Laughing off catastophe

The devastating earthquake in Nepal caused me to remember this outtake on the non- impact of famous historic catastrophes from China evangelist R. Dawson Barlow’s book, “The Origin of the Races,” posted to my website after the horrific earthquake in Haiti. Here it is:

The last generations before the actual return of Christ to this earth will be characterized by godless masses of mockers who scoff at the preaching of His return.

Barlow writes, “In the days that precede the coming of Christ, it will be extremely ‘politically incorrect’ to proclaim His coming. (2 Peter 3:3 says, ‘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 . . .?’)

“What is the measuring stick, the criteria, and the basis for such scoffing and rejection of the preaching of Christ’s return? It will be based on an unshakable trust in a philosophy of evolution that rests on the assumption of uniformitarianism. Remember this is the view that believes in no sudden changes and no catastrophes.

“A casual examination of the prophetic scriptures reveals there will be worldwide global catastrophes happening in association with the return of Christ. This generation only believes in a slow, peaceful, uniform transformation occurring over vast amounts of time.

“Notice the inspired words of the Apostle Peter as he concludes the above thought. Those scoffers give their ‘reason’ for rejecting prophetic preaching and the catastrophes associated with the return of Christ. The following statement is a definition of uniformitarianism given 2,000 years ago:

‘ . . . For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation’ (or as our generation would say today, The Big Bang). (II Peter 3:4)

“History is replete with examples of local catastrophes. Those tragic events traced through human history have become the focus of many a study and geological research . . .

MOUNT ST. HELEN’S—I well remember when Mount St. Helen’s erupted back on May 18, 1980. Some scientists, who were considered ‘in the know,’ to all who lived around the endangered area, gave ample warnings. Because of those warnings many were safely evacuated from the area. Almost everyone listened to the warnings and they were not harmed. Nevertheless, there were some die-hards, one of which was a certain Mr. Harry Truman, owner of a nearby Inn. He appeared on the national evening news each night for about a week before the eruption and refused to budge! He had lived in the shadow of that mountain for many decades. Since nothing had ever happened to that volcano in his lifetime, he dogmatically surmised that nothing ever would. He was like a committed uniformitarian. There were no such things as catastrophes in his thinking. But the eruption came on Sunday, May 18, 1980. Tragically, Mr. Truman perished, along with some others of like mind! That eruption, we later read, spewed enough volcanic ash into the atmosphere, to equal a ton of debris for every human alive on the planet at that time!

NEVADA DEL RUIZ—A horrible tragedy happened in South America in 1985. Another long dormant volcano erupted and killed over 25,000 people. The place where the tragedy struck was called Nevada Del Ruiz, ‘The Valley of Sorrows.’ It was so named because of a similar tragedy that occurred several hundred years before! Yet, people built homes back in that very same valley, in spite of the sad remembrance memorialized in its name.

EL ESNAM—Another tragic catastrophe occurred in 1980, in the country of Algeria, on the northern coast of Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea. A huge earthquake completely destroyed the town of El Esnam, just a few miles southwest of the capital, Algiers. Thousands were killed and injured. It occurred in the same exact spot where another earthquake had occurred just 20 years earlier. Yet, a friend of mine who was there said the people still intended to build on the same spot if the government would allow them.

ATLANTIS—But how about the granddaddy of all the historical catastrophes (which are not mentioned in the Bible)? It is Plato who has left us a tale of woe of a certain people who were utterly destroyed by a catastrophe in less than two days. It was of such epic proportions that the masses of people of this past century and a half have had trouble digesting the thought it might have actually occurred, even though it was believed as historical until the 19^th century. Of course I speak of the famed civilization known as Atlantis. Note the very words of Plato:

‘But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.’ (‘Great Books of the Western World’)

“In his book, ‘Great Mysteries of History,’ (Dorset Press, New York 1987 Edition) Kenneth B. Platnick says,

‘In the two dialogues Timaeus and Critias Plato locates the empire ‘in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules (the Strait of Gibraltar).’ The entire area, which he describes as larger than all of Libya and Asia combined, is roughly the same as that we know now as the Middle East.’

"This account of Atlantis was thought, in many cultures, to be a true account of civilization that perished. But in the last 150 years it has fallen into almost total disfavor. This has been mainly because of the almost universal adoption of uniformitarianism, which does not allow for such catastrophic happenings. . .

“It seems that each new generation cannot adapt itself to the thought of sudden epic scale catastrophes, and certainly not the kind associated with those described in the Bible that are connected with the return of Christ! We are convinced that this is mostly due to the thorough indoctrination of uniformitarianism in our generation’s world-view.

“In other words, the philosophy which attempts to explain the universe, our world, yea, even ourselves, APART FROM A CREATOR, is the SAME PHILOSOPHY which gave ammunition to half a billion unbelievers living before the days of the Flood to laugh off the loving warnings of God. . . .

