The Wedding Supper

The Wedding Supper
Vol: 23 Issue: 30 Thursday, June 30, 2016

Marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman, instituted by God for the twin purposes of partnership and procreation. That it is a sacred union is something disputed only by the obtuse.

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” (Mark 10:7-9)

Jesus Christ said that marriage is instituted by God and that the union of two people in marriage creates a third entity — they are “no more two, but one flesh” in both the eyes of God and, until recently, the eyes of man. However, with the new social rules concerning marriage, that no longer applies.

Two guys can’t be ‘one flesh’ — and neither can two girls. They cannot ‘join’ the way a traditional couple can, they cannot procreate together, they cannot produce from their union new life. In the Biblical sense, they cannot become ‘one flesh’.

For that reason, God intended marriage, from the beginning, to be an unbreakable contract between two people:

“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.” (Matthew 19:9)

This is why adultery is such a serious sin. According to the dictionary;

“Adultery is voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and one who is not his or her spouse.”

Dr. Henry Morris defined ‘fornication’ as follows:

“The Greek word for ‘fornication’ (porneia) could include any sexual sin committed after the betrothal contract. …In Biblical usage, ‘fornication’ can mean any sexual congress outside monogamous marriage. It thus includes not only premarital sex, but also adultery, homosexual acts, incest, remarriage after un-Biblical divorce, and sexual acts with animals, all of which are explicitly forbidden in the law as given through Moses (Leviticus 20:10-21). Christ expanded the prohibition against adultery to include even sexual lusting (Matthew 5:28).”

There are few cultures on earth that don’t recognize some form of marriage. And there has never been a culture in history that survived reinventing marriage or expanding it beyond its original mandate of one man and one woman.

Every culture that tried — from Sodom and Gomorrah to the ancient Greek and Roman Empires collapsed soon after. Man cannot successfully reinvent marriage. It isn’t his to reinvent.

Marriage was instituted by God. It belongs to God. God defined it. It is the model against which all other relationships are defined.

Marriage is also used to symbolize God’s eternal spiritual union with His people throughout the Scriptures. The word ‘fornication’ is sometimes used symbolically in the Old Testament to describe forsaking God to follow after idols.

In the Old Testament, the unrepentant Israel was pictured as an adulterous wife. (Hosea 2:1-8) In the New Testament, the Church is depicted as the Bride of Christ.

In ancient Israel, marriage was a three-phased operation. The first phase was the betrothal, or engagement. The second was the coming of the bridegroom to claim his bride. The third phase was the marriage supper, held at the home of the bridegroom.

Our spiritual relationship with Christ follows this model. Our spiritual ‘betrothal’ takes place at the moment of salvation. The coming of the Bridegroom to claim His bride is a prefiguration of the Rapture.

John’s vision in Revelation 19 completes the picture with the Marriage Supper of the Lamb which takes place in Heaven.

“Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath made herself ready.”

Let’s take a sneak peek at what is in store for us at our wedding dinner and see what we can learn from it.

Assessment:

This passage in Chapter 19 is the first corporate appearance made by the Church since Revelation 4:1 when John heard a voice from Heaven saying “Come up hither!” From Revelation 4:2 until this point in Revelation, John’s narrative has focused on the judgments being meted out to those that “dwell upon the earth” and the corresponding events in Heaven.

There are four views of when the Marriage Supper of the Lamb takes place. About the only thing that is universally agreed-upon is that it takes place after the Rapture and the Believer’s judgment at the Bema Seat.

The post-Tribulation view is that it takes place in the air while the Church is being raptured. In this view, the Church rises into the air, is judged at the Bema Seat, participates in the celebration, then immediately returns to earth with Jesus to participate in the Battle of Armageddon.

“And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.” (Jude 1:13-14)

The Pre-Tribulation view is that the Bema Seat Believer’s judgment and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb takes place while the judgments of the Tribulation are being meted out to those that dwell upon the earth.

There are two other views, “Mid-Trib” and “Pre-Wrath” that place the Rapture and Marriage Supper somewhere around the middle of the seven year Tribulation. The Pre-Wrath view differs from Mid-Trib in that Mid-Tribbers agree that Daniel’s 70th Week is divided in half into two periods of 42 months each. Revelation 13:5 says that the second half of the Tribulation lasts 42 months. Daniel 9:27 says the antichrist breaks the covenant with the years halfway through the seven years.

Also, Daniel 7:25 where the “time, times, and half a time” (time=1 year; times=2 years; half a time=1/2 year; total of 3 1/2 years) also refers to “great tribulation.”

Pre-wrath argues that the Tribulation isn’t seven years long, but is an undefined period of time during the last 3 1/2 years of Daniel’s 70th Week.

Revelation 11:2-3 speaks of 1290 days and 42 months, Daniel 12:11-12 refers to both 1290 days and 1335 days. These days have a reference to the midpoint of the tribulation.

(The additional days in Daniel 12 may include the time at the end for the judgment of the nations (Matthew 25:31-46) and time for the setting up of Christ’s millennial kingdom (Revelation 20:4-6).)

So the length of the Tribulation Period is probably one of the most CLEARLY defined in Scripture.

“And He saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And He saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.” (Revelation 19:9)

Who are those “called” or “invited” to the marriage supper of the Lamb? Is that the Church? Many opponents of pretribulationism say so. Does it make sense? Were you ‘invited’ to your own wedding? Without them, there would be no supper. The hosts are not ‘called’ to their wedding. They call others. The Bride and the Bridegroom host the wedding from their place of honor. They are not guests.

The guests are the Tribulation martyrs, the saints of the Old Testament and the hosts of heaven.

The Bride is pictured as arrayed in fine linen.

“And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.” (Revelation 19:8)

The opponents of pretribulationism argue that suggests the Church must suffer through tribulation to cleanse and purify her in preparation for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the Church is purified by tribulation. The Church is purified and sanctified by the shed Blood of Christ which imputes righteousness, or the Church is not sanctified or purified at all — and never can be.

It is BECAUSE the Church is clothed in fine linen that the Bema judgment has already taken place. That is where the rewards are given out. Note the description of the armies that return with Christ:

“And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean.” (Revelation 19:14)

The phrase, “Fine linen, white and clean” is mentioned twice. Once at the Marriage supper, (v. 9) and once here.

John’s description of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb confirms the following order of events, or it all collapses.

First, the Rapture. Then the Bema Judgment. Then comes the marriage supper. Finally, the return to earth with the Lord at Armageddon. The length of the Tribulation Period is the full seventieth Week of Daniel, or its purpose is meaningless and Daniel must be ripped from our Bibles.

Daniel 9:26-27 says it is determined for the Jewish people. Jeremiah 30:7 says it is the time of “Jacob’s Trouble”. Revelation says one purpose is to judge a Christ rejecting world (Revelation 9:21) and Zechariah 12:10 says its other purpose is to bring about the national redemption of Israel.

No matter how hard one tries to make the Church fit with the purpose of the Tribulation, to make it so, one has to diminish the Lord and elevate mankind. The sacrifice is sufficient for a person to be saved individually, but it isn’t enough to save one generation all at once.

The average guy has to go through average tribulation throughout his life, but if he trusts Jesus, he is saved from judgment. The ONLY purpose for the Tribulation Period IS judgment. Every generation of believers in New Testament history was judged at the Cross and found blameless if they covered by the Blood of Christ.

Except this one.

What happened to C.S. Lewis when he died? Did he have to go through the Tribulation to go to heaven? What about H. A. Ironside? D. L. Moody? Or pick your famous (and now dead) Christian from history. When they died, were they subjected to judgment for sin? Or was their sin covered?

If they didn’t have to go through the Tribulation Period, then why should the last generation?

Are we worse than previous generations that did not? Or is Jesus growing weaker as time passes?

The bedrock doctrine of Christianity is salvation by grace through faith. Nothing more is necessary than God’s grace and our faith. Thus has it been since the Romans threw the Christians to the lions in the 1st century. They weren’t saved by being eaten by lions. They were saved by trusting in Christ.

The Tribulation Period is not the 1st century. Jesus is not building His Church — He is judging those who persecuted it. To judge the Church at the same time is to render the purpose for judgment meaningless.

It adds a special judgment to this generation not meted out to believers of previous generations. It diminishes Christ by demanding additional payment for sins from those whose sins were already paid for.

If salvation is a gift of grace and not of works, lest any man should boast, then what is salvation to the last generation? Bait and switch? You’re saved until the Tribulation and then you have to start over?

If you pass (by being decapitated), you get to go to heaven. If you fail (by taking the Mark), you are forever ineligible and your salvation is of none effect. But those rules didn’t apply to the generation before this one. Or the one before that. Or the one before that, going all the way back to Christ.

But this generation has to re-write 1st Thessalonians 4:16-18 to read:

“For the Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with Him in the clouds. . . . if we survive the Tribulation.”

Wherefore comfort one another with these words?

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on July 20, 2009.

The Rapture

The Rapture
Vol: 23 Issue: 29 Wednesday, June 29, 2016

I believe that the Bible clearly teaches a pre-trib Rapture, not because it holds out the promise of a ‘great escape’, or because somebody convinced me in a high-pressure sales job, or because it is my opinion and I am sticking to it.

I believe the Bible teaches a pre-trib Rapture because a pre-Trib Rapture puts the last days and the Tribulation into a context consistent with the overall flow of Bible prophecy. 

That is the only reason that I teach a pre-trib Rapture.  It makes no difference to me if other, sincere born-again believers embrace a different view; the timing of the Rapture plays no role in our salvation. 

Saving faith is faith in Who is coming, that He is coming again, as promised, and that He will keep all His other promises, including standing as our Advocate before the Righteous Judge. 

Our faith is that “God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” 

But the timing of the Rapture is CENTRAL to the understanding of the overall Big Picture in the last days.

The ‘last days’ is a different era than the Tribulation Period.  The ‘last days’ is used throughout Scripture in the context of the Church Age. 

At Pentecost, the Apostles, newly-indwelt by the Holy Spirit, rushed from the Upper Room to the street, giddy from the experience. So giddy, in fact, that some bystanders thought they were drunk.

