I Had a Revelation

    I started this blog about a year ago because I had a couple of things on my mind, and I wanted to get them off my chest. This is why I’m not a professional writer. You would think that if they were on my mind I would want to get them off my mind. I don’t understand why it doesn’t work that way. They are still on my mind, but I managed to get them off my chest. Somehow, that’s supposed to make it alright.

    In any case, I still have plenty on my mind and on my chest. Given last year’s election and and the very unusual reactions to it, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that most of what is driving me crazy lately is political. I’ve even drifted that way in a couple of my essays. But considering the name I decided to give this whole blog, that didn’t seem to be all that appropriate. So if I’m to continue to contribute to this endeavour, I need to come up with an actual direction to take this thing. An idea came to me this morning.

    Given the current political climate, not just in America but around the world, it’s hard not to get all eschatological. That word’s a lot more fun to say than it is to try to spell, but it means I’m convinced the world is coming to an end.

    It’s sad in a way. All my life I’ve kinda figured the world would end in my lifetime, and all I ever had to say about it was that when it happens, I wanted a good seat. I can’t for the life of me understand why I didn’t realise the end of the world would be unbearably ugly. But looking around at what’s been going on in the world, and the attitude that is quickly pervading all of society, I’ve come to realise that if this is really the beginning of the end of the world, it’s not going to be any fun at all.

    Over the years I’ve heard all kinds of theories, explanations, timelines and sermons about the end of the age and how it’s all going to come down. Chronologically, what is going to happen when. Politically, who the anti-Christ is, and historically, how what you read in the papers matches up with what was written in the Book of Revelation. I’ve read some books trying to make sense out of the whole thing, and those books seem to disagree with the sermons, and each other.

    Finally, having plenty of time on my hands, I decided to study the book of Revelation. I’ve read through it a couple of times, and by the time I get to the end, I’m never quite sure what happened. This time, I’m going verse by verse, Taking notes and referencing however many commentaries I need to to make the particular verse I’m working on make sense.

    This has now been going on for months. I try to spend a couple of hours a day on it, first thing in the morning. I don’t have an alarm to tell me when I’m done for the day. Something else always lets me know when it’s time to move on to the next part of my day. Usually, it’s the next part of my day that comes crashing in, demanding my attention. I try to get up early enough to have a couple of hours before that happens.

    Sometimes, I realise that it’s time to quit when I get to a part that I just can’t make sense out of; I can’t find a suitable reference to put in my notes and I am just getting nowhere. At that point I’ll wrap it up and decide to start the next day looking for a commentary, or Bible footnote, or whatever I can find to get me past that verse and onto the next one. There have been times that it’s taken me three days to get past a verse.

    I blame Chuck Missler for all this. If you’ve never heard of him, you might want to look him up on YouTube. He’s what you call an expositional commentator. He goes through the Bible, chapter by chapter and really works to flesh it out. He believes that every single word, every number and every place name have a meaning that ties into the total message that God is trying to get across to us.

    This all sounds great, but after listening to him for a while, you get to where you read passages you’ve read twenty times before and suddenly you find yourself asking, “what did he mean by that?” Why did God give us a genealogy of Cain’s descendants when they were all wiped out in the flood anyway? I still don’t have an answer for that, by the way and that is what brings me to the point of this particular post:

    The more I learn, the less I seem to know. I’m going to start sharing what I’ve learned about the Book of Revelation. More importantly, I’m going to discuss what I still haven’t figured out.

    As much as I’ve learned from Mr. Missler, John MacArthur, Chuck Smith, Stanley D. Tousaint and others, there are details in the Book of Revelation that drive me crazy that nobody else even seems to notice. I pour through commentary after commentary and they will all skip over these little details like they didn’t even notice them. Well I noticed them, and I want answers.

    Let me give you an example. This is what caught my attention this morning that made me think that studying Revelation was the best course I could take with this blog right now:

    Turn to chapter 11. John shifting from the Temple to the two witnesses without a clutch is troubling enough, but am I the only one to notice that these witnesses are discussed in the future tense until verse eleven. As soon as verse 11 hits, it shifts to the past tense. Maybe I’m missing some sort of innocuous literary device and this doesn’t mean anything. But it is the point that stopped my studying this morning.

    Now I’ve been writing this blog for a year and I know a few people have read parts of it, but I have gotten virtually no feedback from anyone but Pastor Jeff Arp so far. (Thank you Pastor, by the way). I’m hoping that changes and people begin to engage with me as I go through the questions and confusions bubbling up from the pages of this incredible book. I’m hoping somebody helps me out with trying to understand some of this.

    I may be lost. But at least I may have found a direction for this blog.

My Bible Can Beat Up Your Bible

   

     I was writing an essay for this blog, and while doing a little research in an attempt to keep from looking like a total moron, I ran into a controversy that I feel has to be addressed before I even try to share what it was I was writing.

     Bibles. I wonder how many different translations the average Christian owns. Personally, I find I'm becoming somewhat of a collector. It's incredibly easy these days. What, with the internet and phone apps that have a half dozen versions each and more coming out seemingly every month. I'm constantly running into a new translation that has a way of wording one verse or another that just strikes me in a way that makes that particular verse mean something to me when before, the verse was just another line on the way to a different point I thought the writer was trying to make.

Little did I know I was reading BLASPHEMOUS SCRIPTS FROM THE PIT OF HELL!

