Marxist America

Here's Mark Levin on how America now follows the Communist Manifesto rather than our founding documents:

Still Having Questions about the Timing of the Rapture

Ah well. No, I do't want to debate anyone about anything, but that doesn't mean I don't have questionsa about certain systems of thought, and in this case I'm thinking of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. I just listened to the latest Understanding the Times radio show by Jan Markell which addresses the arguments against the Pre-Trib point of view, and as usual althougj it touches on my questions it doesn't answer them. Are my questions especially odd or what?

I do have this point of view that they don't share, which is that the Antichrist was shown by the Protestant Reformers to have already been revealed when the Bishop of Rome became preeminent over all the other bishops of the Church. That was the begining of institutional Romanism headed by the Pope, the Bishop of Rome. I've made the case for this view of the Antichrist over and over here and don't think I'll make it again in this post, but he was recognized as the Antichrist, meaning THE Antichrist, over the centuries by hundreds of Christians outside the Church of Rome, then by the Protestant Reformers who found the evidence in scripture.

This difference of viewpoint doesn't challenge much in the Pre-Trib point of view as I see it it, all it means is that we already know who the Antichrist is. We also know the history of the Inquisition or persecutions and martyrdoms of believing Christians by that Pope and his Roman Church-Kingdom throughout the Middle Ages. The horrific persecutions of believers we see in the Book of Revelation by this Antichrist person seem to me to be a renewal of that Inquisition of the Middle Ages, only this time with I Islamists as the main executioners. Which i've also argued before.

At least one of the questions that keeps haunting me does come from my having this point of view, but really it comes from actual history, not just a point of view. That is, in the Rapture according to the Pre-Trib system all the martyrs of the Roman Inquistion of the Middle Ages will be included. So when we see a group of martyrs under the altar in Revelation 6, who are waiting for more martyrs to join them, it raises this question in my mind why they are being treated as a different group from the martyrs who were raptured? Martyrs are clearly singled out as a special group, but then why is that group divided d between those already raptures and those to come later? I really don't get it.

And this is of a piece with the other question who the Church could have been raptured but uncountable others become believers during the ensuing Tribulation period and yet not be considered to be part of that Church. The Church raptured but millions more who come to belief not part of that group of raptured believers? Are not believers in Christ all the Bride of Chrfist? How can the Bride of Christ be divideed into two groups, two brides as it were? I don't get it.

And then the fact that passages that refer to the Rapture also refer to the sound of a trumpet, in one the "last" trumpet, raised the question why this rather blatant indicator of the event of the Rapture is never mentioned, or is lightly dismissed, by the Pre-Trib people It's clearly "the last trumpet" in First Corinthians 15, and it's the "trummp of God" in Thessalonians something or other which I'm going to have to look up, so I guess I'll have to come back with that information.

It's the sounding of the trumpet that suggests the Rapture could occur at the midpoint of the Tribulation period, since the Last Trumpet of the sev3enth seal seems to occur at that time, and it herals the seven vials or bowls of God's wrath which finish the Great Tribulation. HOWEVER, there are clearly martyrs to be made after that point, and their trials are going to be more horrific than anything we can imagine, so the question doesn't stop there.

All this is Bible-based, I'm not bringing up anything extraneous to the Bible. The Reformers derived the identify of the Antichrist as the Pope from the Bible, and the trumpet is in the Bible, so I don't think what I'm saying is open to the criticism that it's not biblical.

I don't want to argue it though. If I get a nice clear answer, great, if I don't they will just remain questions.

Here's Jan's show for reference:

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Vaccine Mandates and Biden's Divisive Speech

Tucker Carlson sums up the totalitarian COVID craziness:




Whoever thought it could come to this in the USA. I understand why people are leaving the country. I would too if I could.

He goes on from the COVID nightmare to the California nightmare where they are throwing out votes for Elder against Newsome. This is America? Not any more it isn't.

