And the Spirit & the bride say, come.... Reveaaltion 22:17

And the Spirit & the bride say, come.... Reveaaltion 22:17
And the Spirit & the bride say, come...Revelation 22:17 - May We One Day Bow Down In The DUST At HIS FEET ...... {click on blog TITLE at top to refresh page}---QUESTION: ...when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? LUKE 18:8

Monday, February 27, 2023

Puritan Corner - Which was more Work?

"The doctrine of redemption by Jesus Christ is a glorious doctrine; it is the marrow and quintessence of the gospel, in which all a Christian’s comfort lies. Great was the work of creation, but greater the work of redemption; it cost more to redeem us than to make us; in the one there was but the speaking of a word, in the other the shedding of blood. The creation was but the work of God’s fingers (Psalm 8:3). Redemption is the work of His arm (Luke 1:51)."
by Thomas Watson (1620-1686) 
My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass: Deuteronomy 32:2

Dangers of "Progressive" Adventism SERIES Dripping from their Cyberpens: The WOKE LENS

But there were false prophets also among the people, 
even as there shall be false teachers among you, 
who privily shall bring in damnable heresies
even denying the Lord that bought them...
A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject;
2 Peter 2:1/ Titus 3:10
 
Ripped from the Cyberpen of Admiral Ncube at Spectrum Magazine (2/9/2023)...a psuedo-Adventist journal
 
"On February 3, 2023, Clifford Goldstein, editor of the Adult Bible
Study Guide, wrote an article in the Adventist Review titled “America in Prophecy? More Than Ever, Thank You.” 
It was an attempt to critique an essay I wrote for Spectrum titled “An Even Greater Controversy,” in which I questioned some Adventist prophetic speculation about the future of America. As a starting point, my essay was meant to provoke a conversation by critiquing a reading of Revelation 13 regarding the role of America."
We begin with pointing out that they obviously believe the interpretations hammered out by the Church pioneers, who literally spent hours in prayer pouring over Biblical texts, needs to be revised to fit their own progressive modern worldview in how prophecy is t be understood....yes, self ordained "progressives" the the rescue from our Church pioneers!
 
"As a starting point, an understanding of Revelation 13 focused on America in prophecy is clearly a product of our pioneers having conversations about their context. Using a religious lens, they tried to make sense of conditions in 19th-century America."
See above response. 
 
"Goldstein goes on to dismiss the influence of Manifest Destiny on
our pioneers by defending it. By arguing that the continent “was relatively uninhabited,” he renders the displacement of Indigenous people inconsequential, which is what Manifest Destiny (and the Doctrine of Discovery) is all about. Manifest Destiny regards the displacement and plunder of “relatively” few Indigenous communities as immaterial because the expansion of the United States was divinely ordained, justifiable, and inevitable. But history records that an estimated 5 to 15 million Indigenous people were living in North America when Christopher Columbus reached the continent in 1492....Interestingly, Ellen White uses a similar phrase in The Great Controversy: “The nation must arise in territory previously unoccupied.” One may ask, “Unoccupied by whom?
" 
Ah yes, that POISON of the WOKE LENS seeps into the Church. America was very lightly populated compared to the world at the time. I even had professors in college explaining that the whole population of North America (modern continental U.S., Canada and Alaska) was maybe the size of Indianapolis, scattered over that vast territory....so yes, by any objective measurement--it seemed uninhabited. The colonists didn't walk into to large populated established empires, rather they found vasts swaths of uninhabited land with small pockets in indians they came into contact with.
Revelation teaches that waters represent large populations. Earth represents the opposite.

"In any case, America’s exceptionalism is even suggested by Ellen White:
"When the land which the Lord provided as an asylum for His people, that they might worship Him according to the dictates of their own consciences, the land over which for long years the shield of Omnipotence has been spread, the land which God has favored by making it the depository of the pure religion of Christ—when that land shall, through its legislators, abjure the principles of Protestantism, and give countenance to Romish apostasy in tampering with God’s law—it is then that the final work of the man of sin will be revealed."
Clearly, an allegorical interpretation of the earth in Revelation 13:11 is problematic. Maybe Adventism is better off removing that this contentious interpretation represents uninhabited land.
You see, this persons problem with prophecy is that it doesn't look pretty under the Lens of Woke of which they are viewing it....
 
