jBret Weinstein Misundestands James Tour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

faithswindow@mail.com

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

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

305

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

evolutionary theory makes us all sick, certainly makes me sick

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

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

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

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

I'm in pain at the thought.

This world a waystation to eternity

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

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

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

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

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

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

faithswindow@mail.com,      faithswindow@mail.com,    

tRUMP VERSUS rOB rEINER

 sO MUCH OR WHAT tRUMP HAS DONE AND IS GOING MAKES ME HAPPY, SO VERY HAPPY THAT HE IS pRESIDENT AND ABLE TO DO AS MUCH AS HE IS, i HATE  HAVING COMPLAINTS ABOUT HIM, AND USUALLY i DON'T, NOTHIJG WORTH WRITING ABOUT ANYWAY.  a WLE BACK, HOWEVER, i NEED FEEL IT NECESSARY TO WRITE ABOUT DISLIKING HIS USE OF THE f WORD AND THAT MEME OF HIM WEARING A CROWN FLYING A PLANE THAT IS DROPPING BIG BLOGS OF SOMETHING BROWN ONTO A GCROWED OF nO kINGS PROETESTOERS.  dO not LIKE THOSE THIBGS AT ALL, THINK HE SHOULD APOLOGIZE AND TAKE DOWN THAT VIDEO IF HE HASN'T ALREADY.

THEN WHN HE SAID HOW MUCH HE HAS AGAINST rOB rEINER AFTER rEINER'S HORRIFIC MURDER BY HIS SON, EVEN SAYING HE THINKS THE MURDER MUST BE BECAUSE OF REINER'S HATEFUL POLITICAL STATEMENTS OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT, i GEARED UP TO WRITE AOTHER POST COMPLAINING ABOUT HIM AND CALLIING FOR GHIS REPENTANCE.  nO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU DISLIKE SOMEONE'S POLITICS YOU DON'T SAY SUCH THINGS AGAINST HIM JUST AFTER HE HAS BEEN BRUTALLY MURDERED.  yES, EVEN IF rEINER HAD SAID SOME TERRIBLE THINGS AGAINST TRUP PERSOANNALLY WHICH IS WHAT tRUMP SAID WAS THE CASE.  

bUT IT TOOK A WHILE FOR ME TO       Drat.  Jus notice the light was on for the caps lock.  Sorry about thta.  Well, I'm not up to rewriting this right now, sorry about that.

Anyway, on Sunday I heard Chris Plant on the radio describing what Reiner had actually said ahout Trump and it went on and onl, all about how Trump was a solluder with the Russians and all that stuff that has d been soundly debunked long again.  Agparently Reiner never heard the correction.  Somehow the fact that he was THAT insistent in his condemnation of GTrump for what is nothing but a lie, went on and on and on about it with such certainty, never seemed to question it for a moment, believed the whole thing and seemed to present himself as our seavior from Trump by his very public denunciations, I've moved away from thinking Trump needs to apologize for his raction to his death.  Not completely.  I still ithtink it was not the poliotically right thing to do.  I hadn't heard all that from Reiner and maybe may other's hadn't either and your first take is likely to be like mine, Trump is just way over the top and needs to cool it.  Say othing if you have noting good to say, or say something very berief and carefully measured to acknolwedged Reiner's very public polsitive image as well as reervig his own feelings to a vague hine or stwo or something like that.   I think it thurts him to carry on as he did against reiner.  At first I also thight he was just wrong, now I don't think he was so wrong, just more impolitic and unwisde.    

Anyway, I felt I had to say something after all, just now quite wha I'd originally had in mind.

Glimmers of Another world, if you are paying attention

I don't intend this to be apost about politics but I have this line in my head I want to get written down before I go on to what I do what this post to be about, which is:   Most of the news these days can be summed up as the lies and lying accusations of the Left against something Trump or his cabinet did or said perfectly ledtimately or innocently.  Period.  That's it, that's all of it.  YOu clan stop listening to the news now, unless it's about something other than politics.

