Puritan Corner - Better to be Pruned....

"Better be pruned to grow — than cut up to burn."

 by John Trapp (1601-1669)

And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down. 

 Luke 13:9

Within the Deepest Recesses of the Human Heart .....

"Within the deepest recesses of the human heart is the longing to live forever. 

There is something in us that repulses the cold reality of death. 

In the perfect world that God created for mankind there were no graveyards because man was not made by his Creator to suffer death. Death, pain, sorry and sickness was never meant to be part of the experiences of man. 

 

The Bible teaches that God created us in His image (And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:  Genesis 1:26). 

Since our Creator possess immortality (Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: ... 1 Timothy 6:16), 

it was His plan to bestow on us this gift of eternal life.

 

However, just like other intelligent beings in the universe of God, we had a choice to make. One of the Creator's special angelic creation called Lucifer has disobeyed Him and cast a snare on His character of love. 

It therefore became necessary for all intelligent beings in the universe of God to choose whether they will obey the Creator, God or they will defect to the side of Lucifer and his host of fallen angels.  

Paul made this point clearer when he wrote the following statement in the book of Romans: "For the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). 

 Beloved, the Bible is clear. We die because of sin. We die because of our disobedience to the express commandments of God. In fact, sin is defined in Scripture as the transgression of the law of God (1 John 3:4). Sin is actually obeying the voice of Satan instead of heeding to the commandments of God. And as we have noted above, sin brings with it the painful consequences of sorrow, misery, pain and ultimately death." WhiteThroneMinistries

Creation Moment 4/30/2023 - Who "Twiddled" the Knobs?

 And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. Colossians 1:17

 

"As Arizona State University cosmologist Paul Davies observed,  that if you alter

the relative strengths of gravity and electromagnetism just a

little, say, and stars and galaxies can’t form. Flip the tiny difference in the proton and neutron’s masses to make the proton heavier, and you don’t even get stable atoms. Changing these numbers would probably preclude any life in the universe. It isn’t a big leap to say it looks like the knobs have been twiddled – as if the universe were somehow fine-tuned for our existence.

Denying the reality of our designed universe does not solve the problem either. Reality forces us to recognize that our universe was intelligently designed for life and did not evolve."  CEH

PROPHECY

"Prophecy has been defined as "history written in advance." This
being the case, and the prophecy proceeding from the divine mind -from One having power to foresee the future -the events of the real history would most surely fit the prophecy.

 

We may learn from the words of Christ to the apostles one object of the Lord in giving prophecy. 

Speaking of the things that would take place in the career of Judas, He said, "I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am He." (John 13:19). 

 

The uninformed say they are unlearned, and, therefore, can not understand the prophecies. On the other hand, many of the educated, and some of them even among the ministry, say: "The prophecies are sealed, and can not be understood. We all know that the book of Revelation is a sealed book." 

 

In the Revelation, the beloved John was told positively not to seal the book, (Rev. 22:10) and, also, in this book a blessing is pronounced upon those that "hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein." (Rev. 1:3) 

Q: How could the things contained in a sealed book be kept, -things

which were not, and could not be, understood? 

 

That the Lord designed the prophecies of Daniel to be understood is evident from His words to His disciples respecting the same: "When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand);" (Matt. 24:15) that virtually says, Understand Daniel the prophet. Had the people to whom the prophet refers followed the sure word of prophecy, they need not have drifted away from God's law, and substituted for His precepts the commandments of men. 

 

It is not because prophecy has some deep, hidden, mysterious meaning, that a failure is made in understanding it. The apostle Peter has said of it, and of understanding it: "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." (2 Peter 1:20,21) 

 

It is plainly implied from the above language that what is most essential to an understanding of prophecy is the reception of the Spirit that spoke through the prophets. Of that Spirit, promised to all who seek it, it is said, "He will guide you into all truth." (John 16:13)." J. N. Loughborough

IN the NEWS - Honoring Sodom in Congress

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. Romans 1:26.27

"The U.S. House of Representatives briefly put matters of the country aside this week to celebrate the latest winner of  RuPaul’s Drag Race.

