They who hate you shall reign over youTWO

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

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

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

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

Creationist Topics After the Flood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They who hate you will reign over you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

faithswindow@mail.comept if he 

jTrump has been making me nervous lately

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

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

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

faithswindow@

mail.com

aNSWERING aTHEISM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Greenland?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

faithswindow@mail.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tha's all.

faithswindow@mail.com

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

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