The topic I did have in mind for this post is probably going to be a framble among many topics or at least facets of a topic, I'll find out as I go I suppose, but I guess I could start by saying I'm thinking about how this is a fallen world and nobody seems to know it.  Maybe some Chfristians sort of know it but nobody talks about it much even mong Christians.  Qew all more or less atalk about this world as THE world, as if this is the world God created, as if God intended this world to be as it is vfrom the begining.  This is OUR world, this is THE world.  Certainly nonChristians talk about it that way.  We are all born into this world and this is our home and wat's it.  If we have ideas of an afterlife, outside of the Christian framework anyway, they don't change our idea about sthis world.  Christianity is the only religion that has a theology of the Fall, or a chang in the status of things that happened to the world and to human beings as well, after a period in which the world was a lace of innocence and perfetlyion.  The thoeology presents our original parents, Adam and eve, as disobeying God who had told them not to eat the fruit of a particular tree or they would surely die.  They disobeyed, with the help of Satan the Serpent who told Eve that God wasn't telling her the truth, that she would be made a god if she at e of it.  So she did, and she gave it to Adam who also ate of it, although in the New testament we are told that he knew the truth and was not deceived as was EDve;  so we conclude that he ate of it because he didn't want to be separated from eve as he would have been if he had remained in obedience to God while she had to endure thje punishemtn of her disobedeicne.

Because of the Fall we endountger conditions in this world tht are not "normal" in a certain sense, although anyone who isn't thinking in terms of the Fall regards them as normal.  The fall changed Adam and Eve and it changed the world.  All we find out fro scripture is that the world now had thordbnbs and thistles growing in it whereas presaumably they had not been there fobeofe the Fall, and Adam and Eve DID die, not immediately in the physical sense, but thinking og it as ocfurring in phases or stagews, they dided in small ways and we are all still dying in small ways until we did in the big way that removes us altogether from consciousness of this world.   The first death is generally understood to be the faculty or sense by which they knew God.  That having died they hid from God and were no long er in communicatyion with him as they had previously been, or not as easily.  We of course are born without any sense at all of there being a god and without any idea of comunicaing with Him.  If during our llives we hear evidence that God must exist we may accept it or not and that way some become believers, but otherwise we have no natural faculty or snese by which to know Him.

A nonCHristian isn't going to think along thee lines at all, and all the philosophical probings human beings may do in this fallen state will never ever lead them to the biblical understanding of thsese things, to the idea that we are sinners in need of a savior for instance, or that we once had a faculty or organ for knowing God and no longer have it.  Philosophy is necessarily restricted to the terms of the fallen world itself, as are all our human endeavors.  that is what makes this world feels  feel like tHE world, which for all intents and purposes it is for all of us who are born into it and never become Christians, or UNTIL we cbecome Christians.    AltAthei   Atheism is of course the most natural state of mind in this Fallen world.  Without a sense that causes us to be aware of a God we conclude that there is o God.  Everybody does you see.  Until we may hear about God and be persuaded of the idea and believe it, but that still won't be a feeling or an experiencing of God, only belief.  Which is of course why faith is the crucial thing to a believer in this life.

What salvation is, in brief, the restoration of our sense of the reality of God, or sense that He is YThere, and that we can communicate with Him.  this iswhat happens when we are born again.  As Jesus sYS IN jOHN tHREE, uNLESS YOU ARE BORN AGAIN YOU CANOT SEE THE KINGDOM OF gOD, AND A FEW VERSES LATER, YOU CANNOT ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF gOD.   bRING BORN AGAIN IS TO HAVE THE FACIULTY OF NOWING GOD RESTORED TO US, WHICH IS THE ERECETION OF THE hOLY sPIRIT TO INDWELL US AND GUILDE US.  tHIS IS GIVEN ONLY TO BELIEVERS IN cHRIST, THOSE OF US WHO KNOW THAT jESUS DIED ON THE CROSS AS OUR SUBSTITUTE, BEARING OUR OWN SINS IN hIS BODY SO THAT hIS DEATH PAID OUR DEBT TO gOD OR TO THE mORAL lAW FOR OUR ISINS, WHICH IS WHAT KEEPS PEOPLE OUT OF HEAVEN.  wITH OUR SIN DEBT PAID IN FULL BY THE DEATH OF jESUS WHO IS BOTH gOD AND mAN, WE BECOME CHILDREN OF gOD IN A SENSE THAT PEOPLE WHO ARE ONLY BORN ONCE, AS THEY SAY, ARE NOT, ALTHOUGH IN OTHER SENSE THEY ARE ALSO CHILDREN OF gOD HAVING BEEN MADEW IN hIS IMAGE AND SO ON.  bUT YOU HAVE TO HVE THE hOLY spIRIT IN YOU OR YOU ARE NOT A cHRISTIAN AND ARE NOT SAVED, CANNOT ENTER INTO THE kINGDOM OF gOD, CANNOT KNOW GOD, CANNOT BE SAVED.

