Absolute truth humanity won't yield to

Here’s an outtake from this morning’s sermon at my church about how “Truth is a Person”:

The world is at odds with the idea that Jesus is truth—you know, an uncomfortable, inconvenient truth. That’s the problem with humanity, says Alex Kurz.

You know what our culture does: “Your truth, my truth.” Kind of the mentality that Pilate had: “Well, who are you to impose your quote ‘truth’?" There’s no absolute truth; truth is relative.

You hear all sorts of nonsense like that and so the resistance is a far deeper spiritual antagonism against truth. That’s why culture relegates truth to this subjective, “Truth is based on what I feel; truth is based on what I experience.”

They scoff, they reject the idea that there can be absolute truth because they reject that Jesus IS the truth.

You see, God is the one who defines truth. God is the one who defines reality and what is man’s problem?

Romans 1:18: [18] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;

They hold it; they suppress it. Notice verse 25: [25] Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

The truth has to do with the identification of the one true God in the universe and man in his hard, alienated, dark, ignorant, blind heart—they reject the very idea that there can be an authoritative, absolute truth because they reject there is a God.

Listen, truth isn’t just a set of ideas. Truth isn’t just a system of principles or a system of concepts. Truth is about a Savior who needs to be received.

John 18: [37] Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

Look at this pagan, godless response: [38] Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out again unto the Jews, and saith unto them, I find in him no fault at all.

He’s standing right in front of you. You see what just happened? Pilate didn’t need more articulate, philosophical engagement. He needed submission. He needed to recognize, “You are ALL that you claim to be. You are the proof.”

This is a snapshot of the mentality of the world where they’re going around with their hands over their eyes: “Where’s truth? I can’t see it.” Truth is standing in front of Pilate and he makes such a foolish, ignorant statement.

That’s the problem with humanity; they don’t want to yield, they don’t want to bend. They don’t want to receive the truth that, “Truth is a Person.”

*****

Here’s an old study by Richard Jordan:

"When you have paganism, the symbol of it is the circle. The band Travis had a hit song some time ago that said, ‘There’s no wrong, there’s no right. The circle only has one side.’ That’s it; it’s a circle. In the movie Lion King, there was that circle of light and everything’s in it.

“Now, understand the new culture is very spiritual. It’s very into the supernatural. It’s very into the superstitious. That’s why everywhere you look you see vampires and zombies and avatars. The Barnes & Noble by the Woodfield Mall has a ‘Teenage Paranormal’ section as long as that wall to the door.

“I was raised in the Phil Donohue age where everything was naturalistic and there was no supernatural, miraculous intervention by God at all. Einstein said, ‘Well, I believe in a God but not one that intervenes into history.’

"All the philosophy then was about God being an ‘absentee landlord,’ as Al Pacino called him. That was the idea. 'If there’s a God, that’s okay; He just doesn’t get involved.’

“Naturalism says the world just works on the laws of nature like a washing machine. It just works because it works. That’s the way it is.

"Before you had to spend your time defending there’s a resurrection or a virgin birth or that there could be miracles. Now you don’t have to convince young people there’s a resurrection. What you have to convince them of is there’s only one! Because they believe in all kind of resurrections; all kind of life after death. UFOs, zombies. What is a zombie? It’s life after death! What are vampires? That’s animal and man put together in one creation.

“There’s no distinction; it’s gone. There’s a thinking and a social impact of that. Oprah made it chic to be spiritual. She said over and over, ‘It’s okay to get in touch with your spiritual side; just don’t use the Bible.’ Why? Because the Bible says there are two buckets and paganism says there’s just one. It's, ‘Can’t we all just get along.’ 

*****

“Paganism requires the philosophy of tolerance in order to be able to function. The only sin is believing that there is a sin. To say that any action is wrong, or any condition needs to be changed, is abhorrent. That’s why Bible-believing Christianity is presented as intolerant. It’s presented as unloving. It’s intolerant because it’s got two buckets.

“The old culture said that truth is what corresponds with reality. The correspondence idea of truth: ‘If it’s real, it’s true.’ That’s the fundamental thinking of the Bible. How do you know there’s a Creator? There’s a creation. Duh! The first-cause demands that.

“In the old Judeo-Christian thinking paradigm we all recognize truth is out there somewhere. We might not know what it is, but if we just keep searching and dialoguing, it will be there.

“You know the story of the three blind men that tried to describe the elephant? One felt his trunk and said it’s like a rope, another felt his leg and said it’s like a stump and the other felt his belly and said it's like a wall. That’s their perceptions, but the old thinking would say, ‘It’s STILL an elephant!’  It’s still the whole, not your part.

“The new thinking is, 'Whatever you experience it to be, it’s truth.' For you the elephant is a stump or it’s like a big old wall because the elephant is whatever you think it is. Because we’ve only got one bucket and any thinking process that you have, everyone’s experience and participation is right. It’s truth. And it’s not right to say there’s only one way. Truth is really just by experience, so it’s not right to say, ‘You’re wrong!’

“We have terms for the moral ethic that holds paganism together; egalitarianism is one. Multi-culturalism--that’s where the so-called feminist movement came from. That’s where the environmental stuff comes from. That’s where the homosexual stuff comes from. All of that comes from a completely different paradigm of thinking where there’s just one bucket and everybody’s in it. And that’s what paganism is all about."

