What Does Paul mean by Apostasy in 2^nd Thessalonians?

How would we define apostasy from what Paul tells us in the context of his second letter to the Thessalonians? As the concordances we looked at in the previous chapter indicate, the apostasy is a time of falling away, of a great deflection, a divorce from the truth of God “Once and for all delivered to the saints” Jude 3.

 The Church Age has existed for over two thousand years now, and it’s history has for the most part been well documented by hundreds of historians and leaders from days past. That the church has gone through many periods of revival and devival, apostasies, as well a periods of stagnation is well known. However there is a tendency with some people to see the last days in every event and every period of history and we want to avoid reading too much into any one circumstance or set of circumstances.

 And yet on the other hand there is an opposite tendency on the part of many others to adopt an  “Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” attitude towards church history in general and our present period. On an extremely short scale, the last seventy years, I think the evangelical church has gone from perhaps an over emphasis on the Lord’s imminent return since the re-establishment of the Jewish people in Israel, to an attitude among many of the Christian young people today of; “everything continues as it has since the beginning of creation,’ 2 Peter 3:4. The context of Second Peter is that just such a lax attitude towards the second coming would dominate before His return. However because the time scale is so short I am not offering that as one of the evidences of our being in the Apostasia.

 The point needs to be made that all eras and periods of church history have not been the same.  Paul the Apostle as well as the Apostle Peter definitely earmarked a certain period of history that would be marked by an increasingly apostate church, a church that would not only fail to have much effect on the surrounding culture, but would instead conform itself to meet the standards of an alarmingly aggressive apostate and pagan society.

 This period of apostasy wouldn’t apply so much to the areas of the world where the gospel is still spreading, places where there either never was or hasn’t been a real church presence for a long period of time. For this reason China, India and many parts of Africa would not have to be included in a survey of apostasy in the church. The term “apostasy” is a falling away, a turning away from something once widely held and taught.

 Historically, many would call the turning away from biblical truth in the beginning of the medieval ages a type of apostasy and they would be accurate. However the areas of the world which have been dominated by the church and the Christian faith for centuries, particularly the European nations and their colonies did go through a reformation which centered the church back on the Scriptures again. The Catholic Church also participated in the reform in many ways, and both continued to have a strong influence on their respective societies for centuries afterwards.

 Basic truths and ethical mores remained the same for over a millennia, whether you were a catholic or protestant, a peasant or of the nobility. While the Catholic might have placed the pope and the catholic hierarchy over the Word of God and it’s interpretation, no one doubted that the Bible was indeed, the word of God. No one questioned it’s authenticity or authority, even though they may have argued over it’s interpretation. Certain fundamental beliefs were held to be true by all, catholic or protestant.

By fundamentals I simply mean an English protestant would have shared many of the fundamental truths of the faith that any Cape Breton catholic would have believed 500 years ago. The Scriptures were the authoritive words of God and our guide for life and religion. The universe was created ex-nihilo by a triune God; Jesus Christ was God and man, both would have accepted an historical 6 day creation;  Adam made from dust, Eve from his side; they would have understood an initially good creation marred by a literal fall and curse, meaning no death before sin; they would have shared a common faith in a physical death and resurrection and ultimate return of the Jewish Messiah; a physical heaven for the saved and physical and eternal hell for the lost. All these basic beliefs were held in common throughout most of Christendom, not just for a few decades, but for centuries.

 Differences of emphasis, teaching, church structure, and doctrine were wide spread, but for the most part the basics of the historical Christian faith were firmly held. For almost two thousand years, this was the case.

 Fundamental beliefs about morality also pervaded throughout Christendom. Divorce was almost unheard of, sex before marriage was considered the sin of fornication, infanticide and pre-natal infanticide were made illegal everywhere, whether you lived in a catholic or protestant region of the world. Modesty was held to be the standard that both men and women should follow, not something to be mocked or looked down upon. Open displays of sexuality were not condoned nor considered healthy for society in general. Sexually transmitted diseases were not a serious problem for centuries. Homosexual behavior was largely kept out of view and there were no major plagues associated with either homosexual or heterosexual promiscuity.

In essence, what the reformation said was; “No one is above God or the Scriptures. Not kings or dukes, not popes or pastors.” Interpretation would always be an issue, but placing a bible in the hands of the common people brought about a sense of empowerment and equality never heard of before in the annals of history. It also brought about one of the greatest leaps forward in literacy the world has ever seen. Whether you were a plow boy or the neighborhood woodcutter or a land owner and a Duke, you could read the bible for yourself and you could form your own opinion. This brought about in a very real way the first great democracies in modern history. It created a thriving common ground for a fervent morality which, among other things, brought an end to the African slave trade as well an end to child labor. It empowered people.

 It was in this culture that modern science and medicine and humanitarian reforms flourished, though never perfectly. In a fallen world, even those struggling to follow God and his word will fall short, and every generation has it’s high marks and its lows.

 But if the Bible is the Word of God, I have to believe He was pleased by seeing so many people able to read and meditate upon His word.

