Maxwell Joseph Davies.
19 Nov 1948 to 6 August 2024.
After a period of illness, on Friday 9 August 2024 family and friends laid Maxwell Joseph Davies to rest at Pyes Pa Cemetery.
Plot 80.
I had the honour of being asked by Max’s family to direct Max’s funeral service, and to deliver a short gospel message before Max’s body was carried out to his final resting place.
To some attendees my short Christian message was probably seen as a superfluous 5-10 minutes to be endured rather than as anything important, yet for Reawyn, *And Max* his funeral was an opportunity not to be missed… to declare the truth about Jesus Christ and the Bible.
Far from being silly superstitions… Max’s and fam’s faith is founded upon solid ground, and the Gospel message contains their highest values as they know how essential it is for every human being to come to a saving knowledge of why Jesus Christ voluntarily submitted to death on the Cross.
They were especially desirous for their close family and friends to know the love of God so that they might be saved from God’s Judgement for their sins… should the light of truth dawn in their hearts.
On this score… the Davies have proven their love, and faithfully fulfilled their Christian moral duty.
Make no mistake… Heaven and Hell are for real!
Whatever the future holds for each person who attended Max’s funeral, let it never be said the Davies failed to warn their loved ones about the impending Judgement of the Almighty and the simple way God has provided for us all to be forgiven and made holy, so that we can spend eternity together in his presence.
Let he that hath an ear to hear… let them hear.
“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”
Paul The Apostle to the Gentiles. (Corinthians 1vs 18-21)
God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us
Romans 5vs8
It was an honour to be asked to deliver these vital truths to the people Max held so dearly.
I did my best with the short time I had to prepare, and tried to balance the importance of what needed to be said, without too much imposition upon the occasion.
My intention being to write a tribute of more substance to Max’s faith to be put online as a memorial… hence this which is before you now.
I was asked by Reawyn and Fam to perform these rites… to bless her home, etc as more than 3 decades ago, I had the pleasure of Leading a bible study at Max and Reawyn’s home in Payne st Judea.
What a fruitful little fellowship that was!
The Word of God found fertile soil there and Max and Reawyn’s faith grew strong… and enduring… transforming them into Bible believing… Grace preaching… Dispensational… Christians.
From that time onwards Max was no longer simply ‘a family man’ and a Builder…. he became ‘A soldier for Christ’… Max’s life became imbued with Divine strength and purpose.
God gave Max and family the fortitude to endure hardship, and to take pleasure in the simple things of life… esp family.
Max truly was a powerful and Godly Christian Warrior!
He was a beacon of light… Mighty with the Sword of the Spirit (The word of God).
Max was anything but a stereotypical Christian! He always was and remained to the end of his life… A Bougan… A Pakeha Maori, He loved a beer and a good yarn.
Unlike so many phony Pharisaic type churchmen… full of ‘Spiritual pride’… who preach Moral Legalism.. and posture with fake self-righteousness… mishandling the scripture and teaching false doctrines of works, and who don’t even believe the bibles they hold in their hands… Max was the antithesis of all those things! He was a preacher of *genuine Christian truths*… of Humility, of grace, and of faith in the trustworthiness of the King James Bible… in spite of our own shortcomings.
He knew and preached the true Gospel of God’s grace given to us via God’s Apostle Paul. Its a tragic reality that a majority of Christians in the world today don’t even understand these basic essentials.
Max did.
“Study to shew thyself approved unto God. A workman that needeth not to be ashamed… Rightly dividing the word of truth…”
2 Timothy 2vs 15.
There may be thousands of Christians and churches in New Zealand, yet sadly most of them wallow in False doctrine… and don’t properly understand the Gospel.
Very few indeed truly understand the scriptures to the degree that Max did.
He really was a beacon of light as he appealed to everyone he met to stop walking in darkness and embrace the Bible!
Max would extoll you to trust the King James Authorised version of the Bible… As God’s inspired and preserved revelation to us… The final authority in all matters of Faith and conduct.
Max lived a quiet life and received little credit for his labours for Humanity and God. No honours (except from his immediate circle) No fame.
Despite living in virtual obscurity It is my testimony to declare that when Maxwell Joseph Davies passed away Tauranga and New Zealand lost one of our Greatest Christians.
He lived a good life, and it is in recognition of His stature as a real Bible believing Christian that I write this tribute.
Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant.
The same week Max passed away Lead vocalist of the 70s Rock Band Led Zeppelin Robert Plant turned 76… making him virtually the same age as Max… His age difference being 3mths.
You may be wondering why I mention Robert Plant in my tribute to Max Davies? Well, It has to do with the question…. What is a Good life? What is real Success?
Most people reading this know Robert Plant is ‘Rock Royalty’… having achieved ‘Legendary’ status… Living a life of fame and fortune… yet we also know the sands of time sooner or later run out for us all.
Robert Plant will eventually go to his grave with millions of adoring Fans paying him tribute… and by many people’s estimation Robert Plant has Lived Life to it’s fullest. Literally millions of Fans would loved to have walked in his shoes … Yet will any of that Fame and Glory matter when Robert Plant goes to meet his Maker?
In the final tally… when we each give account for ourselves before God Almighty do you really think all the fame and fortune will be deemed to have eternal glory?
No.
“For What profit a man though he should gain the whole world yet lose his own soul?”
Mark 8vs 36.
You see it is when we stand before God Almighty and our lives and deeds are (metaphorically speaking) weighed in his scale… that’s when the true value of things will be known. Do you expect God to use the same judgement as this lost world measures success?
To believe that is to be foolish indeed!
“…Behold, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And to depart from evil is understanding” Job 28vs28
If then we use God’s yardstick to measure what a Good and successful life is I contend that despite Max’s humble existence… in the final tally… God will find his works and his faith are of far greater eternal value than all Robert Plant’s so-called ‘Fabulous life of Earthy success’.
We Christians do not serve the Lord in expectation of wealth or Fame, but out of our love and gratitude to the Lord for what he has done for us, and from our compassion for our fellow man… We have a message of hope and salvation for all who wander lost in darkness and sin… “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever should believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3vs16
In Christian virtue and by God’s metrics Max died a success!
Max died a truly wealthy man in the things that really matter!
Max left this life beloved by his wife and Children, with many friends, and well respected as a tradesman.
Max… as Head of his house was able to instill in his children that life has real meaning and purpose.
He taught them that via faith in Christ not sin… nor even death can defeat the Christian.
Max taught his children with certainty that though they may be separated by death for a short while… to carry on and live their lives to the fullest… fulfilling their God-given purpose… and when their time arrives… to face death with peace and hope trusting in God’s grace and goodness.
In death the Christian is received by Christ.
Video (Above) In Death Paul the Apostle meets his loved ones in heaven…. and Jesus!
Reywyn and Family…. May your faith be an unfailing source of strength! Rest in the certainty that you shall be reunited with Max… for this is the promise and great hope of the Gospel!
This is our great hope.
Death can not eternally separate us who believe!
This is not my opinion… its what’s written in God’s Holy bible!
Amen.
What a tragedy it is for any person to go though life thinking it is pointless and meaningless!
What a tragedy to face death without hope!
Especially given the fact that *Atheism is a delusion!* The Bible say’s ‘The Fool hath said in his heart there is no God!”. (Psalm 14vs1)
When the Atheist stands before the judgement seat of the Almighty… then they will realise just how foolish their atheism was… and how their Heart and mind were darkened… but by then their fate is sealed. They chose to enter Eternity unrepentant of their sins… they spurned the sacrifice of Christ.
Max was not a perfect Christian, very much like myself Max had his vices and struggles. We are well aware of our shortcomings. These faults cause us to rely wholly on God’s grace. Thankfully We know we have been made free from the Law… by Christ, and that despite our own failures to live godly lives, we trust in the Cross, and in God’s love, mercy,
‘And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:’
Pil 3vs9
‘Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree:’
Galatians 3 vs 13
5 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
2 Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing.
3 For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.
4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.
Galatians 5
For by grace are ye saved: through faith. and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God.
Not of works lest any man should boast.
Ephesians 2vs8,9
It has taken me a month to write this tribute because I feared not doing justice to Max’s memory.
I realise my chief difficulty comes from the fact that though I have many dear Non-Christian friends, I have far less dear Christian ones… and very few indeed as dear to me and as close to me as Max was… and I have suffered a great personal loss with his passing. He was (and indeed still is) one of my closest brothers in Christ…
Rest in Pease my friend…. Until we meet again!
Much Love and respect my Brother!
My one regret is that I allowed far too many years to pass without visiting you.
Sorry Bro.
Tim Wikiriwhi.
Christian Libertarian.
Dispensationalist.
Authorised King James Bible believer.
P.S I hope Robert Plant knows the only true ‘stairway to heaven’ is the Cross of Jesus Christ!
It’s not for sale… you can’t buy your way into heaven yet don’t be sad!
God’s Gift of salvation is *FREE* to anyone who believes the gospel that God sent Christ to die for our sins, and that he rose again from the dead in victory over sin and death, and whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved!
I was talking with a friend recently and they asked my opinion whether I believed there would be anything beneficial gained from doing an anger management counselling course… because they are going through life angry.
Taking this course was to be an act of ‘self-help’ because they wanted to overcome their anger and ‘find peace’.
Having done an anger management course myself many years ago I said that I benefitted from it, and that she probably would too.
It was then that she confided in me what was the chief source of her anger… a shocking, callous act of double betrayal… Infidelity.
I believe this took place along while ago, yet she has been carrying this stone in her heart for a long time.
She’s had enough and is now looking for a way to unburden herself from the deep anger and hurt: explaining to me that talking with her son he said to her “…I hope you find peace Mum…”
She replied… “I’ll never forget this… I’ll never forgive it, and when I die I won’t be at peace…”
The way she expressed this… that she would carry this grievance to her grave caused me to stop in my tracks (mentally speaking) for she was talking about *very heavy* moral realities.
I could see the pain she was still feeling… and burden of carrying this conviction of having been grievously wronged.
Now after hearing the sordid story, and seeing my friend does not like what her bitterness is doing to her life… I shared with her my Christian perspective hoping that might provide a pathway whereby she might find peace.
This conversation is the reason I have written this Blogpost.
It is the Christian perspective on Forgiveness.
Before I lay out the central principles, let me state that what happened was wrong, and she is justified in feeling hurt and betrayed. Trust was broken, and so it is easy to see why on these facts some might say she would be fully justified in taking her anger to her grave… yet what does this anger achieve?
It does nothing to solve the hurt… in fact carrying this perpetually only adds pain and misery upon herself.
Carrying anger and unforgiveness is a form of self-torture!
The issue is… can any valid reasons be found to forgive the wrong she has suffered?
Is there any way my friend can put down this heavy weight and enjoy the future free from anger and hurt…and at the appointed time… go to her rest with peace in her heart?
I began to share my Christian perspective on forgiveness…
Forgiveness is a fundamental tenet of Christianity as it lies at the heart of Our relationship to God.
The Bible tells us We are sinful and fallen beings in jeopardy of God’s judgement for our evils.
“There is none righteous, no not one.”
Romans 3vs10
“For all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God”
Romans 3vs23
This is one of the primary facts we must admit *about ourselves* if we are to any hope of ending our separation from God… *We ourselves* are sinful, imperfect and have committed evils against God, and our fellow man.
Never be so self deluded into assuming our own sins we’ve committed against others as being ‘Far less wicked’ than any sins we have suffered from others.
Satan laughing spreads his wings!