bLESSED ASSURANCE, jESUS IS MINE

oH WHAT A FORETATSTE OF OF GLORY DIVINE.

hEIR OF SALAVATION, PURCHASE OF gOD

gbORDN OF THE sPIRIT, WASHED IN hIS BLOOD.

sO IT ISN'T GOING TO OCCUR TO MOST PEOPLE THAT THEY ARE ENYTHING BUT WHAT THEY ARE BORN TO BE, OR COULD BE, OR THAT THE WORLD IS SOMETHING OTHER THAN gOD ORIGINALLY CREATED IT TO BE, BUT THAT WQE ARE CREATURES WHO NOW SUFFER FROM ALL KINDS OF MALADIES, INJURIED, DISEASES AND DEATH OF ALL SORTS, AND THE ANOMALS TOO SINCE gOD PUT THEM UNDER THE CURSE FOR OUR SAKES,. AND THE WORLD IS A MUCH HARDER PLACE TO LIVE IN THAN IT WAS BEOFRORE THE fALL.  aND GTHEN THERE WAS THE GREAT gLOOD OF nOAH WHICH MADE AN EVEN BIGGER RECK OF THE PLANET, CREATING MANY UNINHABITABLE PLACES WHERE BEFORE THE WHOLE PLANET WAS LUSH, A PARADISE FOR ALL LIVING THIGNS.  nOW WE HAVE UNINHABITANBLE MOUNTAIN TOPDS AND ARCTIC REGIONS AND DESERTS.  wE HJAVE TO WORK TO LIVE ON THIS VERSION OF OUR PLANET, WORK HARD IN MANY CASES.

aLTHOUGH IT'S A FALLEN WORLD, i THINK IT'S INTERESTING THAT cHRIST'S COMING INTO THIS WORLD HAD A CGENWRAL EFFECT WHEREVER hIS APPEARANCE WAS TAKEN SERIOUSLY, OF IMPROVING THINGS FOR PEOPLE.  tHAT WOULD BE PREDOMINANTLY THE wEST, AND MOST SPEICIFICALLY THE usa.  oF COURSE  THERE ARE PLENTY OF FORCES ARRAYED AGAINST IT AND TRYING TO TEAR IT TDOWN, UNDER THE INSPIRTATION OF THE DEVIL OF COURSE, AND IT LOOKS LIKE THEY'VE JUST ABOUT SUCCEEDED AT TIMES, MORE AND MORE AS TIME GOES ON.  bUGT HISTORICALLY THE EFFECT IOF cHRIST WAS TO LIFT HUMANITY ABOVE BARBARSISM INTO A RATIONAL AND SANE STATE OF MORALITY I WHICH WE LEARNED TO LOVE OUR NEIGHBOR AT LEAST MORE THAN THE BARBARSIANS DID, AND MADE PROVISION TO CARE FOR PEOPLE, AND HAD PRACTICES TYHAT PROMOTED PROSPERITY AND GENORISITY, UNDER A GENERAL SENSE OF THE IMPORTANCE OF HGONESTY, HOHNOR, TRUSTWORTHINESS, KINDNESS BECAUSE OF THE EXAMPLE OF cHRIST AND THE TEACHING OF THE bIBLE.  THIS MENTAL SET DOWNS NOT OCCURR ANYWHERE OTHER THAN WHERE chRIST HAS AHAD A STRONG  INFLUENCE.  tHIS IS WHY YOU CAN'T TAKE THE SUCCESSES OF THE wEST AND EASILY TRANSPLANT THEM TO OTHER CULTURES, SSUCH AS THE dEMOCACY THT WAS SO FOOLISHLY THOUYGHT TO BE TRANSPLANTABLE AT ONE TIME OR ANOTHER.    dEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES ARE ONLY POSSIBLE IN A PLACE WHERE THE PRINCIPLES OF cHRIST ARE DOMINANT AND NOHWHERE EWLSE.  mOST OF THE WORLD IS STILL fALLEN AND UNDER THE RULE OF GTHE fALLEN MINDSET..      wELL, SO IS THE wEST TOO OF COURSE SINCE ONLY INDIVIDUASLS CAN BE BORN AGAIN, WHOLE CULTURES CAN'T, BUT THE WHOLE wEST AS CULTURE HAS BEEN BROUGHT UNDER THE GENERAL INFLEUNCE OF cHRISTIAN VALUES AND THAT'S WHAT AKES THE DIFFERENCE.

i'M THINKING IN PARTICULARLY OF A       Oh drat how long ashas the caps lock been on.