"It is increasingly admitted that the distribution of global power has
been shifting away from the United States as other countries amass power, whether economically or militarily. The waning of American hegemony does not take away the country’s influence in global affairs. But there is growing evidence that a sentiment of America as a singular shining city on a hill, one to which all other peoples should aspire, warrants contemporary critique
."
2 points in response: First off,  America influencing other nations to implement the mark of the beast doesn't have to be a military threat.
Second, there is his anti-America swipe via his "a sentiment of America as a singular shining city on a hill, one to which all other peoples should aspire, warrants contemporary critique". Now if that doesn't drip of Woke Idealogy/Influence...I don't know what does.
 
"Clearly, an interpretation of Revelation 13 highlighting America as
the stage for a Sabbatarian remnant hunted by Americans who want to kill everyone who doesn’t keep Sunday holy sounded plausible to some in the past. But it does not today. Our pioneers read prophecy as an extension of their time, and so did Ellen White in her predictions. Our danger is in binding God to our calendar without being open to contesting views and critiques ....dangles Adventism’s witness on an irrelevant edge.
"
So not only has his WOKE LENS broke his faith in prophetic interpretations about America in prophecy---but has spilled over into the Mark of the Beast and the counterfeit sabbath---the POISON of Woke entering the Church and upending people's faith.

Creation Moment 2/28/2023 - David & Paul Agree....

"In Romans 1:19, 20 Paul wrote: 
For what can be known about God is plain to them,
because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
” 
We saw that it is relatively easy to understand how God’s eternal power can be seen in the things that have been made.  
David seems to echo Paul’s thoughts in Romans 1:19, 20. In Psalms 19:1-4, David writes:
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.  Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.  There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.  Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.
David and Paul seem to agree that the heavens declare the glory of God, that His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made." Len Cornwell/Fulcrm7

Sunday, February 26, 2023

The "Peace, Peace" in Jeremiah

"The phrase peace, peace, when there is no peace is found in
Jeremiah 6:14 as well as Jeremiah 8:11. It is also found in Ezekiel 13:10 and 16. In all four places, it has the same meaning in the same historical context.
 
*Jeremiah was like a doctor delivering bad news to his patient. His diagnosis was that, unless drastic measures were taken, the patient would die. 
*However, the false prophets gave a “second opinion.” 
 
Instead of radical surgery and a drastic change of lifestyle, the priests and false prophets said a light bandage was all that was needed. The following passage is found in Jeremiah 6:13–14 and repeated exactly in Jeremiah 8:10b–11:
From the least to the greatest,
all are greedy for gain;
prophets and priests alike,
all practice deceit.
They dress the wound of my people
as though it were not serious.
‘Peace, peace,’ they say,
when there is no peace.
 
When the priests and false prophets said, “Peace, peace,” they were
denying that judgment was on the way. They were giving the people false assurances. The explicit assumption is that Jerusalem and Judah had not committed grievous sins and that God was not displeased with them. In fact, according to the false prophets, God was quite happy with His people and wanted to bless them. 
 
God bore witness against the people to whom Isaiah was sent to minister, calling them “rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction” (Isaiah 30:9). 
Such people have closed their ears to the Word of the Lord, and desire to hear only “peace” even when there is no peace. They say to God’s prophets, “Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. . . . !” (verses 10–11)."
GotQuestions

Dangers of "Progressive" Adventism SERIES Dripping from their Cyberpens: Always "Either--Or"

But there were false prophets also among the people, 
even as there shall be false teachers among you, 
who privily shall bring in damnable heresies
even denying the Lord that bought them...
A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject;
2 Peter 2:1/ Titus 3:10
 
Ripped from the Cyberpen of Edward Reifsnyde at so-called Adventist Today (2/23/2023)...a psuedo-Adventist journal
 