     Seriously, while doing a little Google search yesterday, I ran across a fist full of web pages explaining in detail, how the King James Version is the only God ordained, infallible English translation of God's Word. Looking back, I actually know some very sincere Christians who feel this way. My mother got saved while I was a teenager. She was one that told me more than once, that the way to judge a Bible's authenticity was to turn to 1 John 5, verses 7 & 8. I'll bet a lot of readers know where I'm going already. The King James (KJV) Bible says:

        7. For there are three that bear record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one.

8. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one.

But, the New English Translation (NET) reads:

7. For there are three that testify,
8. the Spirit and the water and the blood, and these three are in agreement.

You see the problem, I'm sure. The KJV spells out the Trinity right there in black and white while the NET denies the Trinity.

     I disagree. For those that are interested in the reasons why most of your later translations don't have the KJV version (is that redundant?), Google it. Or just check the footnotes of any good study Bible. The extra verbiage simply doesn't show up on any manuscript before the 16^th century. For those that believe in the Trinity, there is plenty of evidence for the Trinity in other places in the NET and in the other modern translations. For those that don't believe in the Trinity, the best evidence they have is that the Roman Catholic Church is so enthralled with the concept, and of course anything the Roman Catholic Church teaches as fundamental doctrine is going to be suspect.

      As for me, I can see a lot of evidence all through the Bible. But...there's still that Roman Catholic thing. But, this essay isn't about the Trinity. It's about Bibles

      Ironically, my mother, the one who was so concerned about whether that verse was in there, got saved while reading a New Living Bible. Possibly the most maligned of all the translations. I can't even tell you which version I was reading when I got saved.

     I don't think it's that important what Bible you read, as long as you are reading a Bible.

Jeremiah 29:13 “When you seek me in prayer and worship, you will find me available to you. If you seek me with all your heart and soul.” (NET – sorry) With that, I think I've reached my scripture per essay quota.

     The point is, the Word of God isn't so much something that you read. I've read Bible commentaries written by atheists. The Word of God is something that enters your heart. You read the Bible for that to happen, but let's be honest, there are flaws in every translation in every language.

I have a lot of fun studying the Bible, and the deeper you dig, the more fun it is. But when I start digging into the history of the translations and where they came from, nobody seems to agree on anything.

     You've got the Textus Receptus (and several versions of it), the Codex Vaticanus, the Sinaiticus, the Vulgate, Heysychian type, the Septuagint, and on and on and on, and I'm just scratching the surface. These are based on even older texts that also get argued over beyond my capacity for following along. Most of these don't even have real names. They are mostly catalog references.

I swear, if you follow these arguments too long, you'll have to stop and remind yourself of why you believe in the Bible in the first place. Some of these folks involved in these discussions aren't even believers. They just found a fun subject to argue about and in some instances I think they actually want to throw doubt into your mind.

     God's Word is more powerful than all that. I had a Mormon Missionary ask me, “Do you really think that all of God's Word can be contained in just the one Bible?” I found that to be a thrilling question. My answer was yes. Not only that, but the Bible is actually quite repetitive. It says the same thing over and over, and if you get into types and models (One story being a representation of a more central point), the repetitions seem almost endless.

     The idea is, God is going to get His point across. Man is going to screw up the telling of it, but if you are sincere in your search for God and His Will in your life, He will get it through to you if you only have one page of the Message Bible to read.

     On the other hand, if you're just looking to make a point for your own selfish purposes (kinda like me, most of the time), you could hear God's Voice itself speaking to you from a pillar of fire and still end up wandering in the desert until you die when you could have been living in a land flowing with milk and honey.

It Was Only Raining When We Left the Farm

I keep wanting to write a book about my wedding day, or even my life in general. This is the title I always wanted to give it.

   On this date in 1984, I married Perry Ann Stewart.

   Why, you may ask, would anyone get married on New Year's Eve? Trust me, the reason is anything but romantic.

   In 1981, I married an Amish girl named Bertha that I'd met and fallen in love with four years earlier. I was romantic then. They say love is blind. My love was deaf, dumb (meaning stupid), blind and stubborn. The girl had no business getting married, and she knew it. But I would not take “no” for an answer. So, after four tumultuous years of arm twisting – Way past the time I should have caught on – she agreed to marry me. I don't want to spend a lot of time on my anniversary talking about a past relationship; so I'll just point out that on our second wedding anniversary, she told me if she had thirty five dollars to eat on, she would leave me, hitch hike to Portland Oregon and move in with a guy that she knew out there. I gave her thirty five dollars, and she was gone.

   I actually met Perry while I was married to Bertha. My cousin Tim worked at the same hospital where Perry's mother worked, so they were acquainted with each other. One night at a bar in Warrensburg, Perry had won a pool shooting contest with the prize being a pony keg. She had no idea where to go with the thing, so Tim suggested taking it to his cousin Bob's (that's me) house where there is always a poker game going on. So Perry, her cousin Pat and the keg all rode up to my house with Tim to the “Perpetual Poker Game”.

   Tim knocked on the door and when I answered, introduced me to his friends and told me about the keg, which Bertha promptly ran out and grabbed. She wasn't very big, but she was brought up on a farm.

   When I looked in Perry's eyes, it was like I knew her. Specifically, I could see us being together; that she would become very depressed, but that she would never leave. All of this scared me half to death. As did the thought that went through my mind that this woman would be the end of my marriage to Bertha.

   Through the entire evening, I would not pay any more attention to her than was required to function in a poker game. I wouldn't talk to her. I wouldn't even make eye contact. This confused the heck out of Perry. The dynamics in the room being the way they were, she didn't even realize that Bertha and I were married. She thought Bertha was my sister and couldn't figure out why I wouldn't interact with her. After all, she was the hottest thing on wheels – and she knew it. Besides being beautiful, she was built like a brick outhouse and was used to being the center of attention in any room where there were men. Yet, I spent more time talking to her cousin. Pat cracked everybody up. He looked like the stereotypical Lounge Lizard. He had the hiphuggers, the loud shirt unbuttoned far enough to see the medallion resting in a sea of chest hairs. A freshly coiffed perm. To everyone playing poker that night, he will always be referred to as “Mister Disco”.