Identifying people in heaven

You know you recognize people even when you don’t know them personally, and when you get to heaven, you’re not going to need name tags; we’re going to know each other, says Richard Jordan.

Luke 9: [32] But Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep: and when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men that stood with him.
[33] And it came to pass, as they departed from him, Peter said unto Jesus, Master, it is good for us to be here: and let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias: not knowing what he said.

You notice how Peter knew who Moses and Elijah were but no introductions had taken place? How in the world did he know? He never met them; he had read about them, studied about them, was taught about them, because they lived centuries before Peter did.

Here they are, appear before him, when the transfiguration is taking place. That is, Christ is carried to the position where His glorified humanity is put on display, and figures from the other side, as it were, appear with Him. Peter instinctively knows who they are.

It’s the same thing on the other side of the scope. Isaiah 14:9, talking about the Antichrist prophetically, says:

[9] Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations.
[10] All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us?

When that guy shows up in hell, they know who he is. They don’t look at him and say, “Agh, another one showed up.” When that guy shows up, all the kings of the earth who followed him identify him. They have a consciousness of who he is.

Can you imagine when the pope dies and goes to hell, the greeting he gets? You reckon when Mohammed went to hell, the guys down there said, “Boy, we’re glad to see you!”

You ever thought about that? They recognized him. You don’t go into hell incognito. If you die and go to hell, people say, “Well, I’ll have a lot of friends there.” There’s not a one of them going to be your friend when you get there.

They’re going to do like these guys do. They’re going to mock you for being the fools they were. They’re going to hate you for your influence on them that put them there. They’re going to know you.

In Luke 16, this guy dies and when he goes to hell he knows what’s going on.

Luke 16: [23] And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

Notice, he still had eyes. Your soul has a literal bodily shape inside of you. There’s a person inside of your body and it’s real.

[24] And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

How’d he know who father Abraham was? He never met him. You see how you know who they are? It’s not just being conscious of being in someone else’s presence; you can put a name to them and a face.

[25] But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.
[26] And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

When you get there, you have memory. You remember the incidences and things that happened.

*****

Luke 23: 42] And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.
[43] And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise.

When that guy goes there, you reckon he knew he was there? You reckon he knew who Jesus was? Every implication you have is that way.

II Corinthians 12: [1] It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.
[2] I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
[3] And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
[4] How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

If this guy’s caught up into the third heaven and Paul says, “I can’t tell whether he’s still in his body or not,” when he wasn’t in his body, he must have still looked like he was.

He says, “By looking at the guy I can’t tell if he’s dead or alive.” He’s in the third heaven, though. What’s up in the third heaven? His soul. But what did he look like? Paul didn’t say, “Well, he died but I don’t know who he is.”

Out of the body he looked just like he looked IN the body.

Philippians 3: [20] For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:
[21] Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.

Your vile body. The word vile means humiliating. That doesn’t mean it sags where it didn’t used to sag. Just don’t wash it for 3-4 days. It’s a body of corruption.

He’s going to change that vile body and fashion it like His glorious body. You’re literally going to share in the physical glorification of Jesus Christ in a body that reflects His glory.

I Corinthians 15:35: [35] But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?

Some people have the idea that when you get your glorified body, we’re all just going to be carbon copies where every one of us is going to look exactly the same.

[36] Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:
[37] And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain:
[38] But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body.

You know what you’re going to get in the resurrection? You’re going to get your own body; a body that bears your distinct identity. A body that you own out of which the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ will radiate. He’s going to be glorified in YOUR body.

By the way, if I have my own personal body with its own personal appearance, would that give people the capacity to recognize me as distinct from someone else?

I Thessalonians 2: 19 tells me something about the resurrected body: [19] For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming?
[20] For ye are our glory and joy.

Paul says, “You Thessalonians are going to be my joy and my crown.” Well, then he must know who they’re going to be! There must be a way for him to look at the Thessalonica saints and say, “You guys are it!”

There’s some saints that he would see there that aren’t going to be quite as ? for him. They’re going to be like those Corinthians in I Corinthians 13 that are “saved yet so as by fire.”

To use the expression in Job, they’re “saved by the skin of their teeth,”  and that’s not very thick.

But the Thessalonians, in their resurrected bodies, as they stand at the judgment seat of Christ, he’s going to be able to identify who they are.

Now, when you get to heaven, aren’t there some saved people you are a little embarrassed to be around right now? You got a little difference of opinion with them?

Paul says in Romans 7: [15] For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
[16] If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
[17] Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

He’s talking about the difference between your old man and your new man; your old nature and who you are in Adam and then who you are in Christ.

When you die, or at the resurrection, your inner man is removed from your outer man and it’s only your new man that goes into that new body.

So all those old-man problems are left behind and all the things that need to be judged and straightened out, worked on, that confront and confound and make you guilty, all that’s gone.

I think one of the great security blankets for the Believer is the Judgment Seat of Christ where all those works that are you and not Christ—what does he say happens to them in I Corinthians 3? They burn up and they’re gone.

Revelation 21:4: [4] And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

There’s things that have happened in your background and in your life—dastardly, evil things that have happened—and all that’s gone.

On the other side, there’s the things you’ve done to others that you bear the weight for. Those things that in a quiet moment of reflection come back to haunt you.

You see, when you wake up to your brothers and sisters on the streets of glory those things aren’t going to be the issue, not because you don’t recognize them and know who they are, but because you’re just going to know who they are in Christ.