Unfortunately, Darwin and Lyell, Marx and Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky brought and end to all that. The bible wasn’t the word of God, Darwin had supposedly just proven that, and God was dead. He was out of the picture .Men and women, plow boys and Dukes could no longer have access to a book which informed them about the basic truths of life. They no longer had a book or common source that they could interpret for themselves to understand the basics of the human condition, nature, sexuality, and morals. No.

From now on, they would have to rely on the intellectuals to do that for them. And Stalin and Marx and the evolutionary and academic community were only to glad to take over the role previously played by scripture and scripture’s God. Darwin’s priests would tell them how life had formed and Lyell’s pastors would inform how old the earth was. Karl Mark would dictate to them who they were and how they should be governed.          

 See more in The Apostasia, coming soon in the Amazon Kindle bookstore

“There are those that believe that a new modernity demands a new morality…there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality, all else is immorality. There is only true Christian ethics over against which stands the whole of paganism. If we are to fulfill our destiny as a people, we must return to the old morality, the sole morality.”

  Teddy Roosevelt, Johnson, David, Theodore Roosevelt; American Monarch , 1981, p. 44

Don’t Ask for Whom the Bell Tolls, It Tolls for Thee.

In their arguments supporting the right for women to kill the small person inside of their wombs, one of the precedents the supreme court used was the fact that ancient Rome and Greece allowed abortion and infanticide;

“…Abortion was practiced in Greek times as well as in the Roman Era…. Greek and Roman law afforded little protection to the unborn.” Roe vs Wade, 1973

Now this is interesting, because Rome did not recognize the right to life mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence clearly speaks forth our founders faith that some rights were unalienable because they were God given. In Rome, the government was god. In fact a person could be executed for not worshiping Caesar, as a god.

Rome also did not recognize the rights of slaves, and as many historians have given witness to, they built Rome on the back of slavery. Only those of Judeo/Christian societies ever recognized the evils of slavery and fought against it. So why did this errant bunch of lawyers, robed in the garments of the Supreme Court have to go to Rome to justify their case? Simply because every state in the union, as in all the original colonies, as in all of the Christian nations going back 2000 years; there existed laws against infanticide and abortion.

The Christian nations had always protected the life of the unborn and infant. It was one of the striking differences between Christendom and paganism, and the mark of a more humane and kinder society. All life from conception to the grave was protected.

So there already was an over riding precedent in America going back to the founding of the nation and before, in the Colonies; abortion was considered a violation of the infants God given right to life.

Do you think that’s funny or a minor issue? Don’t. The Government of the United States has now set a precedent indicating they have the right to abrogate human life, without due process. Right now it’s babies from the day of conception to birth. Don’t buy the lie that it’s only for the first tri-mester. Infants are routinely aborted from the first trimester through birth,(partial birth abortion) and the same law and arguments that supports one, supports the other.

And the government has no business in deciding the status of personhood. That remains outside of their realm. All we need to know is, is it human? If so then it is made in the image of God and cannot have it’s innate right to life set aside.

Who will be next? The old? The weak and infirm? The mentally handicapped? You? Yeah, it could be you. History shows that the first nations to legalize abortion were Stalin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany. And look where they went. It was a bad day for Jews and anyone who wouldn’t bow their knee to the government.

Show some courage and fight now while you have the chance, with the power of the vote. Don’t support Roman senators for president or any office. Vote for those principles of life that this country was founded on. Our precedents should be those of our nations founders and based on their principles, not those of ancient Rome.

Or you could vote for men and women, who though brilliant and personable and otherwise admirable, are victims of modern academia so don’t have the vaguest notion of the difference between the foundation of Marxism and the foundation of the American Constitution.

But putting all rancor aside, as well as petty party politics, let me suggest you don’t do that. Only one world view has any basis for human rights. That lies in the faith that we are all created in the image of our Creator. Anyone that holds a different view, even though they profess to be and perhaps are Christian, is standing on an atheist platform. They are pro-choice just as the majority of the south was pro-choice.

This is your chance to shine. Would you have voted in favor of the choice to own slaves? If not I suggest you avoid voting for the freedom to kill babies in the womb. All though the choice is certainly yours.

Is a first year Logics course a requirement for Supreme Court Justices?

In the decision supporting slavery in 1857 as well as in Roe vs. Wade, they argued that since neither negroes or slaves or the “unborn “ are specifically mentioned in the constitution or it’s preamble, that they therefore had no claim to human rights under the law. They said;

“… a negro, whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves. . . were not intended to be included under the word ‘citizens’ in the Constitution, and can, therefore, claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.” Dred Scott, 1857

And in the Roe vs. Wade 1973 Supreme Court Decision ;

“The word ‘person,’ as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn…. [T]he unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.”

 Or is all that is required a devious mind and a political appointment? I think the main requirements for the Justices who sat on the bench for the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, were track shoes and a pole vault, so they could all the more easily make one leap of logic after another, one non-sequitur after another and one logical fallacy after another, in route to the worst Supreme Court Decision since the Dred Scott in 1857 , that upheld slavery.