    When they left, I worked very hard to calm myself down. I kept telling myself: “She's from Warrensburg and you live in Wellington.” “This was just a fluke meeting.” “You'll never see her again.” “Calm down!” I was really upset. As tortuous as my marriage was at the time, I didn't want to give up on it. I thought marriage meant forever. Besides, there's that whole stubborn romantic thing. I really needed to get a grip.

    I don't even know what date that was, but I'm thinking it was in the spring of 1983. Then, on July 5^th, Bertha left.

    I worked for a small town butchery at the time and they tended to lay me off in the summer when things were real slow. So with nothing else to do, I moved out of the house in Wellington, put my stuff in storage, and just kind of wondered around looking for good fishing holes.

    My brother Carl had just come back from 12 years in Australia and was living with my mother outside of Centerview, so I dropped by to see him. While there my car broke down and I was stuck.

Carl had met this girl and was absolutely smitten by her and kept asking me for advice on how to win her affection. I kept trying to point out that my wife had left me just a couple of months before – what did he think I knew about women? But he kept on anyway.

    One day my cousin Tim stopped by and as we were talking, I mentioned Carl and this girl he wouldn't shut up about.

Tim asked: “Well, you know who it is don't you?”

“No. I haven't met her”

“Sure you have. Remember Mister Disco?”

  I thought: “OH NO! SHE FOUND ME!!!”

    Carl eventually arranged for me to meet this girl he wouldn't shut up about. As soon as our eyes met, the sparks started flying. I couldn't help messing with her. A sort of game developed between us to 

see how subtly one of us could mess with the other and still have them know they are being messed with. We didn't want to actually start anything because Carl had such a crush on her and we were both worried about his feelings getting hurt. But the results were inevitable. Resistance was futile. Things got started.

    In January of 1984, Perry told me she was pregnant. By this time I was working at the butchery in Wellington again, so on February 4^th we moved into a house in Wellington.

    I wasn't thinking about getting married. I had lost all faith in the institution of marriage. After all, I'd done it once. Look where that had gotten me. I'd also lost all faith in romance, for the same reason. Why Perry wanted to be with me so bad was beyond me. I was as cold as ice. Of course I wanted to get laid, but that was a long way from being in love. I was determined not to get emotionally attached to anyone again. I told her over and over again: “This is purely physical.” I also remember telling her: “Look, this is my life. If you want to tag along, that's up to you. Try not to make too much noise.” I'm sure anyone reading this has to think I was a first class jerk (That's the polite term). I'm telling you, you don't know the half of it. But if she was going to have my baby, I was going to be there.

    On July 29^th, Leo was born.

    During the course of 1984, the butchery I worked at went bankrupt and the men that owned it and I all went to work for R.B. Rice in Lee's Summit, Missouri. By that Christmas, I was laid off again, couldn't afford to stay in the house in Wellington, and Perry, Leo and I ended up outside of Knob Noster, Missouri living in a double wide trailer with Perry's mother, step-father and her two younger sisters.

    Now, for the touching story of how we got married:

    Two days after Christmas, for reasons I don't remember, we found ourselves on the square in Clinton, Missouri eating lunch at a restaurant across from the court house. During the course of conversation, it suddenly dawned on me that if we were to get married before the year ran out, I could write Perry and Leo off my taxes and even get an earned income credit.

    With not a moment to lose, I ran across the street to the court house and applied for a marriage license. As I filled out the paper work, I found out there was a three day waiting period from the time I filed the license to the time we could actually get married. This meant the soonest we could get married would be on the 30^th. I started checking around to see where we could get the deed done and my former boss, Glen Nadler, managed to get the pastor at his church in Wellington to agree to do it on the 31^st. All we had to do was pick up the license and get from Knob Noster to Wellington. This didn't seem like it was going to be a problem. It was only fifty miles North, and the weather wasn't bad – yet. It was cold and rainy, but for December 31^st, I felt we were pretty fortunate.

    Perry, her older sister and I headed up there in a '72 Impala. Her Mother, step-father and her other sisters headed up in an old Dodge van.

    Right about the time we crossed I-70, the rain turned to snow. By the time we got to Wellington, it had turned into something of a blizzard.

    The wedding was informal and strange. My former bosses, Glen and Larry were there with their wives. Glen was actually the best man. His wife took lots of pictures and then lost them. I didn't get to see them for 28 years. I suddenly got a phone call from her about four years ago telling me that she had found them.

    We wanted to have music for the wedding, so Perry's little sister Nemy sang Bread's “If”; a beautiful love song that nobody knew how to play except me. I ended up playing the piano at my own wedding. The pastor bought us a cake, which was great. He laid out a little spread for us, so we had something of a reception. It may have been one of the strangest weddings he ever performed, but it was nice. My taxes were now taken care of and there was nothing left to do but find a New Year's Eve party to crash.

    Everybody else headed back to Knob Noster in the Van. Perry, Carol and I went looking for a party...in the snow.

    We first thought to check Stretch's house. He used to live across the street from me. I woke up one morning to yelling, cussing and gun fire coming from his place. Turns out he had become frustrated with his record player which he threw out into his back yard and emptied his pistol into it. He was a fun guy to party with. Unfortunately, he wasn't home. Then, when we left his porch, the car got stuck in the still falling snow where we parked it. I tried and tried to rock it out of there and ended up blowing out the differential. Now, we were in trouble.