You’ll say, “Hey, there’s Brother Rick!” and you’ll remember Christ in Brother Rick, and all that was “I” and not Christ will be gone. Blank pages.

Isiaah 65: [17] For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.

What’s he talking about? [16] That he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes.

That’s the former things. [18] But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy.

The blood of Jesus Christ is going to cover all that stuff.

God's frequency-hopping 'spread spectrum'

The reason a violinist can make crystal glass break is because the instrument is able to duplicate the frequency the crystal vibrates at with an intensity that shatters it.

“That’s a physical phenomenon, but when the Bible refers to the mountains singing at Christ’s return, in Ezekiel 36 for an example, I’m not so sure that’s all just figurative talk,” says Richard Jordan. “And when He comes back, all of creation’s going to ‘sing unto God, sing praises to his name: extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH, and rejoice before him.’ (Psalm 68:4)

“Notice it didn’t say sing praises about Him. You can’t talk to God if you don’t know Him. Lost people can’t sing praises to God until they’ve called upon His name—until they’ve gotten saved.

*****

When Doubting Thomas had the opportunity to see the prints in Christ’s hands and the scar in His side, he bowed down and said something that no new bible version has yet to take out of the Bible—“My Lord and my God.”

“Of course, Jesus Christ doesn’t respond, ‘Wait, wait, wait! I’m not that; you shouldn’t attribute things to me that belong to God'; He accepted the title and the (corrupt re-translators) don’t notice that it’s there. It’s exactly correct even in a Jehovah Witness bible.

“The Lord’s that way with the Word of God—you find doctrine scattered out in Scripture where when you’re looking to find it and eliminate it, there’s enough of it scattered that you can’t get to it all.

“There’s a great comparison made to this in a book by a Bible teacher who earlier in his career was involved in military communication and producing anti-jamming devices. A jamming device is where you put a broadcast out and a signal jams it and you can’t receive your signal.

“Well, in the military when you’re trying to send commands to your troops—

or nowadays to satellites and missiles—if you’ve got the ability to jam the communication, it can’t go where you want it to go.

“And so, in order to eliminate the ability of an opponent to jam your communication, what they do is communicate on dozens of different frequencies. The idea is if you can jam a third of the frequencies, the receiver can still figure out from the other two-thirds what it needs. He said that’s the way the Bible is!

“The Bible is a book that demonstrates itself to have been written by someone who was outside of time. Whoever wrote Genesis understood something that couldn’t have been known for another couple of thousand years. So, whoever wrote Genesis was not bound by time. They knew something that was going to be revealed in the future that nobody could know except God Himself.

“Years ago, I used to think, ‘Why is it that you have to search all through the Bible to find these things? Why did God just scatter it all over everywhere, seemingly willy-nilly like?’ Well, it turns out it’s not willy-nilly; it’s all PLANNED!

“If God had it all written out for us in simplified jargon, we’d read it maybe 345 times, enough to memorize it, and then we’d get bored with it and quit reading it.

“But the way it is, you never get bored with it because you never quit finding stuff; you just keep discovering and putting links together.

“Probably, a better reason than that, though, is what this guy was saying—it allows it not to be jammed as it comes through history. You can’t destroy it; you can’t get rid of it. There’s no way to destroy the supernatural evidence, or the evidence of the supernatural nature of the Word of God, because of all that. That’s such a fascinating thing about the Scriptures and what makes it so fascinating to read and study.”

*****

Handel’s Messiah is considered the greatest piece of music composition ever put together and yet it’s nothing more than the King James Bible quoted and put to music.

“Notice it’s not the NIV, or the ASV, or the RV, or the Geneva bible—it’s the KJV put into music form,” says Jordan.

One of the events that led Gail Riplinger to write her explosive 1994 book, New Age Bible Versions, which thoroughly exposes the corrupt nature of the modern bible versions, was a campus bible study in which Riplinger, a college teacher at the time, had a young Christian woman approach her seeking words of solace after a romantic break-up.

Upon instructing the student to open her bible to Luke 4:18 to read Jesus’ words, “[He] hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted,” Riplinger found out the entire sentence had been removed from the woman’s NASB version.

Riplinger later found the same verse missing from the NIV, Good News for Modern Man and all Catholic bibles.

As she relates in her book, “The omission is impossible since Jesus was in the synagogue reading from Isaiah 61: 1:2, which contains the sentence in question. Its removal is censorship of the strangest kind since the sentence appears in The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text.

“Its critical apparatus indicates the sigla of the German M, which according to Dallas Theological Seminary professor Zane C. Hodge, indicates the sentence is ‘one that is supported overwhelmingly.’ In this case ‘overwhelmingly’ is a modest estimation since all Greek manuscripts except two, Aleph and B, have it. Even Alexandrinus, an ancient uncial, has it.

“Tsk . . . Tsk to Nestle and his resurrected Westcott and Hort ‘New’ Greek text for leaving it out. NIV committeeman Ronald Youngblood admits his committee disregarded the majority text here.”

*****

Another huge corruption Riplinger learned of in trying to comfort the heartbroken student was that the reference to Christ as “the Comforter,” found in four different verses in John, had been replaced with “the Helper,” something true of not only the NASB but the NKJV and New World Jehovah Witness Version. He is called “the Counselor” in the NIV and the “Advocate” or “Paraclete” in Catholic versions!