On Wednesday, Rep. Jill Tokuda (D-HI) paused House activity when she took to the floor to salute her fellow Hawaiian Sasha Colby, a male-to-female transgender “woman” who recently emerged victorious in the long-running reality competition show’s 15th season.

“Today, trans people are among the most revered members in the Hawaiian community,” Tokuda said. “Amidst ongoing attacks on our LGBTQ+ rights that particularly target trans people and drag queens, her [sic] win is not only well deserved, it gives us all hope. Congratulations to Sasha Colby.”

In her speech, Rep. Tokuda referenced the “māhū” — a term describing gender non-conforming Hawaiians who are often categorized as a third gender." Breitbart

Forgotten Eschatological Motive of Christopher Columbus

"WHAT COULD CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (1451–1506) have to do with a study of millennialism? 

When we think of the great explorer, we remember him for anything

but eschatology.

His Spanish royal sponsors, Ferdinand and Isabella, were indeed stirred by the prospect of wealth beyond their dreams. So was Columbus. But all three had something else on their minds.

 

Ferdinand and Isabella combined political ambition with spiritual desire, nurturing the hope of a final crusade to liberate Jerusalem. Deterred by a lack of funds, they were attracted by Columbus’s proposal that finding a shorter route to the fabled wealth of the East would give them up front financing against the infidel—and prepare for Christ’s coming at Jerusalem.

 

Columbus had another reason to undertake this journey. 

He held a millennialist faith derived from an assiduous study of Scripture and a familiarity with the eschatology of Joachim of Fiore. 

---If there were a shortcut to the East by sea, missionaries could be sent there faster. 

Thus Christians could meet the provision for world evangelization before the Lord could return. Like John the Baptist at the first coming, he had helped prepare the way for the second.

"God made me the messenger of the New Heaven 

and the New Earth,” he wrote.

 

Columbus devoted himself to gathering what he called the Book of Prophecies. More than a collection of Biblical and classical
predictions of the end and the return of Christ, this volume showed how Columbus believed his explorations had served a divine plan. He quoted ancient writers like Augustine and Stoic philosopher Seneca to show how the discovery of the Western islands had been the foretold prelude to God’s final victory. He drew on Old Testament references to islands as support for his conviction that his voyages had been part of God’s strategy.

 

Like others, Columbus believed the world would come to its terminus 7,000 years after the creation. The world was thought to be 5,343 years, 318 days old when Jesus was born. Since then, another

1501 years had gone by, leaving only 155. By that reckoning, the end would be the year 1656. Clearly there was no time for the believers to waste. Jesus had promised that all prophecies would be fulfilled before the end, and his followers should dedicate themselves to accomplishing their part in that fulfillment.

 

One requirement of the Lord’s return was preaching the gospel “in all the world.” (Matt. 24:14). Such a task was now possible because Columbus had shown Christians how they could finally reach the entire globe. Another was recovering the Holy Land for Christ, so that all the world’s peoples could be gathered at Zion to witness the Lord’s return."  

ChristianHistoryInstitute

SDA NEWS : E.G.W. was Right (as Ripped from Today's Headlines Show)

...when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? Luke 18:8

"With such teaching given at the very outset of life, when impulse is strongest, and the demand for self-restraint and purity is most urgent, 

Q: where are the safeguards of virtue? 

Q: what is to prevent the world from becoming a second Sodom?"

E.G.W. 

"The CDC conducted its annual report on teen sexual identity for the year 2021 and found that among more than 17,000 teenagers aged 14-18, about three-quarters claimed to be attracted only to the opposite sex. 

Fully 25% of teenagers say they aren’t “straight.”

Among high school students, 

---12.2 percent identified as bisexual, 

---5.2 percent as questioning, 

---3.9 percent as other, 3.2 percent as gay or lesbian, 

---1.8 percent said they didn’t understand the question.

Overall, the CDC says the number of LGBTQ students went from 11 percent in 2015 to 26 percent in 2021." PJMedia

IN the NEWS - 3 Spiritual Truths from Carlson's Heritage Foundation Speech

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient... Romans 1:28

From Tucker Carlson's speech to the Heritage Foundation:

Truth 1: “I should say at the outset, I’m an Episcopalian, so don’t take theological advice from me, because I don’t have any. I grew up in the shallowest faith tradition that has ever been invented. It’s not even a Christian religion at this point, I say with shame.” 