“There is a prime reason the warnings of the Flood seemed so preposterous to the antediluvians. Before the Flood there had never been a flood. Not only that, according to the biblical record before the Flood, it had never rained on the earth:

‘And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
[6] But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.’ (Gen. 2:5-6)

***** 

"That is the reason the New Testament says of Noah:

‘By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.’ (Hebrews 11:7)

“Noah was warned of ‘things not seen as yet.’ The thought of water coming down from the sky was totally foreign to every human up to that time of history. The ecosystem of the earth was SO totally different from what it is now. The earth was watered by a misting system that kept the entire globe in ‘greenhouse’ perfection.

“No rain! Just what kind of myth is this? It is no myth at all, just a factual account of the pre-Flood days. The reason many readers of the Bible have such a difficult time discerning exactly what these Scriptures are telling us is that most of us have failed to grasp the clear declaration by the Scriptures that the PRE-FLOOD earth was vastly different from the POST-FLOOD earth. This is the reason for Peter’s words in the following passage:

‘Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
[7] But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.’ (2 Peter 3: 6-7)

Being tripped up

One the things L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the religion of Scientology, is known for instilling in his followers is their ability to redefine words through associating different emotions and symbols with the word than were intended.

The cult founder once advised, "The way to redefine a word is to get the new definition repeated as often as possible . . .  This, so far as words are concerned, is the public opinion battle for belief in your definitions, and not those of the opposition. A consistent, repeated effort is the key to any success with this technique of propaganda."

In his 2004 book, The Origin of the Races, author R. Dawson Barlow writes,

“After many years of studying the Holy Scriptures, I remain categorically convinced that the most effective tool of the ‘god of this age,’ the ‘prince of the power of the air’ (i.e. Satan), has had at his disposal, is the allegorical approach to the Bible. It does not reveal truth. Sometimes the ‘scholars’ seem to be more interested in impressing other ‘scholars’ than in revealing the truth of the Word of God.

“The American Heritage Dictionary defines allegory as follows:

Allegory. 1.a. A literary, dramatic, or pictorial device in which characters and events stand for abstract ideas, principles, or forces, so that the literal sense has or suggests a parallel, deeper symbolic sense. B. A story, a picture, or play in which this device is used. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick are allegories. 2. A symbolic representation.

“. . .  Saint Augustine is popularly known as the ‘Father of the Allegorical Method’ of interpreting the Bible. I hate to burst bubbles, but Augustine is not the ‘darling’ of the early evangelicals as is commonly assumed. (Charles) Spurgeon, at the dedication of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, was far too kind when he said (and I quote here from memory), ‘The gospel preached in this place was not new. It was preached by Calvin and by Augustine.’

“. . . My study of church history leads me to believe the deadliest of all the ‘cancers’ infecting the professing, apostate church of Christendom today, is this ‘Allegorical Method’ of interpretation of the scriptures.” 

*****

We know from the Apostle Paul’s writings that as “the course of this world” continues to spiral out under the reign of sin, man’s ungodliness will not only continue to evolve, but will progressively worsen.

Rather than acknowledge any of this being the reality, though, man will simply profess evolving freedom of expression, human sophistry and exploration of human satisfaction, contentment and potential.

*****

Bible teacher Keith Blades, now deceased, warned that “if we fail to become suitably unimpressed with such things, they can become ‘strongholds of resistance’ to us, and we may not even recognize that this has happened.

“Hence, if we fail to condemn what we ought to condemn, we can actually put ourselves in the most difficult position of all when it comes to being able to figure out what’s wrong.

“In other words, we can put ourselves in the position of being ones who ‘oppose ourselves.’ And indeed ‘self-opposition’ is the most difficult form of opposition to detect, acknowledge, and overcome. For deliverance from it requires a degree of honesty of heart, (and hence honesty with oneself), that the position itself is quite averse to producing.

“Therefore, when we fail to become suitably unimpressed with what God our Father tells us that He discounts, denounces, or condemns, we ourselves can then become our own stumbling block, even our own worst enemy.

“For by having improper regard for something that God condemns, we actually carry around in our own minds the very means by which we can be tripped up, or sidetracked, or misled, or seduced, and thereby have the progress of our ‘godly edifying’ impeded.

“And, unfortunately, we also carry around in our minds built-in resistance to being able to honestly perceive and admit that we ourselves are actually hindering our own ‘godly edifying.’

“Wherefore, when we fail to become suitably unimpressed with something that our Father condemns, we actually can give it ‘a second lease on life,’ so to speak.

 

"What’s more, we also foolishly provide the opportunity for us to be deceived into becoming more impressed with it. Whereupon we open ourselves up to the double danger, and double disaster, of being deceived and of deceiving ourselves.”

One of these days

In the book, “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets,” first published right before 9/11 and a “word-of-mouth sensation on Wall Street,” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s relates how “many of things that happen to us—career success, or decisions that turn out well, or gains in the stock market—that we attribute to our own skill or hard work, are really a result of plain dumb luck.”

“Taleb says that “the kind of rare events that really change the world—be they wars or disasters, inventions or serendipitous discoveries, bubbles or crashes—are things we don’t see coming, and aren’t prepared for.”

