White Horse Inn transcript (seminary approved intellectual Christian talk)

-We've got a new poll!
-Dear God, what are the unwashed getting wrong now?
-We asked 100 Christians outside some kind of Christian gathering if this statement were true: Good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. Ninety percent agreed with that statement.
-Dear God...
-Unbelievable...
-If the respondents were more educated (or intelligent) we could give them the benefit of the doubt that they were answering based on what the rather simple question basically is saying rather than based on a typically ignorant belief in works righteousness.
-These were evangelicals...
-Ah oh. Not a high I.Q. crowd. Let's just assume they are ignorant of the Gospel, guys.
-Yes.
-This reminds me when I met a Christian who said there is no apple in Genesis.
-Is there an apple in Genesis?
-It's clearly *implied.*
-Certainly, so this lay person thought he was showing you up.
-In the old days that would be worth three years in a dark hole.
-Amen.
-Amen.
-Amen.
-Scott Hahn has a good take on this form of modern cultural ignorance. He states that in a better era there were solid church organizations that policed what people learned.
-Jesuits.
-Yes!
-Dominicans too.
-But some of them were Jesuits too, I believe.
-I think you may be right.
-Hahn is a good seminary man.
-Which is what people don't generally realize about the so-called Puritans.
-Not a lot of seminary degrees there!
-Uh, noooo??? Hello?
-Did 'Puritans' even exist?
-There were some enthusiasts who wrote about gnostic staple nonsense such as regeneration and spiritual warfare.
-This is not the Gospel. This has no place in orthodox Christianity.
-Small 'o' orthodoxy!
-But of course!
-Has Scott Hahn written anything condemning regeneration?
-I'm sure he has. I would be surprised if he hasn't written on that important theme.
-Especially in today's culture of general biblical ignorance.
-This notion of regeneration is perhaps more pernicious today than ever before.
-King James Bible white trash alert!
-Oh, and look! there's demons all around me! Watch, I'll kill them with my sword...!
-Ha, ha, ha!!!
-Stop!
-A bad example!!!
-Just kidding, guys.
-Was that a sword from Stars Wars or something?
-But listen, ask people what the Gospel is and you are likely to get as many different answers as there are I.Q. points in the heads of the average evangelical Christian.
-That would be under 100, no?
-99 is still a lot!
-I pulled a hamstring playing wiffle ball.
-God has a plan for your life, sir!
-Evil wiffle ball!
-Did the crowd demand we make the country safe from wiffle balls?
-And you know he had a crowd of witnesses for this game of wiffle ball.
-Listen, we had a few. They called for legislation.
-Getting back on topic.
-I was on topic.
-If the topic is the general ignorance of un-seminaried evangelicals!

(May I spare the reading audience the rest of this transcript? Michael Horton, the guy who sounds like he's sixteen years old, basically finished with a litany of evidence that nobody knows anything about the Gospel and then he stated evidence for more things to be aghast about regarding modern day evangelicalism. Then he announced the next program's theme which will be more evidence that nobody knows anything about the Gospel. More poll questions coming up as well, and those man-on-the-street Q and A's which demonstrate that when you confront a pedestrian on his way to work or lunch with a theological question they often can't give you a crisp, smart, well-defined response immediately. Which is typical of our modern culture of biblical ignorance. The rest of the crew then sighed and verbally threw up their hands. The end.)

This Bible is strange, why is it relevant to me?

This Bible is strange, why is it relevant to me? The Bible is strange, no doubt. It requires alot of knowledge and effort to see just its relevance to a person living in a place and time very far away from what is narrated in the Bible.

Here's the concrete answer to the question "This Bible is strange, why is it relevant to me?": It's relevant to you because you are an Israelite. You are of the people called Israel. The Bible is about your people, once you are joined to Christ - King of the Israelites - by faith. You are spiritual Israel. You don't become one of Israel by blood, but by faith and the Spirit. So the Bible and all its seemingly strange contents are relevant to you because you are reading about your people and your history. Not to mention God's plan of redemption for you from eternity to eternity.

'Israel' just means the royal people. You are of the royal race (not by blood but by faith) once you are regenerated by the Word and the Spirit and converted (faith and repentance).

So this puts the Bible and all its strange contents into context.

It should be added: the name Israel carries a sense of having prevailed with God. Heaven taken by force. Prevailing in prayer, etc. Then given power to prevail, by the power of God, over men. Becoming a Prince of God.

Mat 11:12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

So, the Bible is as relevant to you as your own history and future are relevant to you.

Originally written 7.05.2007

Doing that rather than that

In terms of will, acting from God's will, acting from self-will:

The better part of me is God. The worse part of me is me.

A seminary professor discourses on bible versions

Another Kindergarten presentation on the most foundational issue for a Christian. And love the part about 'elders' and 'ministers' having the role of teaching the difficult parts of the Bible to ...what, 'lay' people? Man-fearing churchian 'elders' who couldn't demonstrate understanding of the Word of God if you put a gun to their vain, man-fearing heads. And ministers trained in 'seminaries' dumber than any John Shelby Spong or Tammy Faye Bakker when it comes to the Word of God. Seminary graduates who can't even discern the Word of God, let alone who have the power of attention to actually engage it in a complete and dedicated way.

Good God, the fact that you are a professor in an institution that 'trains' Christians is very depressing, but not surprising.

Christians are prophets, priests, and kings. We don't get taught by man. We fear God and are taught by God. We discern you to be of the devil. And a particularly useless little sop of the devil at that.

Why aren't God's elect walking through the doors of your little man-fearing, village of morality 'churches'? Because God's elect know the voice of the Shepherd, and it isn't in your satanic, Romanist (per)versions you call bibles (bible products, actually) nor is it in the voice of your indoctrinated-by-liberals seminary graduates who have the same level of understanding as modern day graduates of overtaken-by-the-left ivy league schools like Barack and half his administration and half the journalists who drool over him as if he is their long-awaited anti-Christ.

Get understanding, professor. You don't have it currently. Here is what you do: fear God, you worthless sop. Fear God alone. Stop fearing and revering shit-ass man, including your own vain, useless, juvenile self.

Unbroken pride

Pack attack from the James White followers.

"The matter of missing verses, variants, and the silly puddy nature of modern day translation is big but nothing compared to the unbroken pride that is sustained by the very approach of fallen man in using corrupt manuscripts needing man's authority and man's help to have Holy Writ's content determined and to even exist."

+ + +

">The Reformation is overrated. And the Received Text is even more overrated.

I give you credit, diglot, for your honesty. Critical Text teachers and followers would *not* have been on the side of the reformers in the 16th century. Critical text scholars want authority to be in man, not God, just as the Jesuits of the counter-Reformation did (and still do)."

+ + +

"It stings you when you learn of the counter-Reformation and how its main tactic was to destroy faith in the authority of the Word of God by introducing variants and various corrupted manuscripts. The goal was to make people amenable to putting their faith in the word and authority of man. The Pope. The magisterium.

That battle was won by the reformers. Often at the cost of their lives.

In the late 19th century it was all given away by sleeping Christians who didn't know any better. No shot fired. Even someone like B. B. Warfield falling for the devil's line and crossing over that line. Yet God's people, God's remnant, were still around then, as we are in all eras of the history of redemption, and they sounded the alarm. And do to this day.

The Romanists, like Muslims, have the 'long view' and could afford to wait until Christians were asleep to even such foundational issues that underlie the very Word of God, the foundation of the faith.

The ongoing battle between the devil and God's remnant. The devil can only play for time though. God's elect come into the truth eventually, one by one. And in the fullness of time all is consummated."

+ + +

"There is a difference between a *received* manuscript and a *constructed* manuscript. Your critical text masters won't tell you this. They'll tell you that the received manuscript needs an editor. It needs to be edited. That is not the same as needing to be *constructed.*

+ + +

"The devil fights hardest on the ground of the Word of God. Christians have been martyred in untold numbers defending the pure and whole received Word of God. Shallow scholars whether duped or consciously mischievous are playing the devil's part for the most part in our era. Scholars, who, in a different yet similar context, John Owen described as "a host of arrogant, wanton thinkers, puffed up with every fancy of science or yearning for the reputation of erudition..." Book 5, Chapter 12, Biblical Theology.

+ + +

">Looks like he backed off a little in his response to you

My experience is critical text followers are historically ignorant and rather shallow regarding things involved with language and literature.

You all seem to have memorized James White's little book and that's about it. You take its straw man [King James Only] then you call anything that doesn't conform to that straw man a concession.

I said I am not English preservationist (a term I first saw Kent Brandenburg use, don't know if he coined it, but it's a useful term). Neither is a Riplinger. When we talk of Luther's Bible and of the Dutch and French and Italian Bibles made from those languages during the Reformation (I mean see Riplinger's In Awe of thy Word, and I mention her because if *she* isn't a representative of the straw man who is?) it should be obvious that English preservation is not the issue. And when we talk about the underlying manuscripts it should be obvious that questions like: "So where was the AV in the 1400s?" are not exactly relevant."

Modern day false idols

What are the false idols of today that take the place of the Baals, Molochs, Astartes?

It's tempting to say money, sex, fame. But they aren't really idols. They are staple temptations of the devil's kingdom, worldly honor, worldly pleasure, worldly gain.

But an idol is something that a human being in rebellion to their Creator puts in the place of their Creator; and is something they go to to ease their troubled conscience. Something they sacrifice things to as well.