    It seemed no one that I knew was home anywhere in that town. Carol, who was thrilled to see snow for the first time in her life (She's from Mississippi), was in tears because the shoes she had on were not meant for snow and her feet on the brink of frost bite. We eventually ended up back at the pastor's house, banging on the door because they had already gone to bed. We eventually roused them, and they were nice enough to put the three of us up for the night in the spare bedrooms that they had.

    That night, Perry discovered she was NOT pregnant again – if you know what I mean.

    So thirty two years ago today, on a very strange New Year's Eve, a woman who does not deserve what I have put her through, officially agreed to spend the rest of her life with a man that does not deserve the joys that she has brought to me.

...And the whole world parties with us. She never has to worry about me forgetting our anniversary.

Merry Christmas!

I spent all year waiting for Christmas so I could write this essay.

I was going to write about all the things that are wrong with the celebration of Christmas. I was going to start with the very date that we celebrate Christmas on. I'm sure everyone who has done the slightest bit of research knows that Jesus Christ was not born on December 25^th. Lately I've found it fascinating that the Bible gives the exact date that Noah left the Ark. It spells out in advance the exact date that Jesus entered into the Temple on the back of a donkey's colt. Of course it gives the date He was crucified and the date He was raised. (we don't actually celebrate those occurrences on the dates that the Bible gives, but that is an argument for another day.) Yet, the Bible does not tell us the day He was born. A piece of information I find conspicuous in its absence. I read an essay recently that makes a pretty good argument that He was born at the Feast of Tabernacles. I'm not going to try to make that argument, but it is pretty clear he wasn't born on the date Christians celebrate His birth.

The ways we celebrate Christmas started bothering me years ago. I'll admit right up front that it was the money involved that first started getting under my skin. I didn't want to come across like Ebeneezer Scrooge but I couldn't understand how the proper celebration of Christmas meant you were going to spend so much money that you either had to start laying away in August or you were going to be in debt until April. Or both. I could see the pressures this put people under; the pressure it was putting on me, and I decided that I wasn't going to participate anymore. I told everybody that I wasn't going to buy them anything for Christmas and for them to not buy anything for me either. That didn't work, by the way. My mother is going to buy me a present whether I like it or not. So is my son. I get cards from all over the place, and well I guess I can't just drop out of the whole thing. Like I said: I don't want to be a jerk. But the expense just bugs the Dickens out of me. I quit smoking because I didn't want to spend a dollar a pack on cigarettes. Now, they're over $5.00 a pack. I quit doing Christmas when the commercials you saw the most was for Norelco razors. Now, the commercials are all Lexus cars and diamonds. Are you kidding me?

Then there's the lights. I don't know why people feel compelled to triple their light bill for the month of December, but I must admit I really like seeing the all the lights. I'm just too cheap and lazy to put any up myself.

I don't like Christmas trees either. Putting them up used to be fun. Taking them back down never was. The real trees made the house smell nice, but you ended up with pine needles everywhere – not to mention the attendant fire hazard. Then I ran into Jeremiah, Chapter 10, and I now have Scriptural justification for not having a tree. I even became offended by Christmas trees, interpreting that chapter as forbidding them. I found out not everybody sees it that way. It seems there are a lot of things that people I look up to as Christians don't see the way I do.

However, this year I've suddenly become very aware of the importance of Christmas. It becomes clearer to me as I see all the forces so determined to eliminate it. It started with Xmas. I didn't think anything of it at first. It just seemed like an abbreviation. When people started screaming to “Put Christ back in Christmas” my first thought was that Christ never was really in Christmas. That goes back to my argument about the date and all the other problems I have with how we celebrate Christmas. I mean, don't even get me started on Santa Claus. What in the world does a fat dude flying around in a sleigh have to do with Jesus, for crying out loud?

Then they started with “Happy Holidays”. Still, I was not concerned. After all, the holiday season contains Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah...heck, there was a time when I considered the holiday season to run from Thanksgiving to the Super Bowl. Of course, that was before they started playing the Super Bowl in February. "Happy Holidays" to me sounded like encouragement to do what I thought was necessary to stay happy for two months of cold weather and reduced sunlight. Things that faith in Jesus have allowed me to see the error in and consequently to free myself from. That, too is a whole different discussion.

Now we have stores that refuse to have the word Christmas displayed anywhere, though they still expect you to spend an insane amount of money there in celebration of a Holiday that they won't name. We have schools forbidding Christmas from being uttered in their hallways, let alone being displayed anywhere on the property. Lawsuits are being filed to remove nativity scenes from parks and court houses, and now I've noticed Leftist groups doing everything they can to distort the nativity displays that remain. Disgusting things mostly that I won't even describe here. The War on Christmas can no longer be ignored.

So, given the current political environment where businesses are being targeted just because it is known that they are owned and operated by Christians, I figure that this constant and determined effort to eliminate Christmas serves, at least in my mind, as an endorsement of the importance of Christmas.

Someone said you can judge the character of a man by the strength and power of his enemies. In kind of a warped sense, I think that applies here.

My problems with the date notwithstanding, it seems to me now it's pretty important to have a day to not only remember that Jesus Christ was born, but to proclaim it far and wide as a testimony to the rest of the world. The nativity scenes, if nothing else, will hopefully cause people to wonder what it is all about; and if they wonder, they might ask. If they ask, they might learn. Once they learn they might decide to believe, and thus be saved. That's why He was born in the first place. Because God so loved the world, that He gave His only son, so that anyone who believes in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life.