Truth 2: “There is no way to assess say, the transgenderist

movement, with [the mindset of normal politics]. Policy papers don’t account for it at all. If you have people saying, “I have an idea, let’s castrate the next generation, let’s sexually mutilate children.” I’m sorry that’s not a political debate. That has nothing to do with politics. What’s the outcome we’re desiring here? An androgynous population? Are we arguing for that? I don’t think anyone can defend that as a positive outcome, but the weight of the government and a lot of corporate interests are behind that. What is that?”

 

Truth 3: “If you’re telling me that abortion is a positive good, you’re arguing for child sacrifice, obviously . . . when the treasury secretary stands up and says, “You know what you can do to help the economy? Get an abortion,” that’s an Aztec principle, actually. There’s not a society in history that didn’t practice human sacrifice . . . that’s what that is. What’s the point of child sacrifice? Well, there’s no policy goal attached to that. That’s a theological phenomenon. That’s the point I’m making: none of this makes sense in conventional political terms. When people, or crowds of people, or the largest crowd of people, which is the federal government, decide that the goal is to destroy things, destruction for its own sake, what you’re watching is not a political movement, it is evil.”

Creation Moment 4/29/2023 - 2 Questions for Evolutionists

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, ...so that they are without excuse....

Romans 1:20

".....evolutionists need to explain 

-1-how can we explain the origin of a universe that looks like it was designed, but was not designed. 

-2-Furthermore, how can evolutionists explain that ultimately nothing created everything." CEH

Papal Notes - Another Gospel is where Ecumenism Leads

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Galatians 1:6

 

"Pope Francis received Taiwanese Buddhists at the Vatican. After

praising the sacred values and principles of Buddhism, Francis invoked the name of Buddha, asking that He guide the monks into a closer relationship with everyone, including the planet. The Pope’s heretical action elevates Buddha to the status of a spiritual leader on par with Jesus Christ. Pope Francis expressed the following words to the Buddhist delegation:

“Your visit, which you have termed an educational pilgrimage, represents a privileged occasion for advancing the culture of encounter …  For as we experience others in their diversity, we are encouraged to move outside of ourselves and to accept and embrace our differences.” 

“The culture of encounter builds bridges and opens windows to the sacred values and convictions that inspire others. It tears down the walls that divide people and keep them prisoners of preconceptions, prejudices or indifference.” 

“Dear friends, it is my hope that this educational pilgrimage will lead you, guided by the thoughts of your spiritual teacher Buddha, to a deeper encounter with yourselves and with others, with the Christian tradition, and with the beauty of the earth, our common home.”  

This is a mixture of ecumenism and 

reverence for nature and false gods. 

As a result, the uniqueness of the Christian faith and witness is

diminished, and the false notion that Christianity and all other religions, including Mother Earth worship, are equal and valid is propagated."

AdventMessenger

Creation Moment 4/28/2023 - Gleanings From The Great Creation Chapter

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. Genesis 1:27

 

"The first chapter of Genesis is the foundational chapter of the Bible and, therefore, of all true science. 

It is the great creation chapter, outlining the events of that first week of time when “the heavens and the earth were finished, and....God ended his work which he had made” (Genesis 2:1-2). 

 

---Despite the evolutionists, God is not creating or making anything in the world today (except for special miracles as recorded in Scripture) because all His work was finished in that primeval week. 

---He is now engaged in the work of conserving, or saving, what He first created.

 

There are only three acts of special creation—that is, creation out of nothing except God’s omnipotent word—recorded in this chapter. His other works were those of “making” or “forming” the created entities into complex, functioning systems.

 

His first creative act was to call into existence the space/mass/time cosmos. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). This is the domain that we now study in the physical sciences. 

The second is the domain of the life sciences. “God created...every living creature that moveth” (Genesis 1:21). It is significant that the “life” principle required a second act of direct creation. It will thus never be possible to describe living systems solely in terms of physics and chemistry.