The fallacy they appeal to in these statements is known as “the argument from silence” fallacy, in claiming that the lack the of specific mention means that the unmentioned does not exist constitutionally speaking. Which is very strange because they argued in the opposite direction when claiming that the fact that the right to privacy in not specifically mentioned didn’t mean that such a right doesn’t exist. They then took this unmentioned right and used to justify pre-natal infanticide. So at least we’re aware that the are distinguished judges understand the fallacy of arguing from silence.

The Declaration of Independence quite clearly states that “..,all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights…” among these being listed first and foremost, the right to life. It is listed first because it is foremost of all the unalienable rights, because without life, the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness are meaningless, at least on this side of Glory.

Let me further point out a small fact that our robed legalists seemed to have missed. The text says “men”; not men, women and children. Or infants, teenagers and 50 to 70 year olds. Or good Germans and non-Jews. Therefore can we conclude that only men have unalienable rights under the American Constitution?

Of course not. In the original intent, and in the context of the times and the document, “men” actually refers to all members of mankind. Men and women, children of all ages, old people, Jews and non-Jews, and pre-natal and post-natal infants. All human beings have a unalienable right to life that can not be challenged without the due process of the law. Pre-natal infants are fully human from the moment of conception. Their DNA does not code for rats, chimps, ground squirrels or parakeets or cockroaches.

For years we have allowed this truth to be clouded by the evolutionary fairy tale of Ernst Haeckel, who taught that all embryos recapitulate their “evolutionary history”. We’ve confused people into thinking if we kill the baby in the early third tri-mester we’re only killing a chimp. But Haeckel’s fabrication was shot down over a hundred years ago, not long after Haeckel was tried and found guilty of fraudulently changing his embryo drawings. The idea of embryonic recapitulation only remains in high school textbooks and on secular TV., it has been rejected for a number of reasons by modern science. It was only one of the many Darwinian speculations that led to the wanton destruction of innocent human life.

They are human, and they are alive. In fact Congress ruled the following;

“Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception [they defined fertilization and conception to be the same] marks the beginning of the life of a human being — a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.“ (1)

Once again we find the Supreme Court playing games with the constitution, just as they did back in 1857, in the Dred Scott decision. In the Dred Scott pro-slavery decision, though, they only presumed to have authority over liberty.

In Roe v. Wade they abrogated authority over human life itself. Trust me, no human life is sacred or safe while Roe v. Wade stands as law of the land.

A side issue? Don’t make me laugh.

(1) Report, Subcommittee on Separation of Powers to Senate Judiciary Committee S-158, 97th Congress, 1st Session 1981, p. 7 On pages 7-9, the report lists a “limited sample” of 13 medical textbooks, all of which state categorically that the life of an individual human begins at conception.

 ^“ He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace. “ Gen. 19:23

The Tyranny of Tolerance

It appears from these verses that neither the men of Sodom or the God of Israel were very tolerant. But were they both unrighteous? It seems then that sometimes tolerance though considered probably the only absolute in modern culture, is on a collision course with the God of all righteousness. And it’s just as obvious that this is nothing new.

In these verses I am singling out one form of unrighteousness, that of sex between people of the same gender, but there are many other forms of sexual behavior that would fall under the same label as unrighteous. Fornication; sex between unmarried heterosexuals. Adultery; sex between a married and unmarried couple, or more simply, sex with someone else’s marriage partner. There are dozens of other non-sexual behaviors also called unrighteous in the bible, selfishness, drunkenness, tax cheats, liars, the list goes on and on.

The only reason that homosexual behavior stands out as any different is, for the most part, no one is trying to force me to accept drunkenness, adultery or fornication as perfectly acceptable behavior. Yet. Not to do so now is to be judgmental, whether or not your judgment agrees with Biblical standards or not. You are accused of being unaccepting  and of “putting up walls”, Exactly, but I only want to put up walls where God thinks they are necessary. Tear down all the walls and society goes with it.

Not that I judge myself any better then any unrighteous person. I am just as bad, my flesh is the same and I am capable of taking part in and tolerating any of the above listed behaviors. However at a early age, I learned a few survival skills the hard way. For example, I found other guys girl friends attractive and other guy’s wives as well. And sometimes they were willing. But where I grew up, if you took another guy’s girl, you stood a very good chance of being shot, stabbed or just beaten beyond recognition, So when I first read in the Book of Proverbs that to take another mans wife was to take fire to your chest, I understood that.

I remember back in the late seventies when the first big push to accept homosexuality as equal to heterosexuality in all its attributes, the I’m gay, okay? campaign was in full swing.. I remember feeling uncomfortable with that though I had never been churched or read a bible. I had been in the LA county jail though and witnessed sodomy, and wasn’t terribly attracted to it though some of my home boys tried to sell me on it. And then when the AID’s plague hit, I managed, without any help from “fundamentalists” or anybody else to make a connection there. So when I first read the story of  Sodom and Gomorrah it didn’t seem foreign to me.

God draws a clear line between the sexes, and Romans chapter one tells us that in apostate nations, these lines will be blurred.  The very fact that I believe I could commit adultery, homosexuality, fornication and all the rest is the very reason why I avoid them as best I can. And when I tell you I wont approve of them does not mean that I hate all drunks, adulterers, thieves, fornicators or tax cheats. My dearly loved grandfather had a terrible problem with alcohol. I was a thief. I also committed fornication and tried to commit adultery once  but passed out on drugs  before I could get it done.