Therefore,I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very MERRY CHRISTMAS.

...I still don't have a tree. ...I still didn't buy you anything. 

OK, So I'm Sexist

     Anybody that knows me probably already knows that I'm a sexist. I always have been. I know there are people that will tell you that just by virtue of being born male, of course I'm sexist. But it's much more than that. I don't remember ever thinking that girls had “cooties.” I always thought they were the most beautiful, fascinating creatures on earth.

If you check the account in Genesis, woman was the last creation of God. The cherry on top, as it were. God noticed that it wasn't good for man to be alone, so woman was literally God's gift to mankind.(...and I'm not just saying this because I know my wife will be reading it.)

I said all this because I want to talk about a phenomenon known as the Feminist Movement, that I am convinced hates women.

Women are different from men. That claim makes me sexist, but I am thoroughly qualified to make this statement. I have my own test case that I have studied for thirty odd years now. Women are built differently (I REALLY like that), they think differently, they react to things differently and different things matter to them. Yet, the feminists will have you believe that there is no difference between men and women other than stereotypes forced upon them by society. They've spent decades shaming and belittling women into thinking that they are supposed to be like men, while at the same time publicly denigrating men.

They've done such a good job that now women and men have been pitted against each other in a senseless competition that neither side is going to win. It is making everybody miserable with the constant insults and derogatory jokes and threatens to destroy civilization altogether. This whole battle of the sexes is keeping both men and women distracted from what they could be accomplishing together while worrying about whether a woman is “as good as a man.” As good how? Men, whether they want to admit it or not (and most men are more than happy to), do everything they do to in order to impress women. Why would a woman waste time worrying whether she's as good as a man while men are turning themselves inside out just trying to prove they're good enough for a woman?

Let me tell you something: Theoretically, a woman can do anything a man can do. I say theoretically because there is that whole size and weight issue. Let's face it, men are bigger. If you can find a six foot, three inch woman that weights 340 pounds, I'm sure she could play on the defensive line of an NFL team, but why on earth would she want to? The idea that she might is an example of how the feminist movement has distorted our thinking.

Long ago in an orchestrated, deliberate effort, the feminists started devaluing women and the role they were playing in society. Suddenly, homemaking was belittling. Women needed to be “liberated” from the demeaning role of running a household and nurturing children. Somehow, you couldn't be fulfilled unless you were out there with the men, digging ditches, chopping trees, hauling hay, getting carpel tunnel and wrecking your back, while leaving your children at home while someone else watched them grow.

Now they think women should have the RIGHT to fight on the front lines in a time of war. Right? Are you kidding me? Nobody wants the right to be shot at. Men go to war for two reasons: Either to fight for something they believe in (...and getting shot is not a right that anybody believes in), or because they feel they have no choice. Getting drafted would be an example of the latter, and now the feminists are fighting for the right of women to get drafted. Congratulations ladies, your advocates have now won you the right to be forced into battle and get shot.

But there's one thing that a woman can do that no man can possibly accomplish: Bringing new life into the world, and that is where the feminists focus their attack.

They came up with the phrase “pregnant, barefoot and in the kitchen” as their slogan for men “dominating” women.

I got news for you: when my wife gets home the first thing she does is kick off her shoes. She hates shoes. She wants to be barefoot, and everybody wants to be in the kitchen. That's where the food is! ...and pregnant would mean that she was going to have a baby.

When did having a baby become terrible? When the feminists started selling the idea that it was another example of man's oppression of women. So now we have N.O.W., the National Organization of Women, whose main focus seems to be keeping women from having babies. Planned Parenthood is the same way. They claim to be about women's health, but they don't do mammograms, they don't have any gynecologists working there, they don't treat ANYTHING. All they are about is doing whatever necessary to keep women from having babies; even if that means killing the baby that is growing in her womb, and the feminists are the club that beats back any opposition.

They want to talk about exploitation of women, but if you take away the thing that makes a woman truly unique, you've just turned her into a sex object. It used to be if a man and a woman made love, there was responsibility there. Not anymore. There's no reason now for a woman to have any kind of class or dignity. It's “Wham, Bam, Thank you Ma'am” and if she was too stupid to take her pill that day, you can just force her to have an abortion and move on. Now that's exploitation. But they're managing to brainwash girls into thinking it's their right to do whatever they want with their bodies and that the thing growing inside is just a lump of tissues. Why don't they teach them to revere their bodies and not just let anybody do whatever they want with it without any inhibitions or sense of worth. The feminists are intent on destroying all the grace, beauty and distinction that goes with being a woman.

You want to talk about women's issues? What about the way women are treated by Islam? In countries ruled by Muslims, women can't even drive a car. They are not allowed to leave the house without a male relative and their head covered. If they do, they will be beaten ...or worse. Do you know what “the Rule of Thumb” is? It's part of Islamic law that says you can beat your wife with a stick as long as it isn't thicker than your thumb. If the feminists are so worried about the welfare of women, why can't I find a single word on any of their websites or Facebook pages about any of this.

Then there is “female circumcision.” If you don't know what it is, I'm not going to tell you. Just mentioning the word gets my blood pressure dangerously high. It has got to be about the most horrible thing you can do to another human being, and they are doing it to girls all over the world - America too – in the name of Islam. The whole idea is that in the sick and disgusting mind of a Muslim, women are not supposed to enjoy sex. They are just there to be used for the man's pleasure.

NOT ONE WORD from any of these organizations that claim to have women's best interests at heart. They are lying to you. They hate women!

