I Have Returned

It’s been over a year since I last posted on this blog. While I will spare you the boredom of hearing the sad tale why I was gone, I will explain this: During my absence from this blog, I was also largely absent from the internet and from massive US cable/satellite television for over two years. I lived without 99% of the news and social input to which I had been accustomed when I began this blog. No, I was not in prison.

I returned to the 21st century about two weeks ago, both with television and internet service. A lot has changed in the world. When I left in 2012, Isis was a member of the ancient Egyptian pantheon (and a really tacky Saturday morning kid’s show in the 70s). When I came back, it was now an acronym in all caps–ISIS–and the new, awful face of Islamic jihad upon the world.

When I last blogged here in September 2013, I cared to the point of agony that Barack Obama was not only a horrible President, but an illegitimate one deliberately bent on destroying America. When I returned, I had come to accept that this country didn’t have the moral courage to oust the pretender, and I now no longer care. Removing Barack Obama from office now would be like cutting the gangrenous leg off a dead person–pointless and messy.

Larger issues have emerged in my mind, beyond the state of the United States. What I do care about, more so now than ever, is how current events may (or may not) fit into biblical prophecies of the end. I believe Barack Obama has “jumped the shark” if you will in prophetic significance. He could surprise us all and suddenly sprout horns on his head (metaphorically speaking), but it seems unlikely. I do think that it is fairly evident by now that Obama is indeed–as Allen West coined–an islamapologist at the least, an Islamic Manchurian Candidate at worst. Generally, I assume the worst.

But things in the world are shifting mightily, and Obama’s role in it merely seems to be to hamstring the United States so it cannot exert its influence. The rise of Isis, the ascendency of Russia militarily and of the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) economically, and the drift of once moderate Turkey toward Islamic lunacy, are all potentially significant events prophetically.

So I will resume posting shortly, and while I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I hope to throw out some things for your consideration.  A lot of them will probably be ideas borrowed from others and expanded on; maybe a few of them will be original. All of them I hope will encourage you to look at this world a little differently than how you are accustomed, and maybe in the process find some truth yourself.

“The Bible” on The History Channel

It was only a matter of time before those felonious revisionists at the History Channel would commit more violence against the Christian story of faith.  Their latest crime against Christianity is the appallingly erroneous and epically mis-titled series “The Bible.”

My intention in this post is not to pick apart the series and catalog its multitudinous errors–that would be a task filling an entire website.  It is rather to show briefly that The History Channel has not lessened its anti-Christian bias in the slightest, and that “The Bible” isn’t worth the time one would waste watching it.  To discerning, bible-literate Christians, it is offensive in its mendacity; to others, it is perilously misleading.

I have caught bits and pieces of the series since it began, and up until recently my timing hadn’t been such that I’ve caught any errors, although I suspect the Old Testament stories have been recounted in a prosaic and neatly emasculated,  politically correct manner.  And I must give a tip of the hat to them for casting an actor to play Satan who looks very similar to our Pretender President, Barack Hussein Obama.  But when they come to the New Testament, the producers must soon face a decision–what will they do about the deity of Jesus Christ?  They can’t dodge it; it is the topic about which the entire New Testament revolves.  It boils down to a simple, either-or proposition: uphold His deity, or deny it.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which path they chose.

Aside from errors concerning the logistics of the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 (the crowd didn’t mob willy-nilly around the Disciples to get their food–Jesus had them sit in groups and the Disciples fed them in an orderly fashion), the scene was little more than somewhat annoying in its amateurish handling of one of the greatest miracles of the New Testament. If there were any tremendous heresies here, I didn’t catch them.  But the storm on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus walking on the water is another matter.

Here it’s not just Peter’s opinion of who Jesus is, or how the fish and bread were distributed to the masses.  No, here we have a clash of faith and good old-fashioned physics.  It’s a good tale, and a well-known one, so it must be included, but there is that nagging issue of Jesus’ deity.  Walking on water–even today the phrase is used to mean perfection, God-like inerrancy.