And when I woke up that morning I remember the deep feeling of shame I experienced, even though I wasn’t even close to being a Christian or any other religion. I was literally burning with indignation against myself. I told myself I would never do that again. But you can get to like any kind of behavior, you can learn to tolerate all kinds of things which in the beginning burn your conscience. They call it sophistication. And we are all made the same basically.

In this nation we have learned to tolerate pre-natal infanticide, homosexuality, divorce and adultery and fornication. Whoopeee. I really don’t think it’s anything to get excited about. And what is really signified by “tolerance”? Just because people tolerate your behavior, doesn’t mean they necessarily approve of it. Politically correct people are notorious chameleons, they will say anything to survive. But don’t think just because they won’t tell you to your face that they don’t approve of your behavior means that they are in agreement with it. Political correctness breeds cowardice, not the kind of unconditional love God’s lawbreakers are seeking,

We should be able to love people who are involved in behavior we don’t agree with. After all, at best we are all falling short of God’s standards of righteousness. But we shouldn’t be afraid to admit what we actually believe, no matter how intolerant of righteousness as this society has become. Nor should we be forced by a bullying culture using mainstream tactics to lie against our conscience.

 Aren’t we the tolerant ones? So were they in Sodom. Teddy Roosevelt said;

 ” The man who knows the truth and has the opportunity to tell it, but who none the less refuses to, is the most shameful of all creatures. God forbid we ever should ever become as lax as that.”  Theodore Roosevelt

 And;

 ”Never will I sit motionless while directly or indirectly apology is being made for the murder of the helpless.”

T.R., The Foes of Our Own Household, 1917, p.168

Both Jesus and Isaiah spoke about those who would call good evil and evil good.

Martin Luther said his conscience was bound to the Word of God, and he was ready to burn rather then contravene his conscience. What is your conscience bound to or by?  Is it bound to anything other then the flow of the culture? The intolerance of righteousness or the tolerance of unrighteousness may reign for awhile, but it is a philosophy of cowards. And it is the ultimate dead end road.

(I apologize for the changes in font but this is what happens when ever I cut and paste, thanks for your patience) 

This is one of the unspoken myths of modern academia, and yet it is probably the most powerful of them all. Though it’s never directly stated, it’s subliminal presence underlies everything that is taught in government funded schools from pre-school on up through college. It is taught indirectly in many different ways, sometimes by what the curricula teaches, but more often by what the curricula leaves out. And like most secular myths, it is echoed and supported in the media.

For example, In the area of origins science, how the universe came into being, from non-living things like the solar system to the wonders of the biological world, only one theory of creation is taught. The naturalistic, materialistic and atheist Darwinian tale of a self creating universe which evolved out of nothing through random chance and time alone. By teaching this theory, one that almost all of the giants of early science from Kepler to Boyle to Newton would have rejected, and failing to teach the possibility of a supernatural creation and the evidence for it, the students are sent a message.

What is that message? Atheist theories are the best, most acceptable theories in the sciences, so much so that other theories are not worth even discussing. Students are not taught that modern science arose only once; in Christian Europe; they are not taught that all the leading scientists in every major field of science were not only theists (mainly Christians) but that almost to a man, they gave God and the bible as the reason they pursued science; nor are they taught that Darwin’s theory has been falsified by the fossil record, by it’s failure to get around the first law of biology, the law of biogenesis; its failure to satisfy the 2nd law of thermal dynamics, or any of the other mountainous problems that face the followers of Darwin today.

And this is the pattern that it maintains all through the public school system, no matter what the topic. In history, religious people are always presented in the worst possible light, particularly Christians, while pagans, particularly atheists, are presented in the best possible light, usually by the same pattern of withholding pertinent information. Or, if a person is of such stature that they can’t be denigrated, and they were undeniably Christian, then their faith is either played down or ignored entirely. For example, every child in the school system knows at least one fact about the Puritans; they killed witches.

They are rarely told that it was the Puritans who first lifted the ban on the Jews in Britain, or started the first democracy in England, one that shed far less blood then the French Revolution, shed almost no civilian blood, and led to the American experiment; or that Puritan England had the largest numbers of scientific breakthroughs in Europe in that time period, more than any other country, or that it was the Puritans from which the idea of freedom of religious conscience first arose.

Nor are they told that it was Samuel Sewall, one of the judges in the Salem witchcraft trial, that wrote the first anti-slavery tract published inAmerica and that the early Puritan communities went for decade after decade with out any serious crime, no murder, rape, theft, etc.. One Harvard anthropologist, well versed in ancient societies, labeled the Puritan era inAmerica as one of the safest and most humane the world has ever known. But it is very unlikely your child will learn any of this in a secular classroom. This is classic revisionism, with a clear bias towards the atheist worldview, at the expense of any other.

The myth started when A.D. White published his book. “A History of the Warfare Between Religion and Science, etc.” A book that White admitted was written to get back at some at Cornell who had opposed his agenda for the school. The following quote gives the gist of the book:

“The warfare with Columbus the world knows well. How even after he was triumphant…the theological barriers to this geological truth (the spherical shape of the earth), yielded but slowly.”