 “Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. But THIS IS THAT WHICH was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass IN THE LAST DAYS saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:” (Acts 2:13-17)

The ‘last days’ is the Church Age, whereas the Tribulation is the ‘Time of Jacob’s Trouble’. They are two different Dispensations of God. That is central to understanding the times in which we now live.

We are currently in the “dispensation of the grace of God” (Ephesians 3:2). Paul calls the conclusion of this present dispensation the ‘dispensation of the fullness of times.’ (Ephesians 1:10)

During this dispensation, believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit.

“And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.”

But John reminds us:

“Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is He that is in you, than he that is in the world.” (1John 4:3-4)

Note the context.  John is speaking of the ‘spirit of antichrist’ which he says is ‘already in the world.’ He says that the spirit of antichrist cannot overcome the Church saints; because He Who indwells us (the Holy Spirit) is greater than the spirit of antichrist. 

But this SAME PROPHET, writing of the SAME antichrist, (once antichrist comes in the flesh), says;

“And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to OVERCOME them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” (Revelation 13:7)

Since John penned both passages, and they cannot both be simultaneously true, the flow of Bible prophecy is interrupted, if the Church Age runs concurrent with the Tribulation.

During the Tribulation, the antichrist is ‘given’ power to overcome the saints. Is he ‘given’ power over the Holy Spirit? Jesus said, in the context of devils driving out devils, ‘a house divided cannot stand’. (Matthew 12:25)

Clearly, God isn’t giving power over Himself to the antichrist.  That leaves two possibilities, apart from a pre-trib Rapture.

The first is that the Holy Spirit indwells the Church until the onset of the Tribulation, at which point He is withdrawn from the vessels he indwells, leaving believers on their own.

The Apostle Paul says He is ‘withdrawn’ BEFORE ‘that Wicked’ is revealed. (2nd Thessalonians 2:7-8) 

For a pre-Trib Rapture to be a false doctrine means our generation was chosen out of all others in Church history to face the greatest spiritual trial the world has ever known —  without the Comforter that Jesus promised would indwell us until He comes.

The second possibility is that John was either lying or mistaken when he said the spirit of antichrist cannot overcome indwelt believers.

In either case, the promises of Scripture are broken.

Assessment:

Over the last thirty years, I’ve listened to explanation after explanation of why the pre-trib Rapture is a ‘false doctrine’.  It usually revolves around the concept of a ‘great escape’ or some other misunderstanding of the flow of Bible prophecy.

Its opponents will spare no effort to ‘prove’ that it is a false doctrine, as if the timing of the Rapture were somehow of eternal significance.  It is not.

The eternal significance of the Rapture is this:

“The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout . . . and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together WITH them in the clouds, to meet the Lord IN THE AIR. . .” (1st Thessalonians 4:16-17)

 Now let’s try and pull it all together. 

“And as He sat upon the Mount of Olives, His disciples came unto Him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” 

Note the first thing Jesus says in reply to that question.

“And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in My Name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.” (Matthew 24:3-4) 

Jesus said the one who comes in His Name would deceive ‘many’ – not all.  Initially, most of Israel will be fooled. 

“I am come in My Father’s name, and ye receive Me not: if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.” (John 5:43)

Paul identifies the one who Israel eventually (and temporarily) receives as their messiah as the antichrist.

And so, if the one claiming to be Jesus is standing on the ground, instead of meeting me in the air, then I will know that he is an imposter, no matter what tricks he is able to perform. 

The doctrine of a pre-Trib Rapture isn’t a ‘great escape’ for the Church; it is a necessary evacuation of the Holy Spirit’s restraining influence as part of the overall Big Picture for the last days.

Remove it, and the chronology of Bible prophecy is thrown into chaos.

The pre-trib Rapture doctrine has no saving value.  It is of no eternal consequence to anyone that they believe in a pre-Trib Rapture.  I feel no particular need to convert someone to my understanding of the last days.

One is saved by God’s grace through faith in the finished Work of His Son on the Cross as payment in full as our pardon for sin.

But without the pre-Trib Rapture doctrine, Bible prophecy has no context. That is why I teach it as doctrine. It is my obligation as a minister of Christ. 

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2nd Timothy 2:15)

And our insurance against end-times deception.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on September 16, 2011.

Featured Commentary: The Late, Great Book of the Revelation ~ Wendy Wippel

The Scoffers

The Scoffers
Vol: 23 Issue: 28 Tuesday, June 28, 2016

“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” (2 Peter 3:3-4)

I wish I had a dollar for every time somebody offered a similar argument: “They’ve been talking about the Second Coming since the First Coming. They’ll still be talking about it a thousand years from now.”

The Bible is under attack in this generation unlike any generation in history. The entire American educational system is dedicated to eliminating the ‘superstitious’ notion of Divine Creation and replacing it with the godless theory of evolution.

It is called “the theory of evolution” for a reason.  It is only a theory.  (Theory —  “an unproved assumption, abstract thought, speculation)  And, because it IS a theory, the ‘facts’ change with each new ‘discovery’.

The Christian is at an extreme disadvantage when discussing the truth of Scripture with a skeptic. The Christian has the Bible as his only source of information and is bound to follow its teachings. The skeptic, however, is under no such restrictions.

While the Christian is bound to ‘thus saith the Lord’ the skeptic counters with ‘thus saith everybody’. Everybody knows’ is one of the most difficult argument to overcome, since ‘everybody’ cannot be cited, chapter and verse.

In short, the Christian is bound by rules, the skeptic gets to make them up as he goes along. This is the main reason that the Bible has a reputation as a ‘difficult’ Book.  Bible ‘difficulties’ like, ‘who did Cain marry?’ leaves many a Christian speechless.

The skeptic loves to cite ‘contradictions’ contained in the Bible, especially since Christians teach that the Bible interprets itself and that God’s Word never contradicts itself.

Who did Cain marry?’ is but a single example.

The critic generally falls back on one of a number major assumptions, all of which sound logical until you take a closer look.

The first mistake is assuming the unexplained is unexplainable. That this is a mistake is self-evident. The skeptic is more than confident that science will continue to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

Science has mapped the human genome — it is only a matter of time before man will successfully clone a human being.

But where the Bible is concerned, unless and until we find an autographed picture of King David of Israel in a cave somewhere, the skeptic will argue David never really existed.

Actually, in 1993 an excavation dated to 850 BC uncovered a stele inscribed with “the House of David,” with a second discovery in 1994, the “Mesha Stel” which also contained a reference to Israel’s greatest King.

And although Israeli archeologists have identified the ruins of Goliath’s hometown, there remain skeptics who remain convinced King David is a myth. 

The second mistake made by the skeptic is assuming the Bible ‘guilty til proved innocent’ — that is, unless a Scripture can be exonerated by archeological or other supporting evidence, it is not true.

Skeptics long claimed Pontius Pilate never existed, so the Passion story is untrue. Until a plaque bearing Pilate’s name dedicating an arena to the Roman Procurate was uncovered near Ceasarea Phillipi in 1965.

Another mistake is failing to understand a passage in context. Perhaps the most common mistake is when a critic carelessly rips an isolated passage out of its proper context. Or, they interpreted it in a way that the author never intended.

Taken out of context, one can use the Bible to prove almost anything. (TV preachers do it all the time.) A skeptic can do the same thing to disprove almost anything. As the wise man said, a proof text without context is a pretext.

Another error is assuming that if two accounts differ, it means that they are mutually exclusive or contradictory.  For example;

“And Solomon had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen.” (1 Kings 4:26)

“And Solomon had four thousand stalls for horses and chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen; whom he bestowed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem.” (2 Chronicles 9:25)

So which is it? Is this an error?  No. The word translated ‘stalls’ has two meanings.

In one instance, it refers to the place where a horse is kept. On the other hand, the teams of horses that pulled Israeli chariots were also called ‘stalls’.

A Hebrew chariot was drawn by ten horses. Forty thousand ‘stalls’ would be necessary to house enough horses to pull four thousand Hebrew chariots.  The two passages are in complete harmony.

Another mistake is to assume that the Bible approves of all that it records. Solomon was a polygamist, but that doesn’t mean that God approved of the practice.

(God didn’t approve of Israel having kings, either.)

Another common assumption is that God wrote the Bible, without noting that He used human authors. It is a human book, written by human authors, using human literary devices.

Every word is divinely inspired, but every word was written down on paper by a human being. Consequently, James had a different writing style, used different examples and imagery than did Paul.

James says ‘faith without works is dead’ whereas Paul writes,

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: NOT OF WORKS, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

A contradiction? No. James preached to the Hebrew Israelites who had tremendous faith in their laws and religion.

Paul preached to the Gentiles who until Paul’s introduction, had no living God to have faith in.

Assessment:

“In Whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of Him.” (Ephesians 3:12)

Ok, so where DID Cain find a wife? The Bible doesn’t say. Did he marry his sister? Not exactly. Cain undoubtedly married a relative of some sort, either a distant cousin, or possibly a niece.

Adam lived for 930 years, and Genesis says that he had many other children.  There is no Biblical reason to believe Cain and Abel were the firstborn of Adam and Eve.  It is merely assumed.  

When a man and women live to be 100 years old, there can be as many as 4 or 5 generations existing within their family.

If we do the math, by the time Adam died, using a template of 4 generations for the first 100 years and assuming that 5 children would be produced by each couple, by Adams death, there would be a population of over 7,812,500 people on earth.

In fact, by the time Adam was 500 years old, the earth would have had a population of over 250,000. Maybe more. This model assumes five children per family. But people lived hundreds of years and there was no birth control.

Most importantly, it should be noted that the Bible never said when Cain took a wife. But as pointed out from mathematics, by the end of the second century of Adam’s life, Cain would have had thousands of choices.

The Bible is true. We can have confidence in its teaching and its promises. The skeptics are always there, nipping away at the edges, but consider this. The Bible has been under more or less constant attack by the smartest guys in every generation since it was compiled.

If a single thing in Scripture were conclusively disproved, a named person who didn’t exist, a place that never was, an event that didn’t take place, then the Word of God is broken.

