. And for the papacy there IS a definite 666 that can be calculated from the Pope's title Vicarivs Filii Dei ("In the place of the Son of God"), in LATIN of course, because the Antichrist is to be the leader of the revived ROMAN EMPIRE according to other Biblical prophecies (Think Holy Roman Empire with its failed version the Third Reich, and now the European Union).
Now of course you will find all this challenged by those with a vested interest in avoiding the connection with the papacy. And a lot of deceived Protestants have bought into it too. You will for instance find the title itself challenged as never having been an official title of the Pope. But then Chris Pinto did prove that it is, only I'm lousy at keeping notes so I'll have to go find that information again.
And of course there is the papacy's masterpiece of deception, the "oldest" Bible manuscripts which have 616 instead of 666. And everybody eats that up too, although Codex Vaticanus is surely a forgery and Codex Sinaiticus is highly questionable if not proven to be a forgery. At least it is certainly a corruption created in the early centuries as John Burgon believed. But since these two manuscripts only showed up in the 19th century we can at least say "Hm, I wonder what vested interests might benefit from that little discovery?" But Chris Pinto is a much better researcher than I am, he has all the info on this so go check out his site, Noise of Thunder Radio.
This is a favorite view of Preterist eschatology, which interprets much of New Testament prophecy as over and done with in the past, which is of course the case with this view of the Antichrist. No need to think about it any further, no big final Antichrist in our future, all over and done with. I wonder who might have a vested interest in promoting this viewpoint, hm?
If I find a convincing calculation for Nero, OK, but even if I did I could only think of him as the first of the line of official Antichrists, the papacy having picked up the role down the centuries to the present. This could be justified since the papacy in so many respects is clearly a continuation of Roman paganism, from the weird garb to the title "pontiff" from "Pontifex Maximus" to the godification as it were of the Pope with his supposed infallibility and kissing his ring or foot or whatever. And for the papacy there IS a definite 666 that can be calculated from the Pope's title Vicarivs Filii Dei ("In the place of the Son of God"), in LATIN of course, because the Antichrist is to be the leader of the revived ROMAN EMPIRE according to other Biblical prophecies (Think Holy Roman Empire with its failed version the Third Reich, and now the European Union).
Now of course you will find all this challenged by those with a vested interest in avoiding the connection with the papacy. And a lot of deceived Protestants have bought into it too. You will for instance find the title itself challenged as never having been an official title of the Pope. But then Chris Pinto did prove that it is, only I'm lousy at keeping notes so I'll have to go find that information again.
And of course there is the papacy's masterpiece of deception, the "oldest" Bible manuscripts which have 616 instead of 666. And everybody eats that up too, although Codex Vaticanus is surely a forgery and Codex Sinaiticus is highly questionable if not proven to be a forgery. At least it is certainly a corruption created in the early centuries as John Burgon believed. But since these two manuscripts only showed up in the 19th century we can at least say "Hm, I wonder what vested interests might benefit from that little discovery?" But Chris Pinto is a much better researcher than I am, he has all the info on this so go check out his site, Noise of Thunder Radio.
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