*****

I think about how Noah spent 120 years building the ark, all the while warning the populace ridiculing him. There were millions of people on earth prior to the Flood and they simply went about eating, drinking, marrying, giving in marriage, etc., not paying any heed to Noah’s warning.

When Jesus Christ says, “They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all,” He’s saying they were just going about life. They were just going about the ordinary vocations of life, wrapped up in what they were doing, and not paying any attention.

A lot of people aren’t aware of this, but the pre-Flood society was a tremendously advanced one, both technologically and culturally.

“One of the things you know in a culture is, if you’re able to support musicians to entertain you, well, then that's leisure time, and you’ll find mention of the arts and all that back in Genesis 4,” says Jordan. “They had a tremendously advanced culture. They didn’t have some of the technologies that we have evidently, but you get to thinking, anybody who can build the pyramids and do a lot of the things they did back then, they understood geometry, architectural issues, suspension and so forth. They didn't use electricity or the combustible engine to power things as we do, but they had a lot of other things. They had a tremendously advanced technological era.”

*****

As Oklahoma radio and TV preacher Les Feldick explains about the literal explosion of knowledge and technology before the Flood, “You go back to secular history and the evolutionists, and they maintain that the human race didn’t know anything of metals until way, way, down the line, (but) here we are at the very dawn of human history and, according to Biblical account, they were already mining the ore so that they could put brass together, and their iron, and now we see they’re manufacturing with it. They are beginning to produce things made with these metals.

What needs to be remembered, says Feldick, is that Adam, created as a perfect human being and living past 900 years of age, had to have produced some incredibly brilliant children.

“Adam had a mind that would probably blow ours, and his children were not that much below him,” says Feldick. “And on top of that tremendous intelligence, look at all the years they had to use it. What if Einstein, who died if I can remember correctly at the age of 90 or 91, could have lived to the age of 900? Can you imagine what that mind would have produced? Or an Edison, or any of these great men who have been responsible for so much of our technology, what if they could have lived ten times longer than they did?

“Can you see what would have happened? And that’s what you’ve got here before the Flood. You’ve got people with tremendous intelligence, but they had 900 years of time to use it.

“But always remember, where were most of the people spiritually? Out there in utter darkness. Without God it’s a Satanic-inspired civilization…Remember that Satan will promote anything, even a beautiful city park, or work of art. Satan will promote anything as long as it will keep men’s eyes and hearts from God, so never forget that.”

THE Tale of Two Cities

In the coming tribulation period, when the Antichrist deceives the whole world into believing he’s God and Jesus Christ is the devil, the rebuilt city of Babylon (inside present-day Iraq) will once again be a mighty world power, i.e., a great commercial, political, banking and religious center in the world.

Satan, as the Assyrian Antichrist, will make Babylon the capital of his kingdom just as God chooses for Himself Jerusalem, meaning the whole of the “end-times” skirmish for Planet Earth will revolve around these two cities!

*****

The land of the ancient city of Babylon is site of the modern city of Hilla, Iraq, which is 40-50 miles south of Baghdad and on the Euphrates River. Its name was changed back around the 10^th century.

The reality is there is both a “mystery Babylon” and a literal city of Babylon in the Bible. References to the literal city can be found, in part, in Revelation 14:8, Revelation 16:19 and Revelation 18.

In Isaiah 47:5, Babylon is called “the lady of kingdoms,” and she’s the mother of harlots who goes out and prostitutes all of the cities of the earth. But that doesn’t eliminate the literal Babylon, which will actually be the headquarters for mystery Babylon, the religious system, in the “last days.”

While theologians continue to refer to Rome and/or the European Common Market as playing into “last days” prophecy, the ten nations through whom the Antichrist gains his ascendancy are in Palestine. They’re in the Mediterranean, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Persia, and that part of the world, not in Europe. There are no Europeans at all!

These so-called prophecy scholars get the idea Babylon will never be rebuilt from Isaiah 1:-9, which reads, “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.”

But as we know from history, ancient Babylon wasn’t destroyed suddenly, it just sort of wasted away and fell into oblivion and disrepair.

The Bible says in three different places (Jeremiah 49:18 and Jeremiah 50:40 are the other two verses) that when God overthrows Babylon, it will be like when He overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. Obviously this predicted overthrow hasn’t yet been fulfilled.

The final overthrow of Babylon is repeatedly synchronized in prophetic Scripture with the restoration of the nation Israel by God into her kingdom. In Jeremiah 50, for example, the description of Babylon’s future destruction is connected with the fact God’s going to bring Jerusalem back and establish it as His city. As God destroys Babylon, He Himself comes to reside in Jerusalem.

*****

To know just what kind of dominant world power Babylon will become, many insights can be found in Revelation 18. Verse 3 says, “The merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” Verse 9 says the kings of the earth have “lived deliciously with her.”

“And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more,” reads the chapter starting in verse 11. “The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,

“And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.

“And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.

“The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing,

“And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!

“For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,

“And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city!

“And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.”

Obviously, Babylon’s going to have concourse with the kings of the world and be a mega-political power and commercial center that pumps wealth into the earth.

