The Biblical Examiner
An Examination of Biblical Precepts Involved in Issues at Hand

Summer 2006

 

CONTENTS

America Invaded, a sure sign of God's Judgment
Destruction of America
Patriot act in practice
Dubai Debacle
Communist China in charge of US security (remember Korea)
Shunned in America–Australian Nat. Television airs 9-11 Documentary
The Unit
Personal
Peru Problems
Terrorism–property rights activists are terrorists
Fiery Words, Cartoon Wars
Senior Exercise
First Boot
Schools of Reeducation
Mothers, protect your sons
Mexico's war on America
Merging the US, Canada & Mexico
The Looming Immanency of a Nuclear War
(Facts about Judgment)

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Tongues

AMERICA INVADED

Though we have covered this in the past, current events require addressing the subject again, for things have only deteriorated. The following is lengthy with a lot of Scriptural groundwork before we safely reach Biblical conclusions. The invading army has replaced the American flag with its national flag, and our Washington elected officials are doing nothing to stop the invasion. (See Mexico's war on America, in this issue.)

 

US Flag Removed

Ban on U.S., Mexican flags spurs protest at Skyline. 100 at Longmont high school walk out over policy

LONGMONT - Skyline High School students walked out of class Friday morning to protest the school administration's new policy banning the carrying or wearing of American and Mexican flags.

Most of the 100 students were protesting that American flags were included in the ban. Many of them were unclear about the policy, thinking that only American flags were banned, when in fact the ban covers the flags of both countries. ... (Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News. 4/1/06. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4588152,00.html)

Comment: Who would have ever thought that Mexico would have such an influence as to ban the US flag on US soil?

In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord. (1 Corinthians 14:21.)

This Baptist pastor must concede that there are now genuine tongues in America, and those tongues are now impossible to avoid in the USA. They clearly tell us that God's judgment is here. Before the reader dismisses me as a heretic, please consider the law Paul referred to:

Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. The LORD shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; A nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young: And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee. (Deuteronomy 28:47-51.)

For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people. (Isaiah 28:11.)

I wanted to reproduce all of Jeremiah 5:1-19 here, but was unable to for space's sake. So please look up the passage—it is a key to the following message.

For some time now, it has been common knowledge that there are foreign troops in the US. Their purpose for being here is only known by a few. (See "State Briefs" section of the Houston Chronicle, March 21, 1997.) It is not difficult to find news reports of Chinese and Arabs buying up everything that they can get past the US government and taxpayer. It is also a well known fact that The Long Beach Naval Training Facility, one of the best deep water port facilities in America, was turned over free of charge by the US to the city of Long Beach, who then leased it to Communist China for $14.5 million a year. Long Beach agreed to invest $300 million to upgrade the base for China's use. (The same man who is now Red China's governor over Hong Kong is the commanding officer of the Long Beach facility.)

But the real influx of foreigners, especially illegals, is from Mexico and Central America. The price of gas and the official welcome mat for illegals is fueling a great debate, which will probably turn out to be nothing but a lot of smoke as Bush convinces our representatives that illegals are good for the economy, so they should have amnesty. (I have noticed no talk about making the illegals renounce their citizenship in Mexico if they are made US citizens.)

The loyality of these illegal "Latinos" is to their native nation, primarily Mexico. Do they have a desire to become English speaking US citizens, or is their desire to make the Western US a part of Mexico?

US flag removed from Skyline HS

HEY GRINGO, PACK YOUR BAGS AND GET OUT

By Investigative Reporter, John Taft. April 25, 2006. NewsWithViews.com

"You (gringos) have spilled enough of our blood, now it's your turn to bleed, you [expletive] sub-human beasts." So said an editorial in the University of California Irvine's Hispanic LaVoz Mestiza. Professor Gutierrez, employed by the University of Texas, founder of La Raza said, "We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him." Now that isn't very neighborly. (http://www.libertypost.org/cgi_bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=134993)

A Chicano organization called MEChA (http://www.mayorno.com/WhoIsMecha.html) wants to take over much of the US Southwest, an area they call Aztlan said, "For the race everything. For those outside the race, nothing." Another "D" for a bad attitude. Other similar groups include: The La Raza Unida Party, Brown Berets de Aztlan, OLA (Organization for the Liberation of Aztlan), and the Nation of Aztlan. These are radical organizations that can be found in many American high schools and most colleges. They hate America and love its enemies. They are brimming over with race hatred, anti-Semitism, and a history of communist leanings and communist support. They have an irrational anger aimed at their stupid benefactors. Recent mass marches have emboldened these people who do pose a real threat to this nation. Many are illegals and profess their allegiance not to the United States where they live, but to the authoritarian corrupt state of Mexico. ... (http://www.newswithviews.com/Taft/john30.htm — And Bush is pushing to make them legal.)

We are now seeing a vast diversity of tongues, i.e., languages, here in a land that has, from the very first, been of one language. Genuine tongues, various languages, are now being spoken, and to the average American, they are certainly unknown.

According to Paul's instructions (1 Corinthians 14), if a foreigner now stationed in America would get up in a Christian assembly and speak in his native tongue, Paul tells him to be quiet unless there was someone who can interpret what he said. What good would it be for a man (for only a man could speak instructions in a Christian assembly, 1 Corinthians 14:34, 35) to preach the best sermon in the world if no one could understand or interpret it?