How then… given this is true about ourselves… how can we possible stand in self-righteous Judgement of others?
We can’t.
Jesus said ‘that by the same measures we use to Judge and condemn others… God shall use to judge us our selves!
So that by coldly judging others… in fact we condemn ourselves for we are guilty of the same kind of things… ie we are not perfect… we have committed evils we ought to answer for… even if they are not identical to evils we have personally suffered at the hands of others.
We have done despicable things and hurt others too.
Realising our own imperfection, and our own guilt…. from this we discover *our own need for God’s forgiveness*… and the forgiveness of others we have wronged.
We must never forget that we ourselves actually deserve to face Divine judgement. We have all stolen things that don’t belong to us… We have all told lies and deceived others… we (adults) have all committed various types of sexual immorality, for many of us that includes Adultery… yet in spite of all this Evil on our own part, The incredible message of the Bible is that God has loves us and want’s to forgive us all!
We can escape the just judgement of the Almighty… Why? How? Because God is not merely a Righteous Judge. He is also a Loving Father… and full of Mercy and grace!
The Christian Gospel tells us that… “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son [Jesus] that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life…”
John 3vs16
The Apostle Paul say’s “God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us…”
Romans 5vs8
Christ paid the penalty for our sins on the cross, so justice has been served in Gods eyes… as far as our sins are concerned. He settled our debt to God. He’s already satisfied God’s justice!
Jesus was sinnless… yet he died for My sins… he died for your sins… he died for everyone’s sins whosoever will look to his cross in faith.
When Christ rose from the dead, this testified to his victory over sin and death.
So believing this good news, I now have faith that when I die I shall not face judgement for my many evils. They have been paid in full by Jesus. and my loving heavenly Father [God] did all this so he could forgiven me!
” For by grace are ye saved, through faith. and that not of yourselves [our own faithfulness and righteousness] *it is the gift of Gift of God*.
Not of works lest any man should boast…”
Ephesians 2vs8,9.
“Whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved…”
Romans 10vs13
So many people do not understand who the Lord God of the Bible is! They think he is a nasty Cold vicious Judging God, when in truth he is Love and full of grace!
Don’t let Satan deceive you about the true nature of the God of the Bible.
Receive God’s gift of grace and have assurance of God’s forgiveness for our wicked deeds. Believe the gospel and you shall be forgiven.
“Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us…”
Titus 3vs5
And having received to forgiveness of God… by pure grace… how then can we remain unforgiving of others whom have wronged us?
Remember what Christ said to his disciples when he taught them to pray…
“Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory,
forever and ever.
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
Amen.”
Matthew 6vs9- 14
Now it is important to know that under our gospel given to us via our Apostle Paul that our salvation is a free gift and not dependent upon us ‘forgiving others’ as Jesus taught his Jewish disciples, for we Christians live today in a different part of God’s plan, and are under a different gospel to the one Jesus offered to Israel… yet reading Jesus words we can still clearly appreciate the hypocrisy that is involved when believers who hope for the forgiveness of God for our trespasses yet we ourselves are not prepared to forgive others whom have trespassed against us!
Who pretends to have lived a sinless life?
Who among us have not learned terrible lesions the hard way?
Who has not in the past done things which today they deep regret and had they opportunity to turn back time… they would not repeat those grave errors?
Who among us have not repented in our hearts for our wicked deeds?
Who among us could stand were we to be held to account for every great evil we ourselves have committed?
Who among us does not need forgiveness and a second chance to be better people?
Knowing the grace and mercy of God toward us ought to fill us with wonder thanksgiving, and humility.
To anyone who wrongs us we ought to say “We are fortunate that Jesus has paid for all the evils you and I have committed, and has provided a way for us to be forgiven by God… therefore for his sake and the great mercy he has shown me, I likewise forgive you for I cannot remain hard of heart in the face of God’s grace and mercy towards myself.
Trust in the Lord and the Salvation of his Cross, and you too can be forgiven by God for your sins.
Thus it is knowing the richness of God’s grace towards ourselves, we ought to be able to find the High Path… the better way to live… to chose to be like our Good and loving and wise Heavenly Father… Like Jesus Christ himself.
Become a vessel of Grace!
This is the will of God.
Now I hope in considering these Christian truths than my friend will appreciate why she ought to unburden herself from harbouring unforgiveness… Jettison That cold hard stone in your heart!
Free yourself… rest in the peace of God Almighty.
I will finish with Christ’s most famous of sayings when the Pharisees brought before him a woman caught in adultery to test him saying the Law of Moses says she should be stoned to death!
But What sayest thou?
Jesus said “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone…”
John 8.
King James Bible.
Amazing Grace!
How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found.
Was blind but now I see.
And let us never forget the chaos and hurt our evil deeds cause to God, and our fellow man…
Panic!
Panic Sheeple!
The end is nigh!
Global Boiling is here!
OH Dear God! What shall we do?????
We had better institute a Global Shut down!
Are the Globalists poised to implement the Great Reset?
All Auguries bode ill! Many factors lead me to believe the Globalists are about to pounce… and that is why they have in recent days elevated their climate alarmism to truly unhinged levels.
Just in case you have been in a coma for the past decade, and are wondering what I’m raving on about, ‘The Great Reset’ is the Socialist Gospel… the institution of the Socialist New World Order. The End of Independent Sovereign Nations, replaced with Global citizenship, and a Cashless global digital currency.
I believe the NWO is nothing less than the establishment of the Kingdom of the Antichrist as foretold in the Bible. 666. As foretold… As it was in the days of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, All Nations will be gathered under one All powerful Kingdom, presided over by the Enemy of God and mankind.
You will own nothing… yet you are told that you will be happy.
No one will be able to buy or sell except they have the Mark of the Beast. (Rev 13)
There will be no more Religious Liberty.
To achieve their Diabolical ambitions The World Economic Forum are manufacturing a fake existential crisis to justify their monumental grab for total power over the entire planet!
And billions of idiots are falling for it!
They have control of the UN, The World Health Organisation, and their puppets are in positions of power in almost every Western nation.
It has been decades in the planning, and the fate of human freedom hangs in the balance.
Satan Laughing spreads his wings!
The secretary-general of the United Nations Antonio Guterres.
It will be the end of Capitalism, and the birth of the New Age of Socialism!
Hearts and Hugs!!!!
Individual pursuit of wealth and happiness will be over.
All resources will be used for the greater good of the Herd.
*That is the sort of Socialist Bullshit they expect us all to mindlessly embrace*
Anyone with any understanding of how Socialism really works knows that if this New World Order is allowed to get established It will Be Hell on Earth!
Every individual will be allocated their share via the Global social credit system, your personal carbon footprint will be tracked, Your opinions will be scrutinised and policed.
All you must do is submit to the New World Order by taking the implant.
Rejoice Ye Damned Slaves!!!
Some of you may think this is all a bit stink… yet then you remember the Earth is Boiling!!!!!!!
Capitalism and Freedom are destroying the planet! ( At least that’s what the WEF and Leftist Greens wants you to believe!)
THE EARTH IS BOILING!!!!!! (I call BULLSHIT!)
Click and watch that Bangin video (above) from Daisy Cousens.
Our benevolent billionaire banker elites have foreseen all of this and have been selflessly labouring for decades on such a scheme of salvation. The Great Reset.
(If you believe these maniacs have the best interests of humanity at heart, you have rocks for brains!)
It seems patently obvious to me the recent escalation in extreme alarmist retoric is prepping the sheeple of the world into complying with the extreme political evils the Globalists are about to launch… right across the globe. All at once.
The embedded WEF Minions making these absurd claims about ‘Global Boiling’ take their orders from and are working to a schedule dictated by the Globalist Puppet masters, Schwab, Gates, Soros.
Fact check that!
On cue no sooner does The UN and other alarmists ramp up their retoric… catastrophic fires start to break out’ in Hawaii and elsewhere.
The media squeals “Global Boiling!” Global Boiling!
Of course it’s summer in the Northern hemisphere and that’s fire season, just as it is 6mths later in Australia. Poor management of national forests… the failure to maintain fire breaks, and do controlled burn offs of ‘Undergrowth ‘Fuel loads’ is the chief reason why massive fires have become the new normal. Nothing to do with a climate crisis.
This is all well understood, yet satellite images of recent fires in Canada show 6 or more fires starting in synchronicity. Obvious arson… yet Trudeau and Biden take to their National podiums fanning the flames of Climate change hysteria.
This is all by design… All part of the script to justify what is coming… The end of freedom in the West. That is unless we the people rise up in mass protest and Refuse to submit to this Globalists treachery.
If they are poised to implement a global climate lockdown We should be on the watch for some truly gob smacking brazen catastrophe… possibly A fire of unprecedented scale to break out somewhere with massive loss of life so shocking as to cause everyone on Earth to gasp. Not to infer what happened in Hawaii was trivial, if something of stupendous magnitude happens that can be construed to be a result of ‘Global Boiling’…. I for one will not be surprised.
The Globalists are ready to turn such a happenstance to their own advantage. IMO they are evil enough to engineer such an atrocity.
The stakes don’t get any higher than this.
The elites don’t give a rats arse about the billions of filthy little people who scurry about on *their planet*!
They have already decided there are too many of us… and the anti-human far left Environmental movement has done a fabulous job of instilling this Malthusian myth into the hearts and minds of the sheeple of the world… esp their children.
The evil Globalists are about to seize control of *everything*.
It is coming down to the wire!
A show down between the Globalists New World Order, and Freedom loving Americans and Nationalist patriots in all Western nations.
We shall fight to retain our Independence and right to self-determination!
We see the evil hand of George Soros directly at work manipulating the legal systems right across The US seeking to circumvent democracy and prevent American citizens from being able to vote Donald Trump back into office. It does not matter whether you like Trump or not… this corruption ought to be patently obvious to all! It ought to disgust and alarm *All enlightened people* (I’ll be writing another article on this) yet if The Soros Scheme to block Trump from running in the coming election is unsuccessful, there is an extremely high possibility the Globalists will pull the pin *just before the elections*.
That is how immediate this monumental conspiracy could kick off!
A Trump Presidency would be a massive blow to their aims… The Aged Schwab, Gates, and Soros might never live to see another ‘opportunity’ to grab Global power.
These Machiavellian Megalomaniacs have a sense of urgency to achieve their ultimate aims for Global Domination.
Soros is counting on Mass Trump Derangement Syndrome to cause the world to turn a blind eye towards this massive travesty against the American democracy.
Sadly I think he can have confidence that a massive portion of humanity don’t care if Trump is defrauded. They are blinded by their own contempt.
If you don’t want your children to grow up slaves be ready to march in the streets!
Be ready to go to Parliament and protest!
They are getting ready to impose their New World Order under the guise of the climate emergency. *NOW*
And it will resemble North Korean Type totalitarianism… but on steroids.
They have the technology now to monitor and control all human beings on Earth.
Big Brother… 1984… George Orwell.
Understand the level of tyranny they must impose if they hope to maintain an iron grip on power over the entire earth!
Understand the level of suppression of Thought and ambition they must hold over the peoples minds!
Enlightenment Ideals, and Christianity must be crushed out of existence.
We can still beat them and they know it!
They are desperate to gain control of the internet and pass censorship laws to make articles like this one ‘illegal’!
Because it is via Free speech that We the people can rally against them and thwart their evil plans.
Remember what these Evil Bastards did during the Covid Scamdemic!
Remember it was only the compliance of the sheeple that allowed them to trample our human rights, destroy our nations economy and impost tyrannical lockdowns… all of which were a travesty!
