A Book About the Giants That Were Born before the Flood

(I did something that caused the formatting of blog posts to revert to an earlier form and I don't know how to fix it and I've forgotten how to use the old form. I can't figure out how to make paragraphs so I'm going to have to use characters to create spaces. Sorry I'm getting more tech challenged every day). ***************************************************************************\ I discovered a new book about the Nephilim of Genesis 6 -- The Judgment of the Nephilim by Ryan Pitterson -- and have the Kindle version on my PC Kindle page. It's a long book and I'm only aboutg a sixth into it, and although it's white on black which helps a great deal my eyes are getting bad enough that it slows me down quite a bit. ***************************************************************************\ Anyway it's a fascinating study of a controversial biblical passage: ********************************************************

Genesis 6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

*********************************************************************************************************** It's controversial because it just seems so outlandish that angels and humans would have married, so some claim that "sons of God" doesn't mean angels. However, everywhere else in scripture that's exactly what the phrase means, and Pitterson's book makes use of all the relevant sources to prove it. Outlandish it may be but apparently it actually happened. ************************************************************************* Those were the years just before the Flood and the mingling of the human and angelic seed produeddyced giants, also known as the Nephilim. This is considered to be the reason God brought the Flood on the earth, because this corruption of the human gene pool made them unredeemable. The Messiah was to save human beings, not angels, so that these hybrids made the prophesied salvation impossible. By the time of Noah the corruption was widespread. *****************************************(********************************************** What's particularly fascinating about this study is how he brings out the theme of Satan's ongoing attempts to thwart the prophecy of the Messiah who was to save humanity and defeat Satan. The prophecy was first given to Adam and Eve right after the Fall. Satan had already engineered the Fall, the disobeidence of God by Adam and Eve, because according to Pitterson their being placed in the Garden of Eden usurped Satan's own place there. This was new to me. And after the Fall God promised to send a Redeemer who would save them from their sins. He would "bruise the head" of the serpent, who was Satan, and Satan would bruise His heel. This being a threat to Satan he set out to find a way to make the prophecy unfulfillable. **************************************(**************************************************** His first effort was to corrupt Cain so that as the firstborn son of Adam and Eve he couldn't be the sinless Messiah. When Cain murdered Abel the second candidate for Messiah was out of the way. ****************************** But Adam and Eve kept producing children, and so did Cain in his new location east of Eden. This required a new strategy, so Satan provoked the angels called the Watchers to lust after human women. Creating unredeemable babies would have thwarted the plan of redemption if it spread through the entire human race. *********************************************************************************************************** I hope I have that much right. We know of some later attempts to thwart the messianic promise when Pharoah was provoked to have the firstborn sons of the Israelites killed, and then when the Messiah was born in Bethlehem Herod did the same. ******************************************************************************************** But the book is no doubt going to get far more detailed and interesting in its exploration of the time of the giants, and how it relates to us today since we are very close to Jesus' prophecy of the repeat of the "days of Noah" just before His return.