The now many varied, unintelligible tongues to the average person in the street or in the work place are here in America, a new and unusual event. Strange! But is it strange? Why would we think it strange that the Lord would bring strange nations, nations whose tongues we cannot understand, against a nation, America, that refuses to serve the Christian Lord God of the Bible with joyfulness and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of the good things he has provided over the centuries?

Romans 1:21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

See 2 Ki 17:15,jer 2:5, passages which the Apostle may be supposed to have had in his mind. (Lightfoot.)

2 Kings 17:15 And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them.

Jeremiah 2:5 Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?

The modern problem

Professed "Christians" have rejected his statutes; that is, the tasks he has prescribed for his people as found in his general law.

They have rejected his covenant made with their fathers. Paul tells us that it was the fathers of the Christian nation, our fathers, who passed through the sea and met the Lord at the mount. 1 Corinthians 10. (Is not George Washington considered one of our fathers?)

They have rejected his testimonies – "this word has an emphasis of warning. The fall of the Northern Kingdom is attributed to the fact that Samaria despised the warning of the Lord. (2Ki 17:15) Ezra makes confession for the Southern Kingdom, acknowledging that Judah had not heeded God's warning (Ne 9:34; cf. Jer 44:23). The law of the Lord has been given as a warning sign to man." (Thelogical WordBook of the Old Testament. WOT)

Man, especially Christians, have ignored the Lord's warning. Thus, we have made a covenant with death and have agreed with hell by making lies our refuge, and seeking safety in falsehoods. Isaiah 28:15. The average Christian now attends "worship" services seeking after a god of his own liking, not seeking the God of the Bible. He desires a god that has no law except what he or she feels is best. By rejecting the law (the rule of action established by God), they resist the ultimate authority of the divine Lawgiver, the Christ of the covenant. Romans 13:1, Isaiah 49:8. Thus, they walk after vanity — ... it is used as a designation for false gods worshipped by the people of God and hence is usually translated in this context by the RSV as ‘idols': De 32:21 1Ki 16:13,26 2Ki 17:15 Jer 2:5 Jer 8:19 (parallel to pesel); Jer 10:8,15 Jer 51:18 Jon 2:9 Ps 31:6 [H 7]. (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. TWOT.)

Sadly, all of us have gone after the heathen that were round about us, concerning whom the LORD had charged them, that they should not do like them. We have become more like the heathen around us than we are like Christ.

We are in gross violation of the rules of action established by the God whom we say we worship. Listen in the stores, streets and work places, and you will hear the sounds of judgment for our infidelity to our God — tongues we cannot understand.

Biblical Tongues

[Please bear with me as I lay a lengthy Scriptural foundation for the application I need to make.]

What we are now hearing on the streets of America are lawful, Biblical tongues.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3: tongues of men refer to understandable human languages; the tongues of angels may refer to the medium by which angels communicate in heaven. Paul does not say that it is possible or desirable to speak with the tongues of angels; rather, he says that if such a thing were possible, it (nor any other "gift") is not the mark of the Spirit of Christ—genuine love is that mark (ch 13 describes Christian love).

[Acts 2:4, glossia] With other tongues ... Other than their native tongues. Each one began to speak in a language that he had not acquired and yet it was a real language and understood by those from various lands familiar with them. It was not jargon, but intelligible language. Jesus had said that the gospel was to go to all the nations and here the various tongues of earth were spoken. One might conclude that this was the way in which the message was to be carried to the nations, but future developments disprove it. This is a third miracle (the sound, the tongues like fire, the untaught languages). There is no blinking the fact that Luke so pictures them. One need not be surprised if this occasion marks the fulfilment of the Promise of the Father. But one is not to confound these miraculous signs with the Holy Spirit. They are merely proof that he has come to carry on the work of his dispensation. The gift of tongues came also on the house of Cornelius at Caesarea (Acts 10:44-47; 11:15-17), the disciples of John at Ephesus (Acts 19:6), the disciples at Corinth (I Cor. 14:1-33). It is possible that the gift appeared also at Samaria (Acts 8:18). But it was not a general or a permanent gift. Paul explains in 1Cor. 14:22 that "tongues" were a sign to unbelievers and were not to be exercised unless one was present who understood them and could translate them. This restriction disposes at once of the modern so-called tongues which are nothing but jargon and hysteria. It so happened that here on this occasion at Pentecost there were Jews from all parts of the world, so that some one would understand one tongue and some another without an interpreter such as was needed at Corinth. The experience is identical in all four instances and they are not for edification or instruction, but for adoration and wonder and worship.

As the Spirit gave them utterance (kaywv to pneuma edidou apofyeggesyai autoiv). This is precisely what Paul claims in I Cor. 12:10,28, but all the same without an interpreter the gift was not to be exercised (I Cor. 14:6-19). Paul had the gift of tongues, but refused to exercise it except as it would be understood. Note the imperfect tense here (edidou). Perhaps they did not all speak at once, but one after another. apofyeggesyai is a late verb (LXX of prophesying, papyri). Lucian uses it of the ring of a vessel when it strikes a reef. It is used of eager, elevated, impassioned utterance. In the N.T. only here, verse 14 and 26:25. apofyegm is from this verb. (A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, III.21, 22. Broadman.)

[V. 26.] In his own language ... Locative case. Each one could understand his own language when he heard that. Every one that came heard somebody speaking in his native tongue. (Ibid, 23.)