And of all the thinkers and philosophers who have lived during the last two thousand years, not one has been able to claim the title of the man who proved the Bible wrong.

Because nobody can.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on April 11, 2011.

I Know Whom I Have Believed

I Know Whom I Have Believed
Vol: 23 Issue: 27 Monday, June 27, 2016

According to the Books of Kings, Queen Jezebel was the daughter of a pagan king who led Israel into idolatry.

Jezebel was the wife of King Ahab, who was the first to be corrupted into practicing witchcraft and Baal worship. As Queen, she persecuted God’s prophets to the degree that they were forced to hide in caves.

An ancient seal that surfaced in Israel more than four decades ago belonged to the biblical Queen Jezebel, according to a new study released in 2007 by a Dutch university.

The seal, which some scholars date to the ninth century BCE, was first discovered in 1964 by the Israeli archeologist Nahman Avigad, with the name “Yzbl” inscribed in ancient Hebrew, Utrecht University said.

The seal, which was donated to the Israel Department of Antiquities in the early 1960s by the private Voss-Hahn collection, not only bears symbols that indicate a female owner but also “well-worked” symbols that designate that owner as royalty, Korpel said.

After slaughtering God’s prophets, she was confronted by the prophet Elijah who charged her with abominations.

The Bible says she was eventually thrown to her death from a window, and her corpse was eaten by dogs.

Another team of archeologists from Netherlands and Israel, Drs. Bruins, van der Plicht, and Mazar, examined the ancient site of Tel Rehov near the excavated city of Beit Shean.

Radiocarbon dating connected Rehov to the conquest of the city by Shishak, (Pharoah Shoshenq I) between 940-900 BC.

The Bible says that King Shishak invaded Israel in the fifth year of the reign of Solomon’s son, Rehoboam.

The Biblical timeframe would place Solomon’s death at 930 B.C., putting Shishak’s invasion at 925 B.C., exactly within the range of radiocarbon dates (940-900 B.C.) for the destruction of Tel Rehov.

Previous studies had set the destruction of Rehov much later, which would have suggested the Bible’s timeline was wrong.

Turns out the Bible was right, after all.

The same for the ancient kingdom of Edom. Previous excavations suggested the dating of the kingdom of Edom was off by more than 200 years from the Bible’s timeline.

Until Canadian archeologist Russell Adams, along with Thomas Levy of the University of California at San Diego and Mohammad Najjar of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities discovered a monumental tenth century B.C. fortress at a site called Khirbat en-Nahas.

The new finds establish the existence of the Edomite kingdom at the time King David and his son Solomon ruled over Israel.

The Bible wins again.

Bible skeptics claim that much of the Old Testament’s historical accounts of the ancient Hebrew kingdoms contained in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles is largely fiction.

Those who don’t deny outright that there was ever a King David or a King Solomon claim that, at best they were just minor players.

They say that those accounts can’t be accurate because the Hebrews had no written language in the time of David and Solomon.

Until archeologists discovered an inscribed stone embedded into the wall of an extensive collection of buildings in Tel Zayit, about 35 miles southwest of Jerusalem.

The 40-pound stone consisted of two lines of incised letters, representing the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

The stone, dating to the 10th century BC, establishes beyond doubt that a written Hebrew language was already well established at the time the Hebrews were recording the written histories of that time.

In another find, a family seal dating from the fifth century BC confirms the existence of an obscure Jewish family mentioned in the Book of Nehemiah.

A black stone seal with the inscription of the name, “Temech” was found outside the walls of the old city of Jerusalem near the Dung Gate, during a dig headed by archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar.

The discovery of the Temech family seal confirms the existence of an obscure family mentioned in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. Most previous archeological digs had only confirmed biblical figures who were well-known kings.

And the discovery of a cuneform tablet dating to 595 BC acknowledges the receipt of about 1.5 lbs of gold from one Nebo-sarsekim in payment to Nebuchadnezzar.

The tablet confirms Nebo-sarsekim as one of the Babylonian officials mentioned in Jeremiah 39:3.

The Exodus from Egypt has long been the skeptic’s favorite Bible story. The skeptics claim the Exodus story is impossible and the Bible dating of the destruction of Jericho was off by two hundred years or more. 

But a study by Drs. Hendrik J. Bruins and Johannes van der Plicht and published in the British journal, Nature confirmed the early date of Jericho’s destruction. 

Another study, using carbon dating and tree rings found evidence of a volcanic eruption on the Agean island of Thera, dating to 1628 BC, coinciding with the plagues inflicted on Egypt. 

Exodus 10:21-22 says,

Then the Lord said to Moses,“Stretch out your hand toward the sky, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even a darkness which may be felt. So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days.”

What a ‘coincidence!”

Assessment:

Archeology has long been the skeptic’s ace-in-the-hole when making the claim that the Bible is filled with historical inaccuracies.

Of course, even a single, conclusively proved inaccuracy would completely destroy the central tenet of Judeo-Christianity — the infallibility of Scripture.

A lot of times, when we ask God for something, we tend to ‘hedge our bets’ so to speak, by giving God some kind of ‘out’ by appending their prayer with something like, “if it is Your will.”

God doesn’t need an ‘out’. If we make a request that is within God’s will, we can be certain of an answer.

“And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us: And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” (1st John 5:14-15)

The Bible says it isn’t necessary to give God an ‘out’. Jesus told His disciples,

“Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

If the Bible is proved fallible historically, then how could we know the promises of these verses aren’t equally faulty?

Worse, what about the verse?

“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My Hand.” (John 10:28)

If Jezebel didn’t persecute God’s prophets, if Jericho’s walls didn’t come ‘a-tumblin’ down’, if Moses didn’t call down plagues on Pharoah, if David wasn’t Israel’s greatest king, if Solomon is an historical invention, then the Bible isn’t true, God isn’t real, we came from nothing and we are going nowhere.

That’s why the skeptics are so eager to reach into the distant, unknowable past to find their arguments that the Bible is not relevant today.

The last sixty years have witnessed an explosion of archeological finds in the Holy Land, from the discovery of Beit Shean to the Dead Sea Scrolls to the ossuary of Caiaphas, the Chief Priest of the Sandhedrin who presided over the trial of Jesus Christ.

Every discovery made confirms the Biblical accounts. Those accounts that remain in dispute are not disputed because of archeological finds, but rather, by the lack of them.

Until 1965, it was presumed by “scholars” that Pontius Pilate was a fictional character because no evidence had been uncovered identifying him as Roman procurator in Judea at the time of Christ.

Until a plaque from King Herod dedicating the amphitheater at Ceasarea Phillip to Pontius Pilate was discovered there.

Skeptics keep finding new objections, but they are based in the absence of evidence, rather than evidence that conflicts with the Bible’s account.

Skeptics argue that King David was a Bible myth because nobody has yet uncovered an autographed picture of King David wearing a crown and sitting on his throne.

However, there is no evidence that anybody else occupied David’s throne in Davids’ time. The same applies to King Solomon (despite the existence of the Western Wall of Solomon’s First Temple in Jerusalem).

Whenever archeology DOES find evidence from the Old Testament period, it confirms the Old Testament accounts.

The reason? Because the Bible is true.

Jezebel did sit as Queen of Israel, the Egyptian plague of darkness took place as described, Nebuchadnezzar did conquer Israel, Jericho’s walls did come ‘a tumblin’ down.’

And little details about minor historical personages establish the events to which they were a party.

You can be certain that your Bible is true in every area where its accuracy can be measured. The only ‘unproved’ parts of the Bible are those for which there is no evidence either way.

There are NO disproved parts of the Bible.

That means you can count on its promises. You can be certain of the promise of eternal life. You can trust Jesus, and you can trust the Word of God.

The same Bible that contains such tiny details as the existence of Nebo-sarsekim and Temach also promises believers:

“If ye shall ask any thing in My Name, I will do it.” (John 14:14)

You can trust Him. He means it.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on January 21, 2008.

Featured Commentary: The Distress of Nations, with Perplexity ~ Pete Garcia

A Parable

A Parable
Vol: 23 Issue: 25 Saturday, June 25, 2016

You wake up one morning and find a guy camping out in your back yard. You go out and ask him what the heck he thinks he’s doing there and he says he used to live in your house before he lost it to back taxes.

You bought the house from a realtor at fair market value and didn’t know about the tax foreclosure, but now this is your house and he’ll have to go find somewhere else to set up camp.

The next morning, you get up to find the guy has moved his whole family into your backyard and refuses to leave. But you’re a compassionate sort — you’ve gone through hard times yourself, and you find yourself in empathy with the guy.

You don’t need the whole backyard, but you don’t want to get locked into anything, either. So you just go about your daily business and let the people in your backyard go about theirs.

Until one day you come home and find them sitting in your living room watching TV. Well, it’s raining out, and they are watching your favorite TV show, so you don’t throw them out, but you don’t necessarily welcome them, either. Maybe they’ll get the idea on their own.

Next morning, you get up and find yourself standing in a line to get to your bathroom. “Enough is enough,” you bellow. “Everybody out!”

Later, the head of the family in the back yard comes to you and says, “As far as we are concerned, this is our house. Our family lived here for generations before you bought it, and we want it back. We’ll let you have the master bedroom and part of the living room, but the kitchen is ours.”

Well, until they came, you lived alone, and you find you kind of like the company. But you draw the line at giving up the kitchen — as a professional chef, (it’s a parable, I can make up anything I want) the kitchen is the center of your home.

So you strike a bargain in which you have access to the kitchen, under supervision, for certain agreed-upon periods during the day.

However, they insist, you must pay all the bills for maintaining the house and pay for all the food. You finally hammer out an equitable agreement in which they agree to keep up the property in exchange for your footing the bills.

It isn’t a perfect agreement, but you can afford it, they are dirt-poor, and you don’t have time to do all the work yourself anyway.

So you pay the bills, the squatters take over your house, but they trash every room they take over. While you agreed to share the living room, its such a pig-sty that you just give it over to them and start spending most of your time in your bedroom.