"I recently listened to podcast of an Ezra Klein, columnist for the New York Times with great interest. Klein podcasts about his
renewed interest in observing a sabbath as a blessing to him. He approaches it not so much about the religious angle, but based on his discovery that having a sabbath benefits him.
Adventists have historically viewed Sabbath as more a legal obligation than a blessing or joy, in spite of the fact that Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man, not the other way round.
What if the Adventist church became known as the champions of a sabbath because of its blessings to mankind? What if we developed a whole body of research and information strategies that communicated the benefits of sabbath to a secular world? What if we did that for humankind without an evangelistic hook?
Would that be a good way to invest 180 years?"
Always looking for a way to cheapen the Word of God and His Holy Law.
It's o.k. to tout health benefits of a day of rest, BUT that shouldn't take away from the solemnity of the Holy Sabbath Day and it's legal obligation under God's Law.
Q: WHY do self ordained progressives ALWAYS make it either-or
And notice the influence on their thinking---not Scripture---but in this case the New York Times
BTW, his piece was written basically as a fantasy piece about 180 years from now what the Church would be like if the end hasn't come yet. And of course it's dripping with veiled euphoria of tossing out the doctrines of the Church for becoming a social activist organization instead.
 
"What if the Adventist church spent the next 180 years in an intense life of caring? 
Would God’s kingdom be better served than if the church spent that time beating the “soon” drum?"
Who says they don't care? We are back to their flawed premise of their either-or, in this case, that "beating the soon drum" means one can't be caring for his fellow humans as well. It's a broken record with these people.
Bottom Line: They want a Church that does social work at the expense of preaching the 3 Angel's Message. But the Church actually does both. They just have a problem with the 3 Angel's Messages.

Creation Moment 2/27/2023 - Moses....the far better Teacher

 But even unto this day, when Moses is read.... 2 Corinthians 3:15
 
"From Moses however we know that 6000 years ago the world did not exist. 
 
--But of this no philosopher can in any way be persuaded…
--Equally useless is it to consider Moses in the beginning of his [Genesis] history as speaking mystically or allegorically.…Moses spoke literally and plainly and neither allegorically nor figuratively; that is, he means that the world with all [original] creatures was created in six days as he himself expresses it.…
 
Let us come at once to Moses as a far better teacher, whom we may more safely follow than we may philosophers, who dispute without the Word about things they do not understand." 
Luther

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Dangers of "Progressive" Adventism SERIES Dripping from their Cyberpens: God through the Lens of Pachamama?

But there were false prophets also among the people, 
even as there shall be false teachers among you, 
who privily shall bring in damnable heresies
even denying the Lord that bought them...
A man that is an heretic after the first and second admonition reject;
2 Peter 2:1/ Titus 3:10
 
Ripped from the Cyberpen of Hanz Gutierrez at Spectrum Magazine (2/9/2023)...a psuedo-Adventist journal

"Christian eschatology and its secularized twin, Western eschatology, are in deep crisis today. So, too, is Adventist eschatology, which is a legitimate, even if rebellious, child of them. The differences, contrasts, and apparent alternatives are only quantitative and on-the-surface. In substance, eschatology is always hope-generating, and faced with this essential and qualifying fact, contemporary eschatologies are chronically deficient. Paradoxically, the mechanism that has blocked them is an obsession with order, a typical Moloch of modern.....
Blah, Blah, Blah....gobbly gook psycho-babel ALWAYS accompanies their writing.... 

"And the future, as preached by Adventism today, is likewise the product of theological and prophetic calculations, projections, and inferences that try to detach themselves from real people in order to privilege salvation programs, initiatives, and strategies."
There it is....their disdain for the Biblical Doctrines of the Church, slammed under the guise of pseudo-intellectual sounding barbs that IF you (obviously) care about  the prophecy (and it's calculations) that somehow you don't care about people. 
 
"But is such a future still a future? Is it the bearer and generator of hope? Not according to Reinhart Koselleck. He says our future is actually a vergangene zukunft, a "past future," which is already born old and does not create novelty and open new horizons. It is a fearful, self-focused future that only knows how to compulsively extend forward the known present."
More pseudo-intellectual sounding babel based on a worldly source Reinhart Koselleck....these self ordained "Progressives" almost never quote Scripture, as is the case in this article of theirs.

"Christian eschatology must therefore be an eschatology of "good."
Moreover, its evangelical matrix compels it to be so; an "Eu-escatology" is an eschatology of the good and the grace announced to all. This I tried to show through a connection with the parallel Peruvian concept of "Suma Qamaña," which means "living well," having a “good life.” And living well is always coexisting, coliving with others. It has nothing to do with individualistic, self-referential virtuous living or survival.....
"
Again, their focus is drawn from the secular world ("Peruvian concept of "Suma Qamaña,") and not from Scripture then used as an excuse to dismiss Biblical Eschatology as not good---for the writer calls for an Eschatology that IS "good"...therefore one can logically deduce they think our current Eschatology is not.
 
