Refuting Other People's Heresies

I wrote this sin response to a video refuting Catholicism.

But I submit that there is a general principle here as regards refuting other errors and heresies, not just those of Rome

 In just about every refutation of Catholicism I have seen we protestants who make them always make ourselves out to be saints and heroes

But what if assenting to certain doctrinal statements is NOT the same as saving faith  (being necessary but not sufficient)?

What if commitment to a doctrine is NOT  the same as believing it?

What  if forced action against our own hearts as regards doubt fear and the lusts of the flesh is NOT  obedience nor faith  but is forsaking Christ for the law to be perfected in the flesh

If these are so then we act like Catholics but only have a few craps of sound doctrine  where they do not.

And that makes US worse, for we know better but still, in our own self deception,  we are also backslid if not apostate

Catholicism is an easy target,

But to look at our own carnality and what it demonstrates, to look at our  unbelief being what our impulses and careless words indicate  ( and if you know your bibles you KNOW that as we will be judged on our careless words then that is because they indicate unbelief and hypocrisy  being who we are, for "as a man thinks so he is" and "out of the heart of man comes evil thoughts" and  "the mouth speaks the fullness of the heart.

what about these???

There are TWO types of those who have forsaken Christ

This piece was posted in reply to a video saying that the problem with Lutheran preaching is soft antinomianism.

And my slowly evolving position is summarized in the title I append here, namely that there are TWO types of those who have forsaken Christ, and not just the one, namely the legalist

It is as follows:

 if the Lutherans preach the gospel the problem is NOT their teaching.

the thing is human nature has ONLY two alternatives,

legalism which is to forsake Christ for the Law, being fooled by the idea that their efforts do constitute  true law keeping ( they do not) and that these efforts  are obedience to the Holy Spirit ( they are not)

or lawlessness which is falsely called grace but which, in refusing to come to him personally in one on one relationship is no such thing. 

real grace TRANSFORMS the recipient and that as a process of renewal of the mind in one one one discipleship

to see no transformation even over years in an easy believer is to see that they have forsaken Christ for self indulgence

and to see only deterioration in the legalist over years -  and because law stirs up sin and makes it worse deterioration is the only possible outcome  - is to see that they  have  forsaken Christ for the law

the  problem is UNBELIEF, not the unbelief of failing to assent to proposition but the failure of coming to the Lord the spirit  IN PERSON to be changed,  healed and nurtured by Him:

IN PERSON

I come at this from the pole of an  extreme legalist. it is my besetting sin.

the dynamic of coming to the lord to be transformed in person  ( AND STAYING WITH HIM)  to become what the Law requires is TOTALLY DIFFERENT from that of the legalist vainly trying to keep a law he cannot keep and hoping for a help that never comes. Moreover that dynamic of coming to the Lord in person is likewise totally different to that  of the easy believer who thinks that merely being a Christian, or even only assenting to some doctrinal shibboleths is the same thing as having a relationship with Christ

The lies in modern culture compared to the lies in the church

 An American Christian named Rosaria  Butterfield   has preached against some of lies that are permeating modern culture.

She does part of it here  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJaQYNrKaWI

and I have seen other videos of her on this

She is of course correct.

BUT I reply to her post below. For such denunciations barely scratch the surface

FWD

and I said . . .

This very good and necessary. Now i suggest she looks at the lies that have been the foundation of the church since almost the beginning.

and note i did say ALMOST. i never said these following lies were ever preached by the apostles. ND NEVER WILL

But the carnal mind, when it encounters the commandments of God will always twist them, corrupting them into something else entirely, namely lies and they include

1/ that forced obedience against one's own heart is genuine and that God both requires it and is pleased with it

2/that faith  can be engendered,  ie pumped up by willpower

3/ that love is actions  and has nothing to do with feeling

4/that doctrinal assent equals saving faith

5/ that we actually believe the gospel of Christ and are honest about it  when our lives show WE DO NOT

6/ that His yoke is hard  ( remember that He said it was EASY

we can preach  all we like against the lies she speaks about but until we look at the ones i list here we have NOTHING to counter these other lies with for we do NOT believe the gospel. After all the hypocrisy of us Christians  is proverbial and has been for CENTURIES