As Jordan summarizes, “The first worldwide apostasy (Gen.10) started from there, and the last one centers up there. You name it, they got it. They’ve got everything from gold to the souls of men.”

******

On April 22, 2006, exactly nine years ago today, the front page of the New York Times carried a disturbing photo of a 21-year-old Islamic Jihad suicide bomber who killed nine people the day before at a falafel restaurant in Tel Aviv. Next to it was a story about rebuilding modern-day Babylon to rival its former power and splendor.

“One day millions of people will visit Babylon,” assured Donny George, head of Iraq’s board of antiquities, in the Times story. “I’m just not sure anybody knows when.”

An official with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which was said to be currently “pumping millions of dollars into protecting and restoring Babylon,” predicted in the article that “cultural tourism could become Iraq’s second biggest industry, after oil.”

*****

As the Times informed, both United Nations officials and Iraqi leaders were “working assiduously to restore Babylon, home of the Seven Wonders of the World, and turn it into a cultural center and possibly even an Iraqi theme park.”

“Factories are churning, Iraqi security forces are patrolling and the streets pulsate with life—children bounding to school, crowds wading into markets, taxis gliding by,” reported the Times. “Emad lafta al-Bayati, Hilla’s mayor, has big plans for Babylon. ‘I want restaurants, gift shops, long parking lots,’ he said. God willing, he added, maybe even a Holiday Inn.”

*****

Jordan says preachers and others will look at Paul’s warnings about the “last days” and say the events we’re seeing in the Middle East today represent “shadows” of end-times prophetic events.

“The little caveat preachers like to use is, ‘Well, maybe it’s a shadow,’ and maybe it is—I don’t know,’ ” says Jordan. “I do know that Jerusalem has to be in the land of Palestine before the Antichrist can ‘rescue’ them. I know they have to have a temple in order for it to be destroyed, so that isn’t there yet. That still has to be rebuilt.”

*****

Specifically, Paul warns in II Tim. 2: 3-9 “that in the last days perilous times shall come.
[2] For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
[3] Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
[4] Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
[5] Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
[6] For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts,
[7] Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
[8] Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.
[9] But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.”

Jordan says of this passage, “Notice there’s not a thing in that list that couldn’t fit today. You say, ‘Does that means it’s the last days?’ Yep, sure does. You look down through that list and there are general moral and spiritual conditions of declension that are true in any age.

“You know why it is that way? These are general trends, because at any time the Lord could come and take away the Body of Christ. It’s a mystery age and the conclusion of it is a mystery too.

“So when you look around and think, ‘Boy, things are so bad the Lord’s just gotta come,’ that’s what you’re supposed to think! You’re not supposed to look around and say, ‘Man, things are so good, the Lord could leave us here for another 5,000 years anyway!’ You’re supposed to be conscious of the imminence of His coming at any moment.”

(new article tomorrow)

Where to begin . . .

In my estimation, the single biggest thing that ever happened to me was having a total stranger introduce me to my church when I was 26 years old (in 1991) and a new arrival to Chicago.

I had been volunteering on the board of directors for the Christian organization "Inner City Youth Express," helping impoverished children on the near West side of Chicago.

Someone I met at a neighborhood picnic put on by another board member convinced me to go with him to a Wednesday night Bible study held at this little tiny church on the very edge of Chicago (near Harlem Avenue and Irving Park Road).

Little did I know that not only was the preacher of this seemingly remote ministry outlet a world authority on the Bible with his own international school (Grace School of the Bible), but that the church’s original leader, J.C. O’Hair, when it was located in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood (Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road) and called North Shore Church, was one of America’s great fundamentalist preachers in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

*****

The second biggest thing that ever happened to me, if you ask me, was in 1969 when I was not even six years old and my dad very suddenly decided to close his booming private medical practice and sell our family home in the old Fairlawn Heights neighborhood of Akron, Ohio, to become a missionary doctor on the edge of the Amazon jungles in Ecuador.

Little did I know that this grassroots missionary outfit, made up of only five other missionary families at the time, was famous throughout the world for the savage murders of five American Christian missionary men who were speared to death by an indigenous Indian tribe they were trying to befriend and bring to Christ (1956). The mainstream movie, Edge of the Spear, recounting the legendary story, was released in 2005.

*****

At the Soldier’s Training Conference a year ago this weekend, sponsored by my church, I sat down at breakfast with a woman I’ve known since I first started attending Shorewood. I informed her that I had moved back home temporarily to Akron, Ohio to help my mom through a difficult time. I said, “I think about you because I know how you went home to Napoleon (Ohio) for a period to care for your ailing parents.”

She briefly told me about her experience, stressing how being reunited with so many different people she grew up with made the situation actually a wonderful time for her.

I told her I was having somewhat of the opposite experience because I didn’t have any people I knew from my youth to do anything with. Part of the problem, I explained, was that when I was not even six years old, my dad decided to became a missionary doctor in Ecuador, taking the whole family along.

“Where in Ecuador?” she responded. When I answered, “A tiny town on the edge of the Amazon Jungles called Shell-Mera,” she exclaimed, “You were in Shell?! That’s Jim Elliot’s outfit!”