"But now I wish to consider a second category of Andean cosmo-vision that can help restore Adventist eschatology: "Pachamama." ...t is an experiential look at the end, as experience must ultimately be every confessional locus, with conviction but without definitive and absolute accents. Every confessional look at the end is called to be moderate, to produce testimony, not proof....Pachamama is the name of a goddess representing earth, worshiped by the Andean people. In Inca mythology, she is a "Mother Earth" goddess, thus a fertility goddess who presides over planting and harvesting, embodying the mountains but also the plains. She is an ever-present and independent deity who has her own creative power to sustain life on this earth. Her shrines are sacred rocks or legendary tree trunks, and artists see her as an adult woman carrying crops of potatoes and coca leaves. The four Quechua cosmological principles—water,
earth, sun, and moon—claim Pachamama as their main origin. Pachamama represents the earth, not just geological earth or nature but everything as a whole. It is not located in a specific place. It includes springs, streams, rivers, the sea. It is an immediate and everyday deity, acting through a close presence with whom one converses, asking for support or forgiveness for some offense committed against the earth and all that it offers us. She is not a creator deity but a protector and provider; she protects human beings, makes life possible, and promotes fertility and fecundity."
See..."
Observe now they turn to literal Paganism of Pachamama....that belief system that Pope Francis got into hot water over when he took one of their pagan idols back to Rome and set up in a church. The one where offended parishiners took and threw into the river. YES, THESE SELF-ORDAINED "PROGRESSIVES" HAVE NO SPIRITUAL SHAME. They now openly admit in Cyberspace to preferring paganism and spiritualism, to Scripture. 
 
"Resizing the ubiquitous category of history and time. It is only when space and therefore Pachamama is recognized in its foundational value that the view of time is automatically rebalanced. In the Bible itself, the category of history is not absolute...."
Well, there you have it. ...from their own Cyberpen..."the Bible itself, the category of history is not .absolute..." These people are so spiritually dead they don't even see it through the mysticism that clouds their eyes.
 
"Valuing Pachamama cannot take place without a change in
theological and cultural language. Precise analytical verbiage makes Pachamama into lifeless, inert earth—sand and rocks. Rational language must give way to symbolic, poetic, and mythical expressiveness. Myth is the voice that best describes the nature and scope of Pachamama...
."
So they admit they need to go a little Woke/Cancel Culture  by controlling language to ease more people into pagan mysticism...
 
"Valuing Pachamama also creates another, more inclusive kind of ethics. As Pachamama is synonymous with space, a plant is the perfect metaphor precisely because it is rooted. From this we can see a different way of being in the world. Not an ethic of design and transformation, or one of movement and conquest, but an ethic of flourishing. Like a healthy plant, we do not need to move but need only be grounded in Pachamama...."
Speaking of "flourishing", their worldview triumphing in the Church would be the "fourishing" of Lucifer of the Church. 
 
"Finally, this orientation centrally involves a correction to our image of God. God is no longer the victorious judge who ultimately achieves his plans at any cost...."
The author wants us to view God through the Lens of Pachamama....but despite the disdain for God's Word by the author--He will always be the victorious Judge...

30,000,000: Why?

"30 million Chinese died because of the actions of men and women. 
Like most troubles today the event was not a physical catastrophe.  The deaths were the direct result of implementing the policies of the Great Leap Forward aimed at bringing China into the industrial age by harnessing its human labour.  
This means that we are dealing with psychology.  
---We are asking the question why do men and women do these kinds of things? 
Mao turned into a paranoid despot as he purged critics and fostered a blind, fanatical devotion to his own naïve policies.  
But we have also to take into account the tens of thousands of men and women who were prepared to follow Mao’s policies and enthusiastically implement them. We have to look at why, when the deaths began, those responsible for the implementation did nothing to stop the genocide from going further.
Beyond these Mao devotees we also need to ask why millions of Chinese consented, albeit often under duress, to have these policies foisted upon them. 
So in looking at the reason why 30 million Chinese died between 1960 – 1962 we are seeking an explanation for:
 