Did we learn anything from that massive social experiment on Global control????
Realise what I am saying is not fantasy, but an accurate description of the Political Establishment’s modus opperandi.
Wake up Sheeple!
So be ready to march in the streets people!
Be ready to resist!
Be ready to defy their evil orders!
Refuse to comply!
United we stand!
And especially remain peaceful in your civil disobedience… for history has proven that peaceful resistance can break despotic powers… as long as *all the people* act in solidarity and do not waiver in the face of the jackboots.
We must be prepared to make the ultimate personal sacrifices to save our children from Satanic Slavery.
It is also election time!
We desperately need to get rid of Labour, The Greens, and the Maori Party, yet if you want to save New Zealand from the great Reset for goodness sake Don’t vote National.
Don’t vote Act! Certainly don’t vote NZ first!
These parties were fully complicit in Arden’s Tyrannical activities since 2017.
Under Ardern these parties absolutely failed to be an effective opposition… that is because they are fundamentally in agreement on 90% of the big issues that New Zealand has faced… and they are fully on board with The Globalist agenda.|
I implore all Freedom fighters to vote for one of the New Freedom based parties!
Vote for New Conservatives, or Democracy NZ, or Leighton Bakers party, Or NZ Loyal, or Sue Grey’s and Brian Tamaki’s Freedom coalition.
New Zealand desperately needs to sweep out the despicable Status quo parties, and elect new blood!
It is my understanding that all these New parties stand for New Zealand’s Independence and National Sovereignty in opposition to the Globalist’s aims.
Voting for any of the status quo is a wasted vote.
Tim Wikiriwhi
Christian Libertarian.
Update: 26-8-23 *Here we go!…
No less than 79 Arsonists have been arrested in Greece! You can bet they are all Far Left Radicals who are part of the Globalist scheme to promote the idea of ‘Global Boiling’. Their counterparts are lighting fires all over the globe then screaming ‘Climate change!!!!
“… Greece has called out “arsonist scum” after police made 79 arson arrests over wildfires ravaging the country.
Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said there had been several attempts by arsonists to start new fires on Mount Parnitha, north-west of Athens.
The blaze is one of hundreds in the nation where wildfires have already killed at least 20 people this week.
“You are committing a crime against the country,” Mr Kikilias said.
“Arsonist scum are setting fires that threaten forests, property and, most of all, human lives,” Mr Kikilias told Greeks during a televised emergency briefing on Thursday.
“You will not get away with it, we will find you, you will be held accountable.”
Summer wildfires are common in Greece and scientists have linked the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including heatwaves, to climate change…”
Christian post-script.
The Bible predicted the Antichrist minions of Satan would try to enslave the world. It will only happen on our watch *if we wallow in apathy and indifference*.
If we fight this I see no reason in the scriptures why this ultimate scheme of Satan cannot be delayed for a generation or two… when a more Godless, and docile, and ignorant generation fails to appreciate what is at stake. NOT ON OUR WATCH!
And irrespective of the outcome of this struggle, every one of us needs to turn to God Almighty and realise our need to accept the Gospel of his grace.
For We are all *individually* Sinners, and as such our souls are in danger of eternal damnation. It is sin and rebellion against God that is behind the New World Order. yet the gospel say’s God loves us all *as individuals* and has made a way for us to be redeemed, forgiven, and cleansed of our sins, so that we can spend eternity in heaven… in his presence.
The Gospel is that God our Father sent Jesus Christ his son to die on the cross for our sins, and that he was burred, and that he rose from the dead in victory over sin and Death.
Whosoever choses to believe this good news will be saved. Without works! Salvation is the gift of God! You can be saved and put right with God Almighty right now!
It matters not what evils you have committed or what vises you struggle with. If you turn to God and call upon the name of Jesus… you will be saved!
For his love and grace are sufficient *for all*.
Trust in the gospel and no matter what happens, you will spend eternity in Heaven. These are the sure promises of God found in the Bible.
When the Kingdom of the AntiChrist appears (The New World Order) The saved will be raptured out by God, yet all those who rejected Christ will be deceived by strong delusions and will accept the Mark of the Beast.
All who receive the Mark will be judged by God Almighty… Jesus Christ… and be separated from God… Damned… For eternity.
This is the Ultimate spiritual battle that is going on.
Schwab, Gates, and Soros are just the Foolish minions of Satan… deceived by their own Vanity, and lust for power.
My personal testimony is I believe Jesus Christ is the Way, The Truth, and the Life!
The accuracy of the Bible in predicting the coming of Global Tyranny is evidence of it’s Divine truth.
Christianity is the salt of the Earth that prevents the rot… yet Christianity has been systematically attacked and is being forsaken. This is why the world is sinking back into darkness.
Yet We can have a revival!
we must have a revival… if Western civilistaion is to be saved from the false evil Gospel of Socialist Tyranny.
When The Antichrist does finally come to power, he will rule for a mere 7 years… yet these shall be the worst years in the history of Human Government.
In the End, The reign of the Antichrist shall be cut short by the Return of Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
The Antichrist shall be destroyed, and Christ will set up his Kingdom in Israel.
Sounds Far fetched?
It is happening before your very eyes!
Christ visited Israel in the 1st century BC in accordance with the promises of God to the Jewish Fathers.
He changed world history.
Pears encyclopedia calls him “the greatest figure in Human history”.
The Bible promises that he shall return.
He shall rule from Jerusalem for 1000 years… the Prince of Peace.
There is good reason why the UN has been labeled as the modern day ‘Tower of Babel’ in that it seeks to place all of the Nations of the world back under one Brutal Godless King to rule them all… just as Nimrod ruled before God broke up his kingdom and scattered the Nations for the very purpose of placing limits on Human Power and Authority.
Nimrod was a type/ an example/ a forerunner of the Antichrist to come.
It is no coincidence that the Socialists seek to reunify that which God himself divided, and to restore the power of a Global Dictatorship.
The socialists are the minions… the children of Satan… doing his bidding,
Satan’s Gospel of Globalism and the New World Order is as we speak going out to all nations… Deceiving and being deceived.
The level of Guile harbored against Good people who stand in the way of the approaching flood… esp against Donald Trump… is at psychotic levels… even among those who ought to know better.
Satan laughing spreads his wings.
One particular group who demonstrate a sever rabidity of the mind and who are incapable of rational thought when it comes to Trump are the Anarchists.
Many of them… most of them (the only one I know of who is not like this is Victor Pross) are completely consumed by contempt as to be incapable of objective discussion… none more so that the petty Self important Anarchist spokesman for American Anarchists Larken Rose.
Now Rose couldn’t think his way out of a wet paper bag… his arguments are always puerile and founded upon falsehoods, and no one displays a complete lack of character better than he as he revels in the ill fortunes of those he despises.
Remind you of anyone?
An example of this is below… Rose Gloating that Legal attempts to expose the Rampant Voter fraud in the US Elections are not meeting with any success.
As usual Rose is full of crap.
One of his Fans shared this with me today to get my reaction, knowing I myself have been a Stalwart supporter of the Case against the Democrat Party of grand Scale Election fraud, and that I have had hopes that this would be upheld in Court… esp the Supreme Court.
Though it looks like my hopes may indeed be dashed I am at peace in my own convictions and faith.
I am not in the dark… as many.
No Irony in Anarchists tell us to trust the System… nooooo.
It still is not game over, yet it does appear that *despite mountains of evidence* and the fact that *Constitutional Laws were violated* and Electoral safeguards were flouted in every way imaginable… that those most trusted to defend the Nation from being taken over by these very means, are themselves either too spineless to make the call, or have themselves been compromised.
Ie they want Trump out… and Biden in… because they have been duped into believing the Globalist lies of Covid, Global warming, and the Great Reset… ie the Supreme Court has become politically activist.
In such cases the last resort is for the people to enact the principles of the 2nd amendment. They have that right… in fact it is a Duty.
To take up arms against the Usurpers.
Ultimately Tyranny can only prevail when the people slumber or have been rendered helpless by Arms control.
It will be interesting to see what happens as until all Legal avenues have been exhausted the Republicans have remained calm, yet now that it looks like they have been betrayed by the Supreme Court… what will the do?
The Supreme court probably has done ‘a Chamberlain’… thinking ‘Peace in our time’ is better than defending the constitution and having a civil war… possibly an end of the Union… and yet It is doubtful they have avoided this.
Some fights cannot be avoided… only delayed… and usually that delay works to strengthen the Evil powers, and weaken the Good… Like the postponement of abolition of Slavery for the sake of the Union simply delayed the war and made it more bloody… So too By allowing Biden and Harris to assume power and ‘act as if they are the legitimate government… and allowing them take command of the Military, and giving them opportunity to pass anti-second amendment legislations… all this serves the power of Evil.
I believe we are witnessing the foundation of the Global Kingdom of the Antichrist.
Evil prevails when good men do nothing… and that is what is happening with respect to the Supreme Court.
There is only a few legal avenues left. Sidney Powell’s court case will be the final hope.
Yet if it pleases God to allow the Prince of Darkness to begin his final infernal plot… even her noble efforts will not prevail against the corruption, and we all better share the Gospel with our friends and loved ones because the Rapture is at hand… the door of Grace is about to close for all those who reject Christ… Strong delusions are afoot so that the wicked might all be deceived and take the Mark of the Beast.
The corruption of Humanity will be complete.
This time will at first appear (3.5 years) the dawn of a golden age as the Antichrist will appear to be a ‘Christ like’ Savoir riding ‘a white horse’… yet he is Satan’s King.
Then Chaos shall descend upon the Earth for 3.5 years and Death, plagues, and destruction shall swallow up Humanity… and the Angel thrusts in his sickle….
When God decides the e3nd of the age of Grace has arrived, these things cannot be prevented.
The Great Lie will prevail… and that is precisely what I am seeing happening right now.
This is a signal for Christians to stop storing up things for the future but instead busy themselves with the gospel that the final remnants of those who are to be saved hear and receive the gospel… for our time is coming to a close.
The faith of many will fail them. Though they will still be saved… ‘the salt of the Earth’ will have lost it’s saltiness’ and the Rot will quickly spread… a spirit of blasphemy and contempt for the Bible will spread like a disease… times will not be easy for the Christians…. until the Day of Redemption… the Rapture.
Tim Wikiriwhi.
Christian Libertarian.
Rev 14
14 And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads.
2 And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps:
3 And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth.
4 These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.
5 And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God.
6 And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,
7 Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.
8 And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
9 And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand,
10 The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:
11 And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.
12 Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.
13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.
14 And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.
15 And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe.
16 And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped.
17 And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle.
18 And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.
19 And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
20 And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.
This subject is in the very first rank of importance.
In writing this I hope to be able to communicate with both Believers and Unbelievers… which is difficult because the two extremes favour different approaches… one tends to run away when bible verses are deployed… assuming they are about to subjected to a nutty Bible bashing, yet the other tends to think that unless a post has a bible verse every second line that the post is some sort of Satanic plot!
Yet as has become my style, I will speak in plain ‘Natural’ terms as much as possible yet will stitch in scripture as I deem appropriate.
I believe this topic has value both as a means by which both Unbelievers and believers may gain important insights.
The whole theme is very much one of the most essential aspects of the proper relationship of any thoughtful person to the Almighty.
I will talk about how to deal with ‘struggles and issues’ in believing in Gods good character in due course, yet first I must present the basics of why Faith in his good character is essential.
There are many many vitally important reasons why it is *Faith* that puts us in the right relationship with God, and why he has made it the key to our relationship with himself.