The last straw comes when you go to the kitchen as per your agreed-upon hours and are forbidden entry. This is the very last of the last straws. You toss everybody out of the house and lock all the doors.

In response, they go on a rampage in your back yard, burning your toolshed, digging up all your flowers, and chanting threats that your house is next. Exasperated, you call in the law.

Turns out the policeman is the squatter’s brother-in-law so he refuses to evict them from your yard. So you take it to court.

The judge, (who turns out to be the squatter’s cousin) rules that since you let them squat in your yard, they have a proprietary interest so, they can stay in your backyard, but not in your house.

You don’t think the verdict is fair, but you are a law-abiding sort, so you surrender your backyard and try to negotiate an agreement whereby you can cross ‘their’ territory to get to your lawn mower and garden tools.

You finally work out a deal where you can go get your lawn tools, but in exchange, you have to cut their grass, too. The first time you try to go get it, they won’t let you through unless you give them bathroom privileges.

It seems reasonable; you aren’t in the bathroom all the time anyway, and they have to go somewhere, so you agree and they let you pass. You finish cutting the grass and there they are back in the living room watching TV.

You throw them back out and they start throwing rocks through your window. You call the police and the same brother-in-law shows up and begins making excuses for them. Exasperated again, you take them to court.

The (judge who is a cousin) rules that since you agreed to the bathroom deal, what’s so bad about them watching a little TV once in awhile?

He refuses to evict them from your yard, and includes the bathroom sharing arrangement as part of the formal deal.

When you ask for damages for the broken windows, they are refused on the grounds it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t locked them out.

Now, you can’t get to your lawn tools without making a new concession every time you go there, so you decide to just close off the back yard and let them wade through the field of their own making.

You put up a privacy fence to separate ‘their’ part of the yard from yours, leaving a little gate they can come through to use the shared bathroom. Next thing you know, they start lobbing paint filled balloons over the fence at your house. From the bathroom, they toss paint balloons down the hall and into your living room.

You call the police, get the same brother-in-law who again sides with the squatters in the back yard. So you go to court, where the judge orders you to take down the fence. Convinced you are getting a raw deal, you refuse. The judge says, “Then don’t come complaining to me if they retaliate because of your fence.”

“But,” you protest, “the only reason for putting up the fence is to prevent them from attacking my house.”

“Not my problem,” says the judge. “You should have thought of that when you threw them out of their own house that they’ve lived in for generations.”

“But I bought it from a realtor. I have a deed,” you protest.

“It’s because of that deed that I let you live in the house instead of the backyard,” the judge says.

“But this court can’t totally ignore the fact they lived there for generations before you took possession,” noting, “when you moved in, you agreed to let them stay. Now it is up to the two sides to work out an equitable sharing arrangement.”

The judge bangs his gavel, then says to you, “Oh, and cut the grass. Your yard is an eyesore.”

You leave the courtroom, understandably stunned. You bought the house fair and square — and nobody is disputing it. You’ve got the documents to prove it. But despite that, neither the squatters, the police nor the judge recognize your right to sole occupation. And every effort to explain the sharing arrangement puts them in a stronger legal position.

You should have just tossed the guy out on his ear the day he set up camp in your yard.

Now, you’re stuck with the situation as it has evolved; outnumbered in your own house; the police and courts are openly hostile to your claims.

And no matter what the terms of the original agreement was, you know they are only going to uphold one side’s obligations under any agreement — and it isn’t your side.

So one day, having had enough, you pick up a club (because you are outnumbered) and charge over there to have it out with them. This time, the police blame you for an unprovoked attack.

The court awards them damages in the form of full legal title to your back yard.

The war goes on, back and forth, between you and the squatters who now own your backyard up to the fence, with the squatters claiming the entire back yard and still complaining that the gate makes it too hard for them to exercise their right to the shared bathroom.

You finally lock them out of the bathroom. Your neighbors, sick of the commotion (and all former neighbors of the squatters in the back yard) band together into a neighborhood association aimed at driving you out of the neighborhood.

They sign petitions demanding you move away. They complain your privacy fence is an eyesore. Your house is ugly and paint-spattered, your back yard is a mess and there are people living in tents when they should be living inside a house and they blame YOU for their pitiful situation.

A few pretend to be your friends, but at the same time, you know that they are sneaking paint and balloons into your back yard for the squatters to throw at you.

But at least they are not at the moment openly attacking the front of your house from their side of the street, so you pretend back and try not to antagonize them.

Assessment:

It has all the makings of a plot line for a Stephen King novel or a nightmare of the sort brought on by a late night snack of double anchovy pizza washed down by a cold glass of milk.

Instead it is a thinly disguised parable about Israel and the Palestinians. The Arab ‘Palestinians’ had lived in the region for four hundred years as subjects of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Title passed from the Ottoman Empire to the British when the British captured Jerusalem during the First World War.

Britain was granted legal title under the British Mandate, and Israel came into legal possession of that title to its’ ‘house’ in 1948 when it was recognized as an independent state by the United Nations in 1948.

The new title holder, Israel, did not take the title away from the Arab occupants. The British did that. Israel took possession of the land from the British. Israel’s Arab neighbors attacked openly five times, were defeated five times, and now quietly arm the Palestinians for war while claiming to be negotiators for peace.

The UN has ruled in favor of the Palestinians in every dispute that has come before it, including many as ridiculously one-sided as those in my parable.

The Arab-controlled UN General Assembly has never passed a resolution condemning a single Arab action, but has passed more resolutions condemning Israel than all the rest of the world’s serial human rights abusers combined.

The Palestinian claim to Israel is as thin as the squatter’s claim in the parable, and the behavior of the squatters in the back yard is instantly recognizable as mirroring the various Palestinian intifadas over issues like sharing Jerusalem and refusing Jewish access to the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount is the heart of Israel’s religious existence. Without it, it would be like the home of a professional chef without a kitchen.

And Jerusalem is Israel’s ancient, God-given and Divinely restored capital. For the Jews, demanding a share of Jerusalem would be like demanding a share of one’s living room.

(Neat how I worked those in, no?)

In 2007, The Palestinians announced a tentative date for their meeting with Ehud Olmert in Annapolis, Maryland. PA President Mahmoud Abbas made the announcement, adding a warning that, “unless ALL the issues at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are solved, violence will break out anew,” reported the Jerusalem Post.

As in our parable, the police and judge in this case are all related, so there was no outcry from them when the squatters threatened to attack, even though they had no claim to the shared living room (Jerusalem) and reneged on the deal to share the kitchen (Temple Mount).

And like the bewildered homeowner, Israel reacted to the threats with a statement from Ehud Olmert promising to try harder, only to be met with a demand for even more from the other side.

According to the Jerusalem Post there was the promise. . .

“Israel Radio later quoted Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as saying that he would make a “great effort” to ensure that the conference becomes a first step towards peace. Olmert said it was imperative to avoid making excuses and to venture forward in negotiations despite the risks involved. . .

. . . followed by the new demand:

Meanwhile, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, former PA prime minister Ahmed Qurei, said Tuesday there would be no talks with Israel unless a deadline was set for establishing a Palestinian state.

Our parable has a nightmarish-like relentless quality to it — like running down a long hallway and the faster you run, the longer it gets. You go to the cops, its the enemy’s brother-in-law. The only judge is a first cousin. All the rules seem to work in reverse, and always against you, even when it is patently obvious — like in a bad dream.

What used to be your back yard, bought and paid for (in Israel’s case, in blood during the Six-Days War) is now behind a fence erected to protect what is left of Israel’s homeland. The judge [the UN] sides with the Palestinian demands that the fence come down ‘as a condition of peace’ when the only reason FOR the fence is to KEEP the peace — by keeping out Palestinian terrorists.

In the real world, you just couldn’t make something like this up from scratch. If you did, it would have that same surreal, dreamlike quality to it that our parable does.

It is hard to imagine an institution as corrupt as the one represented by the police and judge of the parable, and even harder to imagine rulings that one-sided being handed down by any legal authority.

Yet the UN and General Assembly’s record is so one-sided and biased against Israel that you probably suspected the parable was about Israel and the UN long before I told you.

The point is, you couldn’t make this up — in any other context, it is too unbelievable to make sense. I hope that I am telegraphing my next point — it means you’re seeing the Big Picture — if you can’t make stuff like this up, how hard is it to accurately predict it, in detail, thousands of years in advance?

Look how many predictions we’re talking about, all coming together at the same time, to paint an otherwise impossible Big Picture:

First, the Bible predicted the restoration of Israel — the exact same piece of geography to the same ethnic group, to be called by the prophesied name of “Israel.” This is an event unparalleled in the history of human civilization.

At the time in which the prophets spoke of a restored nation of Israel, that nation had already been destroyed by the Assyrians a generation before. It would not exist again for 2500 years.

But when it was restored, the Bible said, it would be restored geographically, ethnically and religiously, and its scattered citizens would return with their ancient customs, traditions, language and religion intact.

By itself, that is an amazing prophecy, made even more amazing by its fulfillment in our generation.

Second, the Bible predicted Jerusalem would return to Israeli possession. That was even considered an impossible prophecy during the modern era.

The UN Partition Plan called for making Jerusalem an ‘international city.’

From 1948 to 1967, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount part of Jordan. But in 1967, both fell under Israeli sovereignty for the first time in twenty-five hundred years, precisely as prophesied.

Third, the Bible predicted that Israeli possession of the Temple Mount and Jerusalem would become the central flashpoint of global politics, with the Prophet Zechariah predicting the whole world would become obsessed, as if drunken, over the question of who owns Jerusalem.

Fourth, all the prophets predict that Israel will, in the end, stand alone and friendless against the entire world in their claim for both the city and the Temple Mount.

Israel is the only genuine representative Western-style democracy amid a sea of radical Islamic dictatorships in the midst of what amounts to a war between radical Islam and Western society. Israel’s enemies are equally the enemies of the Western world.

But the Western world consistently (and, given the whole ‘war’ thingy, inexplicably) sidesagainst Israel and with its shared radical Islamic enemy.