Riplinger explains, “There is no semantic basis for this revision. The NASB translates the same kind of Greek word as ‘comfort’ eighteen times elsewhere (e.g. Matthew 2:18 ‘she refused to be comforted’).

“The NIV’s ‘Counselor’, bouleutes, sumboulos, is not in any Greek manuscripts. The NKJV’s word ‘helper’, or help, boethos, antilepsis, epikouria, is no where in the verse either, nor are words such as antilambano, cheir, epilambano, antecho, propempo, huperetes, or prosantis, all of which the new bibles translate as ‘help’ often.

“Cults like the Jehovah Witnesses use ‘helper’ since they deny the Trinity and the personhood of the Holy Spirit. The Plain Truth magazine explains why they too avoid the KJV and its ‘Comforter’: ‘[T]he Holy Spirit is not a person but the power God uses—much as man uses electricity.’

“The New King James Version and the New American Standard Version are in poor company rallying with, not only these two cults, but the New Age. Author of Dark Secrets of the New Age observes, ‘New Agers who communicate with Satan’s demons see these spirit entities as their ‘helpers.’

“Vera Alder, for example, when referring to these entities, uses the NASB and NKJV term. (New versions are ‘helping’ to build the ‘semantic bridge’ which Vera Alder and other New Agers said must be built between the New World Religion and existing sectarianism.)

“The NIV removes ‘the comfort’ of the Holy Ghost in Acts 9:31. . . The bride of Christ is no longer comforted with the salutation ‘Beloved,’ but met with ‘Dear Friend’ in III John 2 (NIV). Ephesians 3:9 speaks of the intimacy of our fellowship with God. New Versions join the Jehovah Witnesses in replacing ‘fellowship with the groom’ with the coming ‘new age administration’.”

Bible's deep state

One of the most ironic things from my trip back to Loudonville was driving to the address of my dad’s old office building (which I knew had long ago been torn down) and finding a brand-new cannabis dispensary in the same spot!

My dad developed a real drinking problem shortly after he married my mom, who was a teetotaler and stayed one.

When my brother was a baby my dad would sometimes be out at 1 and 2 in the morning at a bar. Somehow, he got up every morning to run his very popular private medical practice in Firestone Park (Akron, OH).

My mom doesn’t know whether I was born yet or not when my dad made the big switch from magnums of Pinot Grigio to prescription pills and injectables.

She told me his world of dispensing drugs as well as taking them took off after my dad approached a neighborhood pharmacist about helping out his poorer patients by dropping his prices. The pharmacist said to him, “I can’t be a doctor and you can’t be a pharmacist.”

My dad went home that day and thought, “Well, he can’t be a doctor but I CAN dispense medicine without him .” That was all the instigation my dad needed to obtain the catalogs from the drug companies and start ordering pills and injectables by the hundreds and then thousands, eventually including us kids in the “business.”

Within two or three years of moving to Loudonville, us kids were assigned with counting and packaging pills of all kind for every kind of problem.

I would even stamp hundreds of envelopes at a time using a manual inking machine.

(more later today)

The Bible makes it very clear people get eaten. During the upcoming tribulation, some believing Israelites are going to be eaten.

Revelation 20 talks about those who don't take "the mark of the beast." They get beheaded.

"Now, when you make a sacrifice, how do you do it?" asks Jordan. "One thing is they cut off their heads. You put a chalice under there and catch that blood, then hold that stuff up and you’ve got a drink offering."

*****

The symbol of Israel in the Bible is the “burning bush,” not the Star of David, which the Book of Amos identifies as the star of Israel's Caananite god Moloch, associated with child sacrifice.

An internet entry reads, "The elites seem to worship Molech and Baphomet. Molech is the owl from the Bohemian Grove and Baphomet is the satanic goat man with breasts."

Amos 5:26 reads, “But ye have borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves."

"That six-pointed Star of David is really a symbol of a pagan god who infested the nation with pagan religion in the time of the Prophet Amos and before," explains Jordan. "And there’s a reason they would use a star. There’s a reason the Mohammedans use the crescent moon and that kind of stuff.

“There's a whole raft of pagan religions in that part of the world dating to ancient times that worship the heavens. It all goes back to Genesis 11 when 'they built a tower to reach to heaven,' and they corrupted the constellations and the signs and messages in the heavens into pagan use.”

*****

Stars in the Bible are symbols and representatives of certain kinds of creatures, such as angels. Satan and his angels are compared to the falling stars.

Just look at this great passage about the Second Advent in Mark 13: “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
[25] And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.
[26] And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.
[27] And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.”

What God was doing in the six days He made the earth was actually recreating the fallen creation that had been destroyed by the satanic rebellion of the angels in heaven.

“He restored it and placed man on it to subdue it, bringing it back under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ to win it back,” explains Jordan. “When you read Genesis, you realize God only gave Adam the responsibility to run things.

“Adam and Eve faced the Adversary that first week and failed. By the way, Thursday is the day they failed and that’s the fifth day."

*****

After the Flood, God’s plain mandate was “to scatter and replenish the earth,” but the populace purposed, "We’re going to build us a religious system and cathedral and we’re going to get up on top of that sky-high monument (think skyscrapers) and offer sacrifices to our gods."

The thinking was after Nimrod’s: “Unite together, amalgamate everybody and be our own gods, doing all things our own way.”