*The psychopathic behavior of the leader, in this case Mao;
 
*The enthusiastic implementation of the policies by government/party officials; 
*The tacit acceptance of the policies by the majority of the population. 
We want to understand not only what turns leaders like Mao into psychopaths, but why so many are willing to implement the psychopath’s directives.  We also want to know why the majority of the population allow such directives to destroy their lives." ZeroHedge
Q: Why?....A: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jer.17:9)

Creation Moment 2/26/2023 - XO-3b doesn't "wobble"

Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God...
Hebrews 11:3
 
"Every known planet has an orbit that lines up with the equator of its
star—except, apparently, planet XO-3b
Observations indicate that XO-3b’s orbit is tilted by 70 degrees.
This poses a problem for evolutionary ideas about the origins of planets.
The widely accepted theory is that they “coalesced from rotating discs of material and were gradually dragged inwards to their orbits by friction with leftover gases.”
So astronomers are suggesting that XO-3b was knocked into its “cock-eyed orbit” by another planet bumping into it billions of years ago.
But such a planet would have had to have been huge to have had such an effect, as XO-3b has the mass of 12 Jupiters.  
What’s more, astronomers say that such an event should have caused a gravitational wobble in the star, but no such wobble has been detected." CMI

Friday, February 24, 2023

From Whence That Filthy Mire of Error ?

"The manifestation of God is choked 
--by human superstition 
--and the error of the philosophers.
 
Hence arises that boundless filthy mire of error wherewith the whole
earth was filled and covered. 
For each man’s mind is like a labyrinth, so that it is no wonder that individual nations were drawn aside into various falsehoods; and not only this—but individual men, almost, had their own gods. 
 
Surely, just as waters boil up from a vast, full spring, 
so does an immense crowd of gods 
flow forth from the human mind
while each one, 
in wandering about with too much license, 
wrongly invents this or that about God himself.'"
John Calvin

Creation Moment 2/25/2023 - A Really Big God

Gird up now thy loins like a man; 
for I will demand of thee, and answer thou Me.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? 
When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Job 38:3,4,7
 
"The Milky Way Galaxy is composed of approximately 200 billion
stars. 
If one could count three stars per second, it would take 84,000 years to count the number of stars in our galaxy. 
The estimated number of galaxies in the universe has reached 200 billion." 
CSI

Thursday, February 23, 2023

ARCHAEOLOGY: Curse Tablet of Mt. Ebal

"Archaeologists missed a tiny lead tablet when they excavated a site on Mount Ebal 40 years ago, but it was found during the wet sifting process in the re-excavation of a dump pile. 
And folded inside the tablet was a message that scholars say they have been able to reveal with a CAT scan.
According to Scott Stripling, the head of the team from Associates for Biblical Research, the tablet has Hebrew writing that reads, 
Cursed, cursed, cursed—cursed by the God YHW. You will be cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by YHW—cursed, cursed, cursed.” 
---The two uses of the divine name and the chiastic structure are remarkable, and the text could also be the oldest existing example of Hebrew writing by several hundred years. 
---The curse tablet appears to date from 1200 to 1400 B.C., which would link it roughly to the time that Joshua built an altar on Mount Ebal and pronounced a curse on those who turn from God and worship idols ( Then Joshua built an altar unto the LORD God of Israel in mount Ebal,....And afterward he read all the words of the law, the blessings and cursings...Joshua 8:30,34)." 
 BiblicalArchaeology

Opening the Door to Compromise SERIES PAGE

  A man that is an heretic  
after the first and second admonition reject;
Titus 3:10
 
Gap Theory
Historic Creation
The Day-Age Theory
Progressive Creation
Framework Hypothesis
Theistic Evolution

IN the NEWS - Zombifying One's Self (the most EVIL drug yet)

 .....inventors of evil things.... Romans 1:30

"Xylazine — otherwise known as “tranq,” “tranq dope” and
zombie drug” — is wreaking havoc in major cities across the country with its devastating effects: It can literally rot the user’s skin.
The substance, which seemed to first appear in Philadelphia before migrating west to San Francisco and Los Angeles, was used for cutting heroin, but, most recently, it has been discovered in fentanyl and other illicit drugs.
Xylazine
causes sedative-like symptoms, such as excessive sleepiness and respiratory depression, as well as raw wounds that can become severe and spread rapidly with repeated exposure. 
The crusty ulcerations, which can become dead skin called eschar, can result in amputation if left untreated. 
Tranq is basically zombifying people’s bodies,” Sam, 28, told Sky News. 
Until nine months ago, I never had wounds. Now, there are holes in my legs and feet.NYP

Creation Moment 2/24/2023 - Surprise, Surprise......