The third act of creation was that of the image of God in man and woman. The study of human beings is the realm of the human sciences. Our bodies can be analyzed chemically and our living processes biologically, but human behavior can only really be understood in terms of our relation to God, whose image we share. " HMM

The WARNING from Christ & Paul

"Christ says that just before the end “there shall arise false Christ’s, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matt. 24:24). 

And Paul says that just before the coming of Christ, Satan will work “with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness” (2 Thess. 2:9,10). 

 

---The miracles, which Satan works, are intended to deceive, and

since they almost deceive even the saints of God, it is evident that they have the appearance of good. In order to capture professed Christians, Satan is going to profess to be Christ, and he must therefore counterfeit as far as possible the work of Christ.

 

---Sometimes men wonder why the Lord should allow Satan to deceive people. 

*He doesn’t allow him to deceive anyone who doesn’t want to be deceived. Only those who receive not the love of the truth, will fall under Satan’s wiles. 

*No matter what garb Satan or his angels may assume, they can always be detected by comparing their words with the plain declarations of the Bible." 

E.J. Waggoner

Creation Moment 4/27/2023 - The Naïve & Dangerous Priestly Caste

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; 

for God hath shewed it unto them.

Romans 1:19 

"This assumption [that scientific institutions have a peculiar epistemic reliability] is at best naïve and at worst dangerous. 

If any human institution is held to be exempt from the petty, self-
serving, and corrupting motivations that plague us all, the result will almost inevitably be the creation of a priestly caste demanding adulation and required to answer to no one but itself. "

 Austin L. Hughes, The New Atlantis, Fall 2012

IN the NEWS - The Malindi Death Cult

My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their restingplace. Jeremiah 50:5

"Dozens of bodies have been discovered on the property of a Kenyan religious group which authorities have labeled a “cult.” The leader

of the small sect has been arrested, accused of encouraging followers to starve themselves to death in order to “meet Jesus.” 

The death toll reached 73 on Monday after 26 additional bodies were unearthed, as police continue to search the grounds of the Good News International Church, a small sect located on a remote stretch of land near the city of Malindi, Kenya. 

Officials said the bodies were found in shallow “mass graves,” which were “scattered” across a wooded area covering 800 acres..... the church’s pastor Paul Nthenge Mackenzie was said to have promoted bizarre beliefs and practices, including instructing members to starve themselves to avoid “apocalyptic damnation” and

to “meet Jesus,”....Mackenzie has had numerous brushes with the law since 2017, and was arrested in March for “the alleged death of two children who are believed to have been starved to death,” Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) said. Though he was later released on bail, he was picked up again on April 14 after 15 people were rescued on his land – four of whom were reportedly “emaciated and in critical condition.” They died before reaching a hospital, while the other 11, including two minors, required treatment....Mckenzie remains in custody, and is likely to face additional charges....Kenyan authorities said 33 people had been rescued since the search operation began last week, presumably members of the church, though their condition remains unclear, with some reportedly still refusing to eat." RT

Papal Notes - The Diabolical Agenda's Chess Piece

And of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. Daniel 7:20

"On April 20, 2023, Pope Francis hosted a delegation of British interfaith leaders from Greater Manchester at the Vatican. According to the Vatican’s Holy Press Office, Francis urged the need to protect the environment by creating new economic models in light of the

principles expressed in Laudato Si’. 

Pope Francis said:

“I express my appreciation for your efforts, as religious and political leaders, to raise awareness of the urgent need to protect the environment and to work concretely to address the effects of climate change.”

“Certainly, this demands the creation of new and far-sighted economic models.”

 

Pope Francis is attempting to stop something that has been happening on the planet ever since sin entered the earth. Long before the first steam engine or internal combustion engine were invented, the earth was periodically battered by natural disasters: earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanic eruptions, disastrous weather, droughts, heat, cold, ice, and massive flows of mud and lava. Long before the industrial revolution, thousands of species disappeared, including dinosaurs and mammoths.