More on Cessationism

 In reply to a video on the subject:

God speaks to me directly.

this is the promise of having the Holy Spirit 

how do i know it is the Spirit who speaks? no other spirit convicts me  of sin in patience kindness and love.

any other would either tell me sin is not an issue, that i am ok

or have me writing in in agony  of condemnation on the floor

if the Spirit does not speak to us directly how does he Give life? Life is not a reified essence, life is relationship with Him, without this  is a law w cannot keep and we have forsaken him for the law

all the bible is is a book of law for it has things which  i as carnal find absurd.  so the commandments to believe certain things stand to me in the same relations as law does. so gazing at the book will only have me  more condemned than ever. for the letter kills the SPIRIT GIVES LIFE

and how does the Spirit work in me to do and will his good pleasure if he does not speak to me directly in one on one??

and where is the intimacy or abundant life or sabbath rest  if the Spirit does not speak to me one on one?

if i cannot choose, being sunk in sin and carnality, if he does not persuade me as a loving father  in one on one dialogue then nothing gets done and i am lost

i am sorry but if they refuse this they are in perilous danger.

i cannot regard them a brethren for they have forsaken christ for the law, as I did.

but it was the one on one dialogue with the Holy Spirit  OF CHRIST where by his grace ( for he is my wonderful coudsellor0 is persuading me to make choices I simply cannot do of my own 

and if they continue to reject this a time will com when the Spirit  will give up for they are too hardened to hear him. the warning of Hebrews 6:4 ff applies to us christians, and the warning is  to NOT reject the  Spirit for the law

More on "Woke"

You know how it is: the  '"woke" are a pack of spoiled infants. Their entire "thought" and actions show this. And  they especially show this  when disagreed with in any kind of spirited manner. And in their  fevered and  bigoted minds that is hate.

They have nothing else and certainly not the intellectual equipment to consider anything else. So they are in their own imagination but nowhere else, heroes. Their hatred is righteous, they think, and anyone who disputes them is demonized as the forces of pure evil

And of course as they respond to anything they dislike  with HATE and hate only, enough to show that by this  they are in fact a hate movement. Their accusations against classical liberals moderates and conservatives is of course Projection

The behaviour and ideation ( how can i really call it thought) of  the "woke ' leads me to define their movement as 

"Social justice and equity etc 

AS CONCEIVED and PRACTISED BY CHILDREN."

because that is what "woke" is: the most pampered and spoiled generation in history. coming from the most prosperous culture in history yet in their continuing discontent  (that is life itself)  they have to hate something rather thanface their own  internal moral weaknesses.

so they HATE  the culture that gave them EVERYTHING

Truth or Honesty?

This is in reply to a poll post on youtube. the question we were to vote on was "salvation can NEVER be bought by our obedience. 

This is a christian channel

My reply follows:

 I could say the right words (after all I CAN read, you know), and the right words  are  indeed as the question puts, that  obedience can NEVER buy salvation.

OR 

I could speak honestly.

WHICH DO YOU WANT???

For it can't be both, for I am not spiritual enough to believe true doctrine honestly and show  it by living by it in love liberty and peace

BTW i am not the only legalist in the church who thinks he can and must buy salvation: i see it everywhere.

IOW i am largely convinced that if everyone here were honest they would  almost all disagree with the statement given.

Why?

If we are carnal in fruit we are carnal in mind and if carnal in mind then,  as the carnal mind regards the things of God as foolish, and free grace properly viewed  is the core of all spiritual truth, therefore  we WILL regard it as foolish. So  we are trying to buy our salvation with our "obedience, " and this for all our passion and words to the  contrary which God is not impressed by if he sees our hearts (ie what we REALLY think). And our hearts are  given away by  our spontaneous words and reactions

Thoughts on foot washing

The classic Biblical account of foot washing, the one appealed to to justify it in modern times is in John chapter 13:1-14.

I invite you to look it up now, befoer continuing

Jesus washed the feet of his disciples as a sign of service and commanded each to to this to the other, also as a sign of service.

