Guest Post – Page 3 – Divine Council

Culture

The Seers Perspective on Psychics

By Guest Post March 11, 2019

by Doug Overmyer

“I’ve received a lot of hate from Christians,” the psychic told me, her eyes guarded.

When I thought to title this post, I almost wrote, “Psychics: A Christian Perspective,” but I realized how off putting that might be to psychics who have received something from Christians that they shouldn’t have: hate.

You won’t receive that here.

I do, however, want to offer a perspective from the Kingdom of God Mindset that lays at the foundation of how I interpret what seers see.

I frequently receive emails asking for readings from seers or psychics. Obviously, that’s not what this site is about, but one of those emails last week prompted these thoughts.

In the public arena, a psychic is someone who receives hidden information from extra-sensory perceptions. Where does the information come from?

As described here, those with psychic ability probably fall along a continuum of ability. For ease of understanding, I’ve broken the continuum into 7 categories.

The source of the extra-sensory perception depends on where the psychic is on the continuum. But not all “psychics” receive extra-sensory perception.

Charlatans

Charlatans are great at reading people’s physical states. They are extremely observant and able to detect what their subject wants or needs to hear. In The Wizard of Oz, Professor Marvel is a charlatan.

Once, while staffing a booth at a psychic fair, a young man with yellow eyes came to me for a “reading.” My team, of course, was doing prophetic encouragement but in that environment, we adopted the local language and offered “spiritual readings.”

I told this young man what I told everyone: the source of our knowledge is the Father in heaven, and the only way to the Father is Jesus, so we’ll ask the Father through Jesus to have the Holy Spirit reveal what God has for this young man. I invited the Holy Spirit, asked for a word, and waited.

This man stood perfectly still with a blank affect looking directly into my eyes.

I received the prophetic word and gave it to him.

He was visibly startled.

“I wasn’t expecting to hear that. I go to a lot of these, and there’s a lot of fakes. They just read your face. I wanted to see if you were fake. Your reading was the most accurate I’ve ever received.”

I followed it up with, “It wasn’t me. God really wants you to know him.”

My point: he was looking to expose charlatans.

Empaths

An empath is very sensitive to what other people are feeling, to the point of feeling their emotions themselves. They are extremely intuitive. In the Myers Briggs/Keirsey Temperament Sorter, they are extreme INFPs or ENFPs.

It’s a marvelous gift and ability.

They are called into counseling, therapy, or pastoral ministry. Somewhere along the lines, they received guidance to channel their ability through the mask of psychic ability.

Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

These kinds of psychics were not trained to use their gifts appropriately. It is not rooted in the pure truth of God’s love as expressed through Jesus, so the help they end up offering others ends up tainted and distorted.

Parents: if your child expresses INFP or ENFP tendencies, guide him or her to get trained to use these amazing gifts for the most good.

Sensitives

These are people who are spiritually sensitive. They pick up spiritual baggage, spiritual entities, and spiritual destinies. They navigate these impressions, filtered through their worldview, to advise their clients.

They don’t see the baggage or entities or destinies, but they do receive impressions, and the impressions are probably accurate. The distortion comes from the incorrect worldview.

It’s important to adopt the worldview that Jesus had, or something close to it, rather than a gnostic or scientific framework when navigating spiritual impressions to advise someone.

Seers

Seers are sensitives to an extreme: they actually see spiritual baggage, entities, and destinies, and use what they see to advise their clients. Think of Whoopi Goldberg’s character in the movie Ghost.

The ability to see spiritual things is what this site is all about, so at the risk of sounding redundant: the best way to navigate what seers see is through the Kingdom of God Mindset.

False Prophets

Among Christians who think about these things, there is a ton of bad information regarding false prophets.

A false prophet is not a prophet speaking for God inaccurately or incorrectly. This is a “presumptuous” prophet. [Deuteronomy 17:13]

A “false prophet” is a prophet who gets his or her information from a “false god” or any spiritual entity not aligned with God. (A “false god” is any spirit that receives worship, other than the one true God Most High).