As R. Dawson Barlow writes in his 2004 book, The Origin of the Races, “It was the human philosophical mindset (which is NOT unlike ‘modern’ humanism) that was responsible for the construction of the Tower of Babel. That product of depraved human reasoning also later developed into a theme of false worship that continues throughout the Bible, and even to our own present time.

“In Revelation 17 and 18, the prophetic Scriptures describe the event when God will deal with another manifestation of this false religious and political system, called ‘Mystery Babylon.’

"This monstrous system is alive today operating under many aliases (including within Christendom) and gaining greater momentum each year. It will be a dominant power at the time of the Second Advent of Jesus Christ to the earth. It is that same mighty system He will destroy at His coming.”

*****

Jordan explains, “The beginning of Nimrod’s kingdom was Babel in the land of Shinar, and if you remember in Daniel 1, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, went into Jerusalem and took them back into the land of Shinar into ‘the houses of his gods,’ which is the same thing.

“Nimrod built Nineveh, which was the capital of Assyria, and the city Rehoboth, a word that means ‘the city of boulevards.’ What he builds is a great metropolitan city of hustling and bustling Fifth Avenues, 42^nd Streets, State streets, Madison Avenues and all the rest.

“And it says Resen, the city between Nineveh and Calah, was a great city. The word Resen means ‘a bit’ or ‘a bridle.’ And he would have named it after the ability to control things. Resen—that’s like saying Wall Street or LaSalle Street—represents the power that goes with the concentration of economic and social activity in a metro area, and Nimrod controls it all."

 

Table talk for Thanksgiving

“If you put truth on the table, it doesn’t matter how much error is there. If truth can get an opportunity to have a fair hearing, it will take care of itself. The problem is error knows this, so it doesn’t want truth to get to the table, or if it does, it wants it to be on the table in a distorted manner."--Richard Jordan

“. . . Today there’s a great sense people have of being alienated, separated, being ‘out here by myself’ in the world. One of the reasons people join gangs, cults, movements . . .

"I remember years ago reading an article about Al Capone and Joe Kennedy. Kennedy and Capone were contemporaries, and had Kennedy not been a millionaire, he would have been considered a bootlegger. To this day, every bottle of Irish-Scotch whiskey that comes into America his family still gets a piece of.

“During the Prohibition, Al was over here in the speakeasies and he’s got guys importing it and making it in car radiators and stuff. Well, he’s a gangster, but him and Kennedy both had the same motivation; they just started at different social stratas.

“One had no money or political contact but he had street muscle. The other guy’s got political muscle and financial muscle. So one’s this big respected guy and the other, he's a ‘let’s-hang-him-and-get-rid-of-him’ kind of a guy. But the motivation behind both men was the same: Power, money.

*****

From YouTuber about our AI-driven future: "They’re going to redefine what a criminal is. What they care about is the thoughts in your mind, and if you think differently, or you actually even dare to question what the government’s doing when it tells you it’s going to ration your electricity and the food you have,  and tell you you’re going to eat bugs instead of meat . . . Well, guess what? You’ll have one of these Optimus bots following you around.

"Musk says he favors a “Banksian society” model for the future. They constantly use the word “utopia” to make people think it will be a world without poverty, without hate. All things that are human nature that they want to remove and they want you to be subservient slaves.

"In this Banksian reality, tell me if this sounds familiar to you: “An abundance and post-scarcity.” Almost everything is free or effectively unlimited because this hyper-advanced AI handles all production, logistics, etc.

"No one has to work unless they really want to. That will do great things for your mental health when you get up every day and you have nothing to do. What will you do? Turn on a video game, go to some fake reality, live in some dystopian world? God forbid humans do the things God put us here to do.

"We can have the government keep us in our homes and use our Smart locks to make sure we don’t exit because, again, carbon emissions is a big deal and there’s the carbon laws.

"You got to love how Banksian PDF points say “God-like artificial minds,” because that’s what this is. Worship is in play."

*****

Personal installment for book below and will have travelogue entry tonight--I had such a busy, exhausting day at work (at retail operation) now that we're a week from Thanksgiving.

When my dad first told my mom he was going to become a missionary doctor in Ecuador, taking all of us with him, my mom says he explained, “I’ve got to do something for God before I die.”

My dad was someone who thought he had heart trouble because of chest pain that was really just due to anxiety, probably from all the pills he took.

All through my childhood he would tell us kids individually and corporately, “I’m not going to be around much longer.”

*****

I never knew my dad had an addiction to uppers and downers until after he died (at almost 79 years old) and my mom told me—I was in my mid-30s!

Now, when I was a kid, I would see my dad take pills, and he did always carry a bunch in his pants pocket, but he said they were for certain ailments.

He tried to push pills on me and my brother and sister when we were in our teens, but I truly believe he had good intentions. None of us would really take them—we just pretended to take them if he was watching.

The thing is I never knew growing up why my dad would be in such bad moods. He could be in a real good mood and then, without any warning, turn into a bad mood. This could all happen in a five-minute period sometimes.

He could be so volatile that you never knew where you stood with him and I personally was afraid of him on and off all through my teens. I never really ever stopped being afraid of him until five or six years before his death and after my mom divorced him after 31 years of marriage.

What bothered me the most as a teen was how he could be mean (what they like to call emotionally abusive) to my mother, and I would hear her cry so often from sadness at night behind a locked bedroom door.