There are more subtle false idols than merely money, sex, and fame.

Left-wing politics is a false idol. Worship of the state. Marxism, communism, socialism. Environmentalism is a false idol. Worship of the earth. Nature. Multiculturalism is a false idol. Worship of the 'noble savage.' Typically unaware of their condescension of course.

The left-wing 'liberal' (and you just have to be born to be a left-wing 'liberal') comes to these false idols with their troubled consciences ready to make sacrifices.

They will sacrifice their individuality (and everyone else's) to the state. Their freedom. Their labor. Their money. Of course not realizing it will actually take 'all' of those things, eventually. They will then, in the extreme tyrannies they set up, sacrifice millions of their fellow human beings in state-approved acts of genocide. Human sacrifice. Abortion as well.

They will sacrifice their freedom to nature and environmentalism. Sacrifice their money, their economy, free markets.

They will sacrifice their culture and civilization and the safety of their neighborhoods to the worship of the 'noble savage' under the dogma of multiculturalism.

They sacrifice their time, money, words, concern. This salves their uneasy conscience.

The false idol replaces God. Replaces their Creator. Yet they still need to be made to feel ease for their uneasy conscience, so the false idol takes care of that as well.

Their vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will, their rebellion to their Creator in general won't allow them to approach God. They switch the creation for the Creator and engage in practices as wicked and dumb as anything that went on among the Israelites and surrounding nations of Israel in their worship of their Baals and Molochs et al.

I make the point that modern day Reformed academics have forgotten about the subject of spiritual warfare (I use Reformed academics as an example because for whatever it's worth they do carry on the tradition of the most on-the-mark - biblical - school of doctrine). They don't include it in their modern systematic theologies and other books like the first and second and third generation reformers did. They don't value it as something a Christian needs to know about and be able to practice. The same with the teaching on false idols. They don't go near the subject. And they are, as a class of human beings, pretty much monolithically left-wing in their political understanding (or lack thereof). If they are not passionate left-wing 'liberals' they are certainly quicker to mock conservatives and foundational elements of classical liberal society (classical liberalism being true conservatism). You don't have to be around them in their environments very long to see this. It is deemed 'ok' in their environments. Their fear of man is not threatened when they mock such things. It's safe in the eyes of the world to be left-wing 'liberal.' I.e. they don't talk about false idols or spiritual warfare because they would have to face up to their own false idols and current state of being happy prisoners to the devil's kingdom. Or happy denizens of Bunyan's Village of Morality.

Another giddy-for-debate atheist

Right... About 90% of the distinguished scientists in the national academy of sciences are atheist/agnostic. I'm sure all those brilliant people are just undereducated uncultured idiots who never read anything.

Every atheist scientist in the western world is a parasite on Christian culture and civilization just like their atheist brothers and sisters who don't have science degrees. They stand on the shoulders of Christians and pretend they've accomplished things they didn't and could never accomplish.

The atheist pretension to science is new and similar to the homosexual pretension to literary talent and inspiration. The devil has taken all the village idiots and perverts, organized them, and set them to march. It's called the end times.

Science, by the way, has been so politicized that no poll of scientists on their religious beliefs will be accurate. Grant money and other funding not to mention tenure and other perks are at stake.

Atheism + science = junk science. Darwinian evolution, global warming, the Trabant.

Gurnall's Christian in Complete Armour

Handsome looking cover for a new edition of Gurnall's Christian in Complete Armour.

New publisher anyway, don't know if it's a new edition.

Artistic, literary, musical inspiration vis-a-vis Calvinists

>Well, Olsen does have a point, though it may not be the one he was going for. Before accepting his theological challenge, we've got to recognize our failure at his artistic one. Calvinists are notoriously bad at artistic "stuff" in general (when was the last time we saw a good Calvinist movie?). Before we can even think about writing a doctrinally correct response to the Shack in novel form, we've got to get our act together and get some decent writers reading Kuyper's Fifth Stone Lecture. Then maybe we can respond theologically to the challenge...

Arguably the artistic output of Elizabethan England is Calvinist. Arguably, the best of American literature is Calvinist since it grows from Calvinist soil. But the bigger point is this: truly universal and inspired art is more in the realm of general revelation and is tainted when it is mixed with special revelation (which is not the same as visual artists painting biblical scenes or Bach setting parts of Scripture to music). Palestrina, Bach, and even an atheist, or quasi-atheist like Beethoven all drew from the same source for inspiration, despite themselves in the case of the atheist or quasi-atheist.

My reading history

My reading history ended - in terms of what one can get out of such influences as classic imaginative literature, history, philosophy, sacred writings - back sometime in... (well, way back when).

You don't have to read a library. You just have to read until you begin to discern that influences reside in a hierarchy and then make efforts to engage each level of that hierarchy until you reach the top. You do this by not staying on the same rung of the ladder, so to speak. You engage influences that are just above your current level of understanding and just outside your current interests. It is also common to read a great work prior to getting to that level. This helps one to know that the levels exist to begin with.

Higher influences are basically imaginative literature, history, philosophy, science, art, music, and sacred writings (and anything else generally falls into a sub-category of those seven). Athletics and performing arts are also influences.

The higher works have two common characteristics: 1. They are rare. I.e. many genre novels, few epic poems. 2. They require more effort of attention to engage and digest and finish and get understanding of. I.e. they don't pull you towards them like lower influences, you have to bring the motivation and effort to engage them (it's easy to read a bestselling thriller, difficult to read Thucydides).

In academia they are clueless regarding what I've written above. A common literature professor will not be able to discern the difference in influence and inspiration between the Iliad and a comic book (and will take pride in not being able to discern that). If you're in academia and truly an exception, my apologies. You really have to be a rare exception though. (And you're probably not.)

On the other hand one can read every great book in existence and remain a shallow fool. (One can learn at the feet of Jesus and still get no understanding.)

In my own reading history I was able to discern the mountain (switching metaphors) and to climb the mountain. I say there are summit works (Homer, Shakespeare, Plutarch, Thucydides, Plato, etc.), and then there is the 'beyond-summit' work, the Word of God itself.

This is the context of my saying my reading 'came to an end.'

One other thing to discern regarding influence carried in the written word (really, the most foundational influences are in the written word) is there is - as de Quincy outlined in an essay - the literature of knowledge and the literature of power. If all you read are books that give you knowledge, shallow surfacy knowledge usually, you are a common type and usually a shallow soul. You also need language. Higher visual language. Powerful language that can only be found in great works that deliver such language. The Homeric epics are the greatest example regarding this. (Other than the Bible, but as mentioned above the Bible has to be seen in a higher category.) The Iliad and the Odyssey are literature of power; they give you higher visual language that once taken in you can see things in yourself and in the world that you wouldn't have been able to see without that language. J. M. Roberts' History of the World is literature of knowledge (as an encyclopedia is). Most philosophy is literature of knowledge (there are exceptions, the Republic being one). Works of history can fall into either category. A history of art, or of New York will be knowledge; whereas Herodotus and Thucydides are literature of power. Some fall in-between. Grail romance is a visual language that is powerful. Greek myth as well. Even Grimm's Tales are powerful, deep language. Shakespeare is literature of power. Anyway, these basic two categories must be discerned.

There is also knowledge that is beyond the ordinary. Knowledge (and the practicing in real time of that knowledge) that gives us understanding of ourselves and the world around us. One has to venture into 'occult' areas (fending off the voices of the world and the devil at every step, including shallow Christians; i.e. voices that attempt to dissuade you from seeking such knowledge). These types of writings (and schools) vary greatly in worth (it goes without saying), and one often has to search through acres of mud to find a nugget of gold (mixed metaphor, sorry). One has to be able to navigate unknown waters with hazards in them. The Spirit of discernment, the Holy Spirit Himself is helpful (needless, again, to say). Basically, one has to fear God alone and not man. This is what leads to wisdom and understanding.

You also have to know what is out there. Know the field. Know what exists. This means seeking lists and making your own lists. How many great epic poems are there? Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid, Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost. Those five would be on any list. What are the classical historians? What would be considered great novels? What are the basic categories of books to begin with? (history, philosophy, all types of imaginative literature such as novels, lyric poetry, plays, etc.) Finding out about books from reading books. Some authors are good at leading one to other authors. Taking notes. The good thing is higher influences are not infinite. The categories and sub-categories of them are not infinite. There is a finite number of them. They can be listed and categorized. Captured, so to speak. Displayed. You don't have to read them all (see above about levels of influence). Two great works can represent the same level and go over the same ground.

What I've been doing in the last few years is reading great works that I passed over earlier just to now, like a retired athlete, work muscles so they don't atrophy.

I've been focusing on great novels because they deliver - they specialize in - universal human nature and the ways of the world. Understanding that can atrophy first. Musically more like a quartet or a fugue. Something you can get in to and follow at a close level along with the novelist and re-awake such understanding and discernment in the transactions between human beings and in the world.

Other than this, for me, complete Bible readings are a constant. They can become mechanical, which is not good, so one does want to develop level of being somewhat in-between complete readings. (Develop level of being...that 'occult' subject matter mentioned above...)

Don't fear the word 'occult', by the way. It just means hidden. Though it can be right under your nose. Not for everybody, but available to anybody.

Another way to categorize some types of influences is exoteric, mesoteric, and esoteric. Example: exoteric would be like a common systematic theology; mesoteric would be an allegorical work discussing truths of one's inner being; esoteric would be practical level knowledge and practices. When one comes to the point where one says: "But what is it that I'm actually to do?" One is ready for the practical level. (This does not reference works vs. faith, by the way.)