The point was that each should serve each other and, though not explicitly mentioned in this incident, to not lord it over the other as the pagans do

BUT, and I think this important 

foot washing was a relevant cultural practice back in the days of 1st century Israel and the Middle East.

The  culture of bible times in the Ancient Near East is completely foreign to ours, vastly different

people walked everywhere on dusty roads in sandles. Their feet got very dirty, and in arriving at one's destination having them washed would be a relief.

it is no longer so  at least in the urbanized west, not when we drive in an air conditioned cars, alight from the vehicle onto a clean pavement in our  leather shoes. No feet need washing by someone who has never done so in his life 

for us to take foot washing  on is a slavish legalism that has totally lost the significance  of the thing.

Put it this way,  if some legalist  wanted to wash my feet i would regard him as a foot fetishist and get out of there quick!!  The issue is service in a manner  that the person you would serve would find helpful relevant and  not indecent and intrusive, like suddenly wanting to wash his feet "just because they did it in the bible" 

it would be as indecent as putting your hand under the thigh of a person you were making a promise to would be these days but which was a ritual  of promise making in the days of Abraham  and the patriarchs  Genesis 24:2ff  and GEnesis 47:29.

cultural context and appropriateness for these times is UTTERLY RELEVANT .

the point of foot washing is SERVICE, not the culturally relevant form of a time long past  if it is not culturaly relevant now, and  indeed may be seen as either indecent or absurd.

this is something the slavish legalist, ever obsessed with the appearance and never the substance, miises completely

if i were a church member and needed help putting up a fence or some such, and asked for help to receive it, they that helped me would have  done the proper equivalent of washing my feet, something real and practical where the slavish rite of foot washing nowadays is not

A Definition of "Woke"

 I have come up with a defintion of :"woke" for some "woke" are trying to tell us we, the non "woke" can't define it

here goes "soclal justice as conceived and pursued by immature minds". Their minds have been infantilized by post modernism, the re emergence of the cult of feeling which itself is a sub genre in the classical period (late 18th century), and cradle to grave welfarism coupled with a rejection of proper discilpine for children let me give some examples it is immature to think that only the white male is the cause of all evil; and it is immature to maintain that such a view is not racist it is immature to reject truth and exalt feelings in their place - every small child does this and if permited to continue in it becomes a spoiled brat it is immature to think that justice is a zero sum game, that therrefore to free some others must be bullied it is immature to think that their violence, exaltation of looting and murder ( the 2020 riots in the USA ) is a righteous expression of righteous anger it is immature to demand free stuff and REFUSE to even consider that maybe they could and should work for it it is immature to divide all of humanity into victim and oppressors and then lable all victims - real or imagined - as innocent i could go on but you get my point, I hope :)

A Quip by an Atheist

 A video about the historical evidence that Jesus existed had this quip by the fictional character  Dr Greg House come up  in the comment section:

"You talk to God, you’re religious; God talks to you, you’re psychotic.” - House MD

 . .To which I replied . . .

This is very  elegant, but it argues in a logical circle. This is  the fallacy of begging the question,  in latin petitio principii - to petition the principle  ie appealing to what you re trying to prove.

For to have any currency this quip  has to presume that God does not exist  or that such a being does not communicate. Because ONLY THEN is any claim of receiving direct   communication from the Divinity psychotic

And that is a circle, proving nothing

That is to say this is elegant but of no logical value whatsoever.

And of course the dictum, "abusus non tollit usum" also applies  here.

This is the Latin expression of the fact that abusing something  ( abusus) does not detract ( non tollit ) from proper use  (usum.

After all does any one reject food outright because of the abuse gluttons put it to?

 That some deluded people claim hearing from God when He has not spoken, thus abusing the reality of the thing,  in NO WAY detracts from the possibility of Him deigning to do so.

So i have no real interest in House's preference on this matter, for preference is all this is.

He is a fictional character  i found entertaining.  But i watched the entire show for entertainment, NOT wisdon

Who Rejects Christ the Most

 I just saw a video in which a famous apologist was debating with Ben Shapiro, well known conservative commentator and religious Jew.