UPDATE: Adding Chris Pinto's last radio show about COVID as the New World Order:

http://www.noiseofthunderradio.com/noise-of-thunder-radio-show/2021/9/11/notr-9-11-australia-the-covid-new-world-order-91121.html

Evolutionary Worldview Makes for Relative Morality and Relative Everything, All a Function of Whatever You Happen to Think Important

There is no such thing as absolute moral standards from an evolutionary perspective. There is no such thing as cultural institutions that are right or wrong, only adaptive practices that confer some benefit on the cultural or not, according to whatever speculative standard the analyst adopts.

While they may apply some pretty sound moral thinking to particular social issues, as I think Bret and Heather do, their evolutionary perspective undoes any claim to their soundness. It all depends on how you understand benefit, and since that is open to speculation from a variety of points of view you aren't going to get anything like a solid system for understanding much of anything in the sphere of human life.

Just a thought. No pithy critique yet.

Maybe I should try to spell out the Christian worldview. Just for contrast, or frame of rerference.

Hm.

Clashing Worldviews, Two of Them for Now

For a few weeks now Bret and Heather of Dark Horse Podcast have been reading excerpts from their forthcoming book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the Twenty-First Century, and I've listened to some of it, but not all, because I'm appalled at the evolutionary perspective they inhabit. I wish I had a really pithy way of critiquing it but my reaction is too visceral at the moment -- a species of despair that intelligent people actually think along these lines. I'm pretty sure they'd say the same thing about my way of analyzing human history. I could spell it out, which would serve as an alternative model at least but not do much to prove anything.

The evolutionary perspective analyzes everything in terms of its adaptive benefit to the "species" or perhaps even to the culture in the case of humanity. Cultural practices are there because in one way or another, at least when they first appeared, they conferred some important benefit. Marriage, sexual norms and practices, religion of course, name it they have a speculative framework in which to account for it in terms of how it furthered either the survival of the species or the social welfare of the species, human species mostly -- until it seems no longer to have such a benefit and then they speculate about how to go about changing it in the most beneficial way..

Worldviews do have consequences, maybe I could start there. If it's all a matter of trying to shape the society we live in through our knowledge of evolutionary principles, then it's going to depend completely on how well we understand the social forces that impact us that we might want to change. Even the thought that we know that much gives me the willies, but of course that's compunded by my biblical perspective that understands events in relation to spiritual laws outside the purview of a biological framework.

If you're talking about Mayan civiization, for instance, and see the building of temples less in terms of their religious function than their possible creation of social spaces for the people, the fact that they practiced an idolatrous religion that made human sacrifices to feed high quality blood to their gods won't be a big part of your analysis of the rise and fall of the fortunes of the Mayan if they could find a social consequence of the prctice that would count but the idea of an overarching spiritual law isn't going to enter into it.

So when the Antichrist comes to power on the global stage he'll be assessed in terms of whatever social policies seem to facilitate human wellbeing on the planet, at least until his murderous intentions become too obvious to be ignored. The Two Witnesses of Revelation who preach the biblical God may just be annoying, as scripture says they will be to the majority of humanity.

It makes me tired. If I come up with that pithy critique I'll certainly let you know.

Why We Are Never Going to Get Back to Normal. God is Against Us.

CHristians should know the US is under God's judgment, and that this is the explanation for our political disaster that has been escalating faster than usual over the last year and a half. I keep coming back to this like a broken record, sorry about that, but if this isn't understood, all the hopes and efforts to reclaim the nation are futile. Even if it is understood they are likely futile.

I'm not giving up on those effortts and not saying I want them given up. We still have to do what we can, but it is depressing to see the usual explanations that leave out this one essential fact. We can certainly point to the Left as the wrecking ball, we can identify the anti-American ideology of Marxism, we can also discern the diaboligical Jesuits at work in the fake news about America, or so I think thanks to Chris Pinto in particular. But all those are "proximate" causes. They couldn't succeed if there weren't moral and spiritual reasons for the nation's destruction propelling it all.


Mark Levin's radio show is getting heavy with patriotic music and themes these days, and I'm afraid it just makes me cringe. This isn't the America those songs celebrate, we are no longer that America. God can't bless THIS America.