Another categorization is: philosophy, theory, practice.

Enough of these scattered notes. There is a lot in the above.

There's also something to be said for choosing a handful of influences (books in this case) and getting to know them very well rather than having only a shallow connection to a thousand different ones. Make them a balanced handful.

Two unique approaches to atheists (not that it matters, usually)

Here are two unique approaches to take when attempting to wake up an atheist, to some degree:

1. Introduce the atheist to the biblical doctrine and reality (for a Christian) of *regeneration.* Why? Because atheists have a very shallow, juvenile notion of *faith* and really base all their complaint against Christians based on this shallow notion of faith. They think faith is some thing Christians just decide to have, a matter of self-will, and that it is a blind leap and so on, etc. But when you speak to them of regeneration you can actually see them stop in their mental tracks, because regeneration is an experience, and the atheist doesn't think Christians have *any* experience of anything that they don't have access to. So when you explain to them regeneration, and monergistic regeneration, you can then explain to them that their entire complaint is that some people have experienced something they the atheist hasn't experienced. So they are like the deaf person who thinks the people who are dancing are crazy because he can't hear the music they hear. An atheist doesn't like being trumped on experience, and since they don't know enough doctrine to know about regeneration by the Word and the Spirit when you explain this to them it shocks them a bit, and thus is a unique approach to take towards them.

2. Challenge them to do what the people they seem to often most admire (the ancient Greeks) did: practice the saying 'Know Thyself.' Atheists tend to be shallow by nature. They tend to not know themselves any more than they have understanding of human nature in general or the ways of the world or higher influences of imaginative literature, history, philosophy, science, sacred writings, music or art. (Yes, they'll usually have a pretension to such things, but it is not difficult to expose that.) Science fiction genre novels and some Richard Dawkins and they've graduated to atheist Ph.D. That and being born. So challenge them on their self-knowledge. When they deny original sin, for instance, challenge them on how much they are awake to themselves. These are actually areas of worldliness where the atheist can be made to see he/she is very immature and undeveloped. The ancient Greeks practiced 'know thyself'...and they became Christians. Another thing the ancient Greeks had going for them was a basic degree of honesty with themselves in their pursuit of truth. Know thyself, atheist; and pursue the truth honestly.

More me bantering with atheists

ME: Most atheists, when pressed, concede they believe in some kind of reincarnation. Atheists turn out to be psychic hotline dupes when it comes down to it.

ATHEIST: Remember how it was before you were born? That is what death is, good luck!

ME: You don't remember what you were doing a year ago, or a week, or probably a day. Yet you were alive. When you say: "remember how it was before you were born? that is what death is..." you are engaging in very shallow thinking based on a severe lack of self-knowledge.

[I have more; and show tunes later in the evening...]

On Jesus returning

Jesus is never coming back. I can remember my Mother telling me that he was gonna come back eventually and save us all because the bible says so. She would give me money to put in the collection plate.

Even as a small child I could feel the flaws.

Believe in whatever you want. I believe in myself. I hope you believe in you and not a cosmic zombie.

Put down your magic wand and leave harry potter alone.

Use the Bible as your authority and not churches or man and you will at least have the potential of getting on the right track and the narrow Way. As for Jesus' return. Jesus will return in the fullness of time. God acts from eternity. We are constrained to perceive time as linear - birth to death. Time is bigger than how we are constrained to perceive it. When time ends (the harvest) it ends in *all time.* It doesn't end on a single calendar date. It is a supernatural event. Just as creation involved supernaturalism and catastrophism the end does as well. What you need to do is become a prophet, priest, and king, with the full armor of God which includes the shield of faith and the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. Get understanding of the Word of God by actually *engaging* the Word of God in dedicated complete readings. Then using teachers - books - as your discernment enables you to find on-the-mark teaching.

Atheism again

ATHEIST: Oh hush it fool, before I come build a giant 3 meter wall around your church so you cant worship fake deities anymore.

ME: When did atheists learn how to build anything? Atheists can only sit on walls, like village idiots.

ATHEIST: We might appear to be idiots when really we are looking down and marveling at the fact that one can be so inclined to believe in something just because if you don't, you might be punished by something no one has proof of. Curse the heavens until your lungs shatter and tell me if you ever feel a smite of anger from above. Or just pray in one hand, shit in the other, and tell me which one gets full first, you might find an answer some where between the two options about how credible your god is.

The atheist's entire complaint is some people experience something the atheist hasn't experienced. Rather than leaving it at that you pretend nobody can experience anything you havn't experienced. Then you express this juvenile reaction with a lot of juvenile rhetoric. Meanwhile you know you're in rebellion to your Creator because your Creator has put knowledge of Him in your heart. This is why you obsess over Him and those He has effectually called and regenerated. You just need to begin to break the shell of your vanity, worldly pride, and rebellious self-will. My advice: engage higher influences (art, music, imaginative literature, history, science, philosophy, sacred writings). Engage influences that are just outside your current interests and just above your current level of understanding. Keep this up until you can begin to discern a hierarchy in such influences. Eventually you'll arrive at the Word of God itself, and you will engage it even if just as 'literature' (whatever makes you feel comfortable). It's living language though and with the Spirit it has the power to quicken. To cut your dead, worldly spirit from your soul and connect you to the Spirit of God. All despite yourself. Now it is high time to awake out of sleep. Rom. 13:11

Assurance is not a hall of mirrors for a believer

Critics of Reformed Theology, Calvinism, Federal Theology, etc. often have a problem understanding how a believer can have assurance they are saved.

Most Christians don't explain this. They can't or have never thought about it. It's simple, really:

Assurance is a riddle to the unregenerate. The fact is, to the regenerated believer 1) one has one's own life and experience to give one assurance. Before I was like that, I did that, I seemed to enjoy doing that, now I am like this, I don't do that, I don't enjoy doing that anymore. Other things one sees in oneself that are basic and easy to observe are things like 2) one's valuation for Scripture itself. I use to not value it. I use to mock it. Now I actually read it and meditate upon it and yearn to increase my understanding of it and to become 'mighty in the Scriptures.' Another mark of regeneration is 3) love for the brethren. This can seem ironic if you spend a lot of time in debate over doctrinal matters, but once you step out into the world and you recognize a true brother or sister in the faith you feel a real love for them. You and me against the world type of thing because it's usually in such conflict that one becomes aware of another person's belief.

That's a good, basic way to explain it to them.

Atheism 101

atheists + science = junk science

Darwinian evolution, global warming, the Trabant...

An old message

Obama and his cronies have shown their hand,

and Americans are responding:

"Don't tread on me ... motherfucker."

God bless America.

The 9 best, most highly rated, novels of Honoré de Balzac

Because people often google "what is considered the best novel of X" type queries (I do myself) I offer this from a book called The Rough Guide to Classic Novels, pg. 135:

The following nine are the most outstanding [Honoré de Balzac] novels in the scheme [La Comédie humaine]...

Les Chouans (1829)
The Wild-Ass's Skin (1831)
Colonel Chabert (1832)
Eugénie Grandet (1833)
Old Goriot (1835)
Lost Illusions (1837-43)
Cousin Bette (1846)
Cousin Pons (1847)
A Harlot High and Low (1838-47)

For what it's worth; but I can say that the book that is taken from is exceptional for those types of books. The author covers all the classics (and he's not constrained by any asinine or fearful political-correctness) while at the same time will introduce you to many novels you're likely to have never heard of (I would say even 20% of the novels he covers are in this category).

I use myself as a gauge for that last statement, because I am one who has to know about everything that exists in a subject when I am interested in a subject. I pour over lists from anywhere I can find them, for instance. That's why this book surprised me.

Behold a silly cult

What is described in this blog post is nothing less than a cult mindset, and a silly one at that.

Church Christians *have no clue.*

Why there are so few Christians

Christians, church Christians, all kinds of Christians, are always grasping for a way to define the 'Christian experience' for themselves. Some more emotional in their approach, some more intellectual, some more physical.

Here it is, pilgrims: you read the Word of God complete, over and over, and you experience spiritual warfare. That's it.

And that is why there are so few Christians.

Molech appears as James White lectures...

God enjoys tripping up false teachers. Here is a video made by false teacher James White where he is castigating another preacher for burning NIV bibles (the preacher White castigates believes the Authorized, King James, Version is the pure and whole, God-preserved, received Word of God). White plays a video within his video of this preacher burning NIV bibles.

As White in his liberal, academic tone womanishly pooh-poohs the man for being so ignorant that he can't recognize bible versions based on the devil's Alexandrian manuscripts as real Bibles look what emerges from the flames.

This first image is of a Molech-like false idol beginning to emerge from the burning NIV:



This next image shows the Molech-like false idol more clearly:



This third image shows a snout-nosed devil emerging from the burning NIV:



You can see the times each image was caught on the images themselves and so see them yourself.

White is still lecturing to all Christians who are so ignorant as to hold to God's received, preserved Word. As the devil makes himself known in such critical text bible products right under his nose. Look at his facial expressions, listen to his voice. This is a deeply vain man with no discernment for the most foundational thing for a believer, the very Word of God itself.

God marks false teachers, and he also trips them up.