Basically, a False Prophet is anyone who delivers supernatural information from a spirit that is not the Holy Spirit or aligned with the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Apologetics

How 3 Atheists Became Christians Because of the Moral Argument

By Guest Post March 11, 2019

by Erik Manning

There’s a dizzying array of arguments for the existence of God. For a newbie looking to get into apologetics, it can be intimidating trying to figure out where to start. You have the cosmological argument, but it helps if you know something about cosmology, physics and even math. There’s the argument from the origin of life, but now you’re talking about chemistry, DNA, information theory and it can feel overwhelming. There’s the ontological argument, but that requires understanding modal logic and let’s be real here, has anyone in the history of the universe come to faith because of the ontological argument? Sorry, St. Anselm.

If you’re looking either for ammo to argue against naturalistic atheism or to give some reasons for someone to think God exists, I wholeheartedly recommend learning the moral argument. Why?

For one thing, it’s accessible. You don’t need a Ph.D. in philosophy, physics or chemistry to understand the argument. Secondly, it’s more effective because it touches people at a personal level that scientific arguments do not.

Dr. William Lane Craig got his doctorate in philosophy and spent decades developing a version of the cosmological argument. But after spending years of lecturing and debating some of the smartest atheists on the planet, here’s what he has to say about the moral argument:

In my experience, the moral argument is the most effective of all the arguments for the existence of God. I say this grudgingly because my favorite is the cosmological argument. But the cosmological and teleological (design) arguments don’t touch people where they live. The moral argument cannot be so easily brushed aside. For every day you get up you answer the question of whether there are objective moral values and duties by how you live. It’s unavoidable.”

-On Guard, Chapter 6

With a little thought, you know this is true. Just log on to Twitter or turn on cable news for a few seconds. We live in a culture where people are in a state of constant moral outrage. CS Lewis popularized the argument in his classic work Mere Christianity. (Warning: Massive understatement alert!) In regards to the power of the moral argument, Lewis says:

“We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds.

And this is a better bit of evidence than the other because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built. Now, from this second bit of evidence, we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct—in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty, and truthfulness.“

So what is the moral argument? There are several ways to put it into the form of an argument. I favor using negatively in order to falsify atheism. If atheism isn’t true then obviously we should reject it and find a worldview that makes better sense of reality. Here’s the argument in logical form:

If naturalistic atheism is true, there no moral facts.
There are moral facts.
Therefore, naturalistic atheism is false.

An example of a moral fact would be that even if NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association…ew.) somehow hypnotized the world into thinking that pedophilia is morally acceptable, it would still be morally wrong. Morality isn’t a matter of personal preference. I’m going to bring some ‘hostile witnesses’ on the scene to help make my case.

CAN MORAL FACTS BE FACTS OF NATURE?

Some atheists have tried to say so, but I think unsuccessfully. Moral facts aren’t about the way things are, but the way things ought to or should be. But if the world isn’t here for a purpose, then there is no way things are intended to be. Natural facts are facts about the way things are, not the way things ought to be. Animals kill and forcibly mate with other animals, but we don’t call those things murder or rape. But if natural facts are the only types of facts on the table, then the same holds true of people. We can explain the pain and suffering on a scientific level, but we can’t explain why one ought not to inflict suffering and pain.

Here are three atheists who drive the point home that on atheism there can be no moral facts.

“The position of the modern evolutionist…is that humans have an awareness of morality…because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands and feet and teeth…Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” they think they are referring above and beyond themselves…Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction…and any deeper meaning is illusory.” – Atheist philosopher Michael Ruse.

“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is.“ – Atheist biologist Richard Dawkins

And finally, here’s atheist philosopher Alex Rosenberg, when asked about the cruel and inhumane cultural practice of foot-binding that was practiced by the Chinese for centuries:

Interviewer: “And so your argument is to say we shouldn’t do foot-binding anymore because it’s not adaptive, or should we…?”

Rosenberg: “No. I don’t think that it is in a position to tell you what we ought and ought not to do: it is in a position to tell you why we’ve done it and what the consequences of continuing or failing to do it are, okay? But it can’t adjudicate ultimate questions of value, because those are expressions of people’s emotions and, dare I say, tastes.”

Earlier in the interview, Rosenberg says “Is there a difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There’s not a moral difference between them.”