The  one who posted this  video asked we pray for Shapiro.

One of my replies (I made three) was as follows:

It must be understood that the ones who reject Jesus most are the Christians. and no i am not going the cultist who says that all the professed doctrines of the churches are false. THat was Joseph Smith et al and not myself. They, church doctrines that is, ARE mostly true, but simply not believed as is seen by our lives .

To put it simply if we ignore the Holy Spirit we ignore Jesus for the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ

For we prefer the doctrinal construct, the mental image, the sacrament, the church tradition (oh yes we ALL have them not just those catholics we despise); we all prefer our own human forced effort which we call obedience (it is not) and the forced emotion called faith, or the emotional repression we also call faith (it depends on what emotion we are talking about as to whether it be forced or crushed) . . we christians seek ANYTHING but one on one with the life giving Sprit who is Christ IN PERSON. for Him we cannot control and our own control of things is that which we will never give up, unless we give it to the wrong person, ie a church leader. so you will pardon me for not being impressed by the empty albeit true words of an apologist "empty but true"?? that is my point.

just as faith without works is empty, so assent to truth without faith (ie personal trust in a living Being encountered and responded t personally, is also empty. ESPECIALLY, I must add, when the propositons we tout are objectively TRUE

in this instance our commitmtent to propositional truth (not the same thing as believing them, not by a longshot, is acutally a snare for it conceals our real unbelief and thus we are never cleansed of it.

and if we reject Him, prefering the Law to Him in person , which as a rule we do, as we attempt to keep the Law of God we will hate Him all themore.

more than any atheist

On the rise of "Free Speech Absolutism"

 That some "woke," like spoiled infants , get very nasty when disagreed with and want to curtail free speech in the name of protecting their feelings has, in my opnion encouraged a reaction that is extreme and myopic, the opposite error, if you will, which is the usual response to error in this fallen world.

Those reacting to "woke" censoriousness and oftime actual censorship  call themselves free speech purist or free speech absolutists.

But i submit that there is no such thing as total free speeech and neither should there be in a free society.

Does free speech permit libel and slander whereby  a reputation and thus a life can be destroyed by lies? I am not talking about "hurt feelings" here, but deliberate and malicious  character assassination.  So I would say to the so called self styled free speech purist that  if you are prepared to have your life wrecked by malicious lies, permitting it with good heart for it was  free speech, a fundamental principle your would die for, even if you suffered from it then you may  indeed be  a free speech purist. 

But if you have forgotten the distinction between hurting feelings and wrecking lives as explained above maybe your purism is based on ignorance.

And maybe you have simply reacted, not rationally responded,  to those "woke" babies  who themselves cannot tell the difference.

Let me give an example of what i mean.

So someone calls you an *sshole in debate. Fine!  Just brush it off. Only a spoiled brat like a "woke" would get petulant and want to destroy you because it hurt their feelings.

But what  if someone simply took a dislike to you? Assume   you were a tradesman or business owner, and this person destroyed your reputaiton, and your wife believed the lies, and you had a mortgage.

And you lost ALL OF THESE because no one would use your professional service nor buy your wares, your wife left you and the bank  foreclosed after you could no longer keep up the mortgage payments

and in the name of total free speech, being a free speech purist or free speech absolutist  you would be quite happy  with this?

there is far to much myopic ultra narrow focus in this issue.

total licentiousness of speech, a term i coin myself for i am not aware of it being used elsewhere, is no more permissiable  in this instance than when a person shouts "fire!!" in a crowded theatre

free speech has never been an absolute

More in reply to Naomi Wolfe

 

I also posted these on her substack in reply to the essay i linked to previously

Have the Ancient Gods returned?

in a word, no. there is no evidence for this. For I contend there is a far better explanation for the madness than that

that "the devl made me do it" is the oldest excuse in history. literally. Eve tried it in Eden and the Holy One was not in the least impressed

God has left us to drink the cup of evil to its bitterest dregs, the evil being that of our own rebellion against Him.