This thread, started after reading a recent news story on a parole denial of a Manson gang member turned into something interesting

Hey, I never saw this before... Famous crime scene photo

Don't ask how I got here:

http://flapsblog.com/2008/07/15/charles-manson-follower-susan-atkins-denied-compassionate-release/comment-page-2/

OK, I was reading a news story about how a Manson gang woman was denied parole again recently.

I know I've been sending a lot of murder and mayhem stuff recently, but, really, nothing intended by it. I just thought this photo in the link above of the crime scene was rare. - C.

* * * * * * *

Re: Hey, I never saw this before... Famous crime scene photo

Scroll down this web page about 3/4 and there are dozens of links to crime scene photos of the Manson murders:

http://www.members.tripod.com/~VanessaWest/manson.html

Like this one of the heiress of the Folger coffee fortune who was killed at the Polanski house with Sharon Tate:

http://www.members.tripod.com/~VanessaWest/folger.jpg

OK, I'll stop now. - C.

* * * * * * *

Re: Re: Hey, I never saw this before... Famous crime scene photo

Read Abigail Folger's wikipedia page. The detail that caught my eye is she had large amounts of a psychodelic drug in her system when killed. Yes, I'm bringing an occult angle: these drugs are called sorcery in the Bible.

Act 8:9 But there was a certain man, called Simon, which beforetime in the same city used sorcery, and bewitched the people of Samaria, giving out that himself was some great one:
Act 8:10 To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.

This 'Simon' fellow sounds just like Charlie Manson.

Anyway, it's possible a person, or group of people can 'draw' such violence and evil towards themselves when under the influence of such drugs. - C.

* * * * * * *

'sorcery' and drugs, and some other interesting things...

On the PuritanBoard, Steve Rafalsky, a former '60s drug taker type, writes about the connection between the KJV word 'sorcery' and certain illegal drugs. Here is a good exchange with good info:

Tim V. (a guy who works with plants) wrote:

"To throw a different sort of wrench into the discussion, what about plants? I've been collecting plants for years that can alter conscience, and many if not most here know one word translated in the NT for sorcery is the same work we get pharmacy from, and those drugs associated with sorcery back then as now come mostly from plants.

So where's the line there? Betel nut, cannabis, opium, several sages, coffee, cacao leaves etc..Which are lawful for medicine or even recreation and which aren't?"

Steve Rafalsky answered:

"An interesting wrench you throw into the works! You said, “So where's the line there? Betel nut, cannabis, opium, several sages, coffee, cacao leaves etc..Which are lawful for medicine or even recreation and which aren't?” Some of these are out of my knowledge, as Betel nut, sages, cacao leaves. I had a discussion with a PB person a while back concerning cannabis (grass), and was surprised that some – even here at PB – advocated for the legalization of grass and hashish, and considered the Feds out of bounds in criminalizing it. It even seemed as they would have no problem using it.

Medical use of narcotics (not psychedelics) is one thing, which I don’t contest. Medical use of marijuana – legal where you are, I know – opens a door to what I call “the satanic wavelength” which, although it may ease some physical and psychological symptoms, devastates spiritually.

I think the principle underlying what are and are not sorcerous drugs / potions / smokes is the nature of the psychoactive effect. Coffee certainly isn’t of that order (though it is a drug I can’t use but in minute quantities these days – just a wee bit in my decaf grounds), but grass, LSD, PCP, peyote, mushrooms, yage, speed, coke, mescaline (and mescal buttons), and crack, ecstasy (though I am not closely familiar with the latter two) and such are clearly in the sorcery category. The aforementioned “psychoactive effect” is that it energizes the faculty within the human being which is able to commune with other spirits, both human and demonic. Hindus matter-of-factly use hashish for just this purpose – contacting spirit entities – in their religion. Certain Native Americans and their shamans do likewise with peyote, mescal buttons, and mushrooms.

Some folks who get high on grass or acid and watch TV are awestruck at the “spiritual” acuity and profundity of the perceptions and dialogue of the actors / actresses, and even the commercials seem to be masterworks. This is not just a “high effect” but reflects the stoned consciousness of many actors / actresses, and perhaps it is commonly known that many creators of commercials have prostituted their gifts by availing themselves of demonic brilliance and depth through enhancing their skills by means of sorcery.

I think the prevalence of drugs, especially grass and hash (the latter derived from the former), is way underrated in our culture. There are a number of books documenting the widespread governmental use of LSD concurrent with (and a bit prior to) the beatnik and hippie phases, especially the CIA, other intelligence agencies, and high-ranking military personnel, even well-known politicians. It was thoroughly experimented with as a means of psychological warfare, as well as consciousness enhancement.

LSD (acid) is also still used, but quietly, without the fanfare of former days. These sorcerous potions inform much of the consciousness of our times. And if they are legalized – which a less conservative government may be prone to do – what is to stop Christians from partaking of them, if a clear Scriptural prohibition is denied?

In the NT (primarily in Revelation) words deriving from the Greek pharmakon (drug, potion) are used to describe an activity; pharmakon may mean, 1) medicine, 2) poison, or 3) magical potion, or a drug used to enchant. Only the third use is feasible in Rev 18:23 (& Gal 5:20), Rev 21:8, and 22:15. If the church is united – at the pastoral level – on this being an activity of the flesh, and one such that the Lord has said practitioners of it will be denied entrance to the gates of the Heavenly City, as will murderers, whoremongers, idolaters, and liars as well (22:15), then the church will be safeguarded whatever the laws of a lawless land permit."

- C.

ps- If that last post from Rafalsky was interesting here is, I believe, a uniquely interesting post from him from the same forum:

"This is a very interesting topic, and quite controversial! There are truly godly people who recommend the Harry Potter books – saying they have Christian themes within them – and those who thoroughly oppose them. (I once wrote a negative review of the first 5 books titled, “REFLECTIONS OF A FORMER OCCULTIST, NOW THOROUGHLY CONVERTED TO CHRIST, ON HARRY POTTER”. I have yet to review the last.)

I am using that book as a culturally accepted presentation of witchcraft. I know nothing of D&D, save that the role-playing villainous characters, or even “good” characters who cast spells, is akin to role-playing adultery, etc – in my view. Ditto with the ouija board and its direct demonic activity.

But what about the books and movies which do not require such participation? (I am still pondering the view that acting per se is sinful – a view I saw espoused here on PB – and do not know.)

To me, who grew up in the sixties, with the drugs, Eastern spiritual paths, occult teachings (as in Theosophy, etc) functioning and being conscious in the spiritual or psychic realms is the cultural context I live in; in other words, the secular world of mere material reality is as a cardboard prop in denial of God’s world, with its angelic creatures, demonic invaders, and humans who ally themselves with God or His adversaries.

When I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy – as a Christian, but backslidden – it was a visionary work of sorts, even though an artistic literary production, and in the fantasy genre.

The reality I live in is not the “mere material reality” of many unbelievers. I live in, and participate in, the Global Arena of Consciousness, which is located on Apokalypse Field outside the gates of Eden. There is much occult stuff that goes on here – please note, “occult” comes from a Latin root which means simply hidden from view, as in occult carcinoma or occult blood in the stool, and could as easily apply to the hidden prayers and spiritual warfare of a saint as it could to a demonic practitioner, except for the common usage which refers it only to the demonic. But this is not how I use the term!

The world I occupy is filled with two kinds of people, the unregenerate, and the regenerate – or, in modern parlance, the living dead – zombie, vampire, werewolf – those covered with wondrous skin coverings but within are progeny of the Devil; and the children of light, daughters and sons of the Most High God, filled with His Spirit, and in fierce spiritual combat with the living dead, whom they nonetheless seek to win over to the Light. In the global arena – or the world stage – all manner of voices lifted up, as though a great gladiatorial combat of spiritual warriors, seeking to establish vision of the truth, of the real. Except for the politicians and military – who impact the physical realm greatly – most of the voices lifted up are in the occult and mental regions. This is the world I – and I must say we all, conscious of it or not – live in.

In our literature and film we love to project out of us the spiritual horror of the unregenerate – we as a species – and not own that inwardly this is our own reality. Vampires are but those who psychically drain the vitality of their fellows – sometimes mutually – and the werewolves are those who rage and devour the emotional lives of others. They are of the same line, only they have different feeding styles.

So this talk of occult stuff infiltrating the church is sort of misperceiving the reality. We live in the midst of the occult regions – and where the prime deception is the “New York Times mentality” of a proper world ordered and material in essence – with the task of the people of God being to give discernment of the true and the false in the occult. To herald the One who came into our world a Champion of Light, and rescuer of those turned monsters by the ancient and dread sting of death.

I personally believe there is a new age of presentation of the Gospel coming, one which does not deny or suppress the occult, but exposes it from within, revealing the horror, and the glory. And the church will be seen as a glorious entity dwelling in the midst of dark powers – Christ's own community of saints, the haven of the lost seeking His rescue."

New Critical Text bible product on the way!

New updated bible product about to be unleashed by critical text scholars on their sheep the world over. "Can you feel the excitement?" project leader Nina Gerson exclaimed to a jubilant gathering at the Gay, Lesbian, and Transgendered Bible Translation Society where being president is her day job. She calls the request from the New International [Per]Version translation committee to be their project head, "A glorious example of how we can present God's intentions to people when we lose our fear of making God equal and just in a new world."

"The feeling around here is overwhelming," an excited Danny Moo, critical text scholar on the new bible product translation team beamed. "I was just saying to my colleagues it's like the first time I got caught masturbating in public. It's a rush."