BUT THERE ARE MORAL FACTS

So rather than giving up naturalism, these atheists bite the bullet and say that on their worldview there is no room for moral facts. But how plausible is that really? As you can imagine, many atheists disagree. Here are some more ‘hostile witnesses’ I’ll bring in to make the point:

“Whatever skeptical arguments may be brought against our belief that killing the innocent is morally wrong, we are more certain that the killing is morally wrong than that the argument is sound…Torturing an innocent child for the sheer fun of it is morally wrong. Full stop.” -Atheist philosopher Paul Cave.

“Some moral views are better than others, despite the sincerity of the individuals, cultures, and societies that endorse them. Some moral views are true, others false, and my thinking them so doesn’t make them so. My society’s endorsement of them doesn’t prove their truth. Individuals and whole societies can be seriously mistaken when it comes to morality. The best explanation of this is that there are moral standards not of our own making.” – Atheist philosopher Russ Shafer-Landau

“Any argument for moral skepticism will be based upon premises which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values themselves.” – Atheist philosopher Louise Antony

This makes sense. Any argument that allows for the possibility that there is no more moral virtue in adopting a child or torturing a child for fun is a lot less plausible than the existence of moral values and duties. Why should we doubt our moral sense any more than our physical senses?

The problem is for the naturalist is that from valueless, meaningless processes valueless, meaninglessness comes. Atheism just doesn’t seem to have the resources for the existence of moral facts. Christian philosopher Paul Copan writes:

Intrinsically-valuable, thinking persons do not come from impersonal, non-conscious, unguided, valueless processes over time. A personal, self-aware, purposeful, good God provides the natural and necessary context for the existence of valuable, rights-bearing, morally-responsible human persons.

And atheist philosopher JL Mackie agrees that if there are moral facts, their existence fits much better on theism than on atheism. He wrote “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of properties and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events without an all-powerful god to create them. If there are objective values, they make the existence of a god more probable than it would have been without them. Thus, we have a defensible argument from morality to the existence of a god.”

THE POWER OF THE MORAL ARGUMENT: HOW 3 FORMER ATHEISTS CHANGED THEIR MINDS

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America

US Law Already Protects Infants Who Survive Abortion

By Guest Post March 7, 2019

by Dr. Alan Keyes

Editor’s Note: There’s already a law against murder in the US. Furthermore, as Alan points out, BAIPA legally recognizes newborn babies as a “person.” If such laws—already in place to protect the very life that laws are written for—are not enforced then the whole concept of “law” in the US may be seen as a rhetorical exercise.

This week, Democrats voted down an effort to make sure that abortionists who murder infants, born alive despite an attempted abortion, are held accountable for their crimes.

Senate Democrats on Monday blocked a Republican bill that would have threatened prison time for doctors who don’t try saving the life of infants born alive during failed abortions, leading conservatives to wonder openly whether Democrats were embracing “infanticide” to appeal to left-wing voters. (“Dems block ‘born alive’ bill to provide medical care to infants who survive failed abortions“)

When I first heard about the GOP effort to pass the bill, I immediately wondered why it was necessary. In 2002, large bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress approved the Born Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA) which President George W. Bush then signed into law.

That act directs:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the words “person,” “human being,” “child” and “individual,” shall include every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development.

Apparently, because the bill did not explicitly specify penalties for murdering such newborn infants, it has had little or no effect. A Heritage Foundation report explains:

While current law recognizes that all infants born alive are “persons,” babies who survive an abortion attempt are left vulnerable because the law provides for no requirements that health care practitioners treat the infant with the same degree of care afforded to any other newborn. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would remedy this problem by requiring that proper medical care be given to infants who survive an abortion and establishing criminal consequences for practitioners who fail to do so.

Now, the Constitution of the United States provides that no person shall be deprived of life without due process of law. The language of the 14th Amendment (Section 1) clarifies that this prohibition constrains the state governments, each of which is also forbidden to “deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

So if an 11-year-old child is murdered in any state, the state’s government is required to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrator(s) in the same manner as it would if the victim were 30 years old. No special provision of federal law is required to enforce this requirement. The duty of prosecution is uniform for persons of all ages.

This means that states that have failed to investigate and prosecute the willfully purposeful or negligent homicide of newborn infants who survive an abortion attempt violate the supreme law of the land.