When asked, most can’t quite explain why. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Western government spokesmen mumble something about ‘Palestinian victimization’ by the Israeli ‘occupation’ == but when pressed, can’t identify the actual victimizer nor explain what Palestinian territory Israel is actually ‘occupying’.

And they know that any Palestinian state created out of the current population will be a terrorist state and whatever weapons they send them to ‘defeat’ the Zionist occupiers will later be turned on them.

But they don’t seem able to help themselves. It doesn’t make any sense, even when you try to explain it logically.

But the Bible PREDICTED it. Look at the layers of predictions that all depended upon one another in order to project the Big Picture we see before us. The picture we see is the one the Bible prophets foresaw and foretold.

Had the Arabs accepted the 1947 Partition plan, the Bible’s predictions would have failed. Had the Israelis not recaptured the Old City and Temple in ’67, the Bible’s predictions would have failed.

If the Western world sided with Israel as its natural, Western democratic natural ally, (which is also the most logical scenario) the Big Picture would be unrecognizably altered and Bible prophecy would fail.

These are all predictions recorded thousands of years in advance, and puzzled over by every generation to study them in the centuries since. Had any of them failed, the Big Picture we see would not be the one that they, or we, expected.

But here it is, in all its splendiforus gloriousness — undeniable evidence of both the accuracy of Bible prophecy and reality of a Creator God Whose foretold Plan of the Ages is coming together before our very eyes!

But the top-rated television program on cable last Sunday night wasn’t, “The King Is Coming,” or, “Prepare to Meet Thy God.”

The top-rated show on cable last Lord’s Day was the History Channel’s, “The Lost Book of Nostradamus.” Which is the fulfillment of yet another Bible prophecy:

“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (2nd Timothy 3:7)

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on November 3, 2007.

The Quest for An ”Age of Reason?”

The Quest for An ”Age of Reason?”
Vol: 23 Issue: 24 Friday, June 24, 2016

It is a bedrock article of faith among environmentalists that human beings have become a ‘cancer’ on the planet, multiplying and consuming resources the same way cancer cells overrun and destroy a living organism.

To a hardcore environmentalist, the “Georgia Guidestones” function as a sort of Green ‘Ten Commandments’ handed down to mankind from Mother Earth. 

The ‘Guidestones’ were erected by an anonymous group and arranged to resemble Stonehenge. The display consists of six granite slabs twenty feet tall and weighing more than one hundred tons. 

One slab stands in the center, with four arranged around it. A capstone lies on top of the five slabs. The slabs are astronomically aligned, hence its nickname, “American Stonehenge”. 

An additional stone tablet, which is set in the ground a short distance to the west of the structure, provides some clarifying notes on the history and purpose of the Guidestones.

The capstone declares: “Let These be Guidestones to An Age of Reason”, and identifies its sponsors as “A small group of Americans who seek the Age of Reason.” 

The Georgia Guidestones list ten ‘reasonable’ guidelines for maintaining global harmony:

1) Maintain humanity under five hundred million in perpetual balance with nature.

The current population of the earth is 6.6 billion. To achieve the goals demanded by ‘reason’ would require ‘eliminating’ 6.1 billion of them somehow. One way of accomplishing that goal is to:

2) Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity..

Abortion is a fairly effective way of reducing both the surplus population and ‘improving fitness and diversity’. 

That is one reason the majority of abortions in America are performed for free, or are subsidized, particularly for members of the African-American community. One third of all abortions performed in the United States are performed on African-American babies.

And one pregnancy in four in the United States is terminated by abortion. 

Four-fifths of abortions are performed on single women, a third of them teens. 

3) Unite humanity with a new ‘living language’ 

A ‘new’ language would be necessary, since carrying out just the first two guidelines would necessarily involve the words, ‘eugenics’, ‘genocide’ and ‘infanticide’. Those words would have to be eliminated and replaced with something a bit less ‘offensive’. (Think, “Soylent Green”)

4) Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.

“Faith and tradition” are code-words for Judeo-Christianity, which, to the Greens, is the antithesis of ‘reason’. 

5) Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.” . 

“Fair” laws and “just” courts would be those that protect the earth from humanity, rather than the other way around. 

6) Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

Why should anyone be surprised to learn that environmentalists are also globalists? It is the planet — the globe — that is important, not its inhabitants. 

7) Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

Presumably, ‘petty laws’ refer to laws that put human rights ahead of ecological concerns and and ‘useless’ officials as officials who put getting re-elected by humans ahead of being loved by spotted owls. 

8) Balance personal rights with social ‘duties’. 

The moment somebody suggests ‘balancing’ personal rights against ‘social duties’ the term ‘personal rights’ becomes meaningless. A right that is not a right is a ‘privilege’ to be extended or withdrawn to comport with ‘social duties’ . . . as interpreted by whom? 

9) Prize truth — beauty — love –seeking harmony with the infinite. 

I wouldn’t know where to begin with this one. So far, we’ve eliminated 6.2 billion useless people, made abortion a social duty to improve fitness and diversity, created a new universal earth-language, eliminated personal rights and replaced them with social ‘duties’ and eliminated any need or mention of God. 

Having accomplished genocide via deception, NOW its time for truth, beauty and worship of ‘the infinite’ — presumably the earth. So, finally, the kicker:

10) Be not a cancer on this earth. Leave room for nature. Leave room for nature. 

That isn’t a typo — ‘Leave room for nature’ is repeated twice on the slabs, too. The symbolic meaning is clearly that nature is twice as important as the cancer that infests it. 

Human beings are the cancer and that cancer must be excised or it will kill its host. 

Assessment:

When Al Gore wrote his 1991 “Earth in the Balance” he pretty much followed the outline of the Georgia Guidestones, also likening humanity to a cancer on planet earth that can only be controlled by reducing the population to ‘sustainable levels’ and maintaining it in ‘balance’ with nature. 

How is that accomplished in nature? Survival of the fittest. Natural selection. “Natural selection” is the culling process in which the weakest segments of a population die off until there are few enough for the environment to sustain them. 

Al Gore and his followers knew twenty years ago what effect biofuel would have on the global food supply. He says so in his chapter “Seeds of Privation” in which he also argues AGAINST genetically modifying crops to increase the available food supply. 

It takes roughly four hundred pounds of corn to produce 25 gallons of ethanol. That is roughly the equivalent to the amount of corn it would take to feed one person for an entire year. 

There are other technologies, such as Thermal Depolymerization, that can convert ANY carbon-based garbage (which is essentially anything) into light Number Six Crude oil indistinguishable from that pumped from the ground. 

The process has been proved at two thermal depolymerization plants, one at Carthage, Missiouri, the other outside Philadelphia. Both were set up outside Butterball Turkey plants to process their waste products — but it works equally well with other animal waste parts, most household garbage and even ground up computer parts. 

At present, the process can turn garbage into oil for about $18.00 a barrel — its inventor, Brian Appel, says mass production could bring it down to about $11.00 a barrel. 

A Canadian study released this week predicts that the price of fossil fuel oil will double again to more than $200 per barrel by 2012. That translates to roughly $11.00 a gallon at the pump, or roughly $220.00 to fill a 20 gallon tank. 

So why is Al Gore championing the production of biofuel alternatives? Wouldn’t turning the excess garbage created by the surplus population into energy, carbon black and clean, potable water be ‘green’ enough? 

Evidently not, since the objective is not to reduce dependence on fossil fuel, but instead to reduce the surplus population that depends on it. 

Environmentalism is not a social cause, or a political agenda so much as it is a religion rooted entirely in the tenets of the New Age and Al Gore has become its high priest. Anyone who disagrees with its doctrine is immediately labeled a ‘heretic.’

Taking a look at the Big Picture, we see the following
: There are two solutions for the energy ‘crisis’ brought on by high oil prices. 

One solution is to spread the pain across the planet, creating an artificial food shortage and raising food prices to famine levels. 

Appel Technologies is real — the process is real — and it works. But it’s main drawback is that it solves the energy crisis without the necessity for the ‘Ten Guidelines’ (which begins by calling for the elimination of 6.2 billion people). 

The other solution is to buy carbon credits from some tribesman in Ubangi who doesn’t have a car, and then starve him to death by using his food to fuel mine.

Using his food to run my car is acceptable; using garbage nobody wants is evidently not even worth discussing.

Maybe I’m just a thick-headed paranoid. You tell me.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on April 26, 2008.

Featured Commentary: On Idolizing Scripture ~ Alf Cengia

Proving All Things In The Age Of Information Overload

Proving All Things In The Age Of Information Overload
Vol: 23 Issue: 23 Thursday, June 23, 2016

”Information overload” is a term that has come to mean ”a state of having too much information to make a decision or remain informed about a topic.” Too much information can cloud the facts, harden the heart, blind one to the obvious.

Sir William of Occam saw the need to address the problem of information overload as early as the 14th century. A philosopher, Sir William formulated what became known as “Occam’s Razor” as a philosophy for processing information overload.

Occam’s Razor says, in a nutshell, “the simpler the explanation, the more likely its correctness.” Another way of saying it is “the most obvious explanation is the most probable.”

We live in an age of conspiracies and conspiracy theories, but Occam’s Razor still cuts through the excesses of information to get to the heart of the truth of a matter.

But information overload doesn’t just cloud the facts and blind one to the obvious. It also tends to harden the heart and sear the conscience.

How many “Amber alerts” does it take before they blend into the white noise of the day? How many murder/suicides of whole families before we tune them out?

How many reports of corrupt politicians before we accept political corruption as simply the way things are done?

The equation works like this: “The more you know, the less you see.” It all gets jumbled together in a massive flow of information that gets input before we’ve had time to process it all.

We live in the generation in which the sheer volume of information related to Bible prophecy creates its own kind of information overload and its companion results.

There’s so much evident fulfillment of Bible prophecy on a day to day basis that it tends to cloud the facts. Trying to sort out the facts tends to blind one to the obvious. And too much information tends to harden the heart and sear the conscience.

The Bible says, “Prove all things and hold fast to that which is good.” (1st Thessalonians 5:21)

It would appear that Sir William stole Occam’s Razor from the Apostle Paul. Paul is telling the Thessalonians to subject everything submitted to you to be believed to a proper test.