Dr. Stanton Johnson, Professor of Biblical Ethics at Westminster Seminary California, gave an address to the new team of translators. "It was an honor. My main intent was to attempt to get them to be historical and not allow past connections having to do with a so-called English Bible...Tyndale, Geneva, the so-called Authorized Version translators, shackle them into any staid, unproductive, un-Godly narrow paths. Their's is the future. Is that grammatically correct? I'd better be careful around here with all these eminent scholars!"

Look for the new bible product to appear sometime in 2011. The translation committee also plans to produce a new dictionary explaining how they are using words and phrases for the new bible product. "The new dictionary will just be a good back-up for doubters who are less able to accept new meanings for old words," Ms. Gerson explained.

Revealing post at Green Baggins

Update 2: I have to take back the compliment I gave to the one going by the name 'curate.' He's written this in a later comment: "Richard, grace is indeed mediated through the church." Hmm. Tell Warfield that. Warfield couldn't discern the pure and whole - received - Word of God, yet he could at least discern where grace comes from: "Previously, men had looked to the Church for all the trustworthy knowledge of God obtainable, and as well for all the communications of grace accessible. Calvin taught them that neither function has been committed to the Church, but God the Holy Spirit has retained both in His own hands and confers both knowledge of God and communion with God on whom He will." - B. B. Warfield

The reason these churchians are so easily picked off by the Beast Church of Rome and its glass-eyed apologists is because churchians default to Romanism at a foundational level of their understanding (or lack thereof).

Update: also give the commenter over there going by the name 'curate' some credit. He understands. Even though he thinks all Baptists are heretics. What is clear, and what is always never assumed, is the stark fact that Romanists simply don't read the Bible. They just simply don't read the Bible. They are like liberal, shallow Protestants who watch their plastic-haired television preachers or go to Crystal Cathedrals or whatever. Actually I suspect most church Christians - very much including Reformed/Calvinist - never actually read the Bible in anything close to a dedicated way giving real time and effort to the activity. Very much including Reformed academics. The fact that they can't discern cartoonishly corrupt manuscripts and versions based on them from the real thing (the real received thing) is also a result of never actually reading the Word of God.

* * *

This post at the Green Baggins blog is rather revealing. Basically what you have there, in the post and the 700+ comments (to date) that follow it, is a gaggle of church Christians trying to figure out how one can know what the Scripture teaches.

Skip to comment #40 (fortunately the comments are numbered) and read the very concise note written by Vern Crisler to have the subject put into perspective and explained, biblically (it has to do with Bereans, and illumination by the Holy Spirit).

Actually, I'll just post Mr. Crisler's comment because a follow-up was asked of him which he didn't respond to, so I will:

Mr. Crisler wrote:

I think the above discussion illustrates what happens when Protestants give up the Berean principle of interpretive authority (individualism) and place it in the hands of institutions (collectivism). The papists will mock you all the way down the line. And to start out with a self-stultifying Wittgensteinian principle –as Lane does — doesn’t help much either.

rfwhite asked a follow up to the above:

How is it that individual interpretations become a group interpretation?

It happens by default because the term 'Berean' suggests actually searching the Word of God - engaging it, reading it...complete - (not commentaries, not books of doctrine, not confessions, not sermons, but the actual Word of God). Again, it happens by default. Spirit speaks to spirit and truth is known among those who know the truth by the Holy Spirit. The eternal mocking of Romanists and other unregenerate fools who both can't and refuse to know the truth notwithstanding.

Act 17:11 These [in Berea] were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

When you do this you get understanding which is seeing the parts in relation to the whole.

Why do I agree with the Reformation on the five solas? Because I see it in Scripture. Why do I agree with the doctrines of grace? Because I see it in Scripture. Why do I not agree with infant baptism? Because I don't see it in Scripture. Why do I not agree with the catechism of the catholic church? Because I don't see it in Scripture. It's really very simple. Oh, I have to actually engage Scripture. Actual Scripture. And I need the Spirit of truth which is the Holy Spirit (the trickiest requirement and the hardest to explain - or defend - when trying to explain this subject to the currently and proudly unregenerate; all one can say is: engage the Word of God complete and humbly, because that is the environment where regeneration happens, when it does happen).

One further, important note: you need a standard. A real standard. An unchanging standard. That means you need to humble yourselves to the pure and whole - received - text. The Hebrew Masoretic and the Greek Textus Receptus in sound translation (and the only one that exists in English, which is apparently how God intended it to be, is the Authorized - King James - Version. That is the necessary standard. Attempts to make a new translation based on those received Hebrew and Greek texts always deviate. This is due to the spirit of the times, which is a spirit of disobedience. The spirit of the devil.

Now you know the point at which your pride will be broken. If you can wipe the mocking grin off your face long enough to truly ponder your situation you will see how you must proceed, if you truly value the grace of God and the seeking of the Kingdom of God.

To an English guy who sees it as his duty to warn everybody about Calvinism on every video site on the internet

Calvinism is merely a nickname for apostolic biblical doctrine, un-watered-down, un-negotiated down to the demands of fallen man.

It is five solas doctrine. Classical Protestant doctrine derived from the Bible alone.

It is rare to see truth gaining a voice in the world, and when it does the world girds its loins and goes on the attack. Calvinism is experiencing a current revival of sorts, so the world will push back as usual.

God always has His remnant. His remnant know the voice of the Shepherd, the pure and whole, received, Word of God, and His remnant know his doctrine, derived solely from the Word of God.

If you are man-centered rather than God-centered of course Calvinism (apostolic biblical doctrine) is foolish and crazy and 'wrong'. If you are more just and good than God Himself then of course you will have criticisms of a God that is sovereign in creation, providence, *and grace.*

A note: modern Calvinist (Reformed) academics tend to be very different from Reformation era Calvinists (I'm not speaking of the Calvin vs. the Calvinists canard either). Calvin was a barefoot mystic compared to most Reformed/Calvinist academics today.

To a person who anwsers charges of the corruption of the Alexandrian manuscripts with all you need is the love of Christ

Yes, peace, peace, love, love, while I mutilate the Word of God. I tell you to follow the Word of God, while I mutilate the Word of God. Look at John 17 (see? we've kept it in for you!), while I mutilate the Word of God. Get down on your knees and feel the love of Christ, while I mutilate the Word of God. And when you've forgotten the Word of God, because we've mutilated the Word of God, well, all you really need is the love of Christ anyway, you know? Peace, peace, love, love...
- Satan

Response to a cleric who appeals to scholars to deny basic Satanic connections

*****, you just clearly are not yet able to discern foundational things. The Bible is simple. Satan is all through it in multiple names and manifestations and phenomena. Jesus is as well. Babylon = Satan. To see anything Babylonish in Romanism is like 2 + 2 = 4. You are still at a level of development where you hug the shore that is called the reverence for scholars and the authority of scholarship. And of course because this is absolute for you you will call me and anyone else who tells you such things "anti-intellectual."

If you ever find yourself in direct spiritual warfare you will begin to see the basics of the spiritual world and everything that seemed multifarious and myriad before (as the scholars preach on and on) will be seen for what they are. And you will see clearly the difference between revering and fearing man (scholars, in the context of your post) and revering and fearing God alone. I know you will protest that you fear God, but currently you don't fear God *alone.*

Fear God and not man, it is the beginning of wisdom.

Hornets

This is symbolic.

It's the type of thing God controls, like the oceans not over-running their bounds.

You've got evil in your midst, Europe. And the problem is not all external.

Steve Rafalsky, separate from them; they are goats

http://www.puritanboard.com/f63/skepticism-doubt-toward-bible-52046/

R. Scott Clark, pope of the 'Reformed' practical deists

These are the words of R. Scott Clark, as professor at a 'Reformed seminary' in California:

As I said above, I have spent plenty of time in the streets doing evangelism. To borrow from Paul, I must be out my mind to talk like this but I’m a certified EE trainer. I was doing street evangelism when you were in diapers.

Translation: I hit the street for an hour and a half in 1982, and like a life-long housewife who worked for all of two months at a retail store before she got married I've been repeating that episode, in world-weary tones, as if it was the greater part of my life ever since.

There’s a reason I don’t do it any more. It might have been emotionally satisfying but it didn’t produce much visible fruit for the visible church.

Wow, this Reformed professor really has a deep understanding of how planting the seed of the Word of God works in people, doesn't he? You mean the people you evangelized didn't on-the-spot get down on their knees and revere you as an accredited, ordained cleric? It's easy to see your disappointment.

Further, the culture has changed rather markedly since then. I’m not saying that no one should do it but I would certainly say that there’s no moral obligation for us to be “on the streets.”

Maybe not you, but it helps if the actual Word of God is out there in some fashion, preferably 'uncut' (to use street lingo, ha ha). And, by the way, it's good to know that culture has changed to the point where evangelism is no longer necessary. See, I thought human nature and the human condition were rather universal and pretty much static (the fallen parts anyway) despite what TV shows or pop song styles you're currently listening to.

Relative to strategy, I think it’s much wiser for God’s people to be concentrating, as it were, on those with whom they actually have a relationship.

Hear that Celtic missionaries who traveled far and wide to evangelize pagan tribes throughout Europe? What were you thinking?

As to ministers, I will be happy if they will simply preach Christ every week instead of trying to take back the culture for Christ or instead of preaching 10 steps to a fulfilled life or whatever. That’s what I mean by evangelism: ministers announcing the good news in the pulpit. That’s not a great burden; it’s a great joy!