No supernatural devil required here for we are evil as the Bible says countless times yet to be ignored by all of us.

what is happening nowadays is that humaniy is reverting to type, becoming more authentically au naturel. tis is te cup of our own rebellon drank to the dregs, and it get worse

FWD 1

some will rejoice in this. some will despair and die because of this. others will invoke demons to explain or shift the blame. some will blame God for allowing it though i submit that His doing so is about the toughest love there is,

for there is a final category:

a few, tragically a VERY FEW wil seek God because of this and discover repentance of sin as a gift of his counsel in one on one persuasion

covid never shocked my world view. it in fact confirmed it

for though people want to talk about evil these days it is in order to blame the devil. for everyone wants the evil to be in some other fellow.

What did Jesus say when a tower fell on some people killing them?

4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Luke 13:4-5

BTW I am not advocvating hysterical breast beating or emotional flaggelation, wallowing in guilt like pigs in mud in response to our own sins. that too is self rightous claptrap

FWD 2

Many here have cited passages [mostly new testament] about spiritual warfare, meaing battle with demons

I am well aware of these passeges. But i assert they have been flagrantly abused by superstitious mindsets to blame the devil and excuse themselves.

The question remains, how many demons are there and how powerful are they?

put it this way, if you think that every lustful greedy or or angry thought in your head is a demon then there must be vast hordes of them to afflict the billions alive now (what WERE they doing when the human population was no more than 200 million in roman times)

and of course you have to believe they are powerful enough to be able to get in your head at any time'

for myself i know that i am tempted by my own lusts as the letter of James says. no demons applicable here

and i am also protected by the power of God - the petrine letters say so. but this really does offend the demon chasers one of whom told me to my face that the passage i quoted was not in the bible

so, my being a born again believer, no demon can touch me but by special permission of God.

therefore all my evil thougts and impulses are none but my own. and when i seriously tried to keep the law of God i not only forsook Christ to do this ( see Paul to the Galatians) but the effort stirred my sin up and made me far worse than i ever was an an atheist unbeliever. (Paul's letter to the church in rome

so where is the devil in all this?

to me the clincher is this. who or what is the restrainer? (2 Thessalonians 2:6-8) if he or it is still here the demons are severely limited in what they can do, and if the restrainer stil works we aint seen nuthin' yet!!!!! (but God willingwe will not live long enough to witness it for i do not believe the time is yet ripe

who or what is the restrainer? i do not know. as i completely reject the pre tribulation rapture it cannot IMO be the church, which never resrained anything in a godly manner in its history, nor the Holy Spirit who will still be with us as we the born again believers are massacred by the Beast in the Tribulation that God has not seen fit to spare us from

as always there are more scriptural verses than the ones quoted by people on any issue.

and always they change everything about the issue in question

On Naomi Wolfe's "Have the Ancient Gods Returned?"

 Some insist that there is no real evil involved  in the covid business,

Others insist that the evil there  is real and so therefore supernatural agencies must be involved

Naomi Wolfe is one of them. she calls these malign spirits the Ancient Gods

https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/have-the-ancient-gods-returned

I wrote this in reply to her post

It seems to me that you are committing the fallacy of the false dichotomy - that things are either based on human decency, OR are influenced supernatural agencies of evil, ie demons.

but neither is true. For though you have looked at the issue from a classical humanist worldview you have not looked it it from a proper biblcal perspective.

And i do not mean appeal to demons, even though i hold they exist. the true source of evil is far closer to home and scripture, without my having to quote the New Testament, spells this out

Jesus Christ rebuked the Pharisees for adulterating biblical faith with the traditions of men. and it was the Pharisees who held the jews together as a people by founding rabbincal judaism after the Exile of AD 70.

thus judaism as is known since then has fatal blindspots as regards its own hebrew scriptures. and this can be seen in the passages in tanakh that i have seen religious jews routinely ignore

Tanakh ( theJewish name for te Hebrew OldTEstament) tell us that "the heart of man is deceitful above all things, and who can know it"

also that "man is evil from youth up"

also that our righteousness is filthy rags for there is none righteous.

the Psalmist tells us that "in sin my mother conceived me.". This cannot mean that the sexual act is sin in itself, for this is gnostic heresy. therefore can only mean that David, like the rest of us, was conceived as a sinner, ie in christian language born in original sin

I know that Original Sin is a christian term. but it is thoroughly biblical even though the term does not appear in scripture.

if WE are evil because the bible says so then all it takes is a time of crisis to provoke what is already in us, hence the hate divisiveness etc you complain of

and if we are evil then all our talk about human rights was empty hypocrisy from the outset, easily set aside when panic sets in.