The meaning here is, that they were carefully to examine everything proposed for their belief. They were not to receive it on trust. They weren’t to take it on faith because of who proposed it or how.

They were to apply the proper tests of reason and the Word of God and what they found to be true they were to embrace, and what was false they were to reject.

Christianity does not require men to disregard their ability to reason. It does not expect them to believe anything because others say it is so. The Bible uniquely demands the application of reason to the Word of God.

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD.” (Isaiah 1:18)

“Produce your cause, saith the LORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob.” (Isaiah 41:21)

Acts is filled with examples of the Apostles applying reason to the Scriptures when preaching Christ as the way of salvation.

“And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled, and answered, Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee.” (Acts 24:25)

Christianity doesn’t demand that believers abandon their reason and logic at the door.

It requires we exercise both, and in so doing, proves itself to be of God.

Assessment:

“And this I say,” Paul told the Colossians, “lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. . . As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him.”

The meaning here is simply this: “Since you have received Christ as your Lord as He was preached to you, hold fast the doctrine which you have received and don’t be distracted by some new philosophy.”

It means proving all things by applying reason and logic and Occam’s (or Paul’s) Razor to the Scriptures. Sometimes, we can get so caught up in the minutiae of Scripture that we become blinded to the Bible’s Majesty.

All the various prophecies we are witnessing coming to pass in our lifetimes have been studied by every generation since the time of the Apostles. They all waited in vain, searching the Scriptures for some hint that the return of the Lord was near.

In this generation, there is no need to search for clues, or dream up some vague interpretation of some obscure bit of Scripture and try and make it apply to a given situation. Seeing God’s Hand in unfolding history has become so routine that it blends into the rest of the white noise of information overload.

Let’s step back and look at the Bible’s Majesty, rather than the minutiae, for a change.

The Bible was compiled over a period of 1604 years (BC 1492-AD100) by forty different authors, each writing his portion of the overall Book independently. The various authors were kings, statesmen, priests, herdsmen, tax collectors, fishermen, a physician, and itinerant preachers and prophets like Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah.

Few of them knew of the existence of the other at the time they wrote their portion. Some books were composed during the same periods of history from different perspectives, some were penned over a period of centuries.

But each book flows into the next as if the entire work were penned by the same Mind. The Bible cross-references itself across its whole library of 66 individual books; 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New. The Bible is unique in that it is a series of progressive revelations from God given over a period of centuries:

The judges knew more than the Patriarchs, the Prophets than the judges, the Apostles than the Prophets. Yet the Old and New Testaments cannot be separated. You cannot understand Leviticus without Hebrews, or Daniel without Revelation.

The Bible is unique in its simplicity of speech. It is written in a style so universal that it can be translated into any known language.

The Bible contains thousands of details of science, history, geography, medicine, and astronomy.Not a single fact contained in Scripture on any of these topics conflicts with any known evidence.

Isaiah said the earth was round. (Isaiah 40:22) Job wrote from the Middle East of polar ice caps and permafrost.

Ecclesiastes (1:7) and Job (36:27-29), Jeremiah (10:13) and Psalms (135:7) together present the complete description of the hydrological cycle that sustains life on earth.

Four different human authors, four different points on the historical timeline, four different backgrounds (none of them science) but their individual accounts, taken together, outline in detail the complete hydrological cycle of the atmosphere — millennia before its existence was even confirmed by science.

As a work of history, no single historical event, personage, king, kingdom or timeline has ever been conclusively disproved by anyone. Every new discovery confirms the Bible’s account.

No event that can be disproved ever has been. Concerning the accuracy of Luke as a historian, for example, F. F. Bruce writes:

“A man whose accuracy can be demonstrated in matters where we are able to test it is likely to be accurate even where the means for testing him are not available. Accuracy is a habit of mind, and we know from happy (or unhappy) experience that some people are habitually accurate just as others can be depended upon to be inaccurate. Luke’s record entitles him to be regarded as a writer of habitual accuracy.”

The Bible contains advanced medical knowledge regarding sanitary practices and disease prevention not known to Western medicine until the late 1800’s. God instructed the Israelites to burn the garments of leprosy victims.

Western medicine didn’t learn that leprosy was an infectious, rather than hereditary disease until 1873. (It wasn’t until the 20th century that we learned leprosy can survive for up to three weeks on clothing.)

God told Moses to use hyssop oil as a purifying agent. Hyssop oil has been shown to contain 50% antifungal and antibacterial agents.

God commanded the Israelites to perform circumcision on the 8th day of a male child’s life. Specifically, the eighth day. Medical researchers recently discovered that the two main blood clotting factors, Vitamin K and Prothrombim, reach their highest level in life, about 110% of normal, on the 8th day after birth. These blood clotting agents facilitate rapid healing and greatly reduce the chance of infection.

(In fact, performing a circumcision on a child before or after the eighth day requires a Vitamin K supplement injection.)

Back in the 12th century, the Jewish sage Maimonides discovered what he believed to be coded messages hidden in the Bible. Maimonides, working by hand, discovered what he thought were coded words made up of mathematically calculable equidistant letter sequences.

Using computers in the 1990’s several mathematicians from Hebrew University and a Defense Department code specialist named Harold Gans discovered mathematically provable codes do exist at equidistant letter sequences.

After demanding a series of tests to prove the theory, the actuarial journal, “Statistical Science” presented their findings with the following disclaimer:

“Our referees were baffled: their prior beliefs made them think the Book of Genesis could not POSSIBLY contain meaningful references to modern day individuals, yet when the authors carried out additional analyses and checks the effect persisted.”

Wrote the “Biblical Review:”

“The capacity to embed so many, meaningfully related, randomly selected word-pairs in a body of text with a coherent surface meaning is stupendously beyond the intellectual capacity of ANY HUMAN BEING or group of people, however brilliant, and equally beyond the capacity of ANY CONCEIVABLE COMPUTING DEVICE. The phenomenon cannot be attributed to ANYTHING within the KNOWN PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, human beings included.”

Applying Occam’s Razor to the known evidence about the Bible, there can be only one of two possible conclusions.

1) The Bible is a collection of stories and myths that just so happen to coincide with provable history, medicine, geography, astronomy, etc., plus coincidentally, provably forecasts the future with 100% accuracy;

or,

2) The Bible is true in every provable way, and could only have been written by God. So God exists, heaven exists, hell exists, Jesus is real, salvation is real, and so is eternity.

But sometimes, even after being saved many years, the enemy will launch another information overload assault on my reason and try and convince me that it’s all a myth.

All I have to do to dispel the attack is remember there are only those two logical choices and Occam’s Razor.

Coincidence? Occam’s Razor says that cannot be possible.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on August 2, 2007.

Featured Commentary: If I Were The Devil ~ J.L. Robb

Religion and Salvation

Religion and Salvation
Vol: 23 Issue: 22 Wednesday, June 22, 2016

At Babel, God deliberately confused the languages of men and dispersed them into different nations. The purpose, according to Genesis, was to prevent them from all coming under the authority of a single dictator, as happened under Nimrod.

“And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” (Genesis 11:6)

Denominationalism is the spiritual equivalent, ensuring that one powerful leader couldn’t take over Christianity and lead the true Church into error, as the Bible says the antichrist will during the Tribulation Period.

There is an effort by some world church denominations to reverse the process and bring all denominations together under the banner of ‘ecumenism’ but, because the separation is Divinely ordained, it has been unable to attract those denominations that most closely follow the Bible.

The World Council of Religious leaders is such an organization.  Formed at the Millennium World Peace Summit in 2002, The World Council adopted its own charter outlining how they can play an active role in global government:

“The World Council of Religious Leaders aims to serve as a model and guide for the creation of a community of world religions. It seeks to inspire women and men of all faiths in the pursuit of peace and mutual understanding. It will undertake initiatives that will assist the United Nations and its agencies by providing the spiritual resources of the world’s religious traditions in the prevention, resolution and healing of conflicts, and in addressing global social and environmental problems.”

Jesus Himself addressed denominationalism, writing to the seven Churches in the first three chapters of Revelation. Each of these churches is different, both in their doctrine and in the emphasis they place on it.

Thus, we have the Church of Ephesus ‘hating the deeds of the Nicolaitanes’ (a separate status for clergy and ‘laity’) whereas the Church of Pergamos is depicted as holding to “the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which thing I hate.” (Revelation 2:6,15) 

It isn’t the denominationalism that Jesus ‘hated’ but the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, who developed a complicated hierarchy of bishops, priests, and ‘laity’ to oversee a Grand Church, as opposed to the Biblical model of local church self-government. 

Theoretically, Christian denominations share the same basic statement of faith, that of the sin nature, the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith, the Power of the Shed Blood of Christ to cover sin, the free offer of salvation to all who trust Jesus’ sacrifice, and who share the belief that salvation is the product of a relationship with Christ, not a relationship with a church.

How can you tell if you are a member of a Christian denomination or a form of ‘Christian religion’? There are eight sure signs, any of which should make a Bible-believing Christian sit up and take notice. 

‘Religion’ can be defined as man’s way of making himself acceptable to God, whereas Christianity is God’s way of making man acceptable to Himself through a personal relationship. 

The first sign that a denomination has gone ‘religious’ is the denial of the true nature of God.

The Unitarians deny the Triune nature of the Godhead, for example. Many allegedly ‘Christian religions’ deny the Deity of Christ, commonly claiming that Christ as God was not an early Church teaching.  

A second warning sign is the emphasis on salvation by works.

Although many denominations include the idea that God’s grace is important in the role of salvation, the leader normally emphasizes the idea that salvation ultimately comes through one’s own efforts — as defined by ‘the church’.

This imparts power to the denomination, since it changes salvation from a gift to wages, and gives the religious hierarchy the authority to act as paymaster.

The third sign is that of exclusive truth.

Denominations tend to universally identify themselves as the ‘one true church’ to the exclusion of all others. They will agree that some other denominations have some truth, but teach that full truth has somehow been lost and can now only be found in their ‘one true church’.

Fourth, religions prefer an authoritative leadership.