It made for a great story and one that helped to support the idea that religion fought a war against science and held it back for centuries during the period still mistakenly called the dark ages by some.  However, though popular and widely used to disguise the fact that science as we know it actually only arose once, in Christian Europe, there isn’t an ounce of truth to it. As they say in the provinces; The dog doesn’t hunt. Bede taught the world was round in the 7th Century and the pre-eminent text book on astronomy in the 13th Century written by John of Sacrobosco was named, “Sphere” and it taught that the earth and all the  planets were round. (Stark, For the Glory of God)

In fact recent historians now say that Christian scholarship for the first 1500 years was almost unanimous in it’s view of the round earth, and only mentioned the subject of a flat earth in order to refute it. (Russel, Inventing the flat Earth:Columbus and Modern Historians)

Not only did Columbus suspect the world was round, the entire Christian world, Roman Catholic prelates as well, knew the world was round and had for centuries.

In fact, many Catholic scholars did argue with Columbus, but not over the shape of the Earth. They argued correctly that he had underestimated the distance to India from Italy. Columbus thought it was about 2000 miles and in fact it is closer to 14000.

None of Columbus’s own writings or journal, nor those of his son’s biographies of his father, nor the writings of Magellan make any reference to a controversy over the shape of the earth. Kind of strange if one was raging all across Europe the way White described it.

Columbus himself gave the credit for his direction and inspiration to God and the  Scriptures saying;

“I felt His hand upon me” and;

“I have already said that for the execution of the enterprise of the Indies neither reason, nor mathematics, nor world maps were profitable to me, but rather the prophecy of Isaiah was completely fulfilled.” Libro of Prophcias.

Christianity wasn’t the enemy of science or Columbus; it was the source of inspiration.

 ”

Myth 6; The Bible is just another religious book, not particularly unique from the others in any manner

This again is part of another myth, that all religions are equal, based on relative morals and just relativity in general. However the case for the uniqueness of the Bible is entirely without parallel among the world’s religions. As we shall see, the bible is;

1) Unparalleled in marks of inspiration, in undeniably fulfilled prophecy alone, particularly over the Jewish people, it is unmatched by any other religious book or group.

2) In historicity, the bible again is unmatched, by any other religious book, though attacked incessantly at the turn of the century by skeptics, as most  other religious books don’t even make a claim to be rooted in history. Almost every part of the Old Testament has been attacked as non-historical or inaccurate. And yet time and time again, where it is possible for it to be vindicated by the archeologists shovel, it has been.

3) In it’s transmission, translation, circulation and survival, the Bible completely surpasses any other religious or other book of the ancient world. In the small gap between the first autographs to surviving copies, in it’s continued use since it’s inception and in the huge number of manuscripts, circulation and in the incredible accuracy of the transmission, the Bible stands utterly alone and miles apart from any and all other ancient writings.

A) Prophecy

Let’s start with marks of inspiration, and particularly, prophesy. Which is easier, to predict the future or record the past? Most of us would say its easier to write history. Anyone can gather a few books, old newspapers or research on the internet and then write a fairly accurate history of the Viet Nam War or Desert Storm, or the Stock Market Crash and Depression in the 1930′s. Or if we have enough time, we can write a history of a entire nation, like Britain orFrance, and do it with some confidence of accuracy on the main points. And besides, if we are wrong or disagree on some issues where history isn’t clear, it’s impossible to go back and prove us wrong.

In predicting the future however, it’s all too clear when what we predict doesn’t come to pass. Predicting the future is a much more difficult task and one that quickly falls into the realm of impossibility for long range events. Nations come and go. Entire peoples have disappeared off the map, their languages forgotten and their cities buried in dust. The Hittite people, talked about in the bible were a powerful people in the ancient Middle-East, but disappeared with so little trace that the secular historians said they never existed. However due to the persistent digging of the anthropologists, they were re-discovered and the Scriptures were vindicated. Like so many other once dominate nations, they met with sudden disaster, or just slowly faded away into oblivion.

Rome and Greece came and went, Egypt’s glory faded along with mighty Babylon, Persia and so many other smaller nations. One nation, though, has persisted with remarkable tenacity, that of the Israeli or Jewish people. They have survived even after being cast out of the land two times, the last time for almost two thousand years of exile. During this time of exile and wandering the Jewish people were persecuted to the point of becoming a byword for reproach and oppression. Yet despite this, and though they are one of the most ancient of the nations, having coexisted with ancient Egypt and Babylon, this nation has survived and even thrived, with language and religious identity intact.