More than a few times I actually prayed to God that my dad would die. I admitted this to my brother once and he said he did the same thing once or twice.

Peace is in a person

(the good news for me is that I worked today on the next installment of my hometown travelogue, something I see as crucial to finishing my book, and will post tomorrow for certain.)

When the angels announced Jesus Christ’s birth, they said, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

“The new bibles change that because they don’t understand the message there,” says Richard Jordan. “They change it to say, ‘Glory to God on the highest, and on earth peace to men among whom there is good will.’

“They say, ‘See, the way you have peace is you have peace among men who have good will for one another,’ and that’s a good human viewpoint and religious idea, but that’s not what the verse says.

“Jesus Christ will come one day and be the ‘prince of peace’ and establish peace upon the planet and there will be worldwide, universal peace among all nations and all men. He will be the prince--the establisher, the maintainer, the governor--that produces peace on earth and good will toward men from God and from one another.

“You say, ‘Wait a minute, did His mission fail?’ You look around the world today and you don’t see peace. Look around the planet. Our world is boiling with racial and tribal and cultural and moral conflict. Disintegration, separation and secession for racial and religious reasons is the order of the day. 

“America always prided itself on the melting-pot philosophy, where you would come and meld in; leave where you were and become Americans.

“Today, our government, the leaders of academia, the leaders of our nation, they look at that melting- pot philosophy as just nativist bigotry, where you’re trying to lift up one culture above another. And what you hear constantly is ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘egalitarianism’; that is that every culture is equal and therefore every culture should be exalted. Listen, that kind of idea is not the American history. America has become a microcosm of the world on fire. 

“America has always been that kind of a microcosm. That’s why the world has always looked toward America as a beacon, because here’s what we could aspire to and become. But in our lifetime, the whole thing’s been turned on its head and there’s no peace. You bring the nations to America today and what do they do? They don’t meld into a melting pot. It’s more like a boiling stew.

*****

“You got one little group here and they reestablish their home community within the world and it’s, ‘Now we’re going to have our homeland here.’ Chicago’s full of it. There are over 270 different language groups spoken in the metropolitan area.

“I look at that, we got the little sign out front, ‘Reach the world by reaching Chicago,’ and it looks to me like a great fishing hole. There’s hardly anywhere you can go and reach the whole world by reaching one community. Just look at Agne and Darius and how they went back to their homeland in Lithuania. You get saved, you learn truth and you take the message back.

“The radio station were on (WYLL 1160 AM in Chicago), there’s nine and a half million people in this area who can hear it. The last time they did an Arbitron rating of that station, 43,000 people were listening to (my show) every Sunday morning at 8:30. I don’t get to preach to 43,000 people every day, but I do there and I do every Saturday night on the television.

“Our whole culture’s changed and you say, ‘There’s no peace out there!’ but Isaiah says, ‘There’s no peace for the wicked, saith God.’

*****

“You say, ‘Well, then, if Jesus came to be the ‘prince of peace,’ and He came to preach peace, did His mission fail?’

“Well, no, because you realize through Paul’s epistles that the key to it is being able to ‘rightly divide the word’ and understand that this is not the day of the ‘prince of peace.’

“The only way you’re going to have world peace is for Jesus Christ to come back, sit on the throne of the governments of this world and produce peace through His kingdom.

“Being a premillennial Bible-believer is as much a political and economic statement, and sociological statement and ecological statement, as it is a doctrinal statement, because you’re saying there’s no hope for the peace of this planet--politically, economically, socially, ecologically--except in the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, and until then there’s going to be turmoil.

“You say, ‘Well, then, when Jesus Christ came and preached peace, what’s that all about if it isn’t bringing the Kingdom in?’

“Well, it had to do with what He’s talking about here. By the way, in this passage in Ephesians 2, when Paul says He comes to preach peace, did you notice there are three times Paul talks about peace here?

“In verse 14, he says, ‘For he is our peace.’ Verse 15, at the end, what does he do? ‘So making peace.’ And now in the text he comes and preaches peace.

*****

“What is peace? Keep reading verse 14-15: ‘Who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man . . . ’

“You see, in Paul’s mind, peace, and he defines it for you, is being one. In our mind peace is just the cessation of hostility. If we can stop conflict, but stopping conflict and stopping hostility, agreeing not to fight, is not real peace.

“I mean, it’s only superficial. It’s only temporary. It’s only external. Soon enough the animosity will resurface and what you’ll discover is we agreed to stop fighting simply because we were weary of the warfare at the moment, and we’ll stop awhile until we can recuperate and rearm ourselves and then go at it again. Nothing’s really settled.

"In families, moms and dads, husbands and wives, fight and argue and you just finally say, ‘Enough, I’m going to stop,’ but you don’t really resolve it. One of you just gives up for the moment, but it still boils inside. Nothing internally is really resolved. That’s not peace.

*****

“Paul says, ‘He is our peace.’ You see, the secret of peace is in a person. It’s not in a prescription, it’s not in getting a conflict management group to come in and tell you how to manage your conflict—that’s just helping you to stop fighting.

“Christ is the essence of what peace is all about. He’s the embodiment. In order to live at peace you have to have peace internally. Before you can live in tranquility with others, you have to have an inner tranquility with yourself.

“We want to start bringing peace by cleaning up the results of the conflict. God says, ‘I’m going to start with a person because the issue is a person.’