She then told me how, as a college student at Wheaton College in the ‘60s, she was deeply impacted by the story of the four missionaries. Pilot Jim Elliot, as well as slain pilot Nate Saint, were, in fact, Wheaton graduates. She recalled how, as someone who had just finished studying Swahili at Milwaukee Bible College and intended to teach native children in the Congo upon graduation from Wheaton, reading the best-selling book by Elliot’s wife, Elizabeth, when it first came out gave her profound personal inspiration.

Listening to her go on so excitedly, I thought to myself, “Wow! I didn’t realize people every remembered this story!” Then I had to admit to her that no one in my family barely ever mentioned our Ecuador experience and I never even understood until watching the movie what exactly it was all about. The thing is, my parents never talked much at all about what we did during our almost two years in Shell.

*****    

One Sunday morning recently I was listening to Jordan’s radio show (“Riches of Grace,” WYLL 1160 AM at 8:30 a.m. and 1 p.m.) and he mentioned off-hand in a study on “the fallacy of modern-day prayer theology” how, “Preachers and missionaries, you see, they’ve got to have their ‘story.’ If you go sell Amway or some product like that, multi-level marketing, they tell you to develop your story because, as they say, ‘Nobody can argue with your story.’

“And preachers all have to have their story; their special thing God did for them and you sit there and think, ‘Oh, if I was just as holy and wonderful as them, God might do that for me.’ When they tell you those stories, it’s to tell you, ‘Well, God blesses me; too bad he didn’t do it for you. If you were like me He would.’ ”

*****

The hard, cold reality of my dad’s missionary “story,” is he NEVER told it!!! It was something he never passed down to his children and, even though I was there to actually live it with him, I’ve had to play catch-up in my adult years to get any details about why we went there, what happened while we were there and why did we all pack up and leave so suddenly—no explanation given.

As I write this, I admit I am scared to go on. This “story” is not a pretty one and my mom has been very reluctant to tell me anything about it, even saying, “You’re not going to write about any of this are you?!”

(To be continued . . . )   

Where tyranny comes from

Many historians now believe that in gauging the historical accuracy of a given concept, people should first ask themselves a far deeper question: “How historically accurate is history itself?”

For the past 50 years now, our government-run education system has been co-opted away from the didactic fact-based system of thought, based in logic and absolute truth, to a dialectic, feeling-based system based in change and uncertainty.

The result is the only absolute truth anyone is supposed to hold is that there is no absolute truth and citizens are to determine everybody’s ideas and systems are as good as anybody else’s and re-write history.

The U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are no longer great liberating documents even though only the British Magna Carta stands as a peer in the last 2,000 years as an embodiment of freedom and liberty and the thinking that produces that.

*****

As Jordan points out, the government-controlled education system began to be subverted back at the turn of the 20^th Century when John Dewey “had the genius of wanting to do away with the Christian foundation of our culture, and substitute it with a dialectal materialism, known as Marxism.

“And he understood that the way to do it was not to go out and have an assault and egg the president. He understood that what you had to do was take a long-range view.

“Sociologically, it takes four generations to change a culture into something or away from something, and he understood that in order to do that you needed to educate the teachers who teach the teachers who teach the teachers.

"Don’t teach the teachers or the students, teach the teachers that teach…Go capture the universities who teach and now you’ve got a download system.

"The result is kids in high school today are taught  that the very institutions our country is founded on were put in place by “just a bunch of rich white men who wrote those institutions just to perpetuate their monopoly." Just a bunch of old, selfish, rich white guys that did that. And the kids aren’t given the concepts and the ideas our culture was founded on.

*****

Here’s a great sermon out-take on all this from Jordan:

You can’t even go to the culture today and say marriage is “one man, one woman for a lifetime.” Families can’t be identified as “mom and dad.” You say, “Where did that come from?” It came from taking away the foundation upon which those kinds of understandings are based, and replacing it with a dialectic sort of reasoning that’s based on feeling and no absolute truth:

“Who are you to absolutely say that’s what a family and marriage is because I feel loved and if the person I feel loved by happens to be the same sex, who are you to say that’s not right?”

So it sounds more and more like the Edge of Night and As the World Turns and the Young and the Restless. That philosophy that used to have to be relegated to a TV soap opera is now the governing philosophy of the educational institution of our country and that makes a difference. There’s no absolute truth. It’s just whatever’s right for you.

Now when you do that, you do what Israel did: “Every man does that which is right in his own eyes.” (Judges 17:6)

So when you get that kind of widespread skepticism about everything, where, “We don’t know what to believe because there's no absolute truth,” you naturally get chaos.

*****

In a Christian culture, people are going to be self-governed and self-restrained, for the most part, because they know God’s looking. They know there’s a right and a wrong and that “it’s appointed unto a man once to die but after that the judgment.” (Heb. 9:27)

You know there’s an accounting. There’s some absolute truth. There’s a god and there’s accountability. There’s justice.