[Various locations, glossa] tongues the language used by a particular people in distinction from that of other nations: Acts ii.11...; new tongues which the speaker has not learned previously, Mk. xvi. 17... 1 Co. xii. 10...; to speak with tongues; this, as appears from 1 Co. xiv. 7 sqq., is the gift of men who, rapt in an ecstasy and no longer quite masters of their own reason and consciousness, pour forth their glowing spiritual emotions in strange utterances, rugged, dark, disconnected, quite unfitted to instruct or to influence the minds of others: Acts x. 46; xix. 6; 1 Cor xii. 30; xiii.1; xiv. 2, 4-6, 13, 18, 23, 27, 39... (J.H. Thayer, The New Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon, 118.)

[1 Corinthians 12:10] Divers kinds of tongues ... No word for "divers" in the Greek. There has arisen a great deal of confusion concerning the gift of tongues as found in Corinth. They prided themselves chiefly on this gift which had become a source of confusion and disorder. There were varieties (kinds, gene) in this gift, but the gift was essentially an ecstatic utterance of highly wrought emotion that edified the speaker(#14:4) and was intelligible to God (14:2,28). It was not always true that the speaker in tongues could make clear what he had said to those who did not know the tongue (14:13): It was not mere gibberish or jargon like the modern "tongues," but in a real language that could be understood by one familiar with that tongue as was seen on the great Day of Pentecost when people who spoke different languages were present. In Corinth, where no such variety of people existed, it required an interpreter to explain the tongue to those who knew it not. Hence Paul placed this gift lowest of all. It created wonder, but did little real good. This is the error of the Irvingites and others who have tried to reproduce this early gift of the Holy Spirit which was clearly for a special emergency and which was not designed to help spread the gospel among men. See on Acts 2:13-21; 10:44-46; 19:6. (Robertson's Word Pictures.)

[1 Corinthians 12:10] The interpretation of tongues ...Old word, here only and 14:26 in N.T., from hermeneuo from Hermes (the god of speech). Cf. on diermeneuo in Luke 24:27; Acts 9:36. In case there was no one present who understood the particular tongue it required a special gift of the Spirit to some one to interpret it if any one was to receive benefit from it. (Ibid.)

[1 Corinthians 13:1] With the tongues (taiv glwssaiv). Instrumental case. Mentioned first because really least and because the Corinthians put undue emphasis on this gift. (Ibid.)

[1 Corinthians 14:5 all spake with tongues] Translate, "Now I wish you all to speak with tongues (so far am I from thus speaking through having any objection to tongues), but rather IN ORDER THAT (as my ulterior and higher wish for you) ye should prophesy." Tongues must therefore mean languages, not ecstatic, unintelligible rhapsodie (as NEANDER fancied): for Paul could never "wish" for the latter in their behalf. (Jameson*Fausset*Brown.)

Hastings points out that "It is significant that the Pauline notices of ‘tongue-speech' are concerned only with the Corinthian Church." Mystical, ecstatic, even demonic, utterances in supposed communication with the gods were not uncommon in Corinth. Ecstatic utterances had invaded the church from the pagan worship so prevalent in the city (1 Corinthians 14:2, 4, 13, 14, 19, 26, 27, including all the verses having unknown added by the translators). 1 Corinthians 14:9 refers to the physical tongue of man; 1 Corinthians 14:23, plural with a plural pronoun, refers to the Corinthian ecstatic utterances. Observe that chapter 14 contains a mixture of the word tongues: vv. 2, 4, 13, 19, 26 & 27, pagan ecstatic utterances; vv. 5, 6, 18 & 22, actual ethnic languages.1

Therefore, Paul says that he desires that they would indeed be able to supernaturally speak with other ethnic languages as he can, but on the other hand, he is soundly renouncing and rebuking the ecstatic utterances which are actually taking place in this church.

Let us make a quick overview of three main points from 1 Corinthians chapters 12_14, which will be covered in more detail.

First, notice Paul anchors tongues firmly in the law of Moses by citing tongues' Old Testament foundation, their time-frame and purpose, 1 Corinthians 14:21, 22, which we will develop shortly. Furthermore, Paul refers to Moses' command for women to remain silent in the church assembly and to learn from their own husbands, 14:34, 35. (A result of the fall is that the husband is commanded to instruct his wife. Genesis 3:16, Ephesians 5:22, 1 Peter 3:1. Thus, for a woman to instruct men in the church assembly is a clear violation of God's Word.) The command is followed immediately with, If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that these things that Paul writes to the church are the commandments of God, v. 37.

Second, notice Paul's list of "gifts," 1 Corinthians 12:8-10 and v. 28; tongues (ethnic languages) is listed last, strongly implying that they were the least desirable of all the gifts. (Cf. 14:5.) Whatever is done in the church is for one purpose only: to edify the church—the individual is to excel in building up the church, 14:12. Paul is quite clear in 14:4: The Corinthian ecstatic utterance were for self-edification, and was connected with the pride that Paul had to deal with in this letter. Paul makes a contrast-prophesying (preaching the whole counsel of God, Jesus Christ in his entirety. Acts 20:27; Revelation 19:10) edifies the church, while ecstatic utterances edify the individual (it makes one feel good, even better than others).

Third, we see that tongues (both ethnic languages & the Corinthian ecstatic utterance) had to be interpreted for the profit of the entire assembly, 1 Corinthians 14:5, 13, 27, 28; thus, if there was no interpretation for what was spoken, neither ethnic languages nor ecstatic utterance was permitted. In addition, Paul clearly and absolutely forbids women from taking any part in the speaking or interpretation of tongues–it is confusion, 14:33-35. What is needed in the church is clear, distinct and easily understood speaking, 14:7-12. Therefore, Paul, without actually telling them to stop the ecstatic utterances, placed severe enough restriction on them that, if they would obey him, they would stop. Notice the connection that we will come back to, 14:8—he connects tongues with the trumpet that sounded the alarm as in the Old Testament, Ezekiel 3 and 33, &c. God's messenger is to sound the trumpet of warning midst sin and evil. If the trumpet cannot be understood, what good is it?