Still don't believe me? We now have a situation where men are expected to be allowed in women's bathrooms, locker rooms and showers if they say they “identify” as being a woman. Target has announced that is their store's policy. As soon as Americans see this, the first thing that goes through their heads (assuming there is a brain in there) is that their wives and daughters are no longer safe. Any guy can now stroll into the women's shower at the local YWCA with impunity.

North Carolina decided already that this will not happen in their state. Incidents had already occurred where men had gone into the women's room to take pictures and videos of girls using the bathroom; holding their phones either over or under the door of the stall. One man was caught taking a video of a young woman in the shower at the gym. Another woman told of being in a rest room that didn't even have doors on the stalls (WTH?), and having a man just stand there and gaze at her while she was trying to go to the bathroom. North Carolina passed a law that says you will use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex listed on your birth certificate. God help the moron that tries to take a picture of my wife in the ladies room. If he's lucky, I'll be close enough to hear the screaming before she kills him; and if he's really lucky the doctors will be able to remove the recording device from whichever orifice she stuffs it in. Then she'll run over and cry on my shoulder, because she is a delicate feminine flower.

A quick check of the N.O.W. web site shows that they are trying to pressure the NFL into moving this month's league meetings out of Charlotte unless the state rescinds the law that was written to protect girls and women from perverts and predators. They're more worried about gay rights than they are about women's rights, privacy, or safety. How's that for women's advocacy?

Men used to adore women. They would defer to any woman in the room. The cry “Women and children first!” meant that men would give their lives to protect the lives of the women and children in times of extreme danger. Men would give up their seat on a bus or train, tip their hat to honor any woman that crossed their path, stand when a woman walked into a room, open doors and carry any load that a woman - any woman – happened to be burdened with if they were near enough to help.

During the seventies, I remember specifically doing any of these things could get you cussed out for being a chauvinist. Today I hear that chivalry is dead. If it is, the feminists killed it.

I still open doors for women. I like to check for their reaction. I don't get cussed at anymore. They actually look kind of stunned. But I've noticed they like it.

Maybe, just maybe, real women are starting to want to be liberated from all this liberation.

I Am Offended!

Be patient, I haven't decided exactly what I am offended by yet. You can't rush these things. Being offended can be very lucrative if you do it right, but you have to pick your offense carefully.
Being a white, middle aged, Christian man, I don't have a lot to choose from. I guess I could do like Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who just decided she was black one day and started railing about “White Privilege.” I guess you can do that now; she became president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP.
It's also now possible to decide when I wake up in the morning which sex I want to be that day. I've always said I was a lesbian trapped in a man's body. I could put on a dress and try following a 12 year old girl into the ladies room and then sue her father after he beats the hell out of me. But that wouldn't be a case of me being offended. That would just be me getting the daylights beaten out of me for acting like a pervert. Besides, not only do I look horrible in a dress (never mind how I know this), I also have a serious aversion to pain.
I'm afraid I can't just decide I'm younger than my driver's license says. My back won't let me. It's also hard to get offended by people treating me like I'm old when that usually manifests itself as a 15% discount at hotels and restaurants.
It doesn't do any good to be offended as a Christian. Offending Christians has been a national past time in this country for as long as I can remember. Everything from a cross in a jar of urine being called art to the South Park pilot being a Christmas episode of Baby Jesus in a knock down-drag out with Santa Claus. OK, it was really funny. But it was also very offensive. I hate it when they do that.
I understand why people would make fun of Christians. After all, we believe in a book with dragons, unicorns (yes, they're in there but they're not pretty) and fish that can swallow a man whole and then spit him out alive three days later. Not to mention God being born as a man for the expressed purpose of being tortured and killed. ...and that's the good news. What I don't quite get is: if you put all of this craziness in a movie, people would flock to see it. It's true! Just look at how well The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston did at the Box office, and that was just one little snippet. But for some reason, nobody seems to want to read the Book, knowing full well that the movie never does the book justice.
There are reasons why people don't want to read the Bible. For openers, it's long. Really long. In fact, it's not even a book. It's a collection of 66 books written by 40 different authors. It's also a pretty tough read. If you start from the beginning (Genesis), you only get four chapters in before the genealogies start. I HATE those. Adam begot Seth, then Seth begot Enosh, then Enosh begot Cainan...and begot...and begot...and begot...and every time you think you're through with them, another bunch starts. I keep hearing about all these new translations people are coming up with like the gender-neutral Bible, etc. I wonder if anybody has come up with one that just does away with the genealogies. That would be a lot shorter Bible. That's probably what the Reader's Digest Condensed Bible does, though I worry about what else they might have left out. As it turns out though, there's actually some pretty cool stuff hidden in those genealogies, but you've really got to dig for them. It's just hard to fight through it.
Then, there's all that talk about how God expects us to live. The Ten Commandments (not the movie, we're talking about real commandments) and all that. That seems to offend everybody. They threw a judge in jail for refusing to remove a copy of them from the courthouse lawn. I guess the very sight of it was forcing people into therapy. Given its rules against lying and stealing, it must have been creating a hostile work environment for lawyers.
It's amazing to me that during the 70's I kept hearing, “you can't legislate morality.” Yet that is exactly what is being done now. But it is a completely different morality than what is in the Bible. In fact it's pretty much diametrically opposed to it.
The Bible says “you shall not lie with a man as with a woman (you know what it means). It is an abomination.” That's the Bible's morality. Today's legislated morality says if a man wants to sleep with another man, you have to cater to them or you will be run out of business.
  The Bible says “you shall not kill.” Today's legislated morality says a woman has an absolute right to kill the child in her womb any time she wants and if you so much as try to talk her out of it, you could be arrested.
The Bible says, ”a woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment, for all who do so are an abomination”. Today's legislated morality says that if a man want to dress up like a woman, you have to let him in the women's bathroom and locker room.
As I write this, I can already hear all the arguments about the Old Testament not applying today, and I have no right to judge whom someone wants to sleep with or what they want to wear.
Back up a minute! I never meant to imply that anyone should follow these Biblical principles if they don't want to. God knows I don't follow them even to the extent I feel like I should. (Forget about the dress already!) My point is that a morality IS being legislated. It's called “Political Correctness.”
You don't actually have to believe what I believe about the Bible to be a moral person. However, you would have to be politically incorrect. Political correctness was invented specifically to destroy every piece of decency and common sense in this country, and it's working.
This country has gone insane. How else can you explain all the hoopla over global warming while NASA says the global ice caps are actually larger than they were in 1979; Americans are starving all over this country while the government sends Billions of dollars to countries that hate America for “humanitarian aid”; our food is filled with chemicals I can't even pronounce; Americans who pay ZERO in federal income taxes scream and protest about others who are not paying “their fair share”; a presidential election featuring a woman being investigated by the FBI for more crimes than I can even enumerate, a professed socialist, a man everybody knows wasn't born in this country, and a Billionaire reality TV star who brags that while politicians have all been bought, he's the one that's been buying them. Then there's the homosexual community defending Islam when Islamic law says all homosexuals must be killed. I know the Old Testament says that, too (so their distaste for the Bible is understandable) but the Muslims are actually doing it.
So what can I possibly be offended by that isn't politically sanctioned? Make no mistake, I'm plenty offended. But in the current political climate, the things I'm offended by makes my being offended  offensive.  I'm beginning to think, politically speaking, the most offensive thing around is in fact, me. I'm afraid that would look pretty funny on a protest sign: STOP ME BEFORE I THINK AGAIN!
But in a country where the Federal government pays large farm subsidies to suburban families for the grass in their back yard, pays farmers 2 billion dollars NOT to farm their land, spent $350,000 last year sponsoring NASCAR driver David Gilliland and ran one of the internet's largest child pornography sites last year with 215,000 registered users and more than 23,000 explicit images and videos available so they could make 25 arrests, maybe I could get a government subsidy to picket my own front yard to try to force myself to stop thinking. If that sounds ridiculous to you, then it might just work.
Stay tuned...