Musings about racial disparities and what to do about them

I'm just an armchair daydreamer, no earthly good to anyone unless my blogs might have some value and as far as I know they don't. So maybe I'm just writing to myself. Oh I knew there are a few people who read it but I don't know if they are friend or foe, foe meaning people who like to see what the idiots on the other side of issues are saying so they can be armed against them, with answers or just mockery. I don't know, but since there's nothing else I can do these days I go on writing anyway. It's in God's hands. If I'm in His will all is well no matter what. If I'm not, at the moment He's not giving me something else to do anyyway. I spend a lot of time just listening to You Tube videos, about the current social and political situations, some through Christian ministries, also John MacArthur's sermons, but also a scattering of commentaries from here and there. I've been listening to the black point of view quite a bit recently, mostly more or less liberal but anti-Woke, and some of the conservatives like Larry Elder. Although some of them don't completely discount the role of the residual effects of racism and slavery on the continuing economic and cultural disparities between blacks and other groups, they mostly reject solutions such as reparations and are critical of the Woke movement. Most of them point to problems such as fatherlessness and educational deficiencies in the black communities as the main cause of the disparities. Larry Elder points to government interventions as causing more harm than good, such as the minimum wage which deprives unskilled workers of all races of job opportunities. Glenn Loury said on one of his podcasts that he agrees with Malcolm X that the black comkmunities are going to have to solve their own problems. Loury didn't get specific about how that would be done, at least not in that podcast, maybe he does somewhere else but if so I've missed it so far. Anyway, all that is preamble to my own daydreams about some things that could possibly be done within the communities. I admit to total ignorance of what would actually help and I know it's probably empty chutzpah to say anything at all, even offensive. I'm an armchair dilletante, good for nothing. All that said, I have these daydreams. I usually think in terms of the churches getting involved. Black churches but even white churches if God so leads. The first thing I thought of was the ministry of Rosaria Butterfield and her pastor husband who started opening their home to their neighbors for Bible reading and prayer and shared meals, sometimes cookouts, always with an aim to getting to know them and understand their problems. I'll put a link below to one of her talks where she focuses on discovering that a neighbor was running a meth lab. She also goes into her own personal testimony of having been a lesbian professor of English and gay rights activist who got saved after years of hospitality from a pastor and his wife. My thoughts ran far afield of that first inspiration, trying to understand what sorts of problems might be encountered in black neighbor hoods. Gangs are one I know, the murder rate among young black men is scary in cities like chicago. What sort of hospitality could make a dent in that? Since it's probably related to the problem of fatherless homes I had to imagine men stepping in somehow to befriend these kids and try to steer them into something productive. Black men from the churches perhaps. What would it look like? I'm not sure. Cookouts and other kinds of gatherings maybe? Maybe gospel focused -- I remember how pastor David Wilkerson went from his miswest church to New York City to work with the Hispanic gangs there, which he wrote about in his book The Cross and the Switchblade. but if nonChristians got inspired to do something the focus would be different, just focused on the problems of the individual kids. Since deficient education is a problem what about illiteracy. Can that be addressed in some way on the neighborhood level? Simple edcuation around the kitchen table? What about one-on-one mentoring? There's the Big Brother program. Is that in these neibhrohoods? Often efforts that start small can grow into effective programs, but this kind of thing can get too big to be effective, better to keep it on a small local and personal scale I think. A few years ago I heard about a woman in a town near where I live who felt God calling her to help the homeless people in her community, people living in the cheap motels particularly. She would take them a bag of groceries, fix a meal and share it with them to get to know them, then try to find agencies in the community that could help them with various problems, getting a job or whatever. Eventually her personal efforts attracted others until it grow into an agency in its own right. Big enough to remain effective, not too big to become a cold complicated bureaucratic labyrinth. Maybe a useless daydream. I'm in no position to go out and actually DO anything of the sort, all I can do is daydream. I'm too old, I don't get around very well, I'm losing my eyesight, etc etc etc. And besides, I'm white. Although there's no reason whites couldn't also be involved, it's probably best if the majority are black. And if daydreams are useless, oh well. Here's a talk by Rosaria Butterfield about her hospitality ministry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YmZlCvCGJ4 And I also googled "daily life in a black neighborhood and got some interesting hits. The first one is a black guy going into inner city Chicago and interviewing a gang. The second one is about black cultural attitudes that allow others to rip them off.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqgO7-fRiXg&t=21s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Hd9gPx5Z8&t=32s Although these ponderings are about the black situation there are certainly problems among all groups of people that could use more neighborly involvment. I was also thinking how much desperation I felt in my own life where some neighborly interest and help might have made a difference. ///////////I must have done something that changed the format so I'm not getting paragraphs and I don't know how to fix it. Sorry.