There is an old roman saying, in times of war morals are silent. Cicero said this I think. But i owuld expand on it and say in times of PASSION moralis are silent. that passion can be the madness of an adulterous couple, or the passion of panic as in thecovid business.

and when morals are silent all manner of evil results. Not that morals restrains evil. They only restrain action by making hypocrites of all of us

and all this of courese without recourse to invoking demons

for there is no need to invoke demons , the devil, or supernatural agents of evil, ie the old gods.

Yes, BUT . . . .

 A conservative commentator posed a two part quiz, consisting of a yes or no answer to this one  question:

Do traditional gender roles generally make for better relationships?

I voted yes and commented as below

YES

 BUT spiritual gender roles  (I will coin the term for convenience sake, no more, and mean by it the trad role cleansed of sin in Christ)  would make for even better.

in this world even the trad role is FALLEN and therefore  corrupt.

this is something the conservative almost always forgets

I suspect that the Left saw this corruption and like undisciplined thinkers everywhere  did not distinguish use from abuse in this matter  and rejected the lot.

and the resulting mayhem is history

Free speech and hate speech

 The Left these days want to ban speech that may or may not be expressive of hate and therefore violence ; and the Right want to narrow the definitions  of speech as violence so they can rail with impugnity and call it free speech

As the Right, particularly in the USA think they are christians  they would be expected to believe the Bible is the word of God andat least consider its commandments.

I posted this on a conservative channel on a video platform:

Can speech be violent, IOW can it build up, encourage, or demoralize, wound or drive to despair?

Well, is anyone denying this  ever been verbally abused?

to any Christian or religious Jew the answer, believe it or not, is in the Bible itself.

 "life and death are in the power of the tongue" Proverbs 18:1.    If the words life and death mean anything at al then this means words can wound and so speech can be violence.

This is also confirmed in the NT. Jesus said "the mouth speaks the fullnes of the heart" Luke 6:45 - so speech CAN be evil  -  and He also said "out of the heart comes evil thoughts"  Matthew 12:34-36 and mathew 15:18-19, whereby our evil words defile us, not the foods we eat (in response to jewish food law)

this is summarised best in the letter of James  3:5 and quoted here 3:6 "And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

and to cap it all off  no one can control the tongue, James 3:8.

Conservatives \can call themselves christians if they like but they  are bound to adhere to the word of God, or stop pretending to believe  in it

as is often he case even conservatives ask the wrong questions:  the right quesetion is can   even hate speech be controlled by LAW  and is there any utility in the effort. and the answer is essentially NO. and thios because of JAmes 3:8

to call hate speech free speech  is to skirt this issue and actually agree with the Left that speech can and ought to be controled by LAW,  just differning on what speech should be controlled by law. but then LAW is the way that seems right to men but whicleads to death, for legalsim is never obedience. If legalism were obedience the  Pharisees would not have been hypocrites

the error of the right is to deny that such speech is evil, the error if the left  is to think that evil speech can and ought to be coerced into silence by LAW

The  rightists, invokingfree speech,  want to insult and  verbally rail  with impugnity?

very well but they  WILL account to God if not men for it

Ardern Resigns, my theory

 I now have a theory as to why Jacinda resigned.

I dont know this is true but it rings true to me.

I saw a comment on one of the many videos I saw about this matter, from a fellow NZer.

It says that Ardern was on holiday over the christmas break (our summer holiday here downunder) in a small town here in NZ  known for its hospitality.

and people were crossing the road to avoid her, and some were  giving her a piece of their minds.