In some denominations, that authority is carried to the extent that they claim to speak directly for God. This is the ultimate result of the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes that Jesus twice said He ‘hated’.

The authoritative leadership of the Pharisees and Sadducees came under withering condemnation by the Lord during His earthly ministry.

Religions and Christian ‘religious’ denominations both tend to follow the letter of the law — but as theyinterpret it, rather than observing the spirit in which it was intended.

We’ll explain the difference between the ‘letter of the law’ and the ‘spirit of the law’ using a secular example that is in all the headlines today.

The ‘spirit’ of the graduated income tax law was to ensure, (in theory, at least) that all citizens pay their fair share of the tax burden. This is the ostensible claim of the Occupy Wall Street movement — except they define “fair” by placing most of the tax burden on the 1% to pay for the benefits of the 99%.  

The spirit of the law is that it calls for shared sacrifice. The letter of the law exempts nearly half of American citizens from any federal tax burden at all. 

Fifth, religions also tend to impose their own form of taxation as a condition of salvation.

Some religions equate tithing with salvation or staying in a right relationship with God. The Bible imposes no such burden.

The Pharisee tithed, loudly and with great pomp and circumstance. The widow, on the other hand, gave two ‘mites’ — the smallest coin values of Jesus’ day. Jesus condemned the Pharisee,and commended the widow.

Giving is prompted by the Holy Spirit, Whose ministry the true Church belongs to in the first place. ‘Giving til it hurts’ is a man-made doctrine with an obvious goal that has nothing to do with the things of the Spirit.

A sixth warning sign of a denomination going ‘religious’ is the threat of loss of salvation.  Salvation is conditional on Church membership. If you aren’t a member of the proper denomination, you can’t be saved. 

One group with such a belief is the Boston Church of Christ, also known as the International Churches of Christ. The leaders of the ICC teach that there should only be one church in any particular city, which they say is the New Testament model.

If you leave to attend another, you leave your salvation behind at the door.

Seventh, religions also tend to heap to themselves extra-Biblical authority.

The ex-cathedra teachings of the Roman Catholic Popes are given equal weight with Scriptures, and in the case of conflict, are considered superior.

The same principle applies to Catholic Church dogma. Catholics are taught that when dogma and the Scriptures conflict, Church teachings and tradition are to be given superior weight.  

According to Catholic dogma, there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church and one’s salvation within the Church is dependent on observing Church law on sacraments, mass attendance, holy days of obligation, etc. 

Finally, the eighth sign of Christianity being perverted into a religion is the offer of unique truths never before revealed.

The idea that a hidden mystery or new truth is available only through a particular church should be taken as a strong sign that this group is a counterfeit Christian religion.

God has very clearly shown His truth through the pages of the Bible. A new doctrine, new truth, or special word from God suggests that God left something out of Scripture.

For example, that very doctrine — that God left something out — is the foundation of Mormon teaching. The LDS teaches that God forgot to mention Jesus’ coming to the New World to preach to the “Indians” (who were really the “Lost Tribes of Israel.”) 

But Scripture says of itself that it is complete, so by its nature, if it is some ‘new’ doctrine or truth, it is contradictory with the revealed Word of God.  And things that are different CANNOT be the same. 

Salvation is not the product of religion — indeed, religion is an obstacle to salvation. Salvation comes by trusting in the Shed Blood of Christ as full payment for all sins. 

Conversely, religion offers salvation in exchange for putting your trust into that particular religious system.

Salvation is part of an direct and individual relationship with Christ. Religion offers salvation as part of a corporate system of conditions and works. 

That is not to say that Christians shouldn’t attend church — I don’t want to send the wrong message. It is important to meet regularly with like-minded believers and we are told in Scripture not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. 

But church is NOT religion. It is an expression of corporate worship by individual believers. The person who thinks membership with a church makes one a Christian is as deluded as a person who thinks standing in a parking lot makes one a car. 

The Bible teaches that all men are sinners, and all men require salvation to enjoy fellowship with God. (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23)

There is only one way to be saved during the Church Age, and that is by accepting the free gift of pardon procured at the Cross and offered freely to all men through Jesus Christ. (John 3:36, 5:24, 14:6)

That the gift of salvation is offered freely to all men is the expressed Will of God, as recorded in 2nd Peter 3:9.

It doesn’t matter how bad a sinner one is, Jesus offers salvation to even the worst sinners. Wrote the Apostle Paul,

“This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.” (1st Timothy 1:15-16)

Paraphrased into modern vernacular, Paul’s statement boils down to, “If Jesus saved me, He’ll save anybody!” All anyone need do is ask. 

Finally, the Bible assures us that once we are right with God, no religion or system has any claim to our eternal salvation. 

“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Religion offers bondage — Christianity offers freedom.  Even today, they aren’t that hard to tell apart. 

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on October 29, 2011

The Haters

The Haters
Vol: 23 Issue: 21 Tuesday, June 21, 2016

When I was a young man, the idea of Christian persecution seemed (to me)  more historical than actual — why would anybody want to persecute Christians?  That baffled me.

I knew about historical persecution in the days of the Roman Empire and I could kind of understand it, when I looked at it in historical context.  Christianity threatened to upset the balance of power within the Roman Empire.

It wasn’t because Christianity introduced a new god to the Roman pantheon. 

The Romans had tons of gods, most of whom they borrowed from the Greeks, who had plenty of gods to spare.  The Romans looked for common ground between their major gods and those of the Greeks, adapting Greek myths and iconography for Latin literature and Roman art.

So to the Romans, another god more or less didn’t make much difference either way.  As the Romans extended their dominance throughout the Mediterranean world, their policy in general was to absorb the deities and cults of other peoples rather than try to eradicate them.

By the height of the Empire, numerous international deities were cultivated at Rome and had been carried to even the most remote provinces, among them Cybele, Isis, Epona, and gods of solar monism such as Mithras and Sol Invictus, found as far north as Roman Britain.

Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate one god or one cult only, religious tolerance was not an issue in the sense that it is for competing monotheistic systems.

Ancient Rome considered itself highly religious and credited their rise to power to their relationship with their gods and goddesses.  Roman religion was based primarily on knowledge, prayer, ritual and sacrifice, rather than on faith or doctrine.

But the Christian religion wasn’t like the rest of the religions of Rome.  The Christian religion had no defined rituals.  Prayer was modeled after the “Lord’s Prayer” which eschewed ritual formality in favor of a simple acknowledgement of dependence upon the One True God for all things.

And THAT is where all the problems arose.  The whole, “One True God” thing.  If there was only One True God, then that meant that all the rest of them were false gods.

Jesus claimed He was the only God, and that “No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.”

It logically follows then, that the Roman polytheist was doomed, according to Christian theology.  The population in those days found that sort of doctrine threatening, even hateful.  In fact, that was the charge under which they were persecuted — they called it a hate crime.

How could this be?  The fact is, the claims of Christianity make it the enemy of every single other religious belief structure on earth.

Why?  Because, according to Jesus, any worship that denies Him is worship of the devil.

Assessment:

“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” (Matthew 10:34-36)

The United States Constitution’s First enumerated freedom under the Bill of Rights is freedom of religion.  That was another reason why as a young man, the idea of Christian persecution seemed so foreign to me. 

Christianity is not so named because in colonial America, it wasn’t necessary.  The default position was Christian –instituting protections for Christianity would be as unnecessary as setting forth the criteria for marriage as being between a male and female.

(Some things are just so obvious that they don’t need explaining.  Or so they thought 236 years ago.)

It wasn’t Christians whose worship needed protecting.  The Founders were more concerned with ensuring that all religions would be tolerated. 

And in so doing, they ensured that all religions in America would be tolerated.  All of them, except the one they never anticipated would ever need safeguarding.

Consequently, as we count down the last days to the return of Christ, the most dangerous label one could affix to a Christian would be that of “Christian fundamentalist.” 

First, let’s define a fundamentalist as one who stands firm on the fundamental doctrines of his faith.

By the turn of the 20th century, American theological conservatives had identified five basic Christian fundamentals which most of you will recognize from the OL’s basic statement of faith:

1. The Divine Authorship, inspiration and authority of Scripture.
2. The Virgin Birth of Christ.
3. The Atoning Work of the Cross.
4. The historical reality of Jesus Christ and His earthly ministry.
5. The historical reality of Jesus’ bodily resurrection and ascension.

If one holds to those five basic Christian truths, then one is a Christian fundamentalist and therefore, a “intolerant hater” that the Department of Homeland Security considers a threat to national security.  But only Christian fundamentalism is viewed by the federal government as a threat. 

To the world, Christian fundamentalists are the ones who advocate the rebuilding of Israel’s Temple in Jerusalem, oppose the creation of a terrorist state beside Israel, oppose the division of Jerusalem, and the destruction of our shared enemy.

They accept the testimony of the Bible as legal title for Israel’s possession of the Land of Promise and support Israel’s right to exist as an issue of doctrine as well as politics.  The world hates them for that.

The world views Christian fundamentalism as being responsible for all manner of hate crimes, not the least of which is its exclusivity.  The entire ecumenical movement is stalled in its tracks by Christian fundamentalism. 

On the other hand, if one adheres to the Five Pillars of Islam, one is a Muslim fundamentalist and, in America, automatically deserving of such respect that even non-Muslims revere Mohammed as “a Prophet” even if offering such recognition violates their own Five Fundamentals of Faith.

For example, in 2012 Tim Tebow sparked a HUGE backlash during last year’s Super Bowl when he starred in a pro-family ad sponsored by Focus on the Family.  The ad was about Tebow himself, and how his mother decided not to abort him when she was pregnant.

The ad set off howls of protests and demands for boycotts against the network amid demands that the ad be cancelled on the grounds there was no place for such controversial ads on public television.

Later that same year, Lowe’s decided to pull its ads from a reality show on TLC about Muslim-Americans due to complaints from Christian groups that the show was promoting Islam as a faith.  Once again, there was a reaction.  But not against the network for producing the program.

Against Lowe’s . . . for pulling its support.

Calling the retail giant’s decision “un-American” and “naked … bigotry,” Senator Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, told the Associated Press he was even considering legislative action if Lowe’s didn’t apologize to Muslims and reinstate the ads. 