 ...He made the stars also...... Genesis 1:16

"Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have observed six candidate galaxies with stellar masses as high as 1011 solar masses about 500-700 million years after the Big Bang.
We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the Universe,” said Dr. Joel Leja, an astronomer at the Pennsylvania State University." 
SciNews

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

The 1,2,3 of living as an Enemy of the Cross

For as I have often told you before, 
and now say again even with tears: 
Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 
 
 ---1--Their end is destruction, 
                                ---2---their god is their belly, 
                                  -----3----and their glory is in their shame. . . 
 Philippians 3:21

Creation Moment 2/23/2023 - Opening the Door to Compromise SERIES (Theistic Evolution)

"Ever since Christians first attempted to harmonize Scripture with the concept of millions of years, they have been straying further and further from a literal meaning of Genesis until they have abandoned it altogether.
 A man that is an heretic  
after the first and second admonition reject;
Titus 3:10
 
Theistic evolution is not new, but until the late twentieth century it was not common among evangelicals. 
When evolutionary ideas spread in the nineteenth century, a common response from theological liberals was simply to ignore the Genesis text altogether and claim that God created everything through the process of evolution
Evangelicals have long rejected this approach, believing the special creation of Adam is foundational to the gospel. Sadly, a growing number of professed evangelicals no longer think it is important to believe in a historical Adam. Consequently, they have no qualms with joining the liberals in claiming that God used evolution to create life. AIG