One of the most interesting.. and telling facts is that *Faith in Gods Good Character* has always been… and always will be essential… even after/when we are in his very presence and have walked and talked with him simply because of our Limited capacity for knowledge… and his Infinite Divinity.
There will never be a time when we have full understanding of all things about the Almighty, and thus even though we may have a massive understanding… and countless proofs of his Good character… there will always exist a gap between what we know of him… and his full Glory… and thus Faith will always be needed to bridge this gap.
Then for the well versed and philosophically minded it is also understood that ultimately… all our knowledge… even scientific knowledge rests upon unproven assumptions that are accepted by faith!
At the very heart of the History of the Philosophy of science was the foundational ‘articles of faith’ that came directly from monotheism and is why Theists were responsible for the birth of modern science and why they occupy the Chief seats and hold the chief honours for virtually every branch of modern science… as the Founders.
Primarily the impetus to scientific discovery and secular explanations was born of the belief in a single Creator of everything who made the universe and ordered it according to Divine plans that may be rationally understood, and that the universe functions via Fixed Divinely established Laws… that Man may investigate and understand… because these laws are themselves rational and a testament to the truth and rationality of God Almighty.
Facts like this are not open to debate as they stand as Empirical reality… facts of the history of the philosophy of science… rather than on mere hypothetical intellectual ideology and bias.
One of the greatest delusions people like Hitchens, Dawkins, or Tyson have foisted onto the gullible atheist sheeple is the notion that the advance of Science has been synonymous with the advance of atheism… and the discrediting of faith in the Bible.
So far-be-it from being true that Christian faith… is as Atheists present the idea … as being a ploy to suck in the gullible to abdicate their minds and blindly swallow the delusions of religion… these atheists are displaying an abject ignorance of the dynamics and logic that underpins the Christian call to faith.
That *some False Prophets and priests may plot that way is not a justification to say *All Faith is Irrational and for fools*… and in fact to be an Atheist requires a heck of a lot of faith!
Atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris display both rank ignorance and patent dishonesty when they fail to acknowledge the debt science owes to Theistic cosmology.. yet of course their entire arguments fall over if they were to admit the truth!
They prefer to sell books like ‘The God delusion’… ‘God is not Great…how religion poisons everything’ etc etc.
And millions of chumps who hunger for any reason not to believe the bible swallow their Atheist delusions by the ship load.
Most of these people have blinders over their eyes and hands over their ears… they cannot be reached via reason… and in fact Spiritual truths are completely alien to them.
This being so any reader who has even reached this paragraph in my post and is honestly contemplating what I am saying… has hope!… as their hearts are not as hard as impregnable stone.. and they are more open to Objective discourse.
The Bible’s call to faith is not only Philosophically profound, it is also beautifully exemplified in its explanations as to how and why the world is the way it is…warts and all.
That Faith has always been… and always will be essential is shown to be true by the Fall of Lucifer… who was not like us in that we have never seen God…. He not only existed, came and went from the very presence of God… he also held the most exalted place in the hierarchy God had established In Heaven… and on the original Pre-Adamite Earth.
Lucifer had it all…. except the worship that was due to God alone.
It was the dark seed of Pride in Lucifer that caused him to feel he was worthy of greater honor than what he received that caused him to hate God… ie he began to question the goodness of God’s character.
Satan Seethed with envy… and was overcome with a delusion that God was treating him unjustly.
And Lucifer began to tell them (The Angels) lies.. and so under the weight of his Cunning…it was a naive lack of faith that allowed him to deceive many of the Angels into rebellion against God… and as Satan later on… also deceive Adam and Eve into disbelieving Gods word.
… yet I will mitigate the fall of the angels and of Adam and Eve in this one sense… ‘They were like Children in their innocence’… apart from the wiles of The Devil… the father of Lies…these matters might never have entered into their minds before Lucifer sowed his own mis-trust in the goodness of God’s character into their hearts… like a disease.
Yet still had they maintained faith in the goodness of God, Satan would never have been able to cause them to sin….
That Trust in God’s Good character and his right to be Lawgiver and Judge is clearly seen in the test and singular law that God gave to Adam with respect to the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil.
Adam (and Eve) were free to enjoy the fruits of the Garden except the one in the midst which God deemed to be prohibited… and it is a prima facie demonstration of how Satan works.
Genesis 3 King James Version (KJV)
1 Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
From the above we see that Satan was able to sow distrust in Eve about God’s Good character by suggesting God was deceitfully withholding good things from them and had lied to them!
Satan said “Ye shall not surely die…” in direct contradiction to Gods word… and instead of trusting in God Good character and right to make binding laws upon them… she was decieved by this ruse… and fell into sin.
^ in those few words we find why Faith between Conscious Moral Free agents and our Creator is essential… even when unlike today… Humans and Angels dont have to have faith in God’s existence because they experienced him empirically!
They walked at talked with him!
In those few words we also find the key modus opperandi of Satan!
If he can get you to question the Good character of God Almighty and get you to think that God’s word cannot be trusted… Satan has you exactly where he wants you… and in such a condition of accusation against God… Against his word… and against his right to be Moral Lawgiver and Judge… it is impossible for you to please God!
You have switched rolls!
You now claim to be the Judge of the Almighty!
You now think *you can decide* whether or not you will be subject to his Laws and Authority!
You doubt the truthfulness of his word.
And that Satan is now ‘the God of this fallen world’ is demonstrated every day by the perverse Global phenomena of Mankind in their arrogance asserting that The Lord is Unjust… that his judgments are unfair and tyrannical… and that Mankind ought to be allowed to write their own rules… if any!
And there is plenty of Material for the children of Satan to continue to employ to ensure the next generations perpetually believe the God of the bible is a moral monster!
And it is Godless Humanity that have turned this world into a cesspool of filth and violence!
The Height of Human vanity, depravity, and delusion knows no bounds!
I will add links to this post that will some degree expand on many of the monumental points that I have touched upon above only briefly, yet without making this post extremely long I wish to tie in all this with some personal dilemmas I myself wrestle with… and how … knowing the dynamics of faith … I choose to deal with them.
The philosophical and explanatory power of the Book of Genesis is so Gigantic as to be a fingerprint of divine truth!
When contemplated with a sober mind it is not surprising that this text has remained one of the Greatest philosophical/theistic texts of all time!
Not only does it enunciate with clarity the origin of the Universe and humanity, but of equal importance it explains one of the great challenges to faith in the goodness of God’s character… the existence of Evil… and what we today describe as ‘Natural calamities’.
These are things that Satan, and his children constantly use as wedges… as darts … to fire at the innocent and unlearned… and the foolish and rebellious… to undermine any faith they might entertain that God is Good and just.
These accusations require their own rebuttals and The bible contains sufficient facts and demonstrations That God is Holy, Just, and Loving, etc… none the less it cannot be denied that there are things not only in reality but especially within the scriptures that even bible believers like myself *Dont like*… and these test my faith… yet I do not do what so many so-called Christians do… and that is deny the validity of these scriptures… and come with sophisticated excuses why they should not be believed!
The last century saw a massive falling away from bible believing faith… a sad and unnecessary retreat in the face a relentless rationalist onslaught.
Many Christians were deceived into believing the theory of evolution was a scientific fact that conclusively disproved the story of Adam and Eve.
Many were fooled by sophisticated arguments that the God of the Old testament was Cruel and unjust… these people succumbed to the wiles of the devil and instead of clinging to the scriptures and trusting in Gods Goodness and supreme Justice… they caved in and abandoned the very core of their faith.
Had they held fast to their faith… they would not have had to endure long before the evidence would mount up that evolution was a false hypothesis, and that the very complexity of the cell and DNA discovered by the advance of genetics would utterly vindicate the story of Adam and Eve and of Intelligent design. (though of course atheists still refuse to abandon their superstitions and sadly many Christians also have not returned to faith in the book of Genesis as they in fact still have not accepted that a Good God could judge the world by flood)
Now I would never suggest that the question of the existence of Evil and of Natural calamities should never be contemplated!
I believe such questions to be very important… yet we must take extreme care with how we walk on this treacherous soil!
There are great snares and pitfalls that await the stumbling fool.
Satan appears as an Angel of Light!
He and his minions will always present pseudo-moral arguments in accusation of Gods word and contend that believers are guilty of accepting atrocities.
Such as is common with Rationalists who assert the story of Noah’s flood is not only a myth… but also as being a clear demonstration that the God of the bible if he were real… would be a monster!
And falling for these sorts of vacuous… yet powerful delusions has caused untold millions to abandon faith in the Book of Genesis… the very foundation-stone of Gods word!
And I will not deny that the story of the Flood is chilling to the bone!
I will not deny that it would be very satisfying to think that this story is just a fable invented via superstitious and manipulative Priest-craft… and to thereby self-vindicate simply writing the whole business off with the waive of the hand… and then to mock those who cling to these scriptures as Cretins.
And thus thinking we have strong enough science… and moral arguments to subdue *any reasonable debate* We can proudly declare ourselves liberated from Tyranny and myth!
And there is no shortage of Rationalist material… even from so-called ‘Christians’ who argue the Book of genesis is not to be trusted… that it is just allegorical, etc… even though that is not how Jesus or Paul our Apostle saw the Book.
They were Bible believers!
They Knew God was Holy, and just in his judgement, and that his word is trustworthy!
Abraham lived Post Noahs flood… there was probably plenty of empirical evidence for the Flood all about him and when God called him to leave Ur and go to a land in which he would show him… and that God would bless him and make his children innumerable… Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness… saith Paul
Yet still!
Knowing all these things does not fully take away many things that I struggle with… things that I still dont like… things I know are true… yet wish were not.
Yet I accept that Reality and Moral truth are not Subject to my will, and that there are many Objective truths and realities that do not require my assent.
I know that any person who cannot accept the possibility of such objective realities … and still not trust in the Good character of God … but deem anything they dont like as proof that Either The God of the bible does not exist… or that if he does… then he is Not loving and good… to be the height of vanity and self delusion!
These people are the very definition of subjectivists … the very height of Ego-mania… in that they think they… in their ignorance and folly… can stand in judgement of the Almighty!
They have fallen into Satan’s trap.
And the greatest proof of this can be easily found when you investigate what ground it is upon which they base their own moral authority!
Any cursory examination of their moral foundations reveals their feet firmly ensnared in a swamp!
Ie They have no higher moral ground upon which they can justly claim to stand in moral Judgement of the character of God!
And when I read the scriptures I find that most.. if not all the objective realities and Biblical truths that I dont like are also things that God himself has expressed great sadness… such as the Righteous judgement of the lost in eternal torment… and in particular of many of my own friends and family whom I love and sympathize with!
and it is when contemplating this that I begin to understand the terrible burden that is God’s alone to bear.
Who among us would desire to Judge the deeds of humanity with Absolute justice?
None of us are even worthy to throw a stone at an adulterer.
Such Judgments can only be done without hypocrisy by an absolutely Holy Judge.
Yet still who would deny that Evil cannot be allowed to go unpunished?
Indeed another of the great deceptions of Satan and his minions has been the accusation that God seems to allow so much wickedness to prevail… and go unpunished.
Here we expose another gigantic hypocrisy and contradiction in the Atheists contentions against The Lord.
With One hand they curse him for letting the destruction and misery upon the innocent of Sin go unpunished, yet on the other they Curse God for executing Judgement and justice upon the wicked!