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Angels

Video Explaining the Biblical Word ‘Elohim’

By Guest Post March 7, 2019

by TheBibleProject

In the second video in the Spiritual Beings Series, TheBibleProject explores the Biblical word, “Elohim”.

Elohim

Did you know that the biblical word for God is actually a title and not a name? And did you know that this title can refer to other spiritual beings as well as to the creator God? In this video, we explore the biblical terminology for spiritual beings and how this helps us understand what the Bible means when it says that “God is one.”

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Angels

An Interview with the Leading Expert on Angels

By Guest Post February 21, 2019

by Frank Viola

Today I interview my friend Michael Heiser.

If you’ve read my book Insurgence: Reclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom, Michael’s name should be familiar to you since I quote him in several places in my discussion of the fallen principalities and powers later in the book.

(Michael also graciously wrote a robust endorsement for the book, to which I’m thankful.)

Like all of my work, much of Michael’s work is marked by exposing unbiblical traditions that Christians have embraced. Those traditions are so ingrained that God’s people routinely filter the Bible through them.

Recently, Michael released a new book which covers the waterfront on what the Bible has to say about angels. And in so doing, he corrects many erroneous ideas that Christians have imbibed about angelic beings.

I’ll say at the outset that many books have passed through my hands that seek to expound the biblical teaching on angels.

For example, see my free article The Origins of Human Government and Hierarchy where I cite many of them.

But Heiser’s new book Angels: What the Bible Really Says About God’s Heavenly Host trumps every book I’ve seen on the subject of angels.

(Man, Heiser should pay me well for this Introduction! Cough).

I caught up with Michael to ask him some questions about his new book. My thinking behind these questions is that they would be of interest to you, my audience.

Let’s see if I’m in the ballpark on that assumption.

Enjoy the interview!

This first question would fit the category of “pastoral.” Namely, how does your book on angels benefit a believer’s day to day life?

Michael Heiser: I’ll answer this by relaying the most frequently-mentioned item I get from readers and people when I speak on the topic of the supernatural world: the more we understand how God thinks about, and relates to, his supernatural family-partners (the loyal members of the heavenly host), the more clearly we will see how God thinks about us. One is a template for the other.

It is no accident that the vocabulary of “holy ones” used almost exclusively for the supernatural heavenly host is not used of angels in the New Testament. Instead, it’s used of human believers. It’s also no accident that the same is true of the phrase “sons of God.” God wants us in his family, alongside his supernatural family, partnering with him as they do, just in our world.

God’s vision for human believers is to rule with him, displacing the rebellious supernatural sons of God as his council-partners in a new, global Eden.

Angelology informs our identity, mission, and destiny. If we placed more attention on those items we might just be more motivated to remember that this world isn’t our real home. And if we approached each day that way, the Church would change.

There is a movement that often comes up with some wacky ideas and practices with respect to the spiritual realm. For example, they teach that Christians could command angelic beings to do things for them. What is your response to this?

Michael Heiser: I’ve heard this idea and write about it in the book. Hebrews 1:14 is usually the point of reference for the notion we have the authority to command angels: “Are they [angels] not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?”

Some people presume that the verse means that God has sent angels to minister at the behest of believers, which in turn suggests that Christians can command angels to do their bidding.

The book provides more exegetical details, but it’s sufficient to say here that this interpretation can’t be sustained in light of the grammar of the verse. If we’re supposed to command angels, no one in the New Testament (or the Old) got the memo. There isn’t a single instance in Scripture where a human being commands an angel.

We agree on this. What do you believe Hebrews 13 means when it says to be hospitable, because you may be “entertaining angels unawares” (KJV)?

Michael Heiser: Hebrews 13:1 hearkens back to unexpected angelic visitations in the Old Testament (it’s the book of Hebrews). The Old Testament has several examples where people unknowingly interacted with angels. Lot’s exchange with the two “men” in Genesis 19 is a good example.

The two men looked entirely ordinary. It was only when they did something beyond human ability (they struck the men of the city blind; Gen 19:11). The two had shared a meal with Abraham (as well as God himself) in the previous chapter. There was no indication in that encounter that Abraham knew they were angels. Gideon (Judges 6) entertains the angel of the Lord without knowing who he was.