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Ancient Apocalypse vs. God

 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers... 2 Peter 3:3

"In late 2022, streaming-giant Netflix released an eight-part
documentary series titled Ancient Apocalypse, featuring investigative journalist Graham Hancock. Reportedly, the show garnered 25 million viewing hours in just a week and soared to Netflix’s top 10 list in 31 countries. 
Throughout the series, Hancock visits a variety of ancient sites in an attempt to prove his view that an advanced human civilization existed before the so-called “last ice age” and was wiped out by a massive flood over 12,000 years ago. The few survivors then traveled the world, spreading the knowledge of architecture, math, astronomy, and agriculture to hunter-gatherer societies.
While rejecting much of mainstream archaeology’s interpretations and assumptions about the rise of civilization, Hancock still accepts long ages and many conventional geological and anthropological time frames. He rejects the Bible’s history in episode one, lumping the Biblical account of Noah’s flood in with ancient flood myths. Because he has the wrong starting point, he, like mainstream archaeologists, comes to the wrong conclusions.
---According to the only eyewitness testimony of all of history, God created life and the universe around 6,000 years ago, including two
people who were intelligent (made in the image of God) right from the very beginning. They didn’t stumble around dumbly for millennia trying to figure out weapons, tools, farming, and fire. Rather, they were created with intelligence, and within just a few generations from the first man, Adam, “early” man was raising domesticated livestock, making and playing musical instruments, and working with bronze and iron. Genesis 4:17 even mentions building cities just one generation after Adam. In other words, civilization is nearly as old as human history.
God judged their sin with a worldwide flood around 4,350 years ago (not the massive, localized flooding Hancock believes took place) which destroyed every living air-breathing animal and person not saved onboard Noah’s ark. Human civilization was utterly destroyed, and no remains of whatever had been built or invented in the pre-flood world before Noah and his family entered the ark has ever been (or likely will ever be) found.
---Soon afterward, the conditions created by the flood (warm oceans
from volcanic and tectonic activity and cool continents from ash and particles in the atmosphere reflecting sunlight) caused an ice age, burying one-third of earth beneath monstrous glaciers. This event dramatically lowered global sea levels, exposing land bridges between continents and islands and opening up coastlines for settlement. Several hundred years later, the glaciers retreated, water poured back into the oceans, and sea levels rose, engulfing seaside settlements and swallowing land bridges.
But because Hancock accepts much of the evolutionary narrative, he also fails to properly understand our anthropology. He gets some things right: flood legends around the world exist and must be explained somehow (though he explains them wrongly), human civilization can’t spring from nothing, and mankind’s history does appear to be more complex than perhaps many archaeologists believe.
---Keep in mind that it appears that Noah’s sons and grandsons were deified by their later descendants, which might explain the “demigod” status given to many of these “civilizing heroes” in the legends. This deification was likely the result of the long (hundreds of years) lifespans of the first generations after the flood, that steeply drop off so that early ancestors outlived their great-grandchildren. It would seem they “lived forever,” and this illusion, perhaps combined with their advanced knowledge, gave rise to these demigod, civilizing hero myths.
Another common thread in many ancient cultures, according to Hancock, is the imagery of the serpent (most obviously seen as Serpent Mound in Ohio in this series). Why were these ancient cultures fascinated with serpents?
Could these serpents be a memory of the serpent that tempted and deceived Eve into sin in the garden of Eden? Perhaps! In fact, there has never been a greater cataclysm than the fall of man, deceptively influenced by the serpent in Eden.
Throughout Ancient Apocalypse, Hancock regularly attempts to place dates on the various archaeological sites he visits. Sometimes these dates are the conventional dates assigned by secular archaeologists. Other times, they are wildly different and are often reached based on archeoastronomy.
Archeoastronomy, the “astronomy of the ancients,” is a discipline that, in Ancient Apocalypse, attempts to map out the location of stars in the past and relate that to how the ancients may have built or oriented their buildings.
For example, in episode three, Hancock demonstrates that if you turn the sky backward, starting at 9000 BC and going forward, the megalithic temples in Malta, which are all oriented slightly differently, all eventually (over millennia) align to the brightest star in their night sky—Sirius. He uses this as evidence for his preferred dates for these sites.
Q: What’s the problem? 
A: Well, archeoastronomy is not without its problems, not the least of which is that it is a computer model. And, as with all computer models, the parameters and data the researchers feed the model influence the results. Wrong assumptions—such as the use of a 9000 BC initial date and assumption that the orientation of these temples must be due to some astronomical phenomenon, despite the lack of evidence at the sites that such is the case—fed into the program result in wrong conclusions and wrong dates.
Don’t let titles like “Once There Was a Flood” (the name of episode one) deceive you into thinking Hancock is espousing even a semi-Biblical worldview.....Graham Hancock's Ancient Apocalypse uses a lot of catastrophic, almost-worldwide-devastation language that, to many Christians, may sound reminiscent of the Biblical flood of Noah’s day and may make some want to think of him as “in our camp” (or at least closer to it). But Hancock doesn’t think there was a worldwide flood like the one the Bible describes." AIG

Creation Moment 2/22/2023 - Opening the Door to Compromise SERIES (Framework Hypothesis)

"Ever since Christians first attempted to harmonize Scripture with the concept of millions of years, they have been straying further and further from a literal meaning of Genesis until they have abandoned it altogether.
 
A man that is an heretic  
after the first and second admonition reject;
Titus 3:10
 
A sophisticated view was developed in the past century. The framework hypothesis reclassifies Genesis 1 from historical narrative to something more akin to poetry
The most popular claim to support this interpretation is that Days 1–3 parallel Days 4–6. So rather than being literal days of creation, these “days” are merely a literary device used by the author to speak of the “days of formation” and “days of filling.”
Christians may not recognize the name of this view, but they likely can identify some of its fruit. 
For example, many Christian leaders have stated that Genesis tells us about the “who” and the “what” but not the “when” and the “how.” In other words, since Genesis 1 is merely a literary framework to teach the basic truth that God created everything, it reveals nothing about how and when He performed this work. AIG

Monday, February 20, 2023

Fairmount, Indiana Obituary Lesson: It was just a Cold [1890]

To day if ye will hear his voice  
harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. 
Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. 
For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away Hebrews 3:15/James 4:14
 
"GEORGE W BUTLER
George W. BUTLER, an old resident of Fairmount, is dead. 
He was aged seventy-five. 
His demise was sudden and unexpected and was the result of a severe cold contracted during a short visit to Lincolnville.
Indiana General News Items from the Indianapolis News 13 December 1890 Page 6 Columns 5."