In Paul's first letter to Corinth, he dealt with situations that developed in this church with "the gifts." In chapter 12:1, Paul starts his address on the subject of spiritual gifts. Thus, chapter 13 cannot be taken out of context from chapters 12 and 14. These three chapters (12-14) were written to deal with the outside influence of the ecstatic utterances flooding into the church from the pagan temple worship of Aphrodite. Paul made it clear to the Corinthians that their speech (glossa) had no spiritual significance before the Christian God. (1 Corinthians 14:6-11.) Furthermore, in these three chapters, Paul points out the difference between the real tongues and the ecstatic utterances that were taking place. Obviously, what was going on at Corinth was causing problems because Paul, in vv. 12-14, is not exhorting its practice. Rather, he lists its restrictions and regulations.

Paul defines Spiritual

It is important to understand that these three chapters are dealing with a problem: misunderstood spiritually. 1 Corinthians 12:1, spiritual—Paul follows the same line of thought as he did in Galatians 6:1. These Corinthians were misunderstanding what it meant to be spiritual. Because of the carry-over of the pagan idea of worship (and thus spirituality), they were associating the pagan ecstatic utterance with spirituality and communion with the heavenly Father. Notice that the word gifts is added by the translators; therefore, Paul writes the whole passage (chaps 12-14) to clear up the misunderstanding associated with spirituality. (True spirituality is defined in chapter 13. See also 1 John 3:14.)

Tongues & God's Law

Paul firmly anchored tongues (ethnic languages, not ecstatic speech) in the law, as clearly revealed in the Old Testament, and we must do the same. Tongues were a warning to unbelieving Jews of God's soon coming, and even present, national judgment. Tongues were a sign for those who knew God's Old Testament law. Tongues were a call to the nation that had forsaken its God—a call to repent and turn from its sin and back to the Lord God through Christ, 14: 21, 22. Tongues were for a sign not to them that believe already the truth of God's word, but to those who believed not. The clear preaching of God's word, prophesying, was for believers.

Here, as in all places, our final authority for all that is believed, said and practiced must be God's total law-word. (2 Timothy 3:16.) Christ Himself commanded us to search the Scripture that we might find the truth of a matter. (John 5:39, 46, 47.) Both Paul and Christ were referring to searching the Old Testament Scriptures to confirm any and every doctrine because there were no New Testament Scriptures when Christ spoke and Paul wrote. The Old Testament was safely kept in the Synagogues. The Bereans were commended as being more noble than those in Thessalonica because they searched the Old Testament Scriptures daily to confirm what they were being taught by Paul. (Acts 17:11.) Might we do the same. Any doctrine that cannot be clearly confirmed from the Old Testament is a false doctrine. (1 Timothy 1:5-11. The law defines sound doctrine. Thus, without the Mosaic law, the Ten Commandments, there can be no sound doctrine.) Therefore, we must reach back to the Old Testament, as Paul does here, to find the truth about tongues.

Isaiah & Tongues

Isaiah says that if anyone speaks not according to the law and to the testimony (of the prophets), there is no light in them. (Isaiah 8:20. See also, Luke 24:44-48.) Therefore, we have no choice but, as Paul does, to go back into the Old Testament to find the reason for the tongues of Acts 2, 10, 19, 1 Corinthians 12-14. Paul, by quoting Isaiah 28:11-12 in 1 Corinthians 14:20-22, rebukes the Corinthians for not understanding the Old Testament Scriptures in their use of "the gift of tongues." American Christians today should tremble in fear of the Lord as they read the passage Paul used to instruct the first generation of Christians.

Isaiah 28 takes place in the latter years of Hezekiah, King of Judah, 705-701 BC. Before his rule (722 BC), Assyria had invaded Palestine and the Northern Kingdom. Ephraim was destroyed. Now, many years later, Isaiah warns the people of the Southern Kingdom, Judah, that the same thing will happen to them. (Cf. Jeremiah 3:7-10.) But instead of trusting in the Lord for their deliverance from Assyria, Judah makes a deal with Egypt. Their unity with pagan Egypt brings an influx of heathen practices into the congregation of the Lord, and their hearts turn from him. In vv. 7, 8, God's prophet points to the leaders of Judah, and tells the world that they are involved in wicked evil practices—a drunken party. The leaders mock Isaiah and his warning concerning their spiritual condition. Not liking to be addressed as irresponsible children, even though they are childish, they call his teaching childishly simple. As far as they are concerned, Isaiah, a legalist preacher, speaks down to them as one would to a minor, and, considering themselves "free adults," they resent Isaiah, and sneer at his warning.

The prophet, in vv. 11-13, deals with them in the very point of their sarcasm (he continues to speak to them as children, using their scorn for God's word against them) as he makes his prophetic an-nouncement of coming judgment, vv. 14ff. Since the people will not listen to God as he speaks to draw them back to his law-word with plain and simple words that they understand and use daily, He will speak to them in a language they cannot understand, Assyrian. Now they will need an interpreter to understand the other "tongues," languages. (Isaiah 10:5-6.) When they hear the stammering lips and another tongue on the streets of Jerusalem, as well as throughout the land (i.e., the Assyrian language which they understood not), they will know that God's judgment is upon them according to Isaiah's warning. The another tongue was a sure sign pointing them directly back to Isaiah's warning of the coming judgment at which they had mocked and sneered. (Do not many of God's people mock and sneer at the thought of God's judgment against our rebellious nation?)