So it has finally penetrated her pretty empty little head that she is hated.

and to a little girl with all the maturity of a 16 year old  - see her inveterate  grandstanding, the fuss she made on giving birth to a child while in  office  etc etc etc ad nauseum for evidence of this -  to such an infantile mind such knowledge  is SHATTERING

she is not loved, and now she knows it.  But she had to be on her summer holiday away from her acolytes handlers and hangers on, away from her bubble of self involvement and political isolation from reality  to even hear this. So of course she would be  on the verge of tears at the knowledge and has to run away.

So no, i  do not really believe that this is a calculated measure done in sober and cynical  awareness  of the situation. in order to escape criminal charges, as some sites theorise. They may be right but in my opinion  she is far  too naive for that.

she is a silly little girl way  out of her depth and this was compounded by her corruption as seen in her immense wealth ( 25 million on a PM's salary to a girl who grew up in a country towns fish and chip shop) and also seen in how quickly her power went to her head

So  i see no reason to think she was pushed out by anything other than her own wounded childish vanity

AS I said i do not know this, but it rings true to me

BTW i also heard that the rejoicing here in NZ was so great that one pub (drinking establishment, bar, tavern  to my american friends )  is offering cheap jugs of beer in celebration.

a pity i am not a beer drinker . . . .

What is the hope in us

 The following was written by me as a comment on a video by a creation scientist. Given the point i am making it does not matter who this scientist was, nor teparticular subject he  was speaking on 

The validity of the arguments of the creation scientists is why i am satisfied that the secular cosmologist among others are DEEPLY dishonest and that therefore there is no point in tryng to argue or reason with them. IMO apologetic work is best reserved to persuade christians that we have not believed in vain. it is essentially wasted on unbelievers who are too invested in their dishonesty. Which, I contend, is exactly what Romans chapter 1 says and has said all along I am not satisfied that the scripture, "be prepared to offer an account of the hope in you" justifies what we call apologetics. My conviction is slowly growing that the hope in us is our joy and way of life, In other words it is our fruit. and the account for it is the gospel itself. if we have no fruit we do not hope in any real or honest sense, so all our talk about the truth of the gospel is hot air as our lives show we ourselves do not believe it it is as a christian who was not converted by the clever reasonings of men (mine was a smaller scale Damascus Road event now 44 years ago) that i am grateful for thework of the creation scientists for their work

But, to conclude, if arguments do not convert what does?

I do regard it as an indictment on us that these two things are two things we do not have as christians.

They are the kind of unity which shows we truly love one another as referred to in Jesus' prayer ot make them (his discples) one

and the others is power, for St Paul said that the kingdom is not words but power

So we prefer to talk

Grave Soakng

Bil Johnson's  Bethel Church, in Reading Clalifornia  preaches a phenomenon (though it tries to deny it does, but that is beyond my scope) they call Grave Soaking.

In it they claim that by laying on the graves of famous dead Christians they can pick up "the anointing"  or the "power"  that was atttached to these dead saints  and that the can reclaim it for themselves

Grave soaking is utterly irrational.

It regards the power of God as a THING  ( the technical  word for turning an aspect into a THING is reification). and this is pure superstition.

For example: Though I might love someone  - a name does spring to mind  - though you might find a token of said affection, a gift a note you will never find the love itself laying on the ground or floating in the ethr. It is not an entity, but an attitude. It is therefore NOT a thing. It is real but not materially so

So clearly any emotional experience the feel at said gravesite is of no significance. People feel all manner of things all the time. They mean nothing. Truth was never based on feeling

For a church that professes to be protestant  it is rather odd that they should treat the appurtenances of the dead  as if having reified power attached to them. Incidentally they misuse the word "anointing" to justify this.  In medieval  catholic Europe  it was the bones or clothing etc of dead saints that was believed to have this power, with Bethel it is the  graves of them)

and even if this power were an existing entity rather than their  memory of an ability that some  person now dead  was given by God  why would they seek to go to IT directly rather than to God Himself?

This is idolatry. It makes the corpses or gravesites of dead belivers a mediator between God and Man. and there is none bar Christ Himself.