UFO sightings

 Discussion of UFO phenomena on Jan Markell's Understanding the Times radio show, Pastor Billy Crone discusses his study of UFOs.    He thinks only a very small percentage of supposed sightings are ossibly real UFO phenomena, he mentions that the Vatican has been looking for extraterrstrial life for years, and he believes that it's demonic deception rather than anything related to extraterrestrial life.  As do I.   Apparitions of "Mary" are another demonic deception.

Millions Missing: Who’s to Blame? – Pastor Billy Crone - YouTube

Here's an old post from this blog on the subject of UFOs: 

Faith's Corner: UFOs (watchpraystand.blogspot.com)

Jan Markell's interview gets into all the particular lies promoted by all these demonic entities that need to be recognized and rejected. / Advuce: anyone who encounters an "alien" or an apparition of any kind, a "ghost" or whatnot, can make it go away bgy commanding it to leave in the name of Jesus Christ.

More on Loving Our Enemies

MacArthur pointed out in his sermon on loving our enemies that when Jesus prayed from the cross "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," God answered that prayer in the salvation of the thief on the cross next to him and  the onlooking Centurion who recognized Him  as the Son of God.  

When Stephen prayed for those who were stoning him to death,  that God not lay this sin to their charge, that prayer was answered in the conversion of Saul of Tarsus who was in the crowd that was stoning him.    

I've admired for years those who actually live that way.  You'd think that would be enough to change me but alas I'm a hard case.  I'm thinking of Pastor Josef Tson who was persecuted for his faith in Ceaucescu's Romania, his precious library destroyed, and he himself beaten at periodic interrogations.  He asked his wife to make tea for those who were destroying his library, and he prayed for the interrogator who had him beaten.  

Another wonderful example was Corrie Ten Boom's sister when they were in the concentration camp because they had protected Jews from the Nazis in their home, and the sister -- Betsy? --  I'm not sure of her name, was sick and weak and the Nazi who had charge over the work they were commanded to do was harsh with her for her weakness in doing the work, and I don't remember exactly what she said but it was something that blamed herself for her weakness and more or less apologized to her tormentor.  She died in the camp soon after that.   And after the war when Corrie was speaking somewhere that Nazi who had tormented her sister came up to her aftgerward to say he'd been saved.  Corrie at first didn't even want to shake his hjand but then realized it was what God would have wanted.  The man was saved, and very likely because of the Christian witness of her sister.

  

And another favorite example is the stpry of the young KGB officer who was assigned to break up Christian house meetings in the sixties and seventies, and during one raid a woman prayed out loud that the Lord would forgive him, to which he reacted with rage and lifted his club to hit her, at which point he felt a hand grip his uplifed arm and prevent him from striking her.  There was noone there, just an invisible hand.  He panicked and fled the house, but that was the beginning of his conversion.   He had a torn piece of one of the gospels that did the converting.   (Some years later he made a dramatic escape off a Russian ship on which he was an officer, swam through icy water to the west coast of Canada and for some time lived among Christians there until the KGB caught up to him)_

So here's the ideal.  It can only be built on a deep love of Christ and we need to pray for that first.  But when the Inquisition puts us on the rack we are to pray for our torturers.  When they put us in the iron maiden we are to pray for our torturers.  When they starve us to death we are to pray for our torturers.  When they raise the scimitar to behead us we are to pray for our torturers.  .  

So when they censor us today we are to pray for them.  When they lie and call us racists and white sepremacists we are to pray for them.    That doesn't mean we stop working against their evil policies of course, seeking jjustice, it just means we are to forgive them presonally, as individuals, for they know not what they do. 

God Loves His Enemies and So Must We Love Ours.

This is one of John MacArthur's most powerful sermons.  No, for me at least I think it is THE most powerful he has ever preached.  Becausre i needed to hear it.  I know God says we are to love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, and I remember to do it from time to time, but not with much fervor or consistency.  I still flare up in anger when I'm lied about or otherwise slighted or put down.  Sometimes I remember to pray for the enemy in those cases too but pretty rarely.  As I listened to this sermon tears were running down my face.  Finally I understand it.  Thank You LORD, thank you John MacArthur.  I don't think I can bgo on forgetting it anyh more.  