Moses & Tongues

The warning goes back well before Isaiah. We find the basic law for Isaiah's warning (and Paul's) warning in Deuteronomy 28:15-68 (36, 49). There Moses points out to the congregation of the Lord (the seed of Israel) that one result of God's people rejecting the Lord as their King would be servitude to a people whose tongue (language) they would not understand, which is genuine, lawful, Biblical tongues.

Parenthesis: Let me call your attention to the weather. We have seen and will continue to see some very unusual, as well as serious, weather action. Those who deny the modern validity of the Old Testament laws as applied to God's people dismiss the weather warning given in Deuteronomy 28:24ff. Regardless, the warnings are true, as man's warfare against God and his law-word result in God's nature being at war against man.

If God's people will not serve the Biblical God as their King, whose word is easily understood (Deuteronomy 30:14, Romans 10:8), they will serve the heathen, whose words they cannot understand, 47-49. Therefore, let us not suppose for a moment that the rebellious Jews to whom Isaiah and Paul spoke did not make the connection of Deuteronomy 28:45-68. There is no way they could have missed the connection, but knowing human nature as we do (we have it), they ignored the facts. "Other tongues" was, and is, a result of God's people rejecting God's rule (total authority) over them. (Cf. 1 Samuel 8.) This fact is well established in the law and prophets of God, and will not change.

According to Keil:

[Deuteronomy 28:49, 50.] The Lord would bring against it from afar a barbarous, hardhearted nation, which knew no pity. "From afar" is still further strengthened by the addition of the words, "from the end of the earth." The greater the distance off, the more terrible does the foe appear. He flies thence like an eagle, which plunges with violence upon its prey, and carries it off with its claws; and Israel does not understand its language, so as to be able to soften its barbarity, or come to any terms. A people "firm, hard of face," i.e. upon whom nothing makes an impression (vid. Isa. 1. 7),—a description of the audacity and shamelessness of its appearance (Dan. viii. 23; cf. Prov. vii. 13, xxi. 29), which spares neither old men nor boys. This description no doubt applies to the Chaldeans, who are described as flying eagles in Hab. I. 6 sqq., Jer. xlviii. 4O, xlix. 22, Ezek. xvii. 3, 7, as in the verses before us; but it applies to other enemies of Israel beside these, namely to the great imperial powers generally, the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Romans, whom the Lord raised up as the executors of His curse upon His rebellious people. Isaiah therefore depicts the Assyrians in a similar manner, namely, as a people with an unintelligible language (chap. v. 267 xxviii. 11, xxxiii. 19), and describes the cruelty of the Medes in chap. xiii. 17, 18, with an unmistakable allusion in ver. 50 of the resent threat.2

Gill comments thusly:

[Deuteronomy 28:49.] The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, &c.] Now though Babylon is represented as a country distant from Judea, and said to be a nation "from far", Jer 5:15; yet not "from the end of the earth"; as here; and though the Roman nation, strictly speaking, was not at so great a distance from Jerusalem, yet the Roman emperors, and great part of their armies brought against it, were fetched from our island of Great Britain, which in former times was reckoned the end of the earth, and the uttermost parts of the world {s}; and so Manasseh Ben Israel {t} interprets this nation of Rome, and observes, that Vespasian brought for his assistance many nations (or soldiers) out of England, France, Spain, and other parts of the world: and not only Vespasian was sent for from Britain to make war with the Jews, but when they rebelled, in the times of Adrian, Julius Severus, a very eminent general, was sent for from thence to quell them. And it appears to be a very ancient opinion of the Jews, that this passage is to be understood of the Romans, from what is related in one of their Talmuds {u}: they say, that

"Trajan, being sent for by his wife to subdue the Jews, determined to come in ten days, and came in five; he came and found them (the Jews) busy in the law on that verse, "the Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far", &c. he said unto them, what are ye busy in? they answered him, so and so; he replied to them, this is the man (meaning himself) who thought to come in ten days, and came in five; and he surrounded them with his legions, and slew them:"

[as swift] as the eagle flieth; which may respect not so much the swiftness of this creature, the words which convey the idea being a supplement of the text, as the force with which it flies when in sight of its prey, and hastes unto it and falls upon it, which is irresistible; and this is the sense of the Septuagint and Vulgate Latin versions, and is what is ascribed to the eagle by other writers {w}. Now though this figure is used of the Chaldeans and Babylonians, Jer 4:13 La 4:19 Hab 1:8; it agrees full as well or better with the Romans, because of their swiftness in coming from distant parts, and because of the force and impetus with which they invaded Judea, besieged Jerusalem, and attacked the Jews everywhere; and besides, the eagle was borne on the standard in the Roman army {x}:

a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; which, though it is also said of the language of the Chaldean nation, Jer 5:15; yet as the Chaldee and Hebrew languages were only dialects of one and the same language, common to the eastern nations, the Chaldee language, though on account of termination of words, pronunciation, and other things, might be difficult, and hard to be understood by the Jews, yet must be much more easy to understand than the Roman language, so widely different from theirs.

[{s} "____In ultimos orbis Britannos", Horat. Carmin. l. 1. Ode 35. {t} De Termino Vitae, l. 3. sect. 3. p. 129. {u} T. Hieros. Succah, fol. 55. 2. {w} Vid. Homer. Iliad. 21. l. 252. {x} Vid. Plin. Nat. Hist. l. 10. c. 4.]