Though I would dearly love to believe in the Heresy of *Universal salvation* …. or that the Damned will simply be annihilated… etc etc… I know that this is not the true doctrine of the scriptures… and it is out of the knowledge that Judgement is coming for the lost… for their wickedness… esp the wickedness of rejecting Christ’s sacrifice on the cross… that I busy myself with trying to share the Gospel of the grace of God, and attempt to win souls to faith in the trustworthiness of the Bible as a Divinely inspired and preserved Revelation from God to us.
This entire post has been written in the hope that even a few souls might grasp the truth… and share it with their friends, neighbors, and loved ones.
I am painfully aware that I am a very unworthy vessel of these truths… and that many of my own character faults and evils do not reflect well on Christ or the Gospel… nonetheless I dare not remain silent… my time is short… and my burden is heavy with Fear for the lost… esp for My Friends, neighbors, and loved ones.
I also have no doubt that some of my interpretations and assumptions are still cloaked in ignorance… and I look forward to the day that God himself dispels many of my fears with his light.
Even though I know the gospel truth… That Christ has taken away my sins upon his cross…I still fear my own evils and worry about standing before the Holy and Almighty God… the righteous Judge of the wicked!
All I can do is trust in the gospel truth… and rest in my faith in Gods Mercy and grace is sufficient for a wretch like me!
When I am confronted by challenging moral criticisms or supposed scientific ‘facts’ that are presented as ‘proof’ the Bible is in error for which i have no immediate counter-argument, I have learned to rest in my faith and to search out an answer… and in the 30+ years that I have been a Bible believe *Never* has any such challenge ever proven to undo my rational belief in the scriptures.
Most Often it is not long before the supposed ‘Evidence’ against the Bible is exposed as vacuous… sometimes it may take years before I discover the answer and yet sometimes the criticism is found to be valid yet in these cases they expose an error in my own thinking… and actually help me to discover greater truths that were there all along in the Bible… yet may have been buried under some false doctrine I had picked up along the way!
It is always wonderful when I learn new, and deeper truths as they tend to increase the harmony of the scriptures and dissolve cloudy areas that needed exposing to the light of truth.
So it is that the Christian and Bible believer has nothing to fear from giving skeptical arguments a fair hearing.
For me this has been an ongoing process that has strengthened my trust in the scriptures and made me wiser.
^Not anonymous! Its Proverbs 3vs5,6!
That is in essence the Ultimate position of Faith for the humble soul who knows the limits of his own wisdom yet understands the Truth… that the bible is to be believed… for valid reasons.
I know that I dont know everything, and that I must trust in God in respect to my struggles… and to hold tight to his word no matter what storms of controversy I must face.
I do know God Almighty is Holy, Just, Loving, and good, and that as God he must judge sin… and yet out of love has provided a way for the humble who admit their own sin to be forgiven and saved… by pure grace.
“For God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners…. Christ died for us”
“And whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”.
“Faith is the power of an optimistic possibility thinker whereas Doubt is the power of a pessimistic impossibility thinker”
Robert H Sheuller.
The Greatness of the Bible in its explanatory and Value instilling powers is truly Mind-blowing!
Esp when compared to the inescapable nihilism which is what atheism offers!
Faith must overcome skepticism.
Compassion must be stronger than Hatred.
Hope must be greater than despair.
Trust in Gods Word and Good character must overcome the wiles of the Devil.
We have Jesus Christ…and the Gospel of the grace of Grace of God.
Tim Wikiriwhi
Christian Libertarian.
King James Bible believer.
Dispensationalist.
Today I want to make my rebuttal of a friends defense for Larkin Rose’s expressed position on God/ Deism.
Larken Rose Recognizes the fingerprint of Intelligence within the incredible design of living things yet appears ambivalent towards any further thought or discussion about the ramifications of this Revelation.
He reminds me of the late A Flew… the once High priest of Atheism who in the face of the discoveries of Modern science esp the complexity of living things abandoned his Atheism for belief in Intelligent design… yet never made the full traverse to Bible believing Faith in THE LORD.
Flew was an honest thinker yet ran out of Time…whereas Larken Rose still has time to discover the truth… yet his attitude appears to me to be that of a Man who does not really want to go down that road…and I question his motives.
I argue why Deism may once have been forgivable/ understandable in the distant past, yet is inexcusable today, and that now Reason and Logic are on the side of the Theist.
While both entail the belief in a Creator God, what distinguishes Deism from Theism is that Deism rejects Divine interventions in the affairs of Men… No Miracles to circumvent the laws of Nature… and esp No Divine special Revelations to mankind.
It will be necessary for me to skip over large portions of history and related material for the sake of brevity such as the Deism of the 18th century.
(I will have to do a separate Blog post on these important aspects of this topic at some later date, and insert a link to it here)
Watch Larken Rose Here…
*********
Ten or more years ago I was asked to debate Hamilton based Atheists for the existence of the Christian God.
One of my opponents was Garry Mallett from Act.
Now The only reason I have mentioned this debate is because the 2nd part of my argument was the logical assumption that *If there is in fact a God (in the Full context of the word) and that he made us human beings…as Rational, conscious beings… that it would be a reasonable assumption to think that surely he would communicate with us some how… who he is… why he made us…etc rather than just leaving us Ignorant about such things.
That was my premise for why it is rational to at least consider the possibility that the Bible’s claim to be the Divine Revelation from the Creator of the Universe to be a plausible possibility at least… and that the honest thinking person having first concluded that the Universe and Living things are best understood as the products of intelligent design… that following upon that, that The Bible answers the questions that naturally flow on…. The *Who* is this Great designer of the Universe… and what message does he have for us… his Conscious Rational Moral Free Agent Creations… and most importantly… that such a Revelation is precisely what the rational mind would expect from the God who is there… rather than silence.
This is an argument that places Theism as superior to mere Deism and in fact renders belief in Deism today to be a cop out…poor reasoning at best… mostly willful ignorance.
Deism and Theism both draw upon what has been described as ‘Natural religion’… Ideas about God derived from looking at Nature… looking at what has been described as ‘The Book of God’s works’.
Yet Theism makes an additional claim that we have a second Book that we may also gain direct and infallible knowledge about God.. The Book of his actual words.
Deism/ Natural Religion is great up to certain point, yet severely limited as it can never tell us Human beings *who God is*… only that he is there… and that he is super intelligent and super powerful, and that there is some sort of Objective moral law which We Human beings ought to at least try and live by… that gives our Moral sence some legitimate foundation and purpose… rather than simply being some sort of illusion… mere sentiment… mere feelings.
An Idea such as ‘Kharma’, or ‘Reaping what you sow’… These are the sorts of ideas human beings have arrived at via contemplating nature… ‘Do unto others as you would have done unto you’ … ‘Be Good’… we know that’Theft is evil’…because we hate it when someone steals from us… so dont steal from others… yet still none of this has anything higher than our own opinion to rest upon… or the opinion of ‘wise others’… and is therefore not impervious to arguments of evil men that assert that all such moralizations are vacuous.
Dark minds may posit the question… Maybe the Deity is Malevolent?
Do not Floods and Earthquakes signal that our creator is far from a caring God! ????
Is the only Moral Rule …contrary to what the wowzers would have us believe…that the Strong may subject the weak?
Are they trying to subject the strong to whiles of the weak?
What the heck is really going on?
Deism cant definitively answer this… yet it gives those whom cling to it a certain self-justification for not being Nihilistic… for claiming they are Moral and good. (something that is necessary because of what the bible describes as our innate knowledge/ consciousness of Good and evil)
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:…”
St Paul. Romans 1:20.
Yet Deism says *Nobody can claim to really know*.
Now I love many of the Great heathen thinkers of classical times, whom both believed a God exists, and that Humanity should be moral, and because of the times and places in which *they lived* I accept that they really had taken ‘Natural religion’ to its highest forms and that they had no ‘Rungs upon which they could possibly ascend higher and closer to God’, and that they were Good, wise, Moral men…In the context of how good any man might be under such circumstances. (Separated/ aliens from Israel, mostly living before the advent of Christ)
It is at this plateau that many of the Great Heathen moral thinkers had arrived.
The Stoic Marcus Aurelius is supposed to have said…
Though Aurelius lived post-Christ and had ‘herd’ about the Christians and held negative opinions about them, I am not sure to what degree he had any real first hand communications with them, or any familiarity with the Old testament/ Book of Genesis, thus I tend to consider his situation as very similar to that of the *Pre-Christ* Gentile thinkers… Aliens from the Divine revelation.
He was a very interesting thinker…God will judge him. Here is an interesting link to this Topic
Now As a Christian Theist who believes the Bible, I know there are Mountains of the most vital truths missing from this Natural/Deistic Faith position because I have the Divine Revelation… The Holy inspired and preserved words of God Almighty himself esp the Facts That Humanity is under a curse because of our Sin, and that our Sin separates us from God and puts us in danger of His Judgement and Damnation.
*It is possible*… because it is so obvious… without the aid of scripture to apprehend by the power of reason alone Humanities fallen/ sinful condition… our wickedness… our depravity… our Cruelty…. and perhaps from this a rationale may be conceived of the need to somehow appease the anger of the God(s)… for justice sake… all sorts of weird Ideas have been proposed… *Yet via reason it would be impossible to conceive of the doctrine of Christs virgin birth, and substitutional atonement for our sins, and resurrection*…from nature alone.
Indeed many Naturally minded people find these Doctrines repugnant… which leads to my main contentions for this blog about Deists living today in western civilization… and their willful ignorance/ rejection of the Divine Revelation… the Bible in which all these doctrines are laid out in the most Logical fashion from the very beginning in Genesis.
As I have said Deism is severely handicapped to what degree it can reveal the nature of God to us… limited in its certainty of moral precepts, etc, none the less *Today*…far from these limits as being considered by trendy thinkers as pitfalls… these people actually *enjoy* them!
Most of these are people *Today* … follow a trend that became fashionable from the end of the Great reformation who… for various reasons…good or bad… *hate organised religion* (which tends to be where Theistic claims of having ‘Divine revelation’ are most prevalent) … they also enjoy what they see as ‘the Freedom to do as they please… the only moral restraints being their own conscience… and esp that Deism can make no emphatic claims of Divine Judgement for moral failures… it cant even emphatically state the validity of any Human Judgement derived from Nature.
They will say that ‘Reason’ is the only Authority they will subject themselves to, and as they have reached to limits of Reason… they cannot be subject to any higher Moral authority or law.
Philosophers love to quote Hume … “you cant get an ‘Ought from an Is”.
Its Funny though that ordinary people seem to be able to do just that without much trouble appealing to sentiment… they are not moved by arguments that say we can have no confidence in these… in fact to my thinking …the rational approach to this mystery of consciousness to the ideas of Good and evil is not to say ‘We cant ever know’… but instead to set out *in faith* on a Pilgrimage to discover some means by which our sentiments can find Objective validation… It is a quest of discovery for the Divine revelation from the Intelligent Creator whose existence is testified to by his Natural handiwork.
And It is an Irony that in a work by the great skeptic himself David Hume called ‘Dialogues concerning Natural religion’ in which there is a debate about the existence of God, in which Hume deploys his skeptical arguments in the person of ‘Philo’, yet stunningly… in the final analysis his Book ends by giving the victory to the Theist ‘Cleanthes’!
My contention at the Debate was that not only did the Deity Communicate his existence and expectations of Humanity via Prophets and the written word… He intervened into Human affairs in the Most personal manor…. He visited us… and Walked among us… God was manifest in the flesh.
“Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:…”
Now when you add up all the components I have briefly discussed above you ought to be able to grasp why it is that I myself am a Theist… a Bible believer… That the fact that we westerners have easy access to the King James Bible and the book of Genesis therein, that willfully seeking to remain ignorant of the Divine revelation is inexcusable… and why it is that I have a pet dislike for modern Deism… esp its corruption/heresy of what I call Christian Deism which I see as a pathetic retreat from true Christian Theistic faith…caused by a weakness in faith and Bad reasoning… in the face of Atheist sophistry. (Topic for another Post)
I actually struggle to contain my contempt!
I need to take 5… and chill… and remember that it is only by Gods grace that I myself am a Christian at all.
I need to remember *How alien* I once was… How utterly incapable of apprehending the existence of God let alone the truthfulness of the Bible!
It is with all this in mind that I decided to keep calm and write this post..
Recently A friend of mine tried to justify the Deism of one of his Favorite thinkers Larkin Rose, which I had critisised as being pathetic… because he refused to make the most basic inference that Intelligent design demands *GOD* and that from this obvious conclusion… if he was an honest thinker… would demand he then begin a personal pilgrimage to discover *Who* this Grand designer is.
My friend began to repair to the arguments *of Classical Deism* and the limits that Logic faced in that direction… as if that excuse… which of course appears quite valid when looking back to heathen lands… and times before Christ… aliens to the Divine Revelation, Yet This blogpost is my express rebuttal to that argument when applied to modern thinkers like Larkin.
It is invalid for Thinkers today to simply rest on that ancient Plateau… because they live post Christ and have access to the Bible and history.
This makes them fully culpable for rejecting Jesus Christ.
Socrates on the other hand was not privy to the Bible… and I even conjecture that he would have become a Christian had he been given the opportunity… so many of his conclusions about Divine things being in perfect harmony with the scriptures… that he never had opportunity to read.
I say that If Socrates would have considered the Gargantuan explanatory power for the first chapters in the book of Genesis…plus all the rest… the Biblical explanation for the existence of Evil…The explanation of why God has separated himself from mankind… why we die… why there are Natural disasters, etc etc that it is very possible that he would have realised that this divine revelation gives a great logical basis for Biblical theistic faith when one applies it to the world about him.
That in fact the Bible *Is the Revelation* of the Intelligent designer of everything…his message to us his creatures… esp telling us *Who he is*… and what is *Really* going on.
So I question why it is that though Larken Rose sees through the delusion of atheistic evolution, he still is apathetic towards discovering *Who God is* and challenge him to Read the King James Bible… to really contemplate it’s message… and that in doing so he would no longer be in a position to argue that Logic ends at the plateau of Natural religion.
The Bible is a logical extension from the Plateau at the top of the Mountain… upwards out of the stratosphere all the way… a direct line of communication to the Deity… a logical vindication of Bible believing christian Theism.
Of course Satan and his minions have been attacking the Bible, and via sophistry undermining faith in its veracity as The Bible is the Ultimate Fortress of God for the believer. It is the Ultimate Lighthouse in the storm of life Shining its beams upon the treacherous Rocks of peril, and a Guide of Safe passage… salvation to every soul who sees its light and navigates into the Harbour of God’s love and Grace.
Satan is the enemy Of God and Men’s souls…The Father of Lies… it was by cunning craftiness that he was able to deceive Eve, and get her to disbelieve Gods word and to Eat of the forbidden fruit, and he has been at this game the whole time… Deceiving… yet the word of God remains like a Rock
Happy Resurrection Day!
Tim Wikiriwhi.
Protestant, 1611 King James Bible believer, Dispensationalist, Christian Libertarian.
The last paragraphs of Humes Dialouges concerning Natural religion…
If the whole of Natural Theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication: If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence; and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind: If this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs; and believe that the arguments, on which it is established, exceed the objections, which lie against it? Some astonishment indeed will naturally arise from the greatness of the object: Some melancholy from its obscurity: Some contempt of human reason, that it can give no solution more satisfactory with regard to so extraordinary and magnificent a question. But believe me, Cleanthes, the most natural sentiment, which a well-disposed mind will feel on this occasion, is a longing desire and expectation, that heaven would be pleased to dissipate, at least alleviate this profound ignorance, by affording some more particular revelation to mankind, and making discoveries of the nature, attributes, and operations of the divine object of our faith. A person, seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity: While the haughty Dogmatist, persuaded, that he can erect a complete system of Theology by the mere help of philosophy,
KS 228
disdains any farther aid, and rejects this adventitious instructor. To be a philosophical Sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian; a proposition, which I would willingly recommend to the attention of Pamphilus: And I hope Cleanthes will forgive me for interposing so far in the education and instruction of his pupil.
D 12.34
Cleanthes and Philo pursued not this conversation much farther; and as nothing ever made greater impression on me, than all the reasonings of that day; so, I confess, that, upon a serious review of the whole, I cannot but think, that Philo’s principles are more probable than Demea’s; but that those of Cleanthes approach still nearer to the truth.
Ignorance of Dispensationalism can be Deadly.
It can also Damn your soul.
The Bible is The Sword of the Spirit!
It carries the weight and authority of God Almighty Himself!
It ought to be not only revered, but handled with Great Fear and trembling!
( For an explanation of what Dispensational truth is see the links at the end of this post)
With this in mind and taking opportunity to discuss the Importance of dispensational truth, I have been soliciting responses from both Christians and Atheists in respect to a news article (posted below)
and the responses from all quarters have been telling … We live in a world of delusion.
Here is the story…
He told parishioners to drink from a bottle of water laced with noxious Rattex
‘Priest Feeds Congregation Rat Poison To Prove They’re Above Death… They All Die’
BY : HANNAH WATTE…
“This priest tried to prove his congregation were above death by feeding them rat poison and the results were disastrous”
Priest Light Monyeki from Soshanguve, South Africa, took it upon himself to prove his follower’s were superhuman and immortal, with a seriously dangerous stunt.
The priest declared to his congregation they should not fear death, as they will not die, before proceeding to pour bottles of water contaminated with rat poison into their mouths…
Horrifyingly, many of his followers ran forward to take a fatal drink from the treacherous bottle.
The priest took a swig from the poison fluid before pouring it down the throats of his loyal congregation.
Disastrously, yet predictably, the members of his church started to complain of stomach pains and by the evening, five of them were tragically dead.
A further 13 more were taken to hospital for the ingestion of the lethal drink, but despite all of this Monyeki allegedly denied responsibility.
Now some of you readers may be wondering why this Priest would dare to do something so insane?
The answer is that he had obviously read Mark chapter 16 of his Bible which states…
Jesus said…
” Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover…” Mark 16vs15-17 KJV.
In the light of these Biblical promises… Was this Priest ‘Evil’ to do what he did… and why did his congregation die?
Here are some of the responses my question received on a Facebook debating Forum that I post to that serve as typical examples of the various conclusions people reach in such situations…
The silliest response I received was from a deeply deluded soul who though claiming to be a Christian wallows in confusion… just as this South African Preist does… He blamed the poisoning on a lack of Faith!
As if these people willingly drank poison… not believing they would be Divinely immune!
That’s just Dumb… They obviously were sincere enough in their belief to risk death… unfortunately their faith was … for some reason… misguided… misplaced.
Does the fact that no miraculous protection from poisoning occurred… but that as was to be expected… people got sick and died prove that Miracles never happen, and that the Bible is only believed by Fools?
Are the Atheists correct in their assertions…. “This is a perfect example of what Hitchens meant when he subtitled one of his books with “Religion poisons everything”… as one militant Atheist claimed.
At face value… looking at the sequence of events…it may appear that the atheists have a sound case!
I will deal with this assertion shortly.
An answer that was not put forward… yet might be considered to be plausible is the argument Christ used when Satan told him to throw himself from the temple spire… contending the Bible said God would protect him… to which Christ responded “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God”.. inferring that the promise of divine protection from poisoning was only against *accidental or malevolent poisoning*… yet this answer will not work either… as Christ said the miracle *Was a sign*… ie was something that was supposed to convince people of the truth… just as Jesus intentionally did signs and wonders to prove he was the Messiah.
Another seemingly plausible explanation to deal with this problem was proposed by ‘Mike’ who claimed … “Most Biblical scholars think those verses in Mark are forgeries. They don’t exist at all in the oldest copies…”
It’s an interesting claim…
My Rebuttal to this assertion that our modern Bible contains Fraudulent Texts that have been added with the process of time, and my overall Bible believing solution follows… and it is an answer that few people today apprehend… Christians or otherwise…
Mike…. These verses are in my King James Bible, and therefore in my view Authoritative… The translators of the King James being *Greater Scholars* than any of its critics… whom are applying *Bad Human reasoning*.
Let me explain.
In the book of Acts, and the letters of Paul, we read that *Straight away* … in the very times of the apostles…the forces of evil were at work in the fellowship of Christ… Wolves in Sheeps clothing were busy Perverting the scriptures… teaching heresies… etc,… yet all this while God promised to Keep his word pure and available… ie the doctrine of preservation…. so Like today… we have The King James AV… and a whole raft of modern perversions.
The King James was translated from the Received Text… which has by far the greatest historical validation, whereas the modern wolves have used the lesser texts… the perverse texts… some of which will *not have the last portions of Mark 16*… as you have asserted.
Now of course *Dating evidence* is a dubious enterprise at best… Dates given being prone to ‘favour’ the bias of those doing the dating…. yet even if it is true that the earliest fragments found dont contain these verses… this cannot be rationally seen an unquestionable proof that these final verses of Mark 16 are a later fraud.
Such older manuscripts are just as likely to be the fraud itself!
… as Paul and others said this was going on from the Earliest of times… and here’s the real Jam… Christopher…. *When you understand the dispensational aspects of the scriptures *these later verses in Mark 16 Dovetail perfectly with the program that was going on at that time*.
It was a time of signs and wonders…. Jesus did signs and wonders… as did his Students… those whom became the first Apostles after his assention… Peter and Co… Read the early book of acts…. Yet these signs and wonders were to pass away… once the Jews had rejected the Apostles message… just as they had rejected the earlier ministry of Christ himself.
All this is clearly expounded in the scriptures…. yet so few Christians understand any of this… and that is why you get so much foolishness going on… like this misguided African Priest…
Thus the doctrine of these portions of Scripture are being misused and abused…. they do not apply to our Age… our dispensation… which is a completely different program from what is being taught in Mark 16… these verse contain *many doctrines* that are not applicable today… such as Baptism being necessary for salvation… speaking in tongues… etc
So far be it from being a Fake… later edition… or some ridiculous pre-scientific Religious mumbo jumbo… When you understand the context of the verses… everything is perfectly in order.
So…. despite such silly notions that ‘you cant use the bible to prove the bible’…. you can… and these stumbling blocks that Atheists like both Christopher Hitchens and the Chris who mentioned him think of as being evidence that ‘ Religion poisons everything’… simply demonstrates their willful ignorance… their need to stumble over things that are at first glance… hard to believe… which is not surprising given their dire need to vindicate their faith in Materialism…. which of course deems *any super natural claims as automatically being *Fraudulent*…
****
This sorry story is perfect example of how people whom are ignorant of the dispensational nature of the Bible mishandle the scriptures and are blinded by their own delusions..
Such mishandling has the added disastrous affect of leading Atheists to reach and maintain false conclusions… that the whole bible is Full of lies and foolishness… because no miracle was forth coming.
Christians start doubting portions of their scriptures… or start critisizing the faith of people whom if anything show fanatical zeal in the extreme!