Yeah, don't do embarrassing things! Stay in the Village of Morality where everybody already thinks alike, and don't worry about those people on the outside. Only evangelize people who are born into your church. Preferably people who are only born in your actual church building.

You might say: but that’s not very effective and I will repy: that’s the point. There’s a reason Paul calls the preaching of the gospel foolishness.

Oh, yeah, you've got that verse down, don't you, professor? The Gospel is foolishness because it is preached behind four walls where people on the outside can't hear it and thus it is ineffective. Show me the commentary you got that out of, I want to burn it now.

Yes, it’s a horribly ineffective method from the point of view of modern, entrepreneurial, evangelicalism but Jesus isn’t apparently very interested in numbers or success or as we define those things.

Didn't, though, you just say you stopped preaching on the street because it wasn't effective (as you understand effectiveness of course)? Now you're saying if you'd been drawing large crowds to yourself you'd have quit as well. I think you're a bit confused, professor.

He passed by people and never healed them. Should we remonstrate with God the Son for his lack of compassion. Did he drive out every single demon? Did he leave some folk in the grave? How “effective” was that? What sort of way is that for Jesus to bring his kingdom? I don’t know. I guess we’ll have to trust that the King knows what he’s doing.

Miracles performed by Jesus were special revelation designed to let people know He was who He said He was, they weren't supposed to be universal health care. (This shows why seminaries are inane institutions. Clark is a professor of church history, or some such specialty, yet his knowledge and understanding of the actual Word of God is at the level of Tammy Faye Bakker. This can only happen in inane educational institutions such as seminaries.)

He gave the keys to the visible institutional church. Full stop. That’s the great truth with which the modern revivialist movement has not grasped.

In the actual Bible it doesn't say visible, institutional. The Bible obviously defines church in many ways, the big, general way being the invisible church of which Christ is King. Interestingly this is how classical Reformed theologians define it as well. But this professor, R. Scott Clark, is not a classically Reformed Christian. He attacks Puritans, he announces that he is a greater theologian than Jonathan Edwards (I'll wait for the library of books to be written about R. Scott Clark before considering that one). He's a sacramentalist but hides it under a cloak of default practical deism (which his Reformed critics are beginning to see and to label him with). He's basically an unregenerate, angry, Village of Morality academic demanding to be respected as an 'accredited and ordained' cleric and to be honored as a 'scholar' and basically to be treated the way the inane world treats such inane figures.

An email response on repentance

Here is a response from a long-time email correspondent to this post:

Yes. That's my experience. When we discussed 'self-identified' Christians - this is the distinction (although not necessarily a real one but certainly one that I can sense). Some of us have lived a contra life and come to Christianity almost with our heels dug in, total resistance, kicking and screaming - it's simply not anything we want to accept or face up to and yet, everything tells us we must. And it takes a lot to break us down. I think CS Lewis had an experience something like this and I certainly did. So long as I was playing on the fringe, it was okay, more like a shock to awaken others but once it was really real and I was faced with the Truth, the shock was all mine. That's why statements like "Christianity is not a religion it's reality" have resonance for me where to others they seem like some sort of blind arrogance. If it wasn't a fact I could deny it. There is in any case a lot of internal struggles that go along with it as part of the process. I've always struggled with the 'christian community', the church as a legitimate body, and also a lot of the debates that Christians take up. We are just laden with associations too and we know everyone else is, coupled with our self-pictures and vanity and the whole thing is deeply threatening. Perhaps in a way, although I didn't follow you (C) into a deep study of theology, I tagged on, listened and followed up on certain leads as if to help me acclimatise and understand something that I may never have been able to tolerate otherwise. So a lot of the theology was really useful and a lot was crap or just good for the moment. Some outstanding stuff too. But it is this fact that one is changed emotionally that takes a lot of intellectual pondering to understand. (Speed of centres at variance. It's already happened but poor old intellect just can't get it's head around the heart of it, it's too big, too mysterious, too ... ) I would have been very content to find a groove with the 4thWay and just pursue that. Seen from below the Christian aspect came as an intrusion, seen from above we are fed heritage and restored to high places.

We never know who is called. This is the other thing we have always to remember. You. Me. Anyone. In company of a Christian, a pagan or an atheist - it's all the same, we just don't have a call on who gets saved, where and when the Spirit is working. We can't possibly know. It's a mystery. What man says he is, what claims he stakes is his own business. But that's just it, the 2nd commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Maybe Dawkins has the Spirit chasing him down and like Pharaoh his heart just hardens.

- Paul of England

Now Christians aren't supposed to evangelize the faith, pronounces R. Scott Clark

Wow, 'Leader of All Reformed Christians' R. Scott Clark is now saying Christians are not to evangelize but are to leave that to 'ordained ministers.'

So prophets, priests, and kings are not to evangelize the faith. And he goes over a passage of Scripture, explaining carefully that where it says Christians *are* supposed to evangelize the faith throughout the world it really means they aren't supposed to do that. (His 'exegesis' on the word 'all' in that passage is worthy of some kind of Reverse Arminian Non-Understanding of the Word All in Scripture Award.)

It's funny how the more these Jesuits in Calvinist clothing in the Reformed seminaries come out of their closets and the more they are publicly exposed and marked, the more they continue on, zombie-like, as if operating from some preconceived schedule on cue while still thinking they are somehow staying under the radar through it all.

Repentance

Interesting to observe how it is not so much change of intellectual opinions or ideas that is involved with real religion but it's a change in self-awareness, awareness of lying, awareness of self-justifying, awareness of one's condition, one's sin; change in one's ability to recognize something higher than oneself, to distinguish the Creator from the creation.

What I mean is it's not something you can find by noodling around with ideas. It's psychological and emotional development, and psychological 'turning' or internal 're-orientating' which happens less by one's will and more by God's will (which includes being aided by the living, piercing word of God).

Time 2

Following on this post...

I didn't make clear what it means when one says a person's time is alive and not dead once they are dead. God acts from eternity. A person's time (their birth-to-death line of time) is certainly not dead to God.

That linear birth-to-death line of time is not all of time. It is how a human being perceives time.

So what is that line from God's point-of-view? Without trying to actually get into God's point-of-view, which isn't necessary or possible, one can see that that line of time is part of a fuller phenomenon of time as it relates to one's life. The biblical phrase 'fullness of time' suggests the fuller phenomenon of time (higher aspects, higher dimensions, whatever), certainly more than the mere linear that human beings are constrained to perceive.

The human mind can't think of it clearly so usually pictures it as a revolution, or recurrence (note: same life, same time). This of course brings the bats out of the cave screaming "reincarnation!" or "we are only given once to die!"... So, it's not helpful. It's better to think of the 'fullness' of your time more as a cosmos. Something that is filled up as it develops. Yet the obvious interval that is death seems, to the human mind which can only see its time linearly, is difficult to see in a cosmos rather than in a 'circle.' Tough. You don't die more than once, and you are alive in all your time. Unless, of course, you are regenerated and you *leave your time* to be with God in heaven.

Which brings up the fact that this life, in this living time we have, is really death. It is being *dead in sin.* It is not really life at all, but it's all we have until being born again by the Word and the Spirit.

That interval of death is really the eschatological NOW. And...now...I've really confused my zero readers.

I'll try to explain that: that interval of death which 'seems' to reside at a point in a circle (followed by birth, and, again, no, we don't die more than once nor live more than once) is really where we are now. We are dead now, asleep, dead in sin, or, we are alive now, regenerated, with Christ in the 'heavenly places'. Now.

Eph 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

The development of our time - the fullness of time with regards to our individual life - is consummated in regeneration. With regeneration (and all that follows that) we leave this time and join other saints in heaven with our King.

Until then we are 'dead in sin', literally, in a 'seeming' round of death which is really one life but alive at all its points in a way we can't perceive, but that God can. And God can act at any point of our living time.

Time

[updated below]

In this post the last one makes me look like a universalist perhaps, so, well here it is:

>
>
> 25) Here lies an atheist
> All dressed up
> And no place to go.
>
> EPITAPH
>
>

Most likely, like most atheists, he expected to be reincarnated. It's only his dead flesh body there though. His soul and satanic spirit are elsewhere. Until the return of the King he will have his time to be regenerated by the Word and the Spirit if that is what God has in store for him.

I am basically referring to God's ability to act in time unconstrained with how human beings are constrained to perceive time.

God can act in a person's time at any point of that time. He acts from eternity. He can regenerate how and when he pleases. Birth-to-death linear time makes a human being's time seem 'dead' once the person has physically died. To God that is not the case. Deal with it, theologians. The Bible doesn't discuss time 'much' because it tends to explode the narrative when higher aspects of time are discussed. You just have to kind of see it. Figure it out. There's a reason we don't run screaming through the streets evangelizing people when *we know* hell exists. "That person's going to hell unless someone gives them the good news!!" We don't feel this is necessary because this is not how it works. We do need to evangelize though. And not be ashamed of the name Christ.

There is also truth that we just *know* regarding the fact that an unbeliever at death is not necessarily a reprobate at death.

Not to mention not even Reformed theologians (the gold standard I say without sarcasm) can come to a clear conclusion on the 'intermediate state' with regards to unbelievers especially.

There is this thing called the 'fullness of time.' People come into faith, if they do, when they do, by the grace of God, in the fullness of their time. History develops in the fullness of time. God's plan of redemption comes to consummation in the fullness of time. *Fullness of time* suggests a higher aspect of time than our constrained linear perception of time.