Ver. 50. A nation of fierce countenance, &c.] Or, "strong of face" {y}; which aptly describes the old Romans, who are always represented as such; and whereas it is said of the Chaldeans, that they were a nation dreadful and terrible, #Hab 1:7; the same is said of the fourth beast, or Roman empire, #Da 7:7; who were a terror to all the world:

which shall not regard the person of the old, nor show favour to the young: cruel, unmerciful, and uncompassionate, to persons of whatsoever age or sex; which, as it was the character of the Chaldeans, 2Ch 36:17; so of the Romans, who especially showed no mercy to the Jews, as Josephus {z}, who was an eyewitness, testifies.

"The Romans (says he) showed no mercy to any age, out of hatred to the nation (of the Jews), and in remembrance of the injuries done to Cestius;"

one of their governors, when among them. And in another place he says {a},

"the Romans, remembering what they suffered in the siege, spared none, and showed no mercy."

[{y} ... "fortem faciebus", Montanus; "robustam facie", Vatablus. {z} De Bello Jud. l. 3. c. 7. sect. 1. {a} Ibid. sect. 34.]3

Deuteronomy 28:15-68 was fulfilled at least three times: First, it was fulfilled when Assyria moved against God's people in fulfillment of Isaiah's warning. (2 Kings 15:5, 23, 24; 18:11; 1 Chronicles 5:26. One of the symbols of Assyria was a winged lion. See Deuteronomy 28:49.) Second, it was fulfilled when God moved his servant's army, Babylon, against his people. (Jeremiah 25:9.) Third, it was fulfilled when God sent Titus against Jerusalem in AD 70:

§ I. Now, when Titus was come into this [upper] city, he admired not only some other places of strength in it, but particularly those strong towers which the tyrants, in their mad conduct, had relinquished; for when he saw their solid altitude, and the largeness of their several stones, and the exactness of their joints, as also how great was their breadth, and how extensive their length, he expressed himself after the manner following: — "We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war, and it was no other than God who ejected the Jews out of these fortifications; for what could the hands of men, or any machines, do towards overthrowing these towers!" At which time he had many such discourses to his friends; he also let such go free as had been bound by the tyrants, and were left in the prisons. To conclude, when he entirely demolished the rest of the city and overthrew its walls, he left these towers as a monument of his good fortune, which had proved his auxiliaries, and enabled him to take what could not otherwise have been taken by him.4

It is interesting that both Rome's and Hitler's ensign was an eagle, as is Americas (Ben Franklin wanted it to be a turkey). Deuteronomy 28:15-68 has been fulfilled at least three times, and after each fulfillment, God destroyed the armies he had sent against his people—God's people are still here, while Assyria's, Babylon's and Rome's long since passed into history.

The stammering lips and another tongue was/is God's judicial sign of judgment upon his people because they harden their hearts against the simple truths which Moses and the prophet Isaiah spoke. (See Romans 1:21ff.)

In Isaiah's day, the judgment came in the form of Assyria, and the speaking of the Assyrian language on the streets of Judah pointed to Isaiah's prophecy being fulfilled—they could not understand the language without an interpreter. In Jeremiah's day, the tongues were Chaldean. In Paul's day, the tongues were Roman – Latin. God's people had again degenerated into an apostate nation, and had rejected the true prophet, Christ the Messiah, and his warnings. No doubt if he had come as a worldly king with military might or as an elite man of some kind, they might have lis-tened to him, but he did not. He came as a humble servant of God; he came with a simple and plain message that the common man could readily understand, identify with and accept, and the elite rejected and killed him. Christ warned of the horrible judgment that would come as the result of their rejection of the Son. (Matthew 21-24.) In fact, he said that the former judgments would be nothing compared to the one that was coming, 24:21, 22. Assyria, as terrible as it was, would pale compared to the punishment in store for Christ's crucifixion:

2. And now, since his soldiers were already quite tired with killing men, and yet there appeared to be a vast multitude still remaining alive, Caesar gave orders that they should kill none but those that were in arms, and opposed them, but should take the rest alive. But, together with those whom they had orders to slay, they slew the aged and the infirm; but for those that were in their flourishing age, and who might be useful to them, they drove them together into the temple, and shut them up within the walls of the court of the women; over which Caesar set one of his freed men, as also Fronto, one of his own friends, which last was to determine every one's fate, according to his merits. So this Fronto slew all those that had been seditious and robbers, who were impeached one by another; but of the young men he chose out the tallest and most beautiful, and reserved them for the triumph; and as for the rest of the multitude that were above seventeen years old, he put them into bonds, and sent them to the Egyptian mines.* Titus also sent a great number into the provinces, as a present to them, that they might be destroyed upon their theaters, by the sword and by the wild beasts, but those that were under seventeen years of age were sold for slaves. Now during the days wherein Fronto was distinguishing these men, there perished, for want of food, eleven thousand; some of whom did not taste any food, through the hatred their guards bore to them; and others would not take in any when it was given them. The multitude also was so very great, that they were in want even of corn for their sustenance.

3. Now the number† of those that were carried captive during this whole war was collected to be ninety-seven thousand; as was the number of those that perished during the whole siege eleven hundred thousand, the greater part of whom were indeed of the same nation [with the citizens of Jerusalem], but not belonging to the city itself; for they were come up from all the country to the feast of unleavened bread, and were on a sudden shut up by an army, which, at the very first, occasioned so great a straitness among them that there came a pestilential destruction upon them, and soon afterward such a famine, as destroyed them more suddenly. And that this city could contain so many people in it is manifest by that number of them which was taken under Cestius, who being desirous of informing Nero of the power of the city, who otherwise was disposed to contemn that nation, entreated the high-priests, if the thing were possible, to take the number of their whole multitude...