Why Would I Believe In the Bible?

     After all, it's one wild book. It's got seas splitting down the middle so people could walk through it, ax heads floating, asses talking (that would be donkeys, not...never mind), giants, fallen angels marrying women, virgins giving birth, folks walking on water, people rising from the dead, man! Has it got some stories!
I figured after the last blog, and all the talk about piles of empirical data on the side of atheist evolutionists, I might want to talk about what the Bible has that would cause me to believe in it.
There was a story on the internet about someone suing Italy for the Romans killing Jesus. I commented that nobody killed Jesus. He gave up His life voluntarily so that we might be saved from our sins. Someone posted back and asked if I knew how ridiculous that sounded. I had to write back and say that I did. I didn't want to write a two thousand word essay explaining why I believed such a ridiculous idea, so I just suggested that he read the Bible if he was interested in knowing the details. In the two years since, I've felt like I should have written the essay. I guess this is that essay.
I really don't expect to change anyone's mind with this. I've figured out that people believe what they want to believe, and unless they are looking to be convinced, you're not going to convince them it's daytime if you show them the sun. The Bible can be easily proven a hundred different ways to be the Word of God, but if you don't want to believe it, you just aren't going to.
This blog is for people that do believe, or at least want to, if someone would just show them one piece of proof.
I read a long comment by a guy who said that Christians don't think. They are not allowed to. If you think, then you will doubt. If you have a single doubt, then you can't be saved because salvation requires absolute faith.
Well, I think. I also listen. I've found out that no matter what you've experienced, there is a way to discount it. I've mentioned before, Einstein once said, “There are only two ways to live your life: One is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.” Everything in my life can be seen as a miracle...or not.
I've been told that I believe because that's what I've been taught. Others don't believe because they've been taught not to. So who's right?
I will tell you that everything that is written in the Bible that can be verified one way or the other has been proven to be true. Others have told me that isn't true. That all kinds of scientific evidence has been collected contradicting the Biblical account. I say that scientific evidence is either misinterpreted or fraudulent.
I can tell you, and this is not hypothetical, that science has found a link between abortion and breast cancer. If you believe in abortion rights, you will no doubt tell me that is fraudulent.
The point is: Unless you've experienced it personally, everything you think you know is hearsay. We can trade this stuff back and forth all day, with each person claiming the other has been lied to. To Christians who think – like me, all this stuff can cause you to wonder if maybe you do believe in fairy tales. After all, everything can be explained away...almost.
For those Christians, like me who probably think too much, there is one place you can turn for proof.
Israel.
With that one word, I've probably lost a whole lot of readers. (Actually, I wish I had a whole lot of readers to lose.)
You see, the Bible, among other things is a history book. Written over two thousand years ago, it presents a complete history of Israel, from the beginning of time to the end of the world. There are those that will tell you the Bible was really written in the 4th century AD by the Catholic Church. I always find this argument amusing. If the Catholic Church wrote the Bible, you would think that some of their doctrine would be found in there somewhere. The fact is, the Catholic Church turned itself inside out for centuries trying to keep the Bible out of the hands of the masses for fear they would find out that the church's teachings and the Bible have virtually nothing in common. But that's OK. What's a few hundred years between friends. You can say it was written eighteen hundred years ago and it would still be amazing what it says about Israel.
To believe the Bible, you must believe that every word of it was written by men who were led by the Holy Spirit. In other words: God.
Now God, being omniscient knows everything. He alone knows the future in its entirety. So an easy way to test whether the Bible is the Word of God is to see how it relates to what has actually been  going on. Controversy swirls over whether this thing or that thing actually happened or if it actually went down according to the Bible's telling of it. But when it comes to Israel, it's pretty easy to check the facts.
Let's take a quick look at what the Bible says about the nation of Israel. I try not to do a whole lot of “chapter and verse” because we're just having a discussion here and I've seen an incredible amount of garbage being sold using chapter and verse. What I like to do when I'm researching something is to take the chapter and verse that's given and go read the whole chapter. I get a little better context that way and a lot of times, I end up learning something I didn't even intend to.
With that in mind, you can go to the forth chapter of Deuteronomy and read where God, even as the brand new nation of Israel is preparing to cross the Jordan and take possession of the land, is already telling them that the day would come when they would anger Him to the point of throwing them from the land and making it desolate, while what's left of the children of Israel will be scattered all over the world. The first few chapters of Ezekiel make the same point and go into a little more detail, showing that they would be chased around for centuries by folks intent on killing them all off.