I'm thinkig particularly of one episode of the podcast U&ncommon Knoweldge, hosted by Paeter Rbopinson, with guesets Tom Holland, Douglass Murray and Steven Meyer.  Both Holland and Murray spoke of their appreciation of the fact that the West is essentially Christian and how we are all "swimming in Christain waters" whether we are Christians or ot if we live in tghe West.  Hollynad said he had learned over tiem as he'd studied history that we are not as influenced by Greece and Rome as he had once thought, that the mmore he looked at their moral views the less he felt  his own had come from them, in fact much of it he found repugnant, and after a while he hgad to admit that the West's values are funamentally CHristian.   He and Muray are both nonCHristains, atheists too I think but I'm not sure.  the progam is title Does God exist and it's numbert 385if anyoe wants to listen to it.   Although they appreciate the influene of Christian morality on the WEest they don't seem to think of themselgves as in any danger, as it were, of becoming Christians i the sense of believing the theology of CHristiaity.    Murray said something like how the nienteenth century has happened and that kind of kills it for him, although I really don't see how myselfjCertainly the ninteenth century produed many antiChristains but  to my mind they are easily shown to be wrong.  But then I suppose I'm biased to the point that I ust think they are silly anyway.

As usual, the hard part is giving up your sins.  Some of us have sins we are quite fond of.  And Christiost requires us to given them up.  Without holiness you will not see the kingdom of heaven either.

Jesusprovides us the power to mortify our sins, although we do have to work at it ourselves.  He saves us without any help from us, and in fact if we claim to be of help in our salvagtion we are simply not saved, because it is God who saves and we have nothig to do with it.  It is not by works lest any man should boast.  

Anyway, I kind of think it would be intereting and helpful if we were all taught in school that this is a fallen world and that the reason we don't believe in god is that we lost the organ for communicating with God way back at the beginning of the Creation.   Some will of course continue to scoff and  disbelieve, but there might be some who would ponder it and eventually make their way to Christ.  I like to think so anyway.

Or they'll go to other religions.  More sophisticated you now.  Or sionetgubg    Or something like that.  There is only one Truthy though ad tht is CHristainity.  '

Oh that's wht I was tryibg to remember.  Doublass Murray said that even if we should all agree that our sudden flashes of feeling tht tell us we really belong to some other world were taken seriously it wouldn't nbe the Christain religion necessarily that would explain it.

Or so he may hope, but of course it is the only religio that coudl explain it.  Because it is the only religion is that is true.  Yup.  

antichrist again

 Sometimes I am forced to wonder how I can hold on so tenaceiously to the idea that the Antichrist is the Pope in the face of all the sincere confident opinion that he is only going to be revealed at the very end just before he takes the rieins of world rulnership for the last part of the great tribuiotn .  They stronly believe this, and I just heard a little montage of a number of them sayig so, those who subscribe to the pretribulation eschatology that is the most popular eschatology tin the Church these days.   Well, it's hared to be at odds with so many strong leaders of the Church, but I just don't have any other reason to wavewr.  I got convinced through my own researches when I started this blog back in oh seven or so, by Richard Bennett for starters, but also by the calculation of the number  six six six that I had already known about for a number of years efore that.  Later Chris Pinto became a source as well.  But I think maybe the number is what is the strongest of my foundations.  

It's just oo perfect a calculation for that number to be wrong.  There is nop way anyone will come up with anything more convicingh for that number.  It's embedded in a gtitle of the Pope that in itself just about defines the Antichrist, meaning Subsitutute for the Son of God in Latin, vicariuvs filii dei, a Latin name of rhte Pope from which the number is calculationed in Roman Nnumberals.  And the Roman connection is quite clear in the Book of Revelation, in Chapter seventeen, as well as the first beast of chapter thirteen.  Rome Rome Rome.  All the things they try to put together to add up to this Roman identity just don't fit like this one does, they are all quite tenuous by comparison.    o no, I'm not giving this up.  I just have to go on cringeing when others carry on abou this other version of the concept that I have to regard as simply false.  And probably concocted by the Roman Church too, as critics of the futiurist eschatology used to say.  Nobody has much to say about  or against the roman Church these days, and that in itself is a clue I think, paving the way to his taking the role by surprise in the end.  