I distinguish power from ability. I have the ability to play a musical instrument to a professional level. but this did not happen by anything other than inborn talent and  much work. it did NOT result from me being imbued with a reified energy -  that which charismatics all too often call "power".

So I, who really was once a musician,  (my logon on some social media outlets) have the ability to perform on the classical upright bass but I  not have , as they define the term, the power to do such.

I end by repeating to reify power into an essence, a THING,   like electricity is irrational; and idolatrous. for the power whereby they misdefine  the ability of God as being a reiftied essence,  DOES NOT EXIST.

in terms of the biblical text to turn God's power into a thing that they may seek in itself  is pure eisegesis (bringing to the text what is NOT in it). and they  got there by liking his power to electricity and then twisting scripure to fit.

Even though Samson was embued with strength and the first christians with the  power to preach these are not entities in their own right separate form God Himsel. Rather they were God Himself in action.

But as always they seek  the power of God rather that the God of, among a huge host of other things, of  power

The Ride of a Lifetime

 I saw a video, it does not matter which, in which a preacher was denouncing heretics.

That I agree with who he said  the heretics  were  is beside the point

But I wrote in the comments:

Why is it always only ever the OTHER fellow who misrepresents the gospel of Christ?

Have none of you ever been taken on the Grand Tour of your own sinful hearts, with  no less than the Holy Spirit as your Tour Guide,  to see your own unbelief, heresies ( ie misrepresentations of Christ) and outright pretence at belief,  hiding your own real belief - whatever it is -  beind a legalistic commitment to truth?

Then you have missed the ride of a lifetime and have also refused the only way to ever come to an honest maturity whereby any of us have even the  ability  let alone the  right to contend with those in error.

After all the dictum "logs and splinters " also apples to us all. we have NO right to contend   with an error our hostility to which indicates that we are likely embued with it ourselves

And i know from my own bitter experience that the most zealous for truth are in fact the deepest hypocrites as regards it who are riddled with the most heresy. IOW, as they say, "been there done that." So heresy hunting no longer impresses me

Except for the barest minimum requirement of belief  (namely that Jesus is God and that He rose from the dead)  I am a christian because of my  one on one relationship with the Holy Spirit, not my  honest doctrinal orthodoxy - for of the latter i have very little.

So my days of pretending (as opposed to genuine belief) to orthodoxy are over.

When and if I ever come to full orthodoxy this will show by a radiance of life, the Fruit of the Spirit, without which i know that I am full of unbelief and which unbelif i see in other preachers

Science, Politics, Religion: The Odd One Out??

I am considering the notion that there are three main phenomena when it comes to judging human affairs.

These are politics science and [human] religion. 

I consider Biblical  Christianity to be outside of this equation for I am speaking of the world, not the truth

So I might ask which two go together and which is the odd man out?

I venture that science is the odd man out, for in its pure form it is about skepticism debate and evidence whereas politics and man made - carnal - religion are about kowtowing to authority and obeying it without question.

Time and time again our govts are acting like cults - demanding compliance and not offering any evidence but only the oracular pronouncements of authorities

but they have forgotten that appeals to authority are logically fallacious even when the authority is a world renowned expert

in the true spirit of science they the expert should show their work and the submit it to debate. but this has not been done. Science without skepticism is cult religion

And when this submission of reasoned evidence to open debate is not done what we have is not science but scientism, a  view that regards science as yet another religion  and operates the same way

We are not a scientific society but a religious one and where our faith was once  counterfeit church Christianity now it is scientism.

Of course God always has his elect in there somewhere, but we the few are the few and it is only luck and indifference  from the authorities whereby we are not yet persecuted as believers. But that is clearly changing -

Politics and man made religion are acting true to form and science has forsaken its own basis to become as I said scientism, namely a religion . The rot is contributed to by post modernism  which rejects notions of truth outright leaving men with nothing but feelings which  matter more than facts

It really does not matter which issue is being trotted out to feed scientism and post modernist cultism. An observant reader can notice a few on his own.

If and when these fall into the dustbin of history some other madnesses of crowds will emerge