It just does. Not an excuse to think you have more time to screw around. (Or that 'second chance' exists. That is a facile accusation in the context of the difficult subject of time and eternity and how God acts and is able to act in the life of an individual.) The more you know the more is demanded of you. So once regenerated your time *is counted*, pilgrim.
______________________

[update] Whenever one writes about the subject of time vis-a-vis biblical doctrine it is inevitable that the accusations of ignorance of orthodox teaching or accusations of heresy come at you as a matter of course. Theologians avoid the subject, for the most part, so it just sounds 'whacky' as the commenter below typically states.

But there are things that we sense, as Christians. As Christians who even know on-the-mark apostolic biblical doctrine.

One is that people who die as rather obvious unbelievers don't necessarily seem to be obvious reprobates. This is a fact we all see in our lives. We know God takes care of all his creation, and he does it as he sees fit, but that doesn't automatically mean X's unbelieving mother or father died a reprobate. Maybe they very well did and it will be revealed at the final judgment. At the end of the Age. But their death isn't the end of the Age.

Believers (born again Bible-believing Christians who have faith in Jesus Christ) go to be with God when they die. Theologians don't know where unbelievers go when they die (eternal hellfire is where you are judged to at the final judgment; it is not a waiting room prior to that) because the Bible is not clear on that (and when the Bible is not clear on something it is *intentionally* not clear, pilgrims). This is because time plays a role that we can't perceive. God is acting on people from eternity. There is *nothing* in the Bible that suggests God limits himself in how he can act regarding things like regeneration. The Westminster Confession of Faith acknowledges this fact (10.3).

III. Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how He pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.

Written to a mocker of the Authorized Version 1611 and its readers

Oh, why don't you just read your Alexandrian, constructed 'bibles' and be content with it? The atheist-like justification for these continual attacks on Riplinger ("Well, I go after Christians rather than Hindus or Muslims because it's the *Christians* who are poisoning the world the *most*!")...and, yes, you go after the *crazy* Masoretic/Received Text types who read their 17th century English (which is way too hard for modern day people, especially if you've never read much literature to begin with!) because we Christians following such 'old paths' are screwing up the lives of your church members who get real confused and stuff when they see a thee or thou.

We aren't going away, count on that. You just need to reconcile yourself to the fact that Christians exist who see your Alexandrian modern version 'bibles' as corrupt garbage and get over it.

* * *

This is an issue not only of regeneration but of pride. Notice the pure and whole - received - Word of God is the point where the prideful refuse to to be *broken*? The thought is disgusting to them. It is *defeat.* They have yet to humble themselves to the Word of God and the Spirit. They want a bible (a document) that was created *by them.* That relied *on them* for its existence. All the while they want to prate on about their faith and righteousness.

Words the academic priesthood can neither grasp nor counter

The difference between the modern versions of the Bible vs. the Authorized - King James - Version comes down to the difference between a constructed text vs. a received text.

When you get serious with the Word of God you gravitate towards the received text (Hebrew Masoretic, Greek Textus Receptus, i.e. Traditional Text). You cease looking down at the Word of God as a document that requires 'you' to determine its content and you begin to look up to it, in humility, as something received, knowing that the Holy Spirit and Christians before you have shepherded it pure and whole down through history, through intense warfare and martyrdom, knowing you need it more than it needs you.

The constructed text is for children in the academy. The received text is for spiritual warriors on the Way.

The children of the academy are a petulant and deeply asleep playground lot. Their followers are simple dupes and useful idiots who currently fear the opinion of man more than they fear God and their own conscience.

The Word of God is a battleground of spiritual warfare. The devil has been attacking it and corrupting it from the beginning (he began in the Garden). The children of the academy know nothing of this battle. They know nothing of spiritual warfare. They are tame, deeply asleep slaves of the devil in the devil's kingdom.

The children of God, prophets, priests, and kings all of them, know they need the real Sword of the Spirit on the Way. They know they need real armor of God to stand against the world, the devil, and their own inner Old Man. The AV1611 is for spiritual warriors on the Way.

Written to a Muslim and some Euro atheists, and the same message needs to be heard by the rest of you

Muslim said:

Are you confused with all these gradual development of the English Bible
and the foundations upon which each successive version rests?

Muslims worship the devil. The devil attacked the Word of God starting in the Garden.

Modern day liberals attack the Word of God by using corrupt manuscripts.

If you have the Authorized Version (King James Version) in your hand you have the pure and whole - received - Word of God.

Engage it complete and humbly.

Don't conform to what your dead, atheist, socialist masters in Europe demand you conform to. Don't fall for Satanic Muslim or liberal or homosexual propaganda.

Christians are prophets, priests, and *kings.* Clerics are mostly of the devil in all churches in this era we live in. Follow the *old paths.*

Christians *are* prophets, priests, and kings. Follow the old paths, pilgrims. Wake up and see the Kingdom.

Practical deism, a stinging arrow

Sometimes a reviewer hits the nail on the head and the person being reviewed is publicly stung. This happened recently when Michael "iMonk" Spencer wrote an article for the Christian Science Monitor about the "coming collapse of evangelicalism." A reviewer deftly labeled the claim "autobiographical." (Spencer, an evangelical preacher, had just been through the rather unpleasant and embarrassing ordeal of witnessing his wife convert to Roman Catholicism.) The iMonk was stung.

Part of the sting is the unexpectedness of the truthful characterization.

Now we have another example. R. Scott Clark, the vicious warrior against all things mystical and anabaptist in Reformed Christianity, was recently nailed in a review of his book, Recovering the Reformed Confession, as a "practical deist."

The reviewer of Clark's book stated:

A problem that often bedevils Reformed spirituality is what Larry Wilson has pegged as the tendency of the Reformed to fall into "practical deism": God is out there and we are down here with our theology, lacking vital communion with and connection to our gracious covenant God. [link]

Clark responded with:

The review raises concerns about the piety advocated in the book, even associating it with "practical deism." One might have expected such an insinuation from Azusa Street but not from Dyer, Indiana. [link]

In other words, in a clear state of having been stung (unexpectedly) by a true characterization Clark basically sputters: "And you're a fag."

The reviewer answered:

Clark takes issue with my reference to "practical deism," about which I believe all the Reformed must ever be watchful: the temptation to see God in His sovereignty as "up there" and the means "down here" in such a way that the vital spiritual link is severed. The sovereign Spirit must always make effectual the means appointed, and we must wait on him in prayer for that. [link]

Clark was stung. Why? Because he (and many if not most Reformed academics of our day such as his very active book-writing friends Michael Horton and Darryl G. Hart) is a practical deist.

I've said before Calvin was a barefoot mystic compared to these guys. It's just another way of putting it. Somewhere along the line Reformed academics (teachers, church leaders) stopped talking about spiritual warfare, they ceased to write about such New Testament teachings as 'watchfulness', they lost the distinction between the fear of man and the fear of God, they lost touch with the pure and whole - received - Word of God; they know nothing about such things because they have not experienced them. But their arrogance and position of 'honor' (which they covet and protect as much as any in secular academia) denies them the self-awareness and humility necessary to get a clue. Or at least to stop affecting to be teachers of Christians.

Read the entire review of Clark's book.

Deadly, terrifying atheist quotes, beware!

Somebody sent somebody I know cyberly a list of atheist quotes in an attempt, he thinks, to turn his mind. I've responded to each:

> 1)
> Epicurus' old questions are yet unanswered.
>
> Is God will to prevent evil, but not able - then is he
> impotent?
>
> Is God able, but not willing - then is he malevolent?
>
> Is God both able and willing - then is he evil?
>
>
> David Hume

God knows that eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is necessary to become real beings. It's called knowing the difference. But once you eat of it you are no longer innocent (innocent to not do evil nor innocent to not be effected by evil). Epicurus neither knows God's motive nor man's state. He also, in a juvenile manner, judges God using a standard he can't get anywhere other than from God. He's a fat, gluttonous moron, and David Hume was a typical atheist moron for quoting him.


>
>
> 2) Fear was the gods' begetter in this world.
>
> Petronius

Right, because atheists have nothing to fear from their fellow man. Atheists are parasites on whatever civilization is currently happening that respects human rights (to any degree). Leave them to the 'world' and they survive about two minutes.


>
>
> 3) From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by
> God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.
>
> Edward Abbey

In the mind of the atheist any creature other than man is 'cool', including tapeworms. This is due to self-loathing.


>
> 4) Man create the gods after their own image, not only with
> regards to their form but with regard to their mode of
> life.
>
> Aristotle

Yeah, gods like Molech. Animal, monstrous, filthy. Aristotle didn't get out enough. He should have followed Alexander around.


>
>
> 5) Whatever we cannot easily understand we call
> God; this saves much tear
> and wear on the brain
> tissues.
>
> Edward
> Abbey
>

Abbey was popular with dumb college students in the '60s. It's easy to see why.


>
> 6)
> If I were personally to define religion I would say that it
> is a
> bandage that man invented to protect a soul made bloody by
> circumstance.
>
> Theodore Dreiser
>

This is why you're not Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.


>
> 7) In church, sacred music would make believers of us all -
> but preachers can be counted on to restore the balance.
>
> Mignon McLaughlin
>

This quote is the most on-the-mark thus far.