Loving Your Enemies as God Does - YouTube

I disocvered people to pray for I never think about, people I do regard as enemies without really acknowledging to myself that I do, but my reaction is to avoid them.  Now I will pray for them and pray that God will give me real desire to pray for them rather than the cursory dutiful prayers I'm likely to fall into.

I'd heard some wrong preaching on this before.  For instance I'd heard the imprecatory prayers in the psalms recommended to Christians as something we can pray against God's enemies.  But MacArthur makes it very clear that those psalms are for particular situations and have nothing to do with the command to us to personally love our personal enemies.  He did a marvelous job of mustering all the scriptures in both Old and New Testaments that exhort us to love our enemies.    I'd always assumed that loving our nieghbor or our enemy didn't mean we have to FEEL love for them simply will the best for them, but I'd heard a preacher contradict that idea and insist we are to feel love for them.  I knew that for me that's impossible, and I wasn't sure that was the correct understanding anyway.  But MacArthur preached that it a love of the will and not of the affections that is meant, agape love, willed beneficence, kindness to all, not the personal felt love.  That makes more sense and I'm grateful to have that cleared up.

The teaching is also general, we are to pray for all sinners, not just our personal enemies.  The hard thing for me, and I don't think I'm alone, is to pray for the leaders who are promoting dangerous and evil social policies these days.  Now I want to pray for them. 

I'm convicted to the core of my lack of love.  Thank You LORD.

Occultism: The Latest Stage of Doctrinal Deviation in the Churches

 Jan Markell's most recent Understanding the Times radio show is about a rise in interest in the occult that is becoming popular even in the churches. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCqRDA5LA5A 

This is certainly another sign of our closeness to the end as the religion of the antichrist will certainly be occultic and satanic.   

The scripture that is quoted to concemn this is 

1 Timothy 4:1-3   Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils;  Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their consciences seared with a hot iron;  Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats...

I want to point out about this passage that in context it is clearly referring to the Roman Church with its prohibition against marriage for its priests and prohibition of eating meat, at least on one day a week, and this was part of the scriptural basis for identifying the papacy as the Antichrist according to Luther and perhaps other Reformers.   If you leave out the last verse it has a more general application that also seems appropriate but isn't really what the passage is saying.  The "doctinres of demons" in context appears to point to the doctrines of the Roman Church.   The "falling away" or Great Apostasy that is also taken as a sign of the last days was intrpreted by the Reformers to refer to the doctrines of the RC Church.

HOWEVER, there is no doubt that occultic practices are directly connected to demons and their doctrines, and that we are now seeing a spreading of apostasy in the churches.

Although all this does point to the nearness of the Tribulation period, it can also be seen as the ltest phase in a progression of deviations in the churches that have been accumulating over time, from as far back at least as the rise of Liberal theology in the 19th century, and I keep returning to the idea that we could turn back the coming judgment at least for a time if we reversed the trend.  

That would mean seeking God for undertsanding of where to start, and I think that would likely be by requiring women to resume covering our heads in church.  We require men to be bareheaded on the basis of that same passage of scripture and since we read that literally it makes no sense not to read the requirement for women to be covered also literally.  There may be other places to start but I keep coming back to this as a glaring departure that desperately needs to be rectified.   

If we did that I think we could apready start to see improvement in our spiritual vision, because it's deviations and sins that cloud our spiritual vision.   The attack on biblical inerrancy by the Great Bible Hoax of 1881. also needs to be recoghnized and addreswsed.  And another thing I've been forgetting lately that I'd add is that too many churches are soft on divorce and remarriage and I don't think you can just repent of that without doing something about it, but each case would have to be decided separately.

It seems too much to ask but if God convicted us it could be done.

Another First Time Reaction Video

Maybe THIS is how to save the world (young black guy who shed tears over Pavarotti now reacts to Mozart's Requiem)

Mozart - Requiem REACTION - YouTube