The whole scene of the storm is well done (in spite of the inclusion of a extra-biblical female in the Disciples’ group). The appearance of Jesus on the water is chillingly ghostlike, making the Disciples’ initial reaction that it was a ghost entirely believable.  Peter’s challenge “if that’s really you Jesus, then have me walk on the water to you” is omitted.  Peter simply steps out of the boat, and for a few miraculous seconds, he stands on the waves. Then he loses his faith at the sight of the storm and sinks. Jesus’ hand shoots into the water, and the scene slows as he says “Oh you of little faith. Why didn’t you trust me?”

And then Peter awakens from his dream, laying on the beach, as dry as a Baptist picnic.

Clever devils you are, History Channel.  It was all a dream.  Jesus didn’t really walk on the water.  Peter just dreamed it because of some nagging psychological self-doubt.  And in your cleverness you have shown your hand–to you the deity of Jesus Christ is just another fable in an old book written millennia  ago by grizzled old misogynists to justify their patristic society.

The Bible (the book, not the sorry mini-series) is the account of the creation, fall, and ultimate redemption of mankind by God in the person of Jesus Christ.  The mini-series prefers to skip over that detail, making their whole endeavor utterly pointless, for Christians anyway.  But their point was never to hold up Christ to the world.  It was to subtly hold up His word to mockery and disdain.  No Christian should watch this production thinking that it has any value other than to demonstrate the world’s hatred of our Savior.

If We Must Have a Devil…

Well, we are stuck with one whether or not we like it.  Weirdly enough, there are plenty of people who are just fine with that.  And then there are others who are not, but only because in their heightened sense of intellectual superiority, the notion of a real devil is so 16th century.  Next are the poor schmoes like me who believe–quite seriously and literally–in a real, personal devil (Satan, Beelzebub, whatever names he and his legion of imps go by), but aren’t particularly thrilled by it. Wherever you may come down on this particular topic, on this blog you will find that the official position concerning Satan is that 1) he is a real, personal entity; 2) he was a high-ranking chief of the heavenly angelic host, until he got too cocky and thought he take a shot at the Crown 3) and was cast out of Heaven with the 33 1/3% of the angelic host who thought rebelling against the Almighty AND an angelic army with a 2 to 1 numerical advantage was a great idea.  After that, this topic gets more complicated and blurry, but The Devil We Know toes the traditional, biblically-based, orthodox Christian position on Satan and his pointy-headed hordes.

The great media exposure that Satan gets these days is one of many topics we’ll hit periodically here, along with the shameless anti-Christian bias in the world and media, and some really subtle sabotaging of Christian orthodoxy in my newest favorite whipping boy, The History Channel. Now don’t get me wrong–I love The History Channel.  I watch it even now, even though I have caught it several times metaphorically wiping its nose (and other things) with the pages of Scripture. That isn’t all that big of a surprise for me–it’s been going on for centuries.  What really stunned me (and I don’t really know why) is the little changes that have been made to the bible accounts of certain topics that were quite subtle, and yet significantly altered–and in one case totally reversed–the meaning and message intended. I guess I was prepared for a lot of shenanigans, but not something so underhanded.

Posts are welcome here from any viewpoint–pro, con, or somewhere in between or way out in left field.  If you’re just going to be another hostile, self-exalting, obnoxious atheist with nothing better to offer than more of the lame Christian-baiting insults about fairy tales and Jesus riding dinosaurs, don’t waste your time.  Either you won’t be published, or I will publish your braying solely to take it apart piece-by-piece in an excruciatingly slow-motion rebuttal to which you will have no redirect.  If you want to post that kind of effluent, there are plenty of sites and blogs that love that kind of junk.  They will love your hackneyed anti-Christian, anti-Bible, anti-Creationist cliches.  Plus, you will get the bonus of being able to bond with other faux intellectuals like you.  This blog will not be a free-fire zone for morons–of any persuasion–whack job, wild-eyed, self-proclaimed prophets either.

And…GO.