* See the several predictions that the Jews, if they became obstinate in their idolatry and wicked less, should be sent again, or sold into Egypt, for their punishment, Deut. xxviii, 68; Jer. xliv, 7; Hos. viii, 13; ix, 3; xi, 35; Esd. xv, 10-14, with Authentic Records, part. I, p. 49, 121, and Reland Palestina, tom. ii, p. 715.

† The whole multitude of the Jews that were destroyed during the entire seven years before this time, in all the countries of and bordering on Judea is summed up by Archbishop Usher, from Lipsius, out of Joseph, at the year of Christ 70, and amounts to 1,337,490. Nor could there have been that number of Jews in Jerusalem to be destroyed in this siege, as will be presently set down by Josephus, but that both Jews and proselytes of justice were just then come up out off the other countries of Galilee, Samaria, Judea, and Perea, and other remoter regions, to the Passover, in vast numbers and therein cooped up, as in a prison, by the Roman army, as Josephus himself well observes, in this and the next section, and as is exactly related elsewhere, b. v, ch. iii, sect. I; and chap. xiii, sec. 7.5

Signs & Tongues

After the crucifixion of the Son of God and before the final destruction of the Jewish nation, the sign of tongues reappeared. To the Jews who knew the law (Deuteronomy 28) and the prophets (Isaiah 28), it meant only one thing—judgment. Other tongues (ethnic languages) were not new to them; it had happened in the past. ("If it is new, it's not true; if it is true, it's not new.") In the middle of Paul's significant warning concerning the proper use of tongues (1 Corinthians 14), we have his reference to Isaiah 14:21. Paul clearly identifies tongues in the same context as did Isaiah—a sure sign of judgment for rejecting God's warning. The Roman language that would be spoken on the streets of Jerusalem would not be understood without an interpreter.

"But that's Old Testament. Because of Christ, we do not have to worry about any such thing happening to us as happened to God's people of old." However, such a foolish statement cannot be found in Scripture. Quite the contrary! Paul warns us of what happens to every person, Jew and Gentile, who, knowing the Christian God, refuses to glorify him as God in their every thought and action:

But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: For there is no respect of persons with God. (Romans 1:21; 2:8-11. See all of Romans 2.)

Thus indignation and wrath, Tribulation and anguish came upon the Jews first in the form of Assyria, Babylon and Rome for their refusal to glorify God, the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, with their personal, religious, social and national lives. Paul clearly tells us that God, being no respecter of persons, will also send indignation and wrath, Tribulation and anguish against the Gentiles for the same offence.

Similarities

Something that is quite amazing in the passage we are considering is the context in which Paul quotes Isaiah's warning, and the resistance (even anger) exhibited by the Jewish leaders against Isaiah, accusing him of treating them like children. (Read Isaiah 28, for it is basic, or Paul would not have used it.) Both Isaiah and Paul are dealing with immature people who claimed to be God's people. However, they were children whose pride and rebellion caused them to harden against being treated like and spoken to as children.

Children

Our Lord said, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Mark 10:15.) It is not hard at all to follow this call to humility and conversion as the gospel of the kingdom goes out from the very first day that Christ taught it to the last days of Paul as he taught it. (Matthew 3:2; Acts 28:31.) The idea of becoming as little children would have struck at the very heart of the rebellious nation, as once again the religious leaders became hostile at the thought of being treated like children. In fact, having to put on the spirit of a child is enough to make any "natural man" hostile. But not only is child-likeness required in order to enter into the kingdom of heaven, but it is required to advance in his kingdom. Stephen told the religious leaders (as did every other preacher of the gospel, including Christ) that they were the same pious, rebellious, stiff-necked, proud, hardhearted, hypocritical men as were their fathers who mocked and sneered at Isaiah's instruction, a fact that did not win friends and influence people for Stephen any more than it did for Christ. (Acts 7:51-60.)

Moving to the middle of Paul's instruction in chapter 14, v. 20, we see that his warning against childishness fits in with the situation in which Isaiah spoke. (1 Corinthians 14:21—Isaiah 28:11.) Isaiah was rejected by the Jewish leaders because he was treating them like children. Paul tells the folks at Corinth something like this: "Don't continue in your childish attitudes as your fathers did in Isaiah's time. Grow up! Remember, the reason for other tongues is to speak to a rebellious, stubborn, stiff-necked people who will not hear the plain, easily understood law-word of God, saith the Lord. When your fathers rejected the clear, plain message of repentance toward God and faith in Christ, they had to listen to other tongues—an ethnic and unintelligible language of a foreign invader. Your fathers needed an interpreter to understand what was being said." Paul's thought continues: "The another tongues Isaiah referred to had nothing to do with salvation or with being spiritual; rather, it is a sign of judgment which is either al-ready here or is coming."