There are definitely two different descriptions of the coming of CHrist, the second coming that ios, in Matthew twenty four, where Jesus is answering His deisciples' questions about how to recognize the End and His return.  Two different descriptions is what makes the Rapture  idea compelling to me, aas nothing else does.   He will come twisde, once to get His Church and snatch us away to Heaven some time before the Great tribulation plays out on earth during which the Antichrist will reign and those who becomine believers will have to do it the hard way, the hardest way, maybe even harder than the believers did under the Inquisition in the Middle Ages.    Then at the very end He will return in fulll glory and visible to all on Earth.  

Romanism and the Book of FRevelation Again

 Serendipitous events, two discussion of the Book of Revelagion dropped in my path, so I guess it's time for another post on that subject.    It's frustrating because I don't like popposing the best teachers out there and that's what happens with this subject.  Well, also creationism I have to admit.  I hope I'm not just a gadfly but I suppose Im at least that.  Just thinking things through on my own I arrive at opinions these other guys don't arrive at and find myself in opposition to thejm.   Qell, I'm trying to follow the leading of the Lord and if I'm wrong I'm wrong, but maybe I'm not wrong.  He'll have to be the one to promote what He wantsa to promote in the end, that's not up to me.

John MacArthur, one of my favorites, and the guys at Understanding the Times Radio now that Jan Martell has left, and others who work from the Pre Trib Pre Mill eschatology.   I guess it's because they've concluded that Revelation Four shows the Rapture of the Church, which puts the Church in heven during Revelation four and five, and the opining of the seals after that, all of it being pushed to the verny end of the tend times.  

But it doesn't make any obvious sense to suppose that the seven seals are opening only tghat late in history.  Jesus of course qualified to open them after His ascension in the first century, what would be the reason to wait two thousand years?  His own teaching in Matthew Twenty four covers the same events as described in the first four seals, the so called Four Horsewment of the Apocalypse, the sequence of false Christs, wars, famines and death from all sorts of causes as the "beginning of sorrorws, after which, He tells us, comes the End, starting from the Abomination of Desolation standing in the Holy Place and continuing for three and a half years.  All that is of course found in Revelation and not earlier, but the BVeginning of Sorrows includes the sort of things we've seen throughout history and has no spewcial reason to be confined to the Book of Revelation, the false Chrissts, wars, famines, pesilences and martyrdomes.    So  if the seals reveal God's judgments on the earth, these could have beguin right after Jesus' ascension to heaven.  Qhy not?   That's how I've been tentatively thinking of it.

And it firtrts with my having been persuaded that the Protestant Reformers weere right to identify the papacy as the seat of the Antichrist, each successive Pope ascending to that role in the world for timethje time of his reign.  Now we have Leo.  QWill he be the Final Ancichrist, the one of Daniel twenlve?  or is it nine?  "They" are waiting for this Antichrist to be revealed at the very end, but I'm confinced by the Reformers that he was revealed wway back ion  606 AD when the Bishop of Rome took on the title Universal Bishop, essentially usurping power to himself over all the other bishops.   Even one of the Popes hismelf said that was the taking on of the role of the Antichrist, and here were many Chirstians outside the Roan Church doewn the centuries who identified the opopes as CAnctichrist.  Chris Pinto has a DvD on that subject.

Leo just recently, for the second time I think, had the effrontery to denounce the US for our supposed mistreatment of "migrants," meaning of course illegal aliens who don't belong here and must be deported.  They are not mistreated at all.  He wants to be sure they get Catholic rites or some suich, hoo boy.  In ;my mind, this efforontery makes Leo a solid Antichrist already.  But I thought Francis was dgoing to be the Final Antichrist, so I'm not oing to stick my neck out atgain and say the same about Leo.  I don't know.  He might not be the Final one.  Wait and see.  If he makes a deal with Israel for seven years, I'd say that's the sign that he is definitely the one.

I do not get why MacArthur thinks Daiel Eleven is about the Roman Anctichrist.  Isn't it very clearly about the Greek version, that is, Anticiohes Epiphanes, who was the abomination of desolation dealt with by the Macabbees?    As I understandi it , all those military movements describe that Greek or Seleucid leader and theree are some who can describe them all in historical terms.  Not the Roman Antichrist.  A preucurser, a harbinger, not the One.