But according to the advocates of the new climate religion, once we eliminate all fossil fuels, destroy all gas and diesel engines, stop using concrete, cover the grasslands with solar panels and the hills

with wind turbines, and slaughter all of our cattle, the global climate will become perfect, and there will be no more droughts, floods, hurricanes, snow storms, or plant and animal extinctions. We all know that isn’t the case, but that hasn’t stopped the proponents of climate change from spreading their overinflated propaganda.  

The climate agenda is just one piece in the chess game of a much bigger, diabolical agenda." AdventMessenger

Creation Moment 4/26/2023 - What is the Nonsense of "Cope's Rule"?

 The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness... Ecclesiastes 12:13

"Evolution tends to make animals larger over time – except when it

makes them smaller. In Science, Kaustuv Roy lamented the perils of this principle that animals evolve toward largeness, known as Cope’s rule. 

It has some examples but plenty of exceptions. 

If Cope’s rule were a law of nature, wouldn’t we find lots of giants? “Instead, most species tend to be small to intermediate in size, with few in the smallest and largest size classes.”

 Roy argues:

Translating these “rules” into predictions about trajectories of size evolution is not straightforward. If bigger really is better, then we should have a world full of giants, yet most species are small. Clearly there are costs to getting bigger, which prevent a runaway Cope’s rule. Such costs involve complex interactions among a multitude of factors including development time, population size, and patterns of resource use. In addition, the temperature-size rule [Bergmann’s rule] suggests that the external environment, which changes in a complex and nonlinear manner over geologic time, is also important in driving size evolution. So, not surprisingly, simple process-based models of size evolution (such as one based on energetics) have not been widely accepted.

As if that weren’t complex enough, “There is also the problem of scaling up from observations at the population level to macroevolutionary trends in size,” he said. 

It is unclear whether models built on samples from a few generations (living or extinct) will hold up “across geographically separated populations and macroevolutionary time.” The uncertainty about these “rules” of body size evolution make it difficult to quantify the apparent influence humans are having on large animals today." CEH

Answering Those Who Point To Diverse Denominations Within Christendom

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

"A skeptic wrote in:

Why should I believe in your version of Christianity over the thousands of others that exist? Because the Bible says so? Your opponents will say the same thing. The Bible can be used to justify almost if not all interpretations and versions of Christianity. Every Christian believes that they’re right,... That being the case, why should any of us take the Bible and Christianity seriously?

.....your statement is utterly irrelevant. I can use a top-of-the-line power drill as a hammer if I want; clearly that doesn’t mean I’m using it properly. Similarly, just because some people use the Bible badly doesn’t mean we should just ignore the Bible.

Of course, your whole assertion is that we can’t know who’s using the Bible well and who’s using it badly because disagreement exists on what it says. 

But that doesn’t make any sense. It assumes, at a minimum, that we should reject a knowledge claim if experts don’t all agree on it. But experts in the epistemology of disagreement themselves disagree about whether we should reject a knowledge claim if experts disagree on it. So, the claim on which your argument rests (i.e. we should reject a knowledge claim if experts disagree) doesn’t satisfy its own criterion of acceptability, and thus refutes itself. So, it’s necessarily false that we need agreement among experts to believe a knowledge claim—including a knowledge claim about what the Bible means. 

And if we don’t even need agreement among experts on the Bible to know something of what the Bible says, we clearly don’t need agreement among all self-professing Christians. It’s a bit like saying, ‘There are various types of counterfeit money, so real money must not exist.’" CMI

Creation Moment 4/25/2023 - Tall Order for the Darkened Heart

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 

Romans 1:21

" ... another common misuse of evolutionary ideas: namely, the idea

that some trait must have evolved merely because we can imagine a scenario under which possession of that trait would have been advantageous to fitness... Such forays into evolutionary explanation amount ultimately to storytelling... it is not enough to construct a story about how the trait might have evolved in response to a given selection pressure; rather, one must provide some sort of evidence that it really did so evolve. This is a very tall order.... "   

Austin L. Hughes, The New Atlantis, Fall 2012

Simplifying the WRETCHED MAN's CRY

But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, 

and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Romans 7:23,24 

 

"It avails me nothing that Christ has atoned for my sins, if I am then

cast on my own resources. 