These incidents are precedent for the remark in Heb 13:1, suggesting that the same sort of episodes could happen to people in the New Testament era—and now.

In the Gospels, we are told that after Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the angels came and ministered to Him? If you and I were there watching, what do you think we’d see? In other words, how do you think the angels ministered to Jesus in the wilderness, exactly?

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Bible

Can We Please Stop Appealing to Rabbis for Biblical and Ancient Text Interpretation?

By Guest Post February 19, 2019

by Dr. Michael Heiser

I have this topic stuck in my head today in the wake of some conversations with folks about the Dead Sea Scrolls. But it could just as well be about interpreting any passage in the Hebrew Bible. I’ve grown weary of people (especially in Christian Middle Earth) appealing to rabbis to “prove” some idea they have about Scripture.

You have to realize appealing to rabbis means nothing. Rabbinic thought and biblical thought (and academic work) are miles apart. Hey Christians enamored with rabbis: The rabbis can’t even get the messiah right (or, to be more charitable, the two powers in heaven doctrine right — that belief they used to have in Judaism until it became uncomfortable due to Christianity). If you’ve ever listened to Ben Shapiro (I’m a fan of the show) you know what I mean. He often does “Bible time” on his podcast. But what you get isn’t exegesis of the text in its ancient context. What you get is rabbinic opinion (with all the contrarian rabbinic opinions shelved to the side). Rabbinic interpretation (think Talmud and Mishnah) contradicts itself over and over again. That’s what those works do — they fling opinions at each other. That Hebrew food fight got codified into the Talmud and Mishnah. And Judaism is fine with that. We shouldn’t be. Most of what you’d find in rabbinic writings bears little to no resemblance of exegetical work in the text understood in light of its original ancient Near Eastern worldview. Not even close. They’re frequently making stuff up (they apply biblical material to situations in which the community found itself in; the work of the rabbis was responsive to community circumstances — it’s very applicational or situational).

In short, “the rabbis” are not authorities on biblical exegesis in context or on deciphering scrolls and inscriptions. A modern analogy might help. If you put 100 pastors in a room and asked them what a given passage meant and why, and then recorded their debates and codified them in writing you’ve have “evangelical Christian rabbinics.” In academic terms, they are mostly amateurs, unaware of the historical contexts (ANE, and even Second Temple — most of which period preceded the classic rabbinic era). It’s a pool of contradicting opinions. It’s really not very useful. Rabbinic commentary about the biblical text will tell you only about the opinions rabbis have had on a passage. It won’t tell you at all how the ancient biblical writer was producing content from the context of his own pre-rabbinic worldview. “Rabbinic period” and “biblical period” do not overlap chronologically. The classic rabbinic period (“Rabbinism”) dates from the 6th century AD forward. Some of what worked its way into the Mishnah and Talmus is earlier than that, but NONE of it (recall it’s commenting on the Hebrew Bible) is from the Old Testament period. The Dead Sea Scrolls also pre-date the rabbinic period (by centuries). NOTE: This is also why the church fathers aren’t authorities in biblical exegesis, either. They are centuries (even millennia) removed from the biblical period and had no access to things like ancient Near Eastern texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls for help in interpretation. They were brilliant, but far removed from the right contexts and under-sourced.

In fairness, though, I don’t want to overstate the situation. Just as we might find a pastor who is a trained scholar in our hypothetical analogy — and whose opinions would be more informed (i.e., he’d be aware of the scholarly give and take, the published literature on a passage, and the wider worldview contexts), we might find a rabbi who is a trained scholar as well. But it’s light years from a 1:1 equation there. “Rabbi” isn’t a synonym for “Hebrew Bible scholar” any more than “pastor” is a synonym for “Bible scholar.” You might find that overlap, but it’s far from a given.

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Believers

37 Ways to Love One Another

By Guest Post February 19, 2019

by Paul Tautges

A local church is not built by one man, or even a few men, but by every believer being actively involved in ministry through evangelizing the lost people in their lives and serving their fellow Christians. A quick glance at the practice of the New Testament church reveals that they thought very little about programs and very much about relationships.