All this because Christians today wallow in Doctrinal apostasy… failing to heed Pauls injunction to Rightly divide the word of truth,
Satan laughing spreads his wings.
Tim Wikiriwhi.
Dispensationalist, King James Bible believer, Christian Libertarian.
(Note: I have not read this book, or ‘Can we still believe the Bible’so I can neither endorse or warn against them… I have simply inserted these pictures as pertinent to my discussion. They look interesting.)
How Old is this planet? Get This straight… The Bible *does not* set a date for the creation of *The Planet Earth*. A person does not have to embrace ‘Young Earth’ Creationism to be a committed Bible believer.
This is a subject that though I have discussed many times on line, I ought to have blogged my definitive argument before now… given how important it is to defense of the Bible believers position in the trustworthiness of the Bible.
Tonight I will at least make a start.
My opening statement makes my position clear, so that it only remains for me to prove/ argue my point.
So many people on all sides of the Atheism vs Christian Theism debate are convinced that a necessary corollary of claiming to believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God (esp the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis) is that such a view *demands* also embracing the arguments of that reviled group of Christians known as ‘Young Earth creationists’ …. whom argue that *The Bible says* God Made the Universe… and the Earth… a mere 6000 years ago.
This date they have arrived at using an Historical Chronology tracing backwards the lineage of Christ to Adam … a practice that has been going on since at least the 17th century… see here the methodology of Ussher chronology
Though this period of time is not precisely recorded and requires some ‘educated guesses’, Most calculations vary by a mere decade, so that the Basic argument… that according to the Bible God made Adam approximately 6000 years ago… is sound.
So then it appears to many that to believe that God created the Earth for Adam and Eve, requires a person to believe the *Earth itself* was created *5 days* prior to his creation of Adam…. so in faith… that is precisely what millions of YEC Christians choose to believe.
In support for their faith, (like myself) they are aware that the Theory of Evolution is Full of holes… most Bible believers in fact see the theory of Evolution (of Man from Ape, from Rodent, from amphibian, from fish, from worm, from germ…) to be the very height of foolishness and absurdity, and also appreciate the *true advances in the science of Biology and genetics* continually validate the ancient claims of scripture… such as the species being locked into ‘Kinds’, and that the entire human race… is *one family* all carrying the genetic tags of being the offspring from a *single woman*… Mitochondrial Eve.
The Myth of Evolution… requires the Magic and imagination of Countless Millions of Years… and countless numbers of fortuitous unguided accidents to blindly transform Magic Bugs that spontaneously generated from the lifeless mud…into people, and so this Godless ideology conveniently postulates *an ancient Earth…in an ancient self assembling/ evolving Universe.
How Old?… well Every Time Evolutionists state their ‘Scientific Facts’… it is only a matter of months rather than years that *some newly discovered ‘Truth’, forces them to extend the Date of the creation of the universe Backwards by hundreds of millions… sometimes billions of years… proving the whole business to be highly dubious… Guesswork… based upon naive ignorance.
And foolish imaginations run wild… the more Billions of Years the Atheists claim … somehow the mystical powers of evolution are supposed to be *more believable*… as to their way of thinking…this multiplies the number of times their Zombie Goddess ‘Mother nature’ gets to roll her dice. They imagine that Germs can … slowly slowly…. become people…
On the other hand the YE creationists *Dont require to pre-suppose a Multi-billion year Timescale for their cosmology… on the contrary… by their interpretation of the first chapters of Genesis appears to Forbade such a Time-frame… They insist the Bible only allows a time scale of a magnitude in the very low thousands of years… that is the pre-supposition they labour under… and contend for.
Without continuing down this diversion, it is sufficient for my purposes to have pointed out the ideological presuppositions, and dubious nature of the ground upon which the the Bible Critics stand to oppose the YE Creationists, and the basis at the heart of Y E Creationist thinking.
Both groups are keen to subject the Data taken from observation and experiment to the explanatory power of their own bents.
Now having to some degree identified the basic positions of the antagonists… that are supposed to stand as a dichotomy.
An ‘Either- Or choice that people must assemble under one banner or the other…. Bible believers must be Young Earth Creationists… People who accept the theory of Evolution… must Reject the Book of Genesis as being Literally believable, and assume that the planet Earth has existed for Billions of years (last count I herd was the Universe is now supposed to being 13 billion years old, and the Earth 4 Billion.)…
Because of the bundles of suppositions entailed in the two camps, The pseudo-scientific Ideas of Darwinian Evolution has driven a rift within the Masses of people whom call themselves ‘Christians… so that in what is now being called ‘the post Christian Era’… a growing percentage of Christians have abandoned faith in the inerrancy of the Scriptures… and walking enmasse to join the camp of the Atheist Bible rejectors… and like them… choosing to place their faith in *Evolutionary Scientists* rather than the literal veracity of the Scriptures.
And they do this without so much a wink…. they claim that in abandoning the traditional Christian beliefs that they are acting in a more ‘enlightened manor’… and are shedding off ‘an ancient superstition’… that only continues to be embraced by Religious whackos….. Luddites whom have no grasp of science.
Ie… Though these Modern Bible rejecting Christians are now Standing with the infidels… and embracing their Skeptical rationale with respect to the believability and veracity of the Bible… they nonetheless claim *That they are the Holy defenders of the faith!*
That *They are saving Christianity from the dustbin*… by synthesizing Evolution with a Neo-Christianity.
This Form of Christianity *Puts Human Scholarship* and *Evolutionary anthropology*… and Many of the Tenets of Materialism… in authority … Not The Bible… that is rendered to be… a collection of Myths and Fables… only believed by the primitive mind.
This is how the modern liberal Christian sees the ‘The cult’ of Young Earth creationism…’The Cult’ of King James Bible believers…. etc.
Thus the Modern Liberal Christians put *Rationalism* ahead of Faith in Divine revelation and preservation of the scriptures.
And what is the greatest tragedy is that they do not appreciate that they have been absolutely deceived… that they have abandoned the high ground… and retreated in the face of Atheist delusions.
They are also now Free to ‘cherry pick’ what portions of the scriptures they find ‘pleasing’… and reject everything else as some sort of Human error or folly.
To them the Bible is no longer a supernatural book, but concur with the atheist anthropologist that the bible is just another collection of ancient religious texts that has been exposed to all the Human factors … priest-craft, etc… over the millennia.
With Glee they abandon *any scripture* that is difficult to defend… such as Noahs Flood, Joshua’s extermination of the Canaanites, The Doctrine of Hell, The doctrine that Homosexuality is sinful, The doctrine that woman ought to voluntarily subordinate themselves to their husbands, etc etc.
Satan laughing spreads his wings.
So when we stand back, we can perceive just how disastrous Darwin’s Ideas have been to Christendom, and how they have caused a great loss of Faith in the literal truthfulness of the Book of Genesis, and in many of the most fundamental christian values… in favor of Godless liberalisms.
Bible believers are becoming an endangered species.
Their faith is under constant attack… not just from Atheist Infidels… but also now from so-called Christian infidels… this Division of Christianity can very accurately be understood as Christian *Theists* who hold the traditional veiw that the book of Genesis is trustworthy and literally accurate, whereas the Modern Liberal Christian whom embraces Evolution may justly be described as ‘A Christian Deist’.
It is now time to state my own position more clearly.
Let me state that while I agree with the Young Earth types that the theory of Evolution is false…and that God Created Mankind as a special and distinct creature totally unrelated in the hereditary sence to apes, fish, etc… thus My cosmology does not demand aeons of time past… nonetheless,…intuitively… when I examine the geology and geography of the world about me, I find the supposition that the Earth has existed for Many aeons as the most plausible proposition.
I do not deny that The YEC’s have produced many interesting scientific arguments and evidences that undermine the assumptions of the Evolutionists time-frame, yet still I tend to agree with the sceptics of YE Creationism about the age of the Earth being a mere 6000 years old.
And Below I will seek to show you how my interpretation of the scriptures allows me to have a foot in *both camps*… thus I contend that the Dichotomy is false… ie That it is possible to be a Believer in the veracity of the Book of Genesis… and still accept the probability that the Earth is of ancient origin.
Unfortunately for me *my position* is not welcomed by either of the two antagonistic groups… yet for opposite reasons.
What is of the greatest weight, and why I disagree with the young Earth creationist interpretation of the First chapters of Genesis is that they make a fundamental error… they miss the fact that ‘The Earth’ as mentioned in these verses *does not represent the creation of *The Planet Earth* but the restoration of *The Dry Land* from a prior state of void inundation.
The importance of this is appreciated when you realise that Genesis chapter one is not the absolute beginning… the Ex nihilo creation of the Universe, world, etc for humanity… but the restoration of the planet and especially the emergence of *Dry land*… that pre-existed in a submerged state of Darkness and deluge… for an indeterminate period of time.
Let me now take you on a journey through time *as I believe the Bible teaches*… which comes to light with a deeper understanding of the scriptures… revealing the fact that A Bible believer *Ought not to assume* the Universe and the Earth are relatively recent creations… and that such a young view only results from an erroneous interpretation.
Above is a Chart by the Late Great Dispensationalist Clarence Larkin. (1850-1924) which shows the existence of Earth Before Genesis 1…
What needs to be understood is that there are two *Different* beginnings in the scriptures.
The one we are discussing in Genesis, and one in the first chapter of the Gospel of John….
John 1Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. 8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13 which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”
Now it is my contention that this beginning spoken of in John is the real beginning of all creation… the Chronology of events (dispensational scheme) may be understood as follows…
First… before the first ‘beginning’ there was just God the Trinity.
Then he made the angels in heaven (Lucifer and co).
Then God …the pre-incarnate Jesus/The Word made the Universe and the original Earth (This is when the stars of heaven/Angels sang in wonder (Isaiah).
This was in the ancient past possibly billions of years ago.
I believe God created life on earth and put the Dinosaurs here.
Lucifer and the angels would walk upon the earth too.
Next was the Great Rebellion of Lucifer, and the beginning/ origin of evil.
In consequence… God’s Judgement was forthcoming.
God not only judged Lucifer and co but also destroyed the earth/ and maybe even the whole universe by flood.
All the above happened *Before the Time of the Book of Genesis.*
It is *now* that the *2nd beginning* mentioned in the Bible begins… Genesis Chapter 1 starts with the Earth and Universe already in existence… but in a state of Darkness and void. (Text at bottom of this post).
This is when the earth (dry land…not planet) was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep (The scriptures tell us God did not originally create the world without form or void in Isaiah)
…‘Time’ went by and then Gods Spirit moved across the face of the waters.
Genesis 1Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day”…. etc
Here we have the second beginning, or the preparation of the earth for Adam and mankind. Now *this beginning* would have happened in the recent past around 4000bc. This is when God abated the waters and re-established the universe for Mankind…after the fall of Lucifer and the scene was set for the story of the fall of Man.
And it is this *Second beginning* *Virtually Everybody* mistakes as being the time God created the planet Earth, and the universe.
Thus it is at this point… the creation of Adam, that I begin to concur with many of the truly traditional doctrines of theistic Christianity embraced by the Young Earthers… ie that the Book of Genesis is Literally true with regards to the Creation of Mankind, their Fall into sin and separation from God… the story of Noahs flood and God’s judgement of the Wicked… etc.
All things that the Modern Liberal Christian Deist recoils from.
… the rest of the Biblical narrative carries on… From Noah… through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Israel)…
Another Hidden Spiritual gem that comes to light via this doctrine is the appreciation that when God chose to destroy Wicked humanity by Flood… that he was in fact in keeping with a previous precedent of Judgment *already established*.