But when every man does that which is right in his own eyes, what kind of eyes do people have? Your heart is desperately wicked. You’re going to wind up in sin and you know what sin does? “Righteousness exalts a nation and sin is a reproach to any people.” (Proverbs 14:34)

Sin produces corruption. Things fall apart. That’s called chaos and when you get chaos in a culture, that can only go so far.

When you don’t have character in people to restrain the chaos, somebody’s going to restrain it. I’ve said for years the problems are in the cities and the solutions to the problems are going to be in the cities. According to the last census,  54 percent of the population of our country resides in 50 major metropolitan centers in America.

*****

The problems aren’t going to be resolved without truth being spoken to people, and what little presence there is for the church the Body of Christ, it’s such a weak, ineffectual ‘Praise Jesus, Hallelujah!’ kind of thing that isn’t based on the Scripture and doesn’t have any answers for these kinds of things and can’t contend with them intellectually.

They think they can stand out there on the street corner and pray and ask God to throw demons out and He’s going to fix the neighborhood. I’ve read Mark 5, and I know what Mark 5 says, but Mark 5 isn’t what God’s doing today.

That’s why the church today is totally irrelevant in solving those things. So where do people go for answers? They go to themselves. Human viewpoint. Where does that get them? More chaos, and when you’ve got to get rid of chaos, there’s always somebody going to come in with a gun and a government, and people will say, “I’ll take it because I can’t live with the chaos.”

And that’s where tyranny comes from.  Now that’s the way the cycle of history’s always been. But in the midst of that widespread skepticism, and that enormous spiritual confusion, there’s always a real deep spiritual hunger and that’s really what will drive the interest in a book, say, like “The Da Vinci Code.” It’s because people are looking for answers.

To all the philosophy majors out there . . .

In my last salaried job as a manager for a Chicago non-profit organization, I dealt with college students on a regular basis, both working beside them in a variety of capacities and recruiting them through non-stop hiring searches. I was always floored by how many of them stated they were majoring in philosophy.

Media reports about the continued dramatic increase in enrollment to philosophy programs at major universities seem to point to at least one common denominator—the students “experience a kind of intellectual ecstasy.”

*****

The 19^th century English poet Matthew Arnold once wrote, “What is the course of the life of mortal men on the earth? Most men eddy about here and there—eat and drink, chatter and love and hate, gather and squander, are raised aloft, are hurled in the dust, striving blindly, achieving nothing; and then they die.”

What he’s saying is exactly what King Solomon says in the first two verses of Proverbs 18: 1] Through desire a man, having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom.
[2] A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.

Jordan explains, “You need to understand that the loving of human viewpoint won’t get you an education that’s of any value, and when you go off to the university, and to the studying of human viewpoint, this passage in Proverbs is one you need to consider because right here is the explanation for what goes on in the education systems of the world.

“Notice how it says ‘through desire’; an inner desire. You got something you want to do. Your heart wants to get something.

*****

“I talked to a young man recently who had switched his (college) major to philosophy and wanted to have a discussion with me about (French philosopher) Descartes. Well, you know, there’s probably nobody any more worthless than Descartes, unless it’s Spinoza, but he was really caught up with it all.

“The last time I’d seen this young man not quite a year before, he wanted to talk about some verses in the Bible. Now, he still believes his Bible, he says, and I’ll take his word for it, but what he’s filling his mind with is this human viewpoint.

“And I asked him, ‘What would cause you to change from this major over there, that was going to allow you to gain a skill, and get a job, and make some money in life, to a major like this when the Bible says beware of that major?’

“He said, ‘Well, I never thought of it quite that way.’ Of course, his problem is he’s already three years into school and fixing to go to graduate school, and you don’t pay $80,000 a year for an education and then say it’s of no value.

*****

“Solomon writes, ‘Through desire, a man having separated himself.’ When you separate yourself away, and you seek and intermeddle with all wisdom, there’s a word that comes out of that and it’s the word elitism. Another word is egalitarianism.

“That’s a way of saying everybody’s equal. That sounds good because, frankly, that’s a good attitude to have except for the fact it just isn’t true. You know that everybody doesn’t have the same faculties in life about different things. We’re not all equal.

“But what egalitarianism is isn’t so much about the individual—I mean, we’re all equally human, we’re all equal that way and in Christ we’re certainly all equal; nobody blessed more than the other—but what egalitarianism is talking about is more political and it means one culture is not better than another.

“And when you hear people talk about multiculturalism and our pluralistic society those are buzz words designed to say that the Bible is irrelevant; that God is irrelevant; that all truth is relative and one person’s philosophy, and one culture’s ideas, is just as good as another. And there’s no basis to decide that one thinking process is better than the other if there’s no God and no absolute, identifiable truth. Well, that’s the thinking process here.

“The thinking is, ‘No God, we’re going to decide for ourselves what we think is good.’ Well, the problem with that is there are people trying to blow us up today. Terrorists and Islamo-fascists. They think they’re right.

*****

 

“There’s a billion of those people on Planet Earth who think the way you and I think as Americans—or the way we think as Christians—is all wrong. And if deciding which is right is based on some societal decision, which is the only thing left when you don’t have absolute truth, is to say we as a culture, or we as a group, can come to a decision about what we think is good or bad.