I cringed in the same way twenty years ago when "God Bless America" was sung in response to -- and defiance of -- the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pengagon, twenty years ago tomorrow. The response of many Christians made me cringe: "God had nothing to do with it" Ghey said, God doesn't do such things." Whatever happened to Christians' identity as "people of the Book?"

Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. [note: "evil" means disaster or destruction}

Amos 3:6 Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

Mark Levin's latest book, "American Marxism" is full of good analyses of what we are up against and no doubt excellent recommendations for what we are to do about it. I'm sure they are excellent although I haven't been able to get very far reading the book yet. I hope to eventually, but I'm sure he isn't taking God's judgment against the nation into account and as long as that is ignored not much we can do is going to save America. Cewrtainly in opposing Marxism we'll be at least tacitly supporting elements of God's Law but that isn't the same thing as actively opposing and dismantling what has already been put into law and THAT's the only thing that might get us somewhere.

As usual I'll modify my idea of the finality of our calamity enough to say I don't know that we are actually at the point of maximum offense against God and therefore maximum judmment is all we have to look forward to. I still hope. Of course I don't have a "Word from the Lord" on this, I'm deriving it from the scriptural portrait of the way God works in the world and from our own history, what smatterings of thta history that are all I can claim to have. Just enough to know that we've been violating God's Law with amazing alacrity over the last few decades, and even with an amazing righteous indignation. Yeah the usual case in point abortion. The righteous indignation that wants to kill babies is astonishing when you see it in its proper light. If you understand God's purpose in ordaining marriage the righteous indignation in favor of destroying it to make homosexuals feel normal is also pretty astonishing. There are hundreds of such violations of God's Law in our "justice" system by now, that I just haven't been following enough to describe. But what little of it I do grasp is enough to explain that the reason we are having the problems we're having is that as a nation we've turned against God, -- not just "away from " God but actually against God -- which means He is turning against us. Political mismanagement, economic disaster, tolerated rioting and looting and burning in our cities, extreme weather, and as usual I'm coming short of anything like an adequate list. But you can fill in the blanks.

So how do we turn back God's judgments? Attempts to restore American institutions seem like a good idea if they could succeed, but as long as we've given rights and freedoms to violations of God's Law there's no point in restoring the institutions that uphold rights and freedoms.

In Chris Pinto's latest documentary, The True Christian History of America, he gives prominence to Samuel Adams' remark on signing the Declaration of Independnece, that "Now commences the reign of political Protestantism."

There is good reason to think that is really what the Founding of America was supposed to be, even more teelingly than Franklin's famous "A Republic if you can keep it," but the Protestant vision never caught hold as it should have done, and was soon undermined by hostile forces, so two and a half centuries later here we are with a govvernment that is anything but a reign of political Protestantism. What with the malevolence of the jesuits who worked tirelessly since the Reformation to destroy Protestant nations, and the malevolence of atheists who resent everything of God, and perhaps confusion about exactly what sort of republic we were supposed to be -- Protestant? Shouild have been, not based on the Enlightenment as is usually thougyht -- so keeping it was out of the question from the beginning. Certainly it was biblical Protestantism that made the nation great and prosperous. But restoring it now? Can't do it unless we roll back our national offenses against God's Law. And oh how they scream at the idea we might decide not to kill babies any more.

Weep for America, pray for America. But any real hope of restoring America seems futile.

Israel, "God's Clock," in Biblical Prophecy, From Desolation to Prosperity

Jan Markell's Understanding the Times radio show this week is given over to a presentation by Pastor David Reagan that outlines the history of the nation of Israel from God's founding through its abandonment of God and consequent punishments, to its reestablishment in the Promised Land.

He shows how it all fulfills biblical prophecy and is now the main sign that we are in the very last days of the planet. It's a dramatic story of unbelievable desolation of the land, not a tree left standing for almost two millennia, followed by the rebuilding and the greening of the land that has made it a prosperous modern state.