Noahs Flood was *the second flood*… a Second judgement of wickedness… The first happened when Lucifer Rebelled… the second when the Earth filled with Violent and wicked Children of Adam.
This is why though I endorse the Book of Genesis, and the whole Bible as being the inspired and preserved revelation from God that I contend such Bible believing faith does not corner me into also having to believe in a young Earth.
So what Age do I suppose the Earth to be?
*I dont know* 🙂
I dont have even a ball park figure… 100 thousand…1 million… 1000 million years?
Probably millions of years is my conjecture.
What is important to state is that The Bible does not say.
I understand *why* the various vested interests seek to overthrow the ideas of their antagonists, I am on my guard… and watching how any novel ‘proofs’ are fielded, and contended with.
I will say that this doctrine teaches us that the Earth has suffered at least two major cataclysms… of a Global scale…and that the Geological evidence is there… yet falsely ascribed to ‘Ice ages’ rather than Divine Floods.
This is a worthy topic for another Blog post.
I must say that though I do not endorse their ‘Young Earth’ premises, I am impressed by much of their ‘outside the orthodox box’ Scientific arguments, such as their evidence that Dinosaur Fossils probably are nowhere as old as the Evolutionists have claimed…
One of the traps of science is how erroneous ideas can become entrenched as ‘Orthodoxy’… and vested interest form that seek to protect these ‘orthodox’ views from challenges… and so via un-objective bias Bad Ideas can remain in currency long after they ought to have been thrown out. We are witnessing this as true not only with 150 years of Darwinism and their failure to conclusively establish anything near a believable lineage of Human evolution (or anything else)… but also with regards to *How Oil reserves are formed*, *That Dinosaur Fossils contain soft tissue*, That Fat in our diets is the chief cause of western obesity, etc etc.
The world needs people capable of questioning ‘orthodoxy’ and of pursuing un-orthodox ideas to see where they lead because so much can be learned when the mind has been unfettered from pre-conceptions and dares to imagine new possibilities.
So it is that though I dont endorse YE Biblical premises as to the age of the Earth, none the less it is exciting to see the sorts of Challenges their un-orthodox thinking is producing.
2.
Important note: It is essential to apprehend the monumental difference between the theory of the ‘Darwinian Evolution’ of life, from the natural processes that are at work in the greater universe… the Laws of thermodynamics, Motion, gravity, etc… by which the whole universe is undergoing constant transformation. that can be thought of as the Hands of a clock changing position via the Cogs … as the spring slowly looses its tension… and the pendulum inevitably reaches a point of rest.
If we are to call the continuous results of the Blind yet Law-bound natural processes of the Material world ‘Evolution’ … then only a handful of dullards will not accept the veracity of these mechanistic activities… ie I in no way dispute the argument that with vast periods of time… the coalescence of clouds of particulate matter could form larger bodies… Barren Rocks, ice comets, etc, and that in fact these very forces are what maintain the semi-stable ‘Galaxies and solar systems.
It is astounding to me that Myriads of sheeple cannot apprehend *The stark contrast* between the sorts of phenomena that can be rightly explained and understood as a result of the interactions of the blind forces of Nature, from that most different and special classification of phenomena that can only be rationally understood as *intelligently assembled* … to the degree that both A fish… and a submarine belong under the same qualification… segregated from such things as Rough Diamonds and ocean currents. (which though at a deeper level are themselves intelligently ordered… they function in blind obedience to simple Laws)
It is at this juncture that the assertions in ‘Payleys Watch’ Lords Rational supreme over the Absurdities of Dawkins ‘Blind watchmaker’… and all the ridiculous Atheist rantings about Celestial teapots, Multiverses, etc.
3.
It is worth noting here that the march of Science has in fact *Vindicated faith in the scriptures* in that today it is well understood by Science… that the universe did indeed *have a beginning* … which was an article of Biblical Faith poo pooed by Atheist materialists whom asserted the universe was eternal.
They were proven wrong… and in such a monumental fashion that the whole materialist argument has been proven false.
The Laws that Govern the Universe are not supreme, but temporal… and so greater… super-naturalism is now the fully vindicated *Rational position*… The Bibles assertion that the universe had a beginning and will also have an end… is now something *virtually everyone concedes.
A Greater *un-created Supernatural reality *of logical necessity* exists* from which this temporal universe… and Mankind… came into being… The Fundamental being of Reality… God.
Vindicating the scripture that says Gods certain existence is easily seen by the things that are made.
“…For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” Rom 1vs20
You would think that such a devastating Death punch to infidelity would render Materialist Atheism an abandoned superstition… yet so fanatical is the Zeal of the Godless to reject the Bible, that they choose to bury their heads in the sand… They Leap like frogs from their sinking lily pad onto another… pretending the knowledge that the universe had a beginning as being a support for their ‘reformed atheism’… that now hinges on the idea of a Godless Big Bang… and the slow evolution of the Universe via the blind forces of physics as I have already mentioned as being always at work (postscript 2.).
4.
I understand the basic dynamics of their Godless theory… how from their measurements of the size of the Universe they compute a timescale, and Datum for the Big Bang.
I understand the rationale they employ as to *How they attempt to explain the existence of things like our moon*… using computer model simulations… inputting the values of the natural forces… postulating imaginary planet X of convenient size and velocity… working in conveniently calculated time frames… in fortuitous collision angles… stacking the Deck completely… and then claiming the resulting ‘result’ as a confirmation of their scientific Objectivity and the certitude of their whole Evolutionary premises.
They pretend that all their loading of the dice is somehow conclusive proof that God did not thoughtfully order the universe… that it is a mere fluke the The Earth, moon and sun are all so precisely arranged so as to be so fantastically conducive to the sustenance of life.
They delude themselves that they have proven *The whole shebang* to be Godless, Purposeless, meaningless, …
From all this I hope that my readers have apprehended that while I perceive the convoluted plausibility that Natural forces… astronomic impacts… might conceivably… in theory… produce phenomena *like the moon* … a Dead dusty Rock… that this in itself doe not *Prove* the moon was in fact made that way.
It is a symptom of the incredulous modern mind… so trapped in the naturalistic box… that it finds contemplation of anything spiritual, or miraculous painfully unbearable
There is no Science that disproves the idea that God made the universe almost exactly as it appears to us today.
Newton believed this.
He was convinced that the perfect proportionality of the cosmos smacks of the Divine.
The assertion that the moons was formed by natural means is simply an article of faith… stemming from an aversion to Super-naturalism.
Some Modern Liberal Christians whom fully embrace Naturalistic evolution will not wink at declaring that “God made everything… via evolution”.
They are deluding themselves via foolish sophistry….equivocating … ie Re-defining the Term ‘Evolution’ from it’s essential characteristic… that of being an ‘Un-purposed’ ‘unguided’ series of happenstances… into some sort of Divine plan….
I have always argued that if there was *No Earth*… *No Life*… No People… No cars and truck, etc… just a universe full of Burning Stars, and Barren Rocks… like the moon… like Venus, Mars, etc… well then *That sort of Universe* *would be wholly explicable in atheistic terms… Yet The existence of these *Super-natural* things absolutely refutes Atheism.
These things I deem to be *Intelligently designed*… some with the extra special quality of possessing *A soul*… consciousness… all things that *cannot be understood via the purely Materialist paradigm… though Darwinian Evolution does its very best to attempt this very feat.
*Which is in itself the fundamental driving force behind the religious fanaticism of the Atheist materialists*
They are hell bent on maintaining a belief that they have No God to thank for their own existence… No God to answer for how they go about their lives… they must maintain this delusion… at all costs… They simply *cannot allow* the Bible to be believed as scientifically or historically valid.
They delude themselves that they have a rational and scientific basis for their faith… boy are they in for a surprise!
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. 10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 15 and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18 and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. 19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. 21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. 23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
As is his wont, my King James Bible believing Dispensationalist libertarian Christian co-blogger Tim tagged me in his post (of the above image) on Facebook. 🙂
Be sure to get your doctrine from the Bible, not the traditions of man! (Colossians 2:8)
I really do appreciate the pro-tip. It’s just that there’s a whole lotta problems with this instruction. At least one of which renders Tim’s advice utterly useless!
One problem is that the cited verse, Colossians 2:8, does not even mention the Bible.
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. (KJV)
See! What this verse is really saying is be sure to get your doctrine from Christ, not the traditions of man! I agree! But let’s be clear. There’s no mention at all of the Bible in this verse. And I’ve made it quite clear in previous blog posts what my view is. It is that Jesus is inerrant, but the Bible isn’t. The Word of God is inerrant. His scribes, not so much. Yes, that’s right. I basically equate the Bible with “the traditions of man”. I don’t equate the Bible with Christ. The Bible as we know it hasn’t even been around a couple of thousand years yet. Whereas
In [the] beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (DARBY)
Believe it or not, another problem is that the KJV mistranslates this particular verse. And don’t believe it or do, so does the NIV. But of course! 😉
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces[a] of this world rather than on Christ. (NIV)
Which is why I always have recourse to Young’s Literal Translation for times like this when it matters exactly what the Bible says.
See that no one shall be carrying you away as spoil through the philosophy and vain deceit, according to the deliverance of men, according to the rudiments of the world, and not according to Christ (YLT)
It’s clear that “spoiled” is a KJV mistranslation of “spoil”. Yet at least the NIV has the good grace to provide a footnote (see above) to the effect that it has construed “the basic principles” (rudiments) as “the elemental spiritual forces” of this world.
But here’s the fatal flaw with Tim’s advice—be sure to get your doctrine from the Bible, not the traditions of man!—which renders it useless. Which Bible?
Tim’s telling me to be sure to get my doctrine from the Bible, but which one? As we all know, Christians (e.g., Protestants vs. Catholics and Orthodox Christians) can’t even agree on which books belong in the Bible, let alone which translations of the canonical books are themselves canonical.
Which Bible? Tim will, of course, answer the Authorized King James Version of 1611. Which is a fair answer to a fair question. But if I accept this answer, one thing’s for sure. I’m now getting my doctrine from the traditions of man, and from the traditions of one man in particular, viz., my co-blogger Tim Wikiriwhi! And not necessarily from either the true Bible (if, indeed, there even is such a thing) or Christ.
It comes down to this. When all is said and done, we must decide—each of us individually must decide—in what and/or in whom to trust.
I trust in Jesus, the Son of God, whom I know from the first-hand accounts of his ministry by the original gospel authors, from his work in the lives of my brothers and sisters in Christ, from his work in my own life, and from personal encounter.
I trust in the deliverances of my own God-given moral compass when (not often, just occasionally) they conflict with what’s in the Bible.
So the Bible. What’s it good for?
Why, it’s profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works, of course! 🙂
So another year begins.
Satan and his Bitches have not buggered off and so this means we lovers of Truth, Justice, and Freedom must Recommit ourselves to the righteous causes and carry on the fight against the lies and Evil oppressions they spawn.
So My brave friends, let us remember our brothers and sisters in the Jails of our petty tyranny.
Let us rise again to speak boldly against the wicked lies that damn our loved ones souls and keep them under the dragons wing.
May God give me a greater portion of wisdom, grace, and self-control…. to be a better servant… a better soldier…. a better son.
Amen.
Evil prevails when good men do nothing.
Ask yourselves… is this the world you desire to bequeath to your children and their children?
Not I.
The Battlefront is on all sides.
To Arms!
Tim Wikiriwhi.
Protestant Christian.
Dispensationalist.
1611 Bible believer.
Libertarian.