Mark Twain, (Samuel Clemens) was no friend of the Bible or Judeo/Christian beliefs, yet he was moved to say this in testimony of the Jewish People;

“He could be vain of himself and not be ashamed of it. Yes, he could be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream stuff and passed away. The Greek and Roman followed and made a vast noise. They are gone. Other peoples have sprung up and held the torch high for a time, but it burned out and they sit in twilight or have vanished. The Jew saw them all and beat them all and now is what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmity of age, no weakening of parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert, aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew. All other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” (Samuel Clemens, (Mark Twain) Harpers Magazine 1899)

The Jewish People. the people of the Book, Gods chosen people. Remember Him? The God of the Bible, who along with giving us a history of the ancient world from Adam and Eve to the coming of the Messiah, also gave us prophecies of the future of the jewish people up to the end of time. There are a staggering number of prophecies over the Jewish Nation and the Messiah, but we’ll just look at a few major ones in brief. We’ll look at around eight clearly defined specific prophecies;

1) They would become a great nation

2) They would be a blessing to the nations

3) They would be scattered through out all the nations

4) They would be persecuted wherever they went

5) Despite the continual persecution, they would be maintained and keep their identity

6) They would be gathered back into their own land

7) A religious leader would rise from among them that the gentiles would turn to

) While other nations would come and go, the Jewish people will never cease to exist

They would become a great nation and the world would be blessed by them; In Genesis 12: 1-3, God tells Abram that He would make him a great nation and would bless him. He also said, “I will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

That God has blessed all the nations through the Jewish is probably referring foremost to the coming Messiah and Scriptures , however it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that more Nobel prizes for medicine have been awarded to Jews than to all other ethnic groups combined. And that is only a small part of the contribution they have made to mankind in general. As far as the cursing goes, have you met any Moabites or Philistines, or Edomites or Ammonites etc. etc? No. All these nations were among those that cursed Israel and they have all gone to the graveyard of the nations. So in this prophecy alone there are actually at least 3 or 4 fulfilled prophecies, and they were all made before Abram had even had a son.

2) They would be scattered into all the nations of the world and be persecuted, but be preserved and regathered in time.

Deuteronomy 28:64-67, “Then the LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other…and among those people you will have no rest…your life shall hang in doubt before you…and in the morning you will say, ‘Oh, that it was night, and in the evening you will say, ‘Oh, that it were morning, because of the fear that terrifies your heart.”

And, Deuteronomy 30:1-3, “Now it shall come to pass when all these things come upon you…the LORD your God will…gather you again from all the nations where the LORD your god has scattered you.

This happened once in 586 BC and they were regathered in 536-7 after 70 years, and again they were scattered after Titus destroyed the temple in 70 AD. In 1948, just a few short years after the horrors of the Holocaust, 1900 years after the Roman destruction and despite tremendous opposition, a new Jewish Nation was formed in thier homeland and millions of Jews from all parts of the earth have returned there. These particular prophecies were made before they had even entered into their land for the first time.

3) The Jewish people will never cease to exist or cease from being a people. God will make an everlasting covenant with them to plant them in their land and prosper them there.

Jeremiah 31: 35-37, “Thus say the LORD, that gives the sun for light by day and the ordinances of the moon and stars for a light by night…if those ordinances depart from before me, says the LORD, then shall the seed of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.

If Heaven can be measured and the foundations of the earth searched out, then I will also cast out Israel for all they have done.”

Jeremiah 32: 37-41

“Behold I will gather them out of all the countries where I have driven them in my great anger…and I will bring them back to this place and cause them to dwell safely. They shall be my people and I shall be their God and I will give them one heart that they may fear me forever…and I will make an everlasting covenant with them and not turn away from doing them good but will put my fear in their hearts so they will not depart from me.., I will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and all my soul.”

That’s what He said, and the idea is repeated but I think this is sufficient.

4) A religious leader would arise from the Jews whom the Gentiles of the world would turn to.

Genesis 49:10, ” The scepter shall not depart from Judah…until Shilo comes, and unto him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”

Isaiah 11:10, “‘And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse who shall stand as a banner to the people, to Him shall the Gentiles seek…”

Speaking of the Messiahs ministry in Galilee and beyond it said in Isaiah 9: 1,3, “…by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, in Galilee of the gentiles, the people who walked in darkness saw a great light, those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.”

Certainly it cannot be denied that millions of people and generations of rank pagans have turned to the light of the Scriptures through the message of a lowly Jewish carpenter named Jesus. Born in a small village called Bethlehem and raised in a equally small non-descript town called Nazareth, he was crucified after a very short life of 33 years. And yet fromChina to Russia toEurope and Africa and the Americas and elsewhere His name is known and revered. Even the Koran honors him. And say what you like about him, He was Jewish.

It’s also important to realize that all the verses that the Christian scholars and apostles attribute to the Messiah, were also considered Messianic by all the Jewish scholars prior to the 16th century, and many still are today.

There are so many other prophecies about the Messiah and over the Jewish people as well as dozens over towns like Tyre and Babylon and various nations, almost all fulfilled centuries after the scriptures were written. One of the oft repeated prophecies in the minor prophets is that in the “last days” a coalition of nations of the world would unite and come againstIsrael in order to annihilate her. This hasn’t happened yet, but certainly is not hard to conceive of; the media’s handling ofIsrael in the press is atrocious, and secular college campuses often espouse the new anti-Semitism, being very biased and negative towards the only Jewish, or non-Islamic nation in the middle east.

No other book comes even close to this type of explicit prophecy, where peoples and town and specific nations are named. As a matter of fact, if none of these prophecies had come to pass, the bible could easily be falsified, yet it stands vindicated, even by its enemies.