“Then they decide some things are good that we think are decidedly bad and there’s no way to argue that out if all cultures are just as good and every process is just as equally valid. You see, the whole problem is they don’t glorify Him as God—they throw Him off the table.

“When the Word of God is irrelevant, what are you left with? You’re left with trying to figure out what you want to do. ‘Through desire a man having separated himself’ goes over here and intermeddles with all wisdom.

“He goes around and he’s seeking and intermeddling; going in and working with, studying, figuring out, interchanging with wisdom. ‘A fool hath no delight in understanding.’ Solomon’s telling you the guy in (Proverbs 18:1) is a fool.

“But, what’s the guy in verse 1 really want to do? ‘That his heart may discover itself.’ You see the real desire in verse 1? A man through desire goes out and intermeddles with all this wisdom. Why? Because his heart wants to have its own way.

"But what does a fool say in his heart? Psalm 14 says, ‘The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.’ You see, the problem in Proverbs 18 is not intellectual honesty; the problem is moral corruption. The problem is the guy studies for just one thing: his heart to develop an alibi to do what he wants to do. Do you see that? Now, that’s God’s evaluation of what’s going on there.

“Psalm 14:1 says ‘The fool hath said,’ and underline these next words—‘in his heart.’ Way before it comes out of his mouth—and it may never actually come out of his mouth this way but his heart attitude is, ‘There is no God.’ The problem is he’s corrupt; the problem is a sin problem.

“Psalm 10:4 says, ‘The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God.’ Verse 6 goes on to say, ‘He hath said in his heart, I shall not be moved: for I shall never be in adversity.’

“In his heart he’s saying, ‘Hey, nobody’s ever going to get after me. I can make it.’ In verse 11, it says, ‘He hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten: he hideth his face; he will never see it.’

“What he’s saying is, ‘I’m gonna get away with it. God isn’t lookin!’ and that’s his heart’s attitude. You see this guy’s got a heart problem, not an intellectual problem? It’s a heart problem. It’s, ‘Get rid of God and I don’t have to give account. Get rid of God, I can get away with it. Get rid of God, I can do what I want to do my way.’ That’s his heart and that’s who Paul’s talking about when he says, ‘Professing themselves to be wise they became fools.’

“The alibi to live the way you want to live is to convince yourself God isn’t real and that’s the whole issue here with philosophy—the whole push behind it.”

(new article tomorrow)

Getting on with it

I always remember this interview Oprah once had with a woman who was held hostage in Columbia for six-plus years. The lasting message she said she took away from the horrific ordeal was, “Whoever the person you ultimately want to be, that one you always dream about one day becoming, just be that person right now. You don’t have to wait.”

******

Here’s a great passage from an old study of Jordan’s: “What I represent, what I do, all of it is to come from orders from home. And I’m just a little colony of home down here. Can you imagine that? Look around you this morning; we’re an outpost of heaven.

“You send dudes up into space and put them in the spaceship up there, whatever you see in the movies. Well, we’re just that from heaven. God reached out in the world and took a bunch of old dirt bags like us, made of dust, put a little spit in it, molded a man and then He put His life in you and made you part of heaven. That’s who we really are.

“Our conversation . . . our sense of our identity is in heaven. It’s that nobler affinity, that grander purpose, that protection and security that comes from really knowing who you are.

“You know why I can press toward the mark for the prize? It’s because I really know what’s going on. I really know what I’m a part of. He didn’t just save me to keep me out of hell. He saved me to make me a citizen and a part of the commonwealth of His kingdom. And He didn’t just give me a citizen card to put my little nametag on that says, ‘Oh, I’m in!’ He said, ‘You know, I want to associate you with a lifestyle that I’ve established. And I want to demonstrate that in your life.’

“It isn’t just that we’re representing heaven but I’m also looking for this thing to get completed. Aren’t you glad of that? ‘From whence also we look for the Savior.’ When He says we’re looking for Christ the Savior we’re looking for Him. I’m not looking for the undertaker, I’m not looking to get rich, I’m not looking for an overthrow of the government, I’m not looking for the cure of AIDS, I’m looking for Christ. He’s the hope.

“When Paul says, ‘We look,’ we have that earnest expectation; that eager anticipation for Him to appear. Now that’s a dispensational issue as well as a practical issue.

“One of the hard things to do when you teach people is to help folks move out of the sentimental-based thinking into good hard doctrinal reality that gives substance to their hope. Their hope will then give the sentimental attachment.

“People say, ‘Why don’t I just start with the sentimental attachment and forget how I got there?’ Because as soon as the wind blows you get off that sentimental attachment. If it’s all based in your sentiment, when the wind blows the other way your sentiment turns around and you’re mad sentimentally in your emotions. You know that.

“You’ve talked to somebody and one moment you’ve loved them and the next minute you’ve hated them. You went out and bought that new car and you couldn’t do without that thing; you had to have it! That shiny, little red job with all the gadgets. You couldn’t stand to be deprived of having that thing.

