A wakeful one

"Angels were frequently called "watchers" by the ancients, which seems to have been derived from Daniel 4:13, "I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and behold, a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven." The common codices of the Septuagint all read "watcher" as in the Hebrew text, although one or two manuscripts give "a wakeful one."

-John Owen, Biblical Theology, pg. 198

That strange, uncomfortable feeling...

The process of becoming an inane academic elitist who refers to Christians as "lay people" is indeed a Spirit-stripping baptism.

But look at the up-side: you get to dictate to God what His Word actually is. Yes, leave that icky and annoying notion of a "preserved" Word to the "lay people."

The seminary professor who wrote the above-linked post worries that he is "counseling a dead orthodoxy"... Noooooo... (He actually isn't worried about it, he is inoculating himself against the charge. His conscience obviously knows.)

Listen, young seminary student: either you buy into the system of the Beast or you don't. Don't buy and then whine about the consequences.

John Owen on the Cathars

On page 147 of John Owen's Biblical Theology in a section where he is discussing the Roman Catholic Church and how it and pagans in general lie about God's remnant in all eras he states:

"I will pass over other similar monstrous lies with the simple comment that they all pale into insignificance in comparison with the slanders that the Roman pontiffs have dreamed up against the Albigenses [Cathars], the Waldenses, and other faithful servants of Christ."

It's disgusting that modern day Calvinist/Reformed Christians mindlessly and wickedly bleat the same Roman Catholic lies they have been fed in their 'educations' in seminaries and from Roman Catholic sources. How did I know the Cathars weren't what all the reference sources said they were? I have the Spirit of discernment in me: the Holy Spirit. I know God's remnant are maligned by the devil in all eras.

The word Cathar, by the way, is the same as the word Puritan. You'd think this alone would kind of give the Village of Morality churchians calling themselves Calvinists a clue.

Look at this passage from Pink's Sovereignty of God

The context of the whole chapter might be needed, but I suspect this passage can stand on its own:

"A brief word now concerning the extent of human responsibility [responsibility in salvation, i.e. to repent and so on and call on God].

It is obvious that the measure of human responsibility varies in different cases, and is greater or less with particular individuals. The standard of measurement was given in the Saviour’s words, "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required" (Luke 12:48). Surely God did not require as much from those living in Old Testament times as He does from those who have been born during the Christian dispensation. Surely God will not require as much from those who lived during the ‘dark ages,’ when the Scriptures were accessible to but a few, as He will from those of this generation, when practically every family in the land own a copy of His Word for themselves. In the same way, God will not demand from the heathen what He will from those in Christendom. The heathen will not perish because they have not believed in Christ, but because they failed to live up to the light which they did have—the testimony of God in nature and conscience."

This is very much the same thing Zwingli believed (he believed Socrates was saved, for instance). It is a position that is lost in much Calvinist discourse. I have to admit to allowing myself to get into unnecessary knots in defending Calvinist doctrine when in fact it is - biblically - much looser than the tight mathematical treatise its critics paint it as so as to knock it down.

(And on the subject of heathens and those without the Bible and so on I also see time as a factor, i.e. higher aspects of time, recurrence, the fact that God can act in a person's life from eternity and is not constrained by our limited perception of time; the fact that the 'fullness of time' is a pregnant phrase in Scripture which suggests a filling out of time including an individual's time in a higher way, etc., and unbelieving at death doesn't necessarily mean reprobate at death.)

In this same chapter (chapter 8) Pink also describes the process of turning to God in a way Arminians would say "A hah! that is not Calvinism!" when it is. You have to read it. He says what I on my own in going back and forth with people came to: the Word of God is the wild card in the process...

About that camera angle in the Charlie Gibson Sarah Palin interview

OK, Update below:

Well, about that camera angle ABC gave Sarah Palin in the Charlie Gibson interview: why didn't they just film it from the back of her head?

Here is what the media was doing: the face communicates as much as words, and the radical, demonic, scared-for-their-lives leftwing media did not want the audience to see Sarah Palin's face.

On the other hand if Sarah had a little stage fright in her first interview then the dumb media elite will have had their move backfire on them. God does that a lot to dumb reprobates.

UPDATE: I apparently saw a raw edit ABC released at first. The actual interview was done afterall with more than one camera. Gibson is a prissy moron though. "Have you ever met any heads of state?" What if she had? What a freaking dumb question. Anyway, don't any heads of state think its worth traveling to Alaska? What are they scared? Besides, Sarah's a head of state. The State of Alaska! "Ooh, you've never met Merkel?" No, she didn't get any Merkel influence up close. Otherwise she'd probably think just like every leftwing moron on the east coast, right? "Have you ever touched a black man?"

Here's a big thing liberals do

Here's a big thing liberals do. Regarding the Iraq War, prior to it happening, after 9/11, everybody - including the left - was saying we have to DO SOMETHING. We have to hit them back. We have to let them know that they can't do this. We have to put the fear of God into them. Because at that time all the fear-making was on the jihadists side. So we attack at the center of the Muslim devil-held world, Iraq. That act, all that fight, all that blood and violence and defeating terrorists then changes the environment. The emotional and intellectual and actual physical environment. So now the liberals are all brave since the Jihadists don't seem so all-powerful, and so they say, "Well, you know, we should have been more *wise* and not lashed back and so on. I mean, what is all this knee-jerk war-making. I mean, *look at them*: they are hardly a worthy enemy. They are nothing. What are they compared to our military?"

Now remember just prior to the Iraq invasion those same liberals were saying that the U.S. military would get wiped out (and thus they really wanted it to happen).

So anyway since everything is changed by actually making war on the devil Islamic world the liberals now bask in that changed atmosphere and pretend that it was like this all along. I.e., as if it would be like this if the war had never happened.

These liberals have no excuse before God. They are taking the side of the devil and the most satanic people (by their actions) that one can imagine existing on this planet.

Another thing: just use your brain and remember how *exotically unknown* the Muslim world WAS back prior to our military going in and taking it down and looking around and exposing the myths and illusions. Muslims have always played on the myth that their lands aren't gigantic toilets and that their governments and economies aren't forty years behind the times third world, and that their people aren't in disunity and so on. You pull back the curtain with an invasion and of course NOW every liberal is 'wise' about Islam and how backward and feckless militarily they are. IT TOOK A GOD DAMN INVASION TO GET THIS KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING.

You put people in their place by the use of power. Or else they inflict their third world violence on you.

This is why we went into Iraq. Stop listening to the left rewrite history (not that they could come close to understanding military strategy in the first place).

And stop pretending that the environment you live in NOW wasn't made this way by the military invasion and fighting back against Islamic evil in 2001-3 and since.