Uniqueness of the Bible; part 3

C) Translation, circulation, survival;

Perhaps the best book written on this subject, among many, would be “Evidence That Demands a Verdict, 1 and 2 by Josh McDowell, and I highly recommend these to the reader. But how is the bible unique among other books in translation or transmission?

First, it was one of the first books ever to be translated, when the Jewish scribes translated it into the Greek language back in 250 BC. Since then, it has been translated into more languages than any other book in history, both  in whole and/or in part, having been translated into almost 1,280 languages by 1966, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica (McDowell).

Secondly, no book in the world has had the circulation and been in use continually like the bible. It was written over a 1500 year time span and has been in constant use since the time of Moses, over 3 thousand years ago. It was the first major book ever printed, on the Gutenberg Press, and every year literally millions of copies are printed and dispersed all over the world. By the time the Koran came into being  the Old Testament had been around in complete form for over a thousand years, and the New Testament for over 600 years. And the Koran, not only repeats many of the Old and New Testament stories, it recognizes them as valid. The Koran states;

“And God spoke directly to Moses”, (The Koran, Sura  4:164)

“We caused Jesus son of Mary, to follow in their footsteps confirming that which was before him, and bestowed on him the Gospel where in is a guidance and a light, confirming that which was before it in the Torah (first five books of the Old Testament)”

{Koran, Sura 5:46)

Unlike the Vedas and ancient Sanskrit writings of Hinduism that had to be rediscovered by the English after having fallen into obscurity in India, the Bible, coming from a small tribe in the middle east, spread through out the entire world and has remained in constant use ever since.

Thirdly, no book has been transmitted as carefully as the Old Testament. The Jewish Scribes took pains in it’s transmission that made the process almost as reliable as computerized copying. McDowell quotes Bernard Ramm who says;

“Jews preserved it as no other manuscript has ever been preserved…they kept tabs on every letter, every word, every syllable and paragraph. They had special classes of men whose whole duty was to preserve and transmit these documents with practically perfect fidelity…who ever counted the letters or syllables and words of Plato or Aristotle? Cicero or Seneca?”

(Ramm, Protestant Christian Evidences, Chicago, Moody Press)

In number of manuscripts preserved over time, no other ancient text even comes close. For example, of New Testament manuscripts, their are 24,633 surviving.

In contrast, the Iliad has only 643

Caesar, 10

Livy, 20

Plato, 7

and it pretty much goes downhill from there. In time span between the time of writing and the first surviving copy, the New Testament has a span of approximately 25 years. Homer (the Iliad) has a span of 500 years between the time it was  authored and it’s first copy. For most other ancient writings the spans exceed  over a thousand years.

For the Old Testament, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, took the O.T. back to at least a century before Christ, leaving a very small gap between the completion of the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi and the most recent extant copies.

And fourthly, the bible has been under almost constant attack since it first appeared on the scene in the hands of the Hebrew Prophets and later in the hands of the early followers of Jesus, who firmly believed Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD, and the Jews were scattered, they, along with their book, were subject to almost constant persecution. In the early 4th century, Diocletian sent out an edict ordering Christians to be stopped from worshiping and for their Scriptures to be burned.

Of Christians and their book, Voltaire laughed and boasted they would be gone from the face of the earth in less then one hundred years. But they and the book have persisted, along with their Jewish progenitors. Mao viciously attacked Christians, Stalin and Lenin and Trotsky had them thrown into prison camps and slaughtered and their book and religion banned. Any form of theism was outlawed from the schools and from public display.

In America and Western Europe, the bible and prayer have been removed from schools, and in colleges across the continents, anyone who takes the Bible at face value is scorned and laughed at. Even on many conservative Christian campuses, an extremely sophisticated form of interpretation allows the bible to be characterized as a book which can accommodate secular scientific beliefs that have their roots deeply embedded in atheistic theories.

But, like the Jewish people, the Bible survives and speaks the same truths to each succeeding generation. Jesus, a Jew, who claimed to be the Son of God, said this;

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Mt. 24:35,

That was over 2000 years ago, and seems to be one more fulfillment of Jewish prophecy impossible to explain from a secular materialistic worldview.

“There is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9

“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.” Winston Churchill

Just fifty to sixty years ago when I was a kid, Davy Crockett was a hero. Walt Disney immortalized him on film and his riding down to San Antone to become one of the last men to die at the Alamo was looked upon as an act of selfless courage. Popular TV shows ran nightly, like “Wagon Train”, about the westward movement of our forefathers from the east. And my grandmother and great grandmother who I knew personally had come into Texas in covered wagons, survived the Comanche wars and then moved up into Oklahoma, during the land rush. So we were only a generation or so away from many actual pioneers of the old west.

We knew that it hadn’t been all glory and that our forefathers not only hadn’t been perfect, they had at times been greedy and violent in their move to obtain new territories in what seemed like an unending west. We learned the stories of the “Trail of Tears” when the five “Civilized Tribes”, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaws and others were torn off their farmlands and ranches and forced to march all the way to the new Indian territories of Oklahoma. We were taught about the massacre at Wounded Knee among many others, and the chasing down of a badly outnumbered and out gunned Chief Joseph and his Nez Pierce.