Consider the disciple-making that would naturally take place in the life of a local church if every believer would practice the loving, one-another ministry that the early churches first read about in the instructions they received from the apostles:

Be devoted to one another (Rom. 12:10).
Give preference to one another (Rom. 12:10).
Be of the same mind toward one another (Rom. 12:16).
Accept one another by withholding judgment (Rom. 14:1).
Accept one another by showing deference (Rom. 14:1–5; 15:7).
Esteem [highly regard] one another in love (Rom. 14:5; Phil. 2:3).
Build up one another (Rom. 14:19; 1 Thes. 5:11).
Counsel one another (Rom. 15:14).
Serve one another by showing deference in matters of liberty (Gal. 5:13).
Bear one another’s sin burdens (Gal. 6:2).
Be gentle with one another (Eph. 4:2).
Be kind to one another so as to preserve unity (Eph. 4:32).
Speak truth to one another (Eph. 4:25; Col 3:9).
Submit to one another (Eph. 5:21).
Show compassion to one another (Col. 3:12).
Bear with the inherent sinfulness of one another (Col. 3:13).
Forgive one another (Col. 3:13).
Use Spirit-filled, Word-saturated music to teach and admonish one another (Col. 3:16; Eph. 5:19).
Comfort one another with the hope of Christ’s return (1 Thes. 4:18).
Encourage one another (1 Thes. 5:11).
Live in peace with one another (1 Thes. 5:13).
Seek good for one another (1 Thes. 5:15).
Encourage one another to forsake unbelief and hardness of heart (Heb. 3:13).
Stimulate one another to spiritual growth (Heb. 10:24).
Encourage one another by faithful participation in your local church (Heb. 10:25).
Confess sins to one another (James 5:16).
Pray for one another’s spiritual and physical healing (James 5:16).

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Apologetics

Textual Criticism and the Authority of Scripture

By Guest Post February 13, 2019

Textual criticism is an often misunderstood practice. If the Bible is supposed to be the inspired Word of God, how could discrepancies in the text exist? This excerpt from Textual Criticism of the Bible tackles this concern head-on. A properly aligned doctrine of Scripture recognizes the authority of the Bible while also acknowledging the human imperfections introduced over thousands of years of transmission.

A longtime Christian and student of the Bible posted the following comment about Romans 8:1:

“View the difference in versions here! You may want to add this to your NIV. I have an NIV Bible, but when I study, I always compare it to the KJV:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1 NIV).

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit” (Rom 8:1 KJV).

Big difference, huh?”

This comment concerns an issue that surfaces throughout the Bible: differences in Bible versions that may affect the meaning. While some Bibles include footnotes to indicate when such differences exist, these notes are not always helpful for readers with no background knowledge of the preservation and transmission of the Bible from its original authors to the current day.

What should we think when we find disagreement between English versions? Which translations are right? Why would translators “change” the biblical text? How can readers make good decisions about these discrepancies between versions?

These questions are important for every student of the Bible, and textual criticism contributes part of the answer.

Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that discrepancies exist in the biblical text. Why wouldn’t God have preserved his Word with greater care? How can we really know what God has said when there are variations in the wording? These are important questions for people who believe the Bible to be God’s inspired, authoritative Word. To answer them, we must consider what Christians believe and have believed about the nature of the Bible—our doctrine of Scripture.

The doctrine of Scripture has developed over time, as have all theological doctrines. Early on, the church fathers recognized variants among their biblical manuscripts. However, they did not seem to view these variants as damaging to Scripture’s authority. Differences in texts became more problematic after the advent of the printing press. For the first time, Christians were able to have a fixed text—but which text should be fixed? Later, as European scholars in the eighteenth century sifted through a plethora of newly discovered biblical manuscripts, they began to understand how the biblical text had developed over time.

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Earth

Luciferianism: A Secular Look At A Destructive Globalist Belief System

By Guest Post February 13, 2019

by Brandon Smith for Alt-Market.com

Over many years of investigating the mechanics of global events and the people behind them I have become perhaps a little obsessed with one particular subject – the source and motivations of evil. This fascination does not stem from a simple morbid curiosity, but a strategic need to understand an enemy. Much like an exterminator needs to understand the behavior of cockroaches to be effective, I seek to understand the behavior and nature of organized evil.