MacAerthur explains the jsixth seal of Revelation as showing the people of the world finally getting around to realizing that the world is coming under God's judgment.  Seems to me if you just read it straight, in order, it is the point at which the final wrath of God begins, or the seven year tribulation peierios, the previous seals bieng he Beginning of solorrow but not the tribulation wrath.   The martyrs of the fifth seal would be the millions killed under the Popes and their various inquisitions.  They are told to wait for the martyrs yet to be made under the Tribulation.  And since they are described as "souls" and clearly not yet in their glorified bodies, they were not rapituresd, and if anyuthing I'm saying is right, the rapture does not occur in Revelation four.  I don't like being in this posisiton, but there you have it.  I don't as yet have a clear idea of where in the historical sequence the rapture occurs, but it has to be after the sixth seal.

Seems to me, if you stop and think about it anyway, that it's pretty obvious that the papacy has no place in true Chrsitain history.  And since he takes on titles that belong only to Christ and even the Father and the Holy Spirit as well, he's clearly a usurper of high degree.  Yet Catholics have no idea.  Most of them were born into their religion and have no knowledge of the hstiroy of any of it, and of course feel offended if you suggest their Church isn't the true Church.  But it isn't, and the wosonnooner they learn that the better for them.   Years ago,, when I was reading my way to becoming a Christian, I went through a phase where I thought I would be a Catholic.  I was reading a Catholic theologian who said that the Pope is the ehad of the Church, and I knew there was something frwrong with that idea, in fact it disturbed me quite a bit.  It's standard in Romanism though.  But ehre are two places in scripture where it is clearly said that Christ is the Head of the CHurch.  Not the OPope, and the Lord showed mew both those places ina  amiraculous way one day, which is what ended any idea I had had of becoming a Catholic.

It is veruy disturbing to reaslize how little anyone knows any more about the false claims of the Roman CHurch.  It's all been forgotten by the majority of Protestantsm, although there was a time when it was pretty well known.  It's the reason the pilgrims came to America of course.  You could start there.  And then you can find John Adams, our second Presicdnet saying that the Jesuits are the most evil organization on earth.  Long long time since any such sentiment was heard in America.  Sad and dangerous.  And you'll hear naive statemewnts like how it makes no sense for us to critizie Catholicsm because the docgtrinal disgferences are so small and inconsequential.  That is a monumental historical blindness since it may have been millions of proto Protestants who died under the Inquisition for their refusla to affirm the idea of Transsubstantiation.  No minor disctrinal difference to them.   And then I found out that Charlie Kirk, who I thought was pretty good at arguing against Catholicism, was found to have a "St. Michael's medal attached to the chain around his neck on which he also wore a cross.  Very distrubing to think he had a Catholic talisman like that on him.  

There are plenty of deceptions fogging up the atmosphere we live in these days, but obne of theworlse is no doubt this acceptance of the Antichrist system, the Roman CHurch.

Next day:  In case it wasn't clear, I think the first five seals are ongoing throughout the time since the Lord ascended to the right hand of God, that is, He opened them then, as John shows in his vision of Rvenlation.  I think the opening of  the sixth seal is still future, and certainly the seventh is, which I take to be the tribulation itself, the seventieth week of Daniel as well as the seven years to the return of Jesus.    John MacArthur speaks of the martyrs in the fifth seal as if they are living saints facing martyrdom rather than souls already martyred waiting under the altar for God's vengeance on their behalf.  I think that's how it sounds anyway, though it's hard to believe that's what he really means.  I think they are the martyrs madew throughout the previous two thousand years, most of them under the Roman Inquisitions.  here are certainly Christian martyrs being made today, thousands of them in Nigeria for instance, all joining those under the altar I suppose.  

But the sixth seal shows dramatic celestial events among other things that haven't yet occurred, and reads like an introduction to the final period of God's wrath, although MacArthur reads it as if it's connected to the first five seals, and that I don't get at all.  Those first seals reveal nothing out of the ordinary in the life of this world, false Christs, wars, famines, diseases and death, nothing new there.  It may be God's judgment but it's not in the same category as the judgmgnets that come in the seventh seal, which definitely show the hand of God in destructive natural events and strange phenomenoa.  The difference in content seems to me to be a straong reason to take ther seventh seal as the time of the tribulation, the last hhalf of it being the Great Tribulation, the time being given both in Revelation and in the Book of Daniel.

I supooses the Rapture could occur at any time as is believed by those who believe the Pre Trib PreMill escahatology, perhaps just before or even during the opening of the sixth seal which I take to be yet future, but as I've mentioned a few times by now, I think the main sign that the end period has beggun will be the Antichrist's making of a treaty of some sort, or "confirming" such a treaty, with Israel, for seven years, which he will break at the halfway point, three and a half years into it.  Followed by the Great Tribulation.