Without a doubt, the Christianity of our forefathers played out very badly in real life at times and these misdeeds should not be forgotten. The practice of slavery, particularly the African slave trade was and is a horrible blot on American history. But we also understood that it was Christianity which played a major role in putting an end to that slave trade. Now however, it isn’t just the slave trade or our mistreatment of the Native Americans that is being called into question, but the expansionism itself. Our forefathers are lashed for even being so evil as for wanting to expand the borders of the country. In Barak Obama’s book, the Audacity of Hope, he spends a few paragraphs explaining our evil expansionist ways, and condemns John Quincy Adams and others, as well as the pioneers themselves for “forcing the Mexicans to defend themselves” among other atrocities.

He really can’t be blamed because he didn’t come up with these ideas on his own, he learned them at Harvard where American history is dissected under the micro-scope of politically correct doctors a hundred years or more after the fact. These doctors are sure they are capable of judging past generations of Americans because, they know that they are the most moral and ethical generation that ever lived on the face of the earth. If you don’t believe that, just ask them. I remember Bill Clinton being interviewed after the Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky affairs, and I remember him telling the interviewer that he was the “most ethical President” the U.S. had ever had.

Bill Clinton could say that in spite of his moral failings because he knew he held all the right attitudes and ideas one needed. He was a doctrinaire feminist, pro “choice”, and very environmentally aware. In the same way the then Senator Obama could explain and judge the entire American pioneering era and West as one of sinful expansion. By this same attitude, this generation can condemn Truman and the WW II generals for demanding unconditional surrender with Japan, and for their bombing of Hiro Shima.

But to really be fair, I think it might be wise to try and understand the American attitude towards Japan by recognizing the dynamics of the time and not be so fast to pass judgement. After all, if you were on an aircraft carrier and had just received word that your uncle had died on Iwo Jima or at Guadalcanal, and that your nephew had disappeared in a sub off the coast of japan, you might have had a slightly different perspective then a Sixties Harvard professor.

And the same holds true for the early Americans. Many were against slavery from the very first, and even many farmers who kept slaves were convinced it was an economic necessity. There was of course no Constitutional right to keep slaves, but let me remind you that there is no Constitutional right to abort unborn human infants in their mother’s womb either.

And if you allow yourself to put down the egalitarian books you are reading by 21 century Harvard graduates, just for a minute, and read the actual journals of the men and women who dared to cross the Atlantic to escape from religious persecution, or just to seek a chance to find new opportunities for themselves and their families, you might find that they really don’t fit the “expansionist” picture that is often painted for us in academia. Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone and Sam Houston all fought the Native Americans during wars as the European settlers headed deeper into Indian territories. They all lost family members to raiding war parties, and sometimes had to lay in the brush and listen to a son being tortured all night long before he died an agonizing death. Many tribes on the east coast maintained a cult of torture, and while not as bad arguably as our pre-Christian Celtic and Saxon or Viking forefathers, they did not always behave in ways that our Harvard doctors might approve.

And yet despite this, none of those men hated the American Indians. When the Creeks finally settled down, Crockett lost his job in congress because of his fight to recognize the rights of Creeks and Cherokees as full American citizens, a fight he eventually lost and which led to the trail of tears. All three of those men lived with the Indians and if you read their journals, they had a deep love and respect for the courage and toughness of the Indian people. They did not harbor ill will towards them and I think on the part of Boone and Crockett this was largely due their Christian training and grace.

Despite what ever qualities they had, many Native American tribes themselves practiced ruthless expansionism among themselves and kept slaves. Crockett s trip to the Alamo and the Texas war for independence is more complicated, but still not explainable in the half a sentence that Barak Obama gives it in his book. On the down side for many of the American settlers in Mexican Tejas, they were slave holders who wanted to grow cotton. And to the Mexican governments credit, they had just outlawed slavery. However that wasn’t the only thing they had outlawed. They made it a law that all Tejanos had to join the Catholic church and pay their tithes to it.

There may not have been a Constitutional right to slavery, but the American settlers did recognize the right to religious liberty. This and very heavy handed treatment by the distant Mexican government eventually led to the war, and interestingly many of those in favor of independence were Mexican born nationals. Go to the Alamo and read the list of the men slaughtered there, you’ll be surprised at how many were Mexican.

And I can’t help but wonder what these politically correct doctors think would have taken place if America had not expanded it’s borders? Britain was very interested in Texas, as were other countries and history shows that a vacuum is soon filled. And at what point does expansion become evil? Were the first pilgrims evil for escaping a menacing English government? Were the Iroquois evil for pushing the Cherokee farther south? There is no doubt that when America broke it’s land treaties with the various tribes, that was wrong and refusing to recognize the Cherokee and Creek and Choctaws as citizens was evil. Chasing down the Nez Perce for trying to flee into Canada to join their relatives was grossly manipulative and unfair.

But do these Harvard scholars and this generation really think they are morally superior to the early Americans? The chapter of Obama’s book where he blithely denigrates our forefathers for their pioneering and expansion rings of cant and Pharisaical self righteousness and hypocrisy.

But, that’s what they taught him at Harvard.