> 8) Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when
> they do it from religious conviction.
>
> Blaise Pascal
>

Religious conviction can mean anything. Marxism. Whatever. A person with a new heart and an unburied conscience doesn't do evil cheerfully, completely or any other way.


>
> 9)
> The religions of mankind must be classed among the
> mass-delusions of
> this kind. No one, needless to say, who shares a delusion
> ever
> recognises it as such.
>
> Freud
>

Freud was stump dumb.


>
> 10)FAITH: The effort to believe that which your commonsense
> tells you is not true.
>
> Elbert Hubbard
>

This may be true. You need to be regenerated and hence have a sanctified commonsense to know God's Word is true.


>
> 11) Blind faith is an ironic gift to return to the Creator
> of human intelligence.
>
> Anonymous
>

Man is fallen. Man doesn't have a pristine intelligence he had in the Garden. And faith in things one cannot see is not the same as 'blind faith.' That's a dumb, juvenile conflation.


>
> 12)
> Three-quarters of the American population literally
> believes in religious
> miracles. The number who believe in the devil, in
> resurrection, God
> does this and that - astonishing. These are numbers that
> you have
> nowhere in the industrial world.
>
> Noam Chomsky
>

Noam Chomsky to this day considers Pol Pot to have been a hero of his people.


> 13)
> A tyrant should always show a particular zeal in the cult
> of the gods.
> People are less afraid of being treated unjustly by those
> of this sort,
> that is if they think that the ruler is
> god-fearing and pays some
> regard to the gods; and they are less ready to conspire
> against him, if
> they feel that the gods themselves are his friends.
>
> Aristotle
>

Thanks, Aristotle. A lot has happened since you departed.


> 14)
> The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no
> more to the
> point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a
> sober one.
>
> George Bernard Shaw

Are drunks happy? Are they not more asleep? More prone to fall for illusion?


>
> 15) The Christian religion not only was at first attended
> with miracles, but even at this day
> cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
>
> David Hume
>

Regeneration by the Word and the Spirit is real. It happens. People experience it.


> 16) Once miracles are admitted, every scientific
> explanation is out of the question.
>
> Kepler
>

So?


> 17) There is a very intimate connection between hypnotic
> phenomena and religion.
>
> Havelock Ellis
>

Yes, and if fish and thoroughbred horses are similar then you have a point.


> 18) It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an
> anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously.
>
> Einstein
>

Jews are eternally ignorant of biblical doctrine. Yes, God became man. He didn't cease being God though!


> 19) Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength
> from its readiness to fit in with our instinctual wishful
> impulses.
>
> Freud
>

Yeah, we humans are just secretly chomping at the bit to fulfill those ten commandments... Freud's brilliance strikes again.


> 20) Philosophy is questions that may never be answered.
> Religion is answers that may never be questioned.
>
> Anonymous
>

No, you can question them. Why not?


> 21)If
> triangles made a God, they would give him three sides.
>
> Montesquieu
>

If man had made the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, then man would not have made him an incomprehensible trinity.


> 22) Religion is for people who are afraid to go to hell,
> whereas spirituality is for people like me who have been
> there.
>
> Dave Mustaine
>

Dave thinks he's experienced hell because he got sick doing drugs and stuff. Hang in there, guy, like they say: when you're having a heart attack -- you'll know it.


> 23)
> This is my simple religion. No need for temples. No need
> for
> complicated philosophy. Your own mind, your own heart, is
> the temple;
> your philosophy is simple kindness.
>
> The Dalai Lama
>

The Dalai Lama is basically as profound as any number of new age gurus who play to women who call psychic hotlines. Thanks, Tibet.


> 24)
> Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it
> you would
> have good people doing good things and evil people doing
> evil things.
> But for good people to do evil things, that takes
> religion.
>
> Steven Weinberg
>

Except that Christianity is not about being good, it's about making contact. With God. Via the Holy Spirit. Being 'good' is for losers who are going to hell.


> 25) Not one man in ten thousand has goodness of heart or
> strength of mind to be an atheist.
>
> Samuel Taylor Coleridge
>

Not sure what Coleridge's quote is doing here.



> 1) The more I study religions the more I am convinced that
> man never worshipped anything but himself.
>
> Richard Francis Burton
>

You're learning about the fallen nature of man. Keep going.


>
> 2)
> You never see animals going through the absurd and often
> horrible
> fooleries of magic and religion... Only man behaves with
> such
> gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being
> intelligent,
> but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
>
> Aldous Huxley
>

The devil prefers to fool man. It's more fun for him. How fun is it to fool a dog?


>
> 3)
> For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really
> is than to
> persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
>
> Carl Sagan
>

No, delusion is not good. (Many of these quotes are missing necessary context. Obviously we're supposed to assume delusion = God or whatever, but it's hard to respond to many of these. 'Religion' is mentioned in a way that could mean chicken worship or whatever, for instance.


>
> 4) Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own
> mind.
>
> Ralph Waldo Emerson
>

Emerson wasn't an atheist. This quote though is another out-of-context empty thought.


>
> 5)
> It was of course a lie what you read about my religious
> convictions, a
> lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not
> believe in a
> personal God and I have never denied this but have
> expressed it
> clearly. If something is in me which can be called
> religious then it is
> the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so
> far as our
> science can reveal it.
>
> Einstein
>

Who cares what Einstein believed?


>
> 6) Atheism
> in its negation of gods is at the same time the strongest
> affirmation
> of man, and through man, the eternal yea to life, purpose
> and beauty.
>
> Emma Goldman
>

Emma had been reading Nietzsche and was fired up. Nietzsche at that same time was catatonic in the upper room of his sister's house.


>
> 7) There is no God any more divine than Yourself.
>
> Walt Whitman
>

Well. OK. When and why did you start talking like the devil, Walt?


>
> 8) As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in
> schools.
>
> Anonymous
>

Rim shot.

>
> 9) I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up
> there, please save me, Superman.
>
> Homer Simpson
>

Modern day cartoons are soul-dead. Yes, all of them.


>
> 10) The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the
> most singular things in all literature.
>
> Alfred North Whitehead
>

This one I've heard before, and it does make one think. Of course humor can be many things to many people. I suspect there is little humor in the Bible because the Bible is serious as hell. And a little humor would give humans an 'out' to say, "See? He's just joking!" But if humor is about things that are true, and the Bible enables us to see our true nature, then there is humor in the Bible. It's kind of humorous that the Israelites hadn't been left to themselves two minutes before they started to worship a statue of a cow. When they were in the very presence of God Himself. That is humorous. If you can't see it that's your humorless problem.


>
> 11) When suffering comes, we yearn for some sign from God,
> forgetting we have just had one.
>
> Mignon McLaughlin
>

Yearn for a sign from God when suffering comes?


>
> 12)
> We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only
> in the sense and
> to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is
> beautiful and
> his children smart.
>
> H.L. Mencken
>

He spent his whole life coming up with that stuff.


>
> 13) I
> distrust those people who know so well what God wants them
> to do,
> because I notice it always coincides with their own
> desires.
>
> Susan B. Anthony
>

Like the ten commandments, yes.


>
> 14) By the year 2000, we will, I hope, raise our children
> to believe in human potential, not God.
>
> Gloria Steinem
>

Her human potential was writing a lot of dumb forgettable books, then dying of disease. I think. Is she still alive?


>
> 15) Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
>
> Mark Twain
>

Mark Twain did a lot of psychological projecting in his life. He wasn't aware of the concept though.



>
> 16)
> Most people are bothered by those passages in Scripture
> which they
> cannot understand; but as for me, I always noticed that the
> passages in
> Scripture which trouble me most are those that I do
> understand.
>
> Mark Twain
>

Atheists always have to be the top intellectual monkey.


>
> 17) I don't believe in an afterlife, although I am
> bringing a change of underwear.
>
> Woody Allen
>

A sad Jew.


>
> 18) If God created us in his own image, we have more than
> reciprocated.
>
> Voltaire
>

How so, Voltaire?


>
> 19) And that what we call God's justice is only
> man's idea of what he would do if he were God.
>
> Elbert Hubbard
>

You got it ass-backward and sideways, Elbert. What you call God's justice is your demand that he do what you consider to be good and just.


>
> 20) What? Is man just one of God's mistakes? Or is God
> just one of man's?
>
> Friedrich Nietzsche
>

Go back to your vegetable state, Friedrich.


>
> 21) PRAY: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled
> in behalf of a single petitioner
> confessedly unworthy.
>
> Ambrose Bierce
>

Excellent. Why not? God says do it.


>
> 22)
> I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects
> of his
> creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own - a God,
> in short,
> who is but a reflection of human frailty.
>
> Einstein
>

Jesus, can we keep the Jews from theologizing?


>
> 23) Millions long for immortality who don't know what
> to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
>
> Susan Ertz
>

Humans.


>
> 24)
> I don't know that atheists should be regarded as
> citizens, nor should
> they be regarded as patriotic. This is one nation under
> God.
>
> George H. W. Bush


This 'quote' is a famous fake quote. It's only repeated by liberals and atheists. People under no conpunction by conscience or anything else to tell the truth.


>
>
> 25) Here lies an atheist
> All dressed up
> And no place to go.
>
> EPITAPH
>
>

Most likely, like most atheists, he expected to be reincarnated. It's only his dead flesh body there though. His soul and satanic spirit are elsewhere. Until the return of the King he will have his time to be regenerated by the Word and the Spirit if that is what God has in store for him.


- C.