--Holy beings fell before the wiles of that subtle tempter, who, like a roaring lion, seeks to devour me , and my evil heart will surely make me a willing prey. 

--I am eternally damned unless I can find a Savior from sin. 

--I shall never save myself from sin."  

Charles Fitch

Creation Moment 4/24/2023 - The 4 "Wise" Fools of France

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,... 

Romans 1:22

"Belief in ‘deep time’ actually developed in France in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, before spreading to Britain in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries.

 

Amongst the most notable French voices against scriptural authority and belief in the Flood in the 18^th century were: Bernard de Fontenelle (1657–1757), Benoît de Maillet (1656–1738), Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778), and Denis Diderot (1713–1784).

 

Bernard de Fontenelle

Fontenelle was trained at the Jesuit Collège de Bourbon, and for decades (1697–1740) he held the prestigious position of Secretary to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. This allowed him to influence the development and direction of geological science in France in a way that undermined belief in the Biblical Flood.

He had earlier written a book (1686) entitled Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. Effectively a science fiction dialogue, it discussed space travel and the possibility of life on the moon and other planets. Fontenelle envisioned gradual alterations in nature occurring over hundreds of thousands of years, and his book was influential in preparing the French imagination for a different worldview over the subsequent century.

 

Benoît de Maillet

Another significant influence of the middle of the 18^th century was de Maillet’s edited book Telliamed (a reversal of his name). It was first published posthumously (1748) by the Jesuit priest Abbé Jean Baptiste le Mascrier, although draft copies had been circulating in Paris for a couple of decades. De Maillet had become a French diplomat, allowing him to travel to the Middle East where he became acquainted with other cultures and beliefs.

Telliamed argued the case for millions of years of change from the perspective of a Hindu sage against a French missionary. Earlier clandestine drafts had argued that the earth was at least two billion years old, correlating roughly with half a day of the Hindu creator god Brahma; the 12-hour day of Brahma is said to last for 4.32 billion years (during which period Brahma is awake), followed by a night of similar length.

 

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)

The famous Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire also claimed that deep time was required for geological change. He commented in an anonymous letter to the Academy of Bologna in 1746 that:

Revolutions of thousands of millions of years are infinitely less in the light of the Great Architect of Nature, than to us that of a wheel which compleats [sic] its round in the twinkling of an eye.

Voltaire also argued that fossil fish found on Alpine mountains were in fact food dropped by Christian pilgrims! However, Charles Lyell, though a strong opponent of the Mosaic account, thought Voltaire was arguing deceitfully, because Voltaire recognized that such fossil evidence strongly supported the Biblical Flood account. He commented quite bluntly that:

The numerous essays written by him on geological subjects were all calculated to strengthen prejudices, partly because he was ignorant of the real state of the science, and partly from his bad faith.

Voltaire even began to argue that the Hindu writings were more ancient and authentic than the Bible. However, again he misrepresented the truth. He praised the Ezour Veda (or Ezourvedam) as a valuable gift to Western nations, saying they were indebted to this eastern religion. But in reality, this was a latter-day forgery; the work of Jesuits, not an ancient text. It was in the form of a dialogue between two supposed Vedic sages, one a monotheist and the other a polytheist who conclude that Hindu polytheism is more or less monotheism in disguise.

 

Denis Diderot

Diderot was an agitator against the political and religious authorities and, at one time, was imprisoned for sedition. In his Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature (1754), he wrote:

… may not a philosopher, left to his own conjectures, suspect that, from time immemorial, animal life had its own constituent elements, scattered and intermingled with the general body of matter, and that it happened that these constituent elements came together … [and] that millions of years passed between each of these developments … ?

The Jesuit-trained Diderot was well acquainted with Voltaire and gradually lost his faith, becoming a deist, then an atheist. He was tasked with editing a French Encyclopédie, a comprehensive work published from 1751 to 1772 to explain the world from the perspective of naturalism, and aimed at changing the thinking of French society.

 

Belief in millions of years of geological change then spread to Britain in the late 18^th century and early 19^th century through men such as James Hutton, Erasmus Darwin, Charles Lyell, and Charles Darwin." CMI