In post-Christian, Laodicean America, when compared to the “threat” posed by Christian fundamentalism, even a form of fundamentalism that mandates the murder of innocents in the thousands, pales by comparison.

I began with the statement that when I was a young man, I could not imagine the circumstances under which Christians living in the world’s most Christian country could ever find themselves persecuted for their faith.

Of course, I could also never have imagined that a faith that offers salvation as a free gift extended to all mankind would be considered hateful whereas a religion that demanded murder-suicide as a condition of salvation would be celebrated.  Especially by those whose murder would satisfy those conditions.

But that is where we find ourselves — not over the course of centuries, but over the course of less than two decades.  When Bill Clinton and Al Gore addressed the DNC in 1992, they both quoted what they claimed was the Bible. 

The DNC rocked the US political establishment when it voted to remove any mention of God or Jerusalem from their platform.  When the DNC sought to quell the backlash by holding a voice vote to put God back in, He lost three times before the Democrats did what they do best.

They stole the election for Him.  Nobody quoted the Bible.

America was born out of the principles of Christianity that made her the greatest nation the world had ever seen.   America kept to the basic fundamental doctrines of Christianity for most of her existence and prospered like no nation in the history of the world.

Until, like the Romans before them, they came to worship the  creation more than the Creator, precisely as the Bible predicted would happen in the last days. 

”For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2nd Timothy 4:3-4)

Like the fable that says that Christian fundamentalism is dangerous and hateful, but Islamic fundamentalism is to be respected as a “religion of peace and love” in spite of the mountains of bodies that testify to the contrary. 

Ever notice that hardly anybody ever asks where America is in prophecy anymore?

The Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on November 24, 2012.

Featured Commentary: A Saint by any Other Name ~ Wendy Wippel

Blinded by the Light

Blinded by the Light
Vol: 23 Issue: 20 Monday, June 20, 2016

To the average Muslim or the average Jew, Christianity is a polytheistic religion.  Christians can explain that we worship only one God, but in three Persons, but that makes it about as clear as mud.  Jews worship YHWH, the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

If there is one verse of Scripture that defines Judaism, it would be the “shema”.  

Shema Yisra’el YHWH Eloheinu YHWH Eḥad – “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Muslims find the doctrine of the Trinity to be even more confusing than do the Jews. The Old Testament makes reference to the Son of God on any number of occasions, whereas the Koran’s references are all negative.

“Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and ye perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.” (Psalms 2:12)

“The Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, was no more than God’s apostle . . .God is but one God. GOD FORBID THAT HE SHOULD HAVE A SON!” (The Koran: 4:171)

“Those who say: “The Lord of Mercy has begotten a son, preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might crack . . .” (The Koran: 19:88)

”God forbid that He Himself should beget a son!” (The Koran 19:29)

Although the New Testament is all about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Redeemer of the World, King of King and Lord of Lords, there is but one verse in the New Testament that clearly outlines the doctrine of the Trinity — and it is suspect.

John Calvin wrote of the Trinity doctrine, “I would insist only on the direct words, unexplained, just as they lie in the text:

“There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: And these three are one.” (1 John 5:7 KJV)

“As they lie in the text. . . “ Calvin’s wording here raises another question:  Is the text itself genuine?

There are those that argue that 1st John 5:7 was added by some scribe or copyist later and that it was not among the earliest doctrines of the Church.

I’ve seen this debated many times over the years – the argument over the authenticity of the text baffles me.  If the text is not authentic, then what is it doing in the Bible?

If the answer is that it shouldn’t be in the Bible, then the next question should be, “who says and how do they know?”

The New International Version is translated from the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus manuscripts. The NIV version waters down the Trinity proof text this way:

“For there are three that testify: 8 the[a] Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.”

The verse in the NIV is footnoted. The footnote reads;

“Late manuscripts of the Vulgate testify in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth: the (not found in any Greek manuscript before the fourteenth century)”

That’s where one moves from the realm of doctrine into that of opinion. Nobody can say for certain if the text was a later insert.  If it was certain, then it wouldn’t be part of the Bible.  But there it is.

So for many scholars, it is a matter of opinion if it is supposed to be there.  

The word translated as “mystery” is musterion which means, “a Divine secret, not previously revealed.”

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a mystery.  So let me throw this out for your consideration.  The Bible does not require you to believe a ‘mystery’ as a condition of salvation. 

The Bible requires that we believe the facts as they are, not necessarily the Divine mechanics behind those facts as they may be revealed later.

Genesis records that God said, “Let there be light, and there was light.”  That is a fact and I believe it.

There is no mystery in the existence of light.  Only in how it sprang from nothing.  But I don’t need to know that in order to believe that God created light.

“And the Word was made flesh.” I believe this as a fact – my belief is not based in my understanding of the details of how, but in my faith in the factualness of that statement.

I believe the Bible’s statement that God is both Three and One.  I believe that Jesus Christ is the Second Person in the Godhead, and I also believe that God is One. 

HOW this can be is a matter of faith and not one of understanding.  That’s why it is a mystery.

But it is absolute absurdity to reject the facts which God has revealed because we don’t fully understand the mechanics of how it all works.

The ‘mystery’ does not lie in the fact itself, but rather in how that fact comes to be a fact.   Paul wrote,

“Behold, I shew you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.”  (1st Corinthians 15:51)

There are many Christians that don’t believe in the Rapture. They have a different opinion about what that verse means.  But their eternal destiny is not in jeopardy.

Nobody is saved by faith in the Rapture.  We are saved by our faith in the Promise of salvation by grace.

 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God . . . “ (Ephesians 2:8)

The mystery is not relevant to the facts.  As a Christian, you are not required to believe the mystery or even to understand it.  But you are required to believe the Scriptures.

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” (2nd Timothy 3:16) 

The objection that the text describing the Trinity was inserted into Scripture later by a copyist means, by definition, that 2nd Timothy 3:16 is ALSO unreliable.  Doesn’t it? 

If 1st John 5:7 was a later insert, meaning that 2nd Timothy 3:16 must be unreliable, what does that say about Ephesians 2:8? 

How does one know which verses to trust? There is a Latin phrase that deals with these kinds of Bible objections.

“Si erro, libenter erro; et me redargui valde recusem.”

It means, “If I err, I err willingly; and I vehemently refuse to be convinced of it.”

Assessment:

There is much that we know but can’t explain.  You are NOT your body.  You are a soul whohas a body. You don’t need to be a religious scholar – or even a Christian – to know that.  Consider a few examples:

• Aircraft routinely carry the bodies of deceased persons as cargo. Airlines therefore report the number of ‘souls’ on board an aircraft to differentiate with the number of bodies. 
• An injury to the body is felt by the soul.  An animal will flee from an injury and be done with it.  It takes an injured soul to plot revenge for an injury to the body. 
• On the other side of the equation, when the soul feels shame, the body blushes.  When the soul feels anger or fear, it is the body that trembles. 

You know it as fact.  The Bible only confirms that it is true, it doesn’t explain how it works.  Neither can you.  Nor should you necessarily have to know how it all works in order for it to be true.

It will be true whether you understand it or not.  That doesn’t mean that nobody should study.  Everybody should.  But it is a command with a purpose:

“Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2nd Timothy 2:15)

These are marching orders for those called to serve — not everybody who gets saved is called to lead others to Christ.  Some are called to the work of evangelism, others are not.

But all need to be saved.  Salvation does not come by scholarship.  Salvation does not come by understanding the mysteries of God as revealed.  One doesn’t need to have ever cracked a Bible in order to be saved.

The Bible says that “faith cometh by hearing . . . the Word of God.”    (I believe it safe to say that Heaven is full of people that never learned to read on earth.) 

John tells us that these Three are One in unity and testimony and also in essence.  1st Timothy tells us that ALL Scripture is Divinely inspired and useful for doctrine.  

Jesus Christ said that every hair on your head is numbered and that not a sparrow falls from the sky without God’s knowledge and permission.  

It then follows that God is equally capable of preserving His Word as He wants each of us to have it, according to His purpose.  That’s another no-brainer that is often overlooked in the quest for scholarship.

The Bible says that God has revealed Himself as one God in Three distinct Persons; the Pater, the Logos and the Hagios Pneuma.  But the Divine mechanics — exactly how God can be one God in three Persons — is not revealed by Scripture.

Where is the wisdom in rejecting what is revealed, based on that part which has not been revealed?

The doctrine of the Trinity is not nearly as difficult as it is made out to be.  Try this for an illustration.  Take three candles into a dark room and put one in each corner.  Light them and go stand facing the other corner.

From that perspective, facing into the corner, you can only see one light.  But you know that there are three candles.  You can’t see the three candles, but you know that they are there.

Do you know how the light from each candle behind you was diffused in order to create the single light illuminating your corner?

Now for the next question.  This is the big one.  Do you NEED to know how in order to be able to use the light to see?  

What if you were already standing in the corner in the dark when somebody else comes in and lights the candles?  Would it change anything about the light if he said there were three different candles in different corners and all different colors?

Would you have to inspect the three candles before you could use the light to see with?  Or is it enough to simply know how many candlepower the light is?  Do you see it?  The Light illuminates the doctrine.

Trying to create a doctrine away from the Light gets the equation exactly backwards. Turn around from your imaginary corner and stare directly at one of the candles for a minute.

Now turn back around and see if you can still see as well into the darkness of your corner as you could — before you blinded yourself by staring too hard into the Light.

It is incumbent upon us to learn all we can from the Word of God because the more we learn, the more we understand how little we know.  That is where wisdom begins. 

In knowing that God is God.  And that we are not.  

The Scriptures tell us; “him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations.”

It is easy for God to be a Trinity and still be One God because He is God. Everything is easy for God.

But it is impossible for us to fully understand it because we are not God.  God says it takes three Divine Candles to produce the Light that illuminates my dark corner.

Now that He’s defined that Light for me, I need only worry about using it to see what He is illuminating. 

There will be lots of time to learn about the Candles in detail when I get to Heaven.

This Letter was written by Jack Kinsella on April 4, 2012.

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