One very important fact that must first be made clear in people’s minds is that evil does indeed exist. Establishment propaganda has spent immense time, effort and capital attempting to condition society into believing that evil is nothing more than a social construct – an opinion. Evil is supposedly in the eye of the beholder; a product of religious conditioning. This is a falsehood. Just like concepts of beauty, concepts of evil are actually inherent in our psyches from birth. The “eye of the beholder” is irrelevant.

Two particular areas of human psychology support this fact:

First, as the work of Carl Jung (and by extension anthropologists like Joseph Campbell) exposed, all human beings no matter where in the world they are born, from the most isolated tribe in the Amazon to the largest metropolis in America, carry the same archetypal symbols in their psyche. That is to say, we ALL have the same psychological elements in our minds regardless of environment.

This fact alone is so overwhelming to modern man that some people refuse to even acknowledge it as a possibility. We have been trained like lab rats to see only one path through the maze; we have been told over and over again that everything is “relative”; that each person is entirely a product of environment and that we all start out empty as “blank slates”.

The vicious attacks on Carl Jung by the establishment (including lies that he cooperated with the Nazis) tell me that Jung was very close to the mark. He had stumbled upon something very dangerous to the establishment; something that could derail their conditioning of the public.

Second, the undeniable existence of the human conscience suggests that we are born with an understanding of duality. Meaning, just as Jung discovered, our psyches contain inherent concepts of good and evil that influence our decisions and reactions. Jung referred to evil, or psychologically destructive impulses, as the ‘personal shadow’ and the ‘collective shadow’.

The vast majority of people have an intuitive relationship with good and evil. They feel anxiety when confronted with evil actions or thoughts, and they feel personal guilt when they know they have done something evil to other people. Some might call this a “moral compass”. I would refer to it as part of the soul or spirit.

In any case, there is a contingent of people in the world that do not have it – a small percentage of the population that is born without conscience, or that finds it easy to ignore conscience. We’ll get to those people in a moment, but first, we should probably define what evil is.

Evil is first and foremost any action that seeks to destroy, exploit or enslave in the name of personal gain or gratification. Unfortunately, evil actions are often misrepresented as advantageous for the group, thereby making them morally acceptable. The needs of the many supposedly outweigh the needs of the few, and thus evil is rationalized as a means to a “positive end” for the “greater good”.

In most cases, however, destructive actions do not end up serving the interests of the majority, and only end up giving more wealth and power to an elitist minority. This is not a coincidence.

Evil begins with the denial of the existence of conscience, or the denial of the existence of choice. Each person is born with a capacity or freedom to choose. We can listen to conscience, or we can ignore it. We can do good, or we can do evil. Evil tells us the choice is relative and that morality is relative; that there is no difference between a good choice and a bad choice, or, that the evil choice is the only choice.

Beyond ignoring conscience, we must also define the motivation that drives evil. Psychology would suggest that destructive self serving actions stem from an obsessive desire to obtain or control things we cannot or should not have. Interestingly, this is also what some religions teach us, but let’s stick to a secular examination.

As mentioned earlier, there is a group of people in the world who do not see good and evil the way most of us do. Their psyche functions in a completely different way, without the filter of conscience. These people exhibit the traits of narcissistic sociopaths. Full blown high level narcissistic sociopaths represent around 1% to 5% of the total human population, and most of them are born, not made by their environment. Also, 5% to 10% of people hold latent traits of either narcissism or sociopathy that generally only rise to the surface in an unstable crisis environment.

I have written extensively on narcissistic sociopaths and the globalist establishment in numerous articles. I have also outlined how such people, contrary to popular belief, are not isolated from one another. They do in fact organize into groups for mutual gain.

There is an ideology or system of belief that argues for the exact opposite of what conscience tells us is “good”, and that system is Luciferianism. In fact, luciferianism appears to be the source influence for most existing destructive “isms” in our society today (including socialism and globalism). It is my theory that luciferianism is a religion or cult designed by sociopathic narcissists for the benefit of sociopathic narcissists.

It is sometimes difficult to identify the true “sacraments” behind luciferianism because, for one, luciferians refuse to admit that the system is a religion at all. They prefer to call it a philosophy or methodology, at least in public. The system also seems to encourage active disinformation in order to dissuade or mislead non-adherents. The historic term for this religious secrecy is “occultism”. I would call it “elitism”.