"Peace is a person, and to live in peace you have to be at peace with that person. If you have peace, then you can begin to resolve the conflict, genuinely. But peace starts, Romans 5 says, ‘Being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Chirst.’

“Until you have peace with God, not just in the sense of not arguing with Him, but a sense of a cessation of His being against you and you being against Him . . .

“How do you quit being against Him? How do you get Him to quit being against you? That’s what peace is, and that’s why at the end of verse 15, Paul says, ‘He’s made peace.’ How did He make peace? He made it through the blood of His cross. He made it by slaying the enmity of the law that was against us because we couldn’t keep it.

*****

“In Titus 3 is a fascinating word picture of a life without Christ. He’s going to describe what you know about who you were before you came to faith in Christ. Titus 3:3: ‘For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.’

“That’s life without Christ. You say, ‘Well, I don’t live like that.’ Well, that’s because you’re foolish and you’re deceived. You see, an unsaved person doesn’t really understand what life is about. They don’t really know how to live. They think they do but they’re foolish and they’re disobedient.

“They don’t do what God says and they’re deceived into thinking they know better. And they’re serving-- they’re the slaves, they’re being driven by--all kinds of lust, passions and pleasures. All kinds of thinking that says, ‘I want to be gratified, I want my jollies, I want to be happy and I’m going to do it my way.’ The result is they wind up living in malice and envy.

“If you want to know the culture around you, and you want to understand why the crudeness and vileness you see around is there, it’s because the minds of unsaved people are like a garbage can. They’re full of garbage. You know that because you used to be that way.

“Paul’s saying here, ‘Don’t get mad at lost people for being lost people; don’t you remember what it was like where you were lost?’

“Listen, the only way you can get rid of the garbage is to get rid of the garbage can that’s holding the garbage. If you just dump the can's contents out, you know what, it’s still there. There can still be a real, ripe odor to it. There’s the remnants.

“So you know what God does? Verse 4: you see, he saved us, not by our righteousness. Not by me saying, ‘I’m going to fix all those problems.’

“Titus 3: 4-5 says, 'But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared,
[5] Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.'

*****

“You say, ‘I’m going to quit being foolish; I’m going to get educated. I’m going to start doing what God says to do and obey Him. I’m going to control my desires and just channel them in a certain way, discipline myself, and I’m not going to lie in envy and malice. I’m going to eliminate hatred and all the conflicts that come from it.’

“And God says, ‘Good luck.’ As I’ve said to you before, sin isn’t in the action; it starts in their heart. And to eliminate those things in Titus 3:3, you have to have a miracle from God that gives you a new heart and makes you a new person.

“That’s the thing he’s talking about when he says, ‘The one new man.’ That’s the church the Body of Christ, but when God puts you in the Body of Christ, what the Body of Christ is you. You’ve been put into a transforming union with Him; made one with Him.

“He put you in His Son and makes His identity your identity; makes His reality your reality, His life your life, His righteousness your righteousness, His acceptance your acceptance. What belongs to Him now belongs to you because you’re in Him; you’re an heir of God and a joint-heir of Jesus Christ.

“The verse says, ‘Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.’

“He comes in and cleanses you by making you a new person. He regenerates you and gives you new life. God the Holy Spirit makes you into a new creature.”

Human enslavement for 2030? It's being built out all around us

“What will humans do in Musk's robotic future? Certainly not working, Elon Musk wrote in an October X post,” reports Business Insider.

"AI and robots will replace all jobs," he wrote. "Working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables, instead of buying them from the store."

In a speech the other week, Musk predicted Tesla's Optimus robot “will actually eliminate poverty.”

“Minutes earlier, the crowd cheered and broke out into chants of ‘Elon, Elon!’ as shareholders approved Musk's $1 trillion pay package. The Tesla CEO — who is the world's richest person — will unlock up to $1 trillion in shares if Tesla achieves a series of lofty targets, including selling one million Optimus robots in the next decade,” says Business Insider.

Here is analysis from a Christian YouTuber:

Elon Musk is proposing an idea that his Tesla Optimus Robots will follow criminals around to make sure they never offend again and people will be on board with ideas like this.

We’re already seeing MAGA onboard with Palantir and ICE being able to track civilians via their technology and trace their movements.

We’re seeing everybody out there who once cared about this thing called “privacy” no longer care about it. We’re seeing those once worried about a surveillance state actually on board with Donald Trump and these big tech giants building out a surveillance state.

They don’t tell you what the crime could actually be. People just automatically hear about repeat offenders because the media’s constantly let us know that all these crimes being committed are from Democrats letting these convicts out of prison, who then go and commit the crime again. Think about how many times we heard these stories over the last couple of years where we keep hearing the term “repeat offender.”

Well, here’s the idea to solve the problem. Instead of overcrowding our prisons, because your home is going to be your prison once they initiate the carbon laws, “What we’ll do is have these Tesla robots follow you around—a personal handler.”

Not only does Musk talk about people being assigned for free their own Tesla robot that will be listening to everything they say, watching where they go and what they do, and you think this if for extreme offenders like murderers or rapists, but this is just going to be for people who disagree with the government.

People who, by the time 2030 rolls around, won’t be able to criticize the state of Israel, or have differences of opinions from what the current government regime tells them they’re supposed to think, and how they’re supposed to eat, and how they’re supposed to treat other people, and every other thing that Big Brother wants to control because it’s all about behavioral control . . .