Several of these people are in the Bible itself. Haman comes to mind, from the book of Ester. Daniel talks about the “abomination that brings desolation.” History has shown that to be Antiochus IV Epiphanes from around 170 BC. I love bringing this guy up, mainly because I finally figured out how to pronounce his name. Daniel prophesied about him over six hundred years before he was born. He brought on the revolt of the Maccabees that gave rise to the Hanuka celebration, and Jesus uses him as a model for the anti-Christ.
Then the Romans in 70 AD sacked Jerusalem and tore down the temple, just like Jesus said they would do and in 135 AD the Romans expelled the Jews from Jerusalem, tore down the city and put up another city with a whole different name: Ælia Capitolina. Suddenly, Israel and particularly Jerusalem no longer exist.
This gave rise to all sorts of bizarre interpretations of the Bible. Early church leaders were intensely antisemitic. They began teaching that Israel had been judged by God for killing Jesus and that the church now replaced Israel in all the prophesies concerning future events. The church now receives all God's blessings as related in the Old Testament and the Jews have received all the curses. This was all very easy to sell because Israel no longer existed.
During the Middle Ages, Jerusalem got its name back as the crusaders and the Muslims fought over control of the “City of Our Lord.” While the two groups fought battles all over the area, the one thing they had in common was they both loved killing Jews. The Protestant soldiers used to hold contests to see how many Jewish babies they could fit onto a single sword.
Then there were the French, Spanish, and Portuguese Inquisitions which mainly were concerned with converted Jews who were accused of failing to quit being Jews. They would still observe the Sabbath on Saturday, or celebrate Passover or whatever. Since before the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the church was more concerned with not having anything in common with the Jews than they were with observing the teachings in the Bible.
Then we had Hitler. He was so Satanically obsessed with killing off the Jewish race that he actually succeeded in garnering sympathy for the Jews. Looking back through history, that was quite a trick.
Through all of this, it became easier and easier to discount the Bible as a collection of cool stories that couldn't possibly have actually happened, other than a few historical points here and there.
Then a funny thing happened. On May 14th 1948, Israel was suddenly reborn as a Jewish nation again. Just as the Bible said it would in Isiah chapter 66 (“Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once?”), in Ezekiel, chapters 33, 36 and 37 and the 31st chapter of Jeremiah, among other places. You will note that these three books were written during the Babylonian captivity, but not all that is said can be applied to the Israel that existed between their return from that captivity and the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. For instance: the quote that I snuck in above from Isiah, and the repeated reference to them being scattered all over the world. In the eleventh chapter of Isiah it says, “The Lord shall set His hand again a second time to recover the remnant of His people.” I encourage you to read these chapters in a good study Bible. Read the footnotes and chase down the references supplied.
Now, I fully understand that nobody likes Israel. Nobody ever liked Israel. I said I wouldn't do this, but you gotta check out Psalm 83:4 – They have said, “Come, let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.” As you read the next few verses of that psalm, those tribes listed represent the five nations (look them up) that all attacked Israel on May 15th, 1948 – the very day after the United Nations voted Israel into existence. Israel didn't even have a single tank. At its narrowest point, it was only nine miles wide. If the armies assembled against it could have only managed to move through those nine miles, they would have cut the new nation in half and victory would have been assured.
But NO!...They couldn't get it done.
Over the next 25 years, Israel was attacked again and again, yet the attacks only served to increase the size of the nation. Now we hear all these reports about how the Jews are illegally occupying the land and how they are oppressing the Palestinians and on and on and on. The stories I've heard about the Zionist conspiracies defy the imagination. They are behind everything – I mean EVERYTHING that is wrong in this world.
I'm not here to make a political argument, though it does seem a little unreasonable to me to begrudge a people their own country with a land mass that would qualify as the seventh smallest state in America. It's size is somewhere between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. But God didn't grant this land to the Jews because they were such wonderful people. God promised this land to Jacob (Israel) and his descendants as an ever lasting inheritance because Abraham, Jacob's grandfather was His friend.
So to sum it all up: Israel historically, militarily, politically and logically has no business being there. Of all the stories in the Bible, the very existence of Israel today is about the most unbelievable. Yet there it is – just like the Bible said it would be and despite every attempt to make it go away.
When they succeed in destroying Israel, then you can try to convince me that the Bible isn't in fact, the Word of God.