There are some foundational beliefs that luciferians do openly admit to. First and foremost, the goal of luciferianism is to attain godhood. That is to say, they believe that SOME human beings have the capacity to become gods through the accumulation of knowledge.

I have written about the insanity of the goal of godhood in the past, outlining how quantum physics and Kurt Godel’s Incompleteness Proof make total scientific and mathematical observation and understanding of the universe impossible. But mathematical reality does not stop luciferian circles from destructively chasing that which they cannot have. By extension, scientific knowledge not tempered by discipline, wisdom and a moral compass can lead to catastrophe. Material knowledge is invariably abused by those seeking godlike power.

The notion of self-worship is a core trait of sociopathic narcissists; Luciferianism just codifies it as if it is a virtue. Another problem with the idea of becoming a god is that one inevitably develops a desire for followers and worshipers. What is a savior, after all, without a flock? But how does a human being gain a flock and become more a god? Through force or through trickery?

Second, luciferians claim they seek to elevate the power of the individual in general. In the minds of many people this doesn’t sound like a negative at all. Even I have argued for the importance of individualism in the midst of societal controls. That said, any ideology can be taken to extremes.

The pursuit of individual gratification can be pushed too far, to the point that the people around us begin to suffer. Because of the elitist nature of luciferianism, they are not necessarily seeking the elevation of ALL individuals, just certain “deserving” individuals. There is a tendency to view non-adherents as “inferior”; stupid people that should be sheared like sheep by those who are chasing a superior dream of personal godhood.

This attitude can also be seen in the common actions of narcissistic sociopaths, who have no qualms about conning or exploiting people around them as resources, feeding off others like parasites.

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Ancient Near East

Scripture and Cosmology: Reading the Bible Between the Ancient World and Modern Science

By Guest Post February 12, 2019

by Nate Claiborne

One of the more paradigm shifting experiences I had in seminary was finding out about other ancient Near Eastern literature. The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, was written in a very different place and time than our own. By studying other writings from that place and time we may be better equipped to understand what the authors of Scripture originally meant.

Now, I say “may be better equipped” because reading that other ancient Near Eastern literature takes just as much of an interpretive effort as reading the Bible, and maybe even more so in some cases. One might even say that the other literature is even harder to interpret because we haven’t been exposed to it as much as we’ve been exposed to Scripture.

This is where finding good resources on the ancient Near East can prove helpful. So, I want to highlight a couple before moving back to books on Genesis proper.

Kyle Greenwood’s Scripture and Cosmology focuses on one main aspect of understanding the ancient Near East. Thanks to IVP Academic, I was able to give it a read a while back. On the whole, I think it’s a helpful primer on the intersection of ancient Near Eastern literature and Scripture. While there are different aspects of this intersection, cosmology is perhaps the most relevant to making sense of Genesis in light of modern science. This book will introduce that touchy subject well without being the definitive last word (which it doesn’t aim to be).

In case you’re still wondering, the ancient Near East is what we would now call the Middle East. In relation to Europe, it is the Near East as opposed to the Far East. And it is ancient, meaning up until either the Persian Empire, or Alexander the Great (depending on who you ask). We can potentially understand the Bible better by understanding the literature of Israel’s neighbors from that time period.

The opening chapter highlights the importance of context for interpretation and also differentiates the different types of context (cultural, geographic, historical, literary). This leads to a discussion of worldview in general, and then the particular part of a worldview called cosmology.

The next three chapter are the first part of the book and focus on Scripture and the cosmos in its ancient cultural context. The first of these chapters is a general introduction to ancient Near Eastern cosmologies, or understandings of the world and how it worked. The next chapter then looks at how cosmology is represented in Scripture. The remaining chapter in this first part then takes a closer look at cosmogony, which is the more technically term for a creation account. Greenwood starts with Genesis 1-2, but then looks at the other places in Scripture that talk about God creating the world.

The second part of the book has two chapters and focuses on cosmology in historical context. The first chapter compares Scripture and Aristotelian cosmology. The second does the same but with Copernican cosmology, which at the big picture level is more or less our current understanding.

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