Keep in mind, Musk is also talking about a “universal high income” for all that will "eliminate poverty." He put out a tweet about having Optimus replace human surgeons because, again, remember we hear about AI becoming big in the medical field . . . he said we won’t have to worry about the price of healthcare anymore.

People out there are on board will all this stuff because all it took was for Elon Musk to jump out on stage next to Donald Trump. All it took was for Musk to start saying he believes in Jesus Christ, like all these guys suddenly telling you they have found faith in Jesus Christ. Guys who for years and years talked about being atheists are all suddenly Christian and getting you on board with things like Tesla robots and autonomous vehicles and everything else they have planned for us.

Notice how they changed the wording from “universal income” to “universal HIGH income” so conservatives who always complain about their tax money going to Democrats who don’t want to work and want to sit home and watch video games, well, all they need to do is change the wording so people think, “Well, it will be universal high income, so yes, let’s build these robots out so they can follow around criminals AND so they can take all of our jobs away.”

Elon was even tweeting this out proudly because he’s fully on board with universal high income just like he’s fully on board with climate laws being in place, and if you understand what the plan is with Agenda 2030, and how these things tie together for human enslavement, you’ll start to see what’s really being built out around you.

In his speech, Musk talks about a time where we won’t need money; in fact, your wealth will be measured in how much energy you can provide. I guess that does us no good because we’re not allowed to actually generate free energy; they’re allowed to control all those things.

So, if you own Tesla, say, which provides a lot of energy, you’ll be the king of the world on top of the mountain while the rest of us, well, we’ll just be getting whipped in the rear end by Tesla bots.

(new Bible study this evening)

Normalizing mind of beast for the Beast

Assessing the psychological make-up of a former First Lady and U.S. presidential candidate, TV psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow concluded (in 2017 interview) that her “really big problem is that she seems unable to determine when her lies are registering with audiences as clearly untrue . . . 

"At the core, people who lie transparently do so because they lack empathy—the ability to intuit and vicariously experience what others are thinking and feeling.  Locked behind walls of narcissism or arrogance or imperiousness, consumed with the pursuit of power, they can’t tell convincing lies because they can’t truly resonate with how their words and mannerisms are being received . . .

“As a forensic psychiatrist I have seen this psychological paradigm before—in those with sociopathy.  Not infrequently, criminals attempt to hide their crimes with lies that are so obviously untrue that they leave investigators shaking their heads and chuckling. The criminals cannot tell that their lies are ineffective, because they are too insensitive to the feelings of others.”

*****

The 70^th week of Daniel during the Tribulation period is divided in the middle with three-and-a-half years on each side. In the middle of the week, a transformation occurs in the life of the Antichrist where he goes from being the “man of sin” to the "son of perdition."

“In the first half, he’s a man, and in the middle of the week he dies,” explains Richard Jordan. “When a man dies his soul goes to hell. He’s killed and goes to hell and they lay him out ‘in state.’

“My educated guess of how it will happen is he will lie in state and have a state funeral and then, all of a sudden, he’ll just come up out of the coffin and say, ‘Hi guys, I told you I was God.’

“Now, if you had some wacko terrorist come in and slash some guy real good with a machete and kill him, and then he was laid out stone-cold dead, and they’ve got the TV cameras on him and pictures going out all over the world because he’s this world ruler who's brought in peace and subdued everybody, and then all of a sudden he just stood up, what do you think people are going to do?!

“He becomes the beast that ascended out of the bottomless pit and he’s no longer just a human now, he’s a demonic creature: he’s Satan incarnate, as it were. He's now the ‘son of perdition.’ Ezekiel 28 says he’s the prince (Antichrist) in the first half, and the king (Satan) in the second half.”

*****

In his 1990 book, Daniel the Prophet, Bible scholar Noah Hutchings makes the point, “When a man in his own wisdom and pride looks downward and inward to himself, God gives him the mind of a beast because all beasts look down.”

From the Book of Daniel, we know that one-time world-ruler King Nebuchadnezzar (a picture-type of the Antichrist) was given the mind of a beast for seven years—the same time frame of this 70^th week in which the Antichrist is called a beast.

“Although (Daniel’s) dream was prophetic of God’s judgment against Nebuchadnezzar himself, it was a representation of the subduing of all Gentile nations under the authority of God at the end of the Tribulation period,” writes Hutchings. “We notice that although Nebuchadnezzar had been given two specific warnings, he continued to claim all honor and glory unto himself and defy the God of heaven.

“God gave him the mind of a beast and he was insane for seven years. During the seven-year Tribulation period, the leaders of the nations will act as mad men: they will defy God and accept the leadership of a ruler called the Beast.”

*****

In another chapter, Hutchings informs, “We read in Revelation 13:5 of the little horn on the beast: ‘And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies. . .’

“This ruler of the last beast empire will try to force every man, woman and child to reject Christ as Savior and deny the existence of God, and then he will pass a universal law that everyone must fall down and worship him as God.

“The end of this Antichrist, demon-possessed madman which Daniel saw is also described in Revelation 19:19-21. . . Daniel was particularly interested in the fourth beast because it was the ruler of this kingdom who would make war against Israel and prevail against them for a time.

"The fourth beast was also the strangest and most horrible of all the beasts, and it would be destroyed by the Messiah when He comes to bring in His kingdom. So, it would be natural that Daniel would want to know as much as possible about it.”