“Some of you found some person you thought you had to have as a spouse. Couldn’t live without them. Six months later it’s, ‘Can’t live with ’em!’ You go buy that car and sign up for 60 months of payments and before five years is up you’re gonna hate that car so bad you’ll want to take a sledgehammer to it and then you’re still gonna have 14 months of payments to make.

“Your emotions can change like that. You need your hope built on something that doesn’t change. That’s why you don’t base it on your experience and your sentiment; you base it on some hard, cold facts of Bible doctrine that then will produce . . . you see if you’ve got the facts and you place your faith in the facts, that faith in the facts of God’s Word will bear fruit and the fruit will produce some feeling.

“But the feelings are like the tip end of the tail on the dog. They come last! My daddy used to say that he liked everything on the pig including the part that jumps over the fence last. That’s where feelings are! Get the whole pig over the fence and the feelings will get there. And if they don’t, you know what; you’re not going to worry about it because the pig’s over the fence.”

(new article tomorrow)

Mister 13's incarnations

From Samuel 17, we know David, as a young lad, didn’t just kill the giant Goliath; he killed a bear and a lion.

Jordan explains, “He said, ‘I killed a lion and I killed a bear; now I’ve killed me a giant.’ David’s still learning. When I read those verses my mind runs immediately to Daniel 2 and 7, and Hosea 13 and Revelation 13, and all those things associated with the Antichrist and the ultimate manifestation of the satanic policy of evil.”

*****

In Job 38, God starts listing off for Job just some of the animals Job can’t control. Man was designed to have dominion over every creature in the earth and so God, in order to demonstrate things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be, starts asking Job, “Can you control the lion? How about the raven?”

There’s also the wild goats, calves, wild asses, unicorns, hawks, eagles, on and on. If you count down from chapter 38:39 all the way down to Job 40:15, the behemoth is the 13^th animal listed in this passage.

Jordan explains, “He’s Mister 13. It’s the number of rebellion. This is not a good guy here. By the way, you can read about him in Revelation 13.

“The word behemoth is a Hebrew word. It’s not translated; it’s just transliterated into the English language. The word is literally the plural form for the Hebrew word ‘beast.’

 

"Well, that’s not hard to understand because, in Revelation 13:1-2, when it describes the Antichrist, it says he has the body of a leopard, the mouth of a lion and the feet of a bear. The Antichrist is a composite beast. He’s identified that way in Hosea 13, for example."

*****

The first mention of "leviathan" is in Job 41:1. He’s later identified in Isaiah 27 as Satan. “So what you’re dealing with here is the Antichrist and the power behind him— Satan,” says Jordan. “The reason God is doing that with Job is because, if you start in 40: 6-14, in essence, what the Lord says to Job is, ‘Here’s what it’s going to take for you to deliver yourself out of satanic captivity.’

“God says, ‘Let’s look at your adversary,’ and Job looks at the behemoth, then looks at leviathan. They’re the real enemy that held Job in satanic captivity and the captivity is not going to be over with until these two characters are dealt with in the last days.

“Everything in Job 40 has tremendously significant things to it. If the ‘behemoth eateth grass as an ox,’ you have two horns like that.

“That serpent that stood there in front of Eve was not a legless little scaled snake hanging on the ground. The serpent was a beautiful, handsome, adorned angel of light whose character was that of a serpent.

“Satan was ‘more subtle than any beast in the field’ because in his essence he’s a cherub and a cherub in Ezekiel 1 is identified as the ox.

 

"So, when it says ‘he eats grass as an ox,’ it’s something about the essence of who he is. It says, ‘Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly.
[17] He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together.
[18] His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron.’

“By the way, his belly (Rev. 3)—he’s got the body of a leopard. His bones are like bars of iron. Genesis 4, in describing the course of this world under satanic dominion, is where the iron first shows up in Bible. Iron was an invention for use as part of the course of this world.

*****

Deuteronomy 3:11 says, “For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.”

“Where’d the giants come from?” says Jordan. “Genesis 6. Angels mingled with the seed of man. That’s what we read there in Daniel 2. It’s pointing you back to Genesis 6 as to the origin of these 10 kings.

“The guy’s got a bed that’s 12-feet-by-6-feet. He’s a big dude because he’s one of the giants. But he’s one of those remnant of those giants that came from the ‘sons of God’ coming down and cohabitating with ‘the daughters of men.’

“In Deuteronomy 4:10 you’ll see the reference is to ‘the iron furnace even out of Egypt.’ Egypt is where Israel was held in satanic captivity.

 

"My point is iron in the Bible is associated with satanic activity, and in Daniel 2 when he talks about how ‘they mingle themselves with the seed of man,’ there’s an issue there about demons and man and producing a seed and these demons coming in and taking on to themselves a human identity.

“Now, if you take on yourself a human identity as in Genesis 6, then you go to Revelation 17 and these demonic creatures—these fallen spirits who’ve taken on a human vessel of identity . . . when it says ‘they will eat the flesh of the woman,’ the woman is guilty of the blood of the servants of Jesus.”