Also, notice Paul's indictment against this church for being childish. (1 Corinthians 13:11, 14:20.) The Supernatural ability to speak an unknown (to the speaker) foreign language was being used with pride, as a child would be lifted up with pride over abilities he had and he considered superior to another's abilities. Paul points out that child-likeness is only commendable in the matter of malice, not in understanding. He tells them to grow up. Again, the connection is significant as he moves from this exhortation into the quote from Isaiah. The context of both Paul and Isaiah has to do with childishness and maturity.6

Paul's 13 guidelines

Note some significant points made by Paul as he tries to instruct this worldly, immature and childish church concerning the proper use of tongues. Remember, the ecstatic utterances from the pagan worship had infiltrated this church, and was being mistaken for something godly and spiritual. We have already noted Paul's distinction between their ecstatic speech and true spiritually. We will not cover the whole chapter (1 Cor. 14) but will quickly mention thirteen guidelines which Paul establishes for the proper use of tongues.

1) The other tongues, as used in chapter 14, is the power given by the Holy Spirit to speak in a literal, foreign language, unknown to the speaker—an obvious fact from the passage. Referring back to either the situation with the Assyrians or with the Romans, the context of chapter 14 would be something like this: The people did not understand Rome's language, for it was unknown. A person not knowing Rome's language has the supernatural ability from God to speak it. T-hose around him do not understand Rome's language either, so the speaker needs an interpreter to translate -his words into a common language, so his hearers can understand him. Paul says it is crazy to speak in a language that requires an interpreter when one can speak in the common language and present a message easily understood by all. (1 Corinthians 14:1-12.)

In all three cases, Assyrian, Chaldean and Roman, tongues were a foreign language for which the hearers needed an interpreter to understand. (Deuteronomy 28:49; Isaiah 28:11. Cf. all of Acts, esp. chap. 2.) Anything other than this scenario of an actual foreign language would have to be the ecstatic speech carried over from paganism, which Paul vehemently stands against. He tells the immature Christians at Corinth to quit seeking the childish things and grow up, e.g., "Sure, it makes one feel good to be able to supernaturally speak in a foreign language not understood by others, but what good is it to speak in mysteries that only God can understand? It's so much better to speak in the com-mon language of those present." Paul says that he would rather speak five words in easily understood language than ten thousand words unintelligible to his hearers. (1 Corinthians 14:19.)

If it were not so obviously fraud against their hearers, we could find it amusing that those who claim supernatural gifts of speaking in tongues must have interpreters when they go to foreign countries to speak. How can they claim the supernatural gift of tongues is from God if they cannot even preach the gospel in an unknown (to them) native tongue? In other words, their tongues are ecstatic utterances, a hold-over from the ecstatic utterance that had invaded the Corinthian church from the pagan worship so prevalent in that city.

2) Prophecy, not tongues, was to be desired, 14:1-5. The desirable thing is the ability to explain the practical applications of God's law-word, and how to ap-ply them to life, which alone will build God's people. Everything done within the church is to be for the benefit of the body of believers. The purpose of the public assembly is to admonish one another, to build up and strengthen one another, and to be an encouragement and help. (Hebrews 10:25.) When we consider the true purpose of tongues (warning of God's wrath upon the rebellious Jewish nation), we can see how tongues would not "edify" a church. They would edify an individual and lead to vast amounts of pride, e.g., "I'm special because God is using me to speak to that person about God's judgment to come." (Yes, I see 14:5, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying. We will see more of this as we continue.)

3) Tongues were not spontaneous, 14:2, 28, 32, etc. There were several conditions that had to be met.

4) 14:8 is an interesting comparison—speech is compared to a trumpet that sounds an alarm. (Num. 10:5; Jer. 4:19; 6:17; 42:14.) Paul calls tongues an uncertain trumpet, an uncertain alarm for battle. In fact, any-thing not easily understood would leave the people unprepared for battle—the battle was against personal, social, religious and national evil and wickedness.

5) [T]ongues were for a sign ... to them which believe not. When the hardened, unbelieving Jew heard the tongues (supernatural speaking in a foreign language that was his native tongue), the tongues would speak to him of the coming judgment against his hard-ness and rebellion because he would know both Moses and Isaiah, v. 22.

6) However, to the unlearned (those not knowing the law of Moses) and to the unbelieving Gentile (who also would not know the law), tongues would be madness, v. 23.

7) It was to be the preaching of the gospel of Christ and of eternal judgment to come that would cause the visitor to believe, v. 24. It is the clear, easily understood presentation of the gospel that reveals the heart, causing conviction and conversion, vv. 24, 25. (1 Corinthians 1:21T.; Hebrews 4:12, 13.)

Looking through Acts, we see that in every instance of tongues there were unbelieving Jews present—that is, unbelieving in the gospel (Acts 2), unbelieving in the Holy Spirit (we have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost, Acts 19:2), or unbelieving that the gospel should go to the Gentiles (Acts 10).

1 Corinthians 12-14: The purpose of Paul's instruction is to clear up the misunderstanding of what is spiritual. The Corinthians were under the delusion that the ecstatic utterances from pagan worship were a sign of being in close fellowship with the Holy God of heaven and earth. First, Paul said the supernatural ability to speak in an unlearned and unknown foreign language was the least impor-tant of all the gifts. Why do we need to speak in a foreign tongue when our message can be so much more effective in the common language? Paul's second guideline was to only use what will edify the complete body of believers within the church—the ability to speak in a foreign tongue edified only the speaker. Third, tongues (ethnic languages) must be interpreted by the man who speaks them—a message in a foreign language that cannot be understood by the hearers is useless. It would be absurd to use a supernatural ability to speak in another language that the hearers cannot comprehend, 14:5. Fourth, the ability to speak in an unknown foreign language was to warn the hardened unbelieving Jews that judgment was on its way—soon he would witness on the streets of his own hometown an invading army (Mexican!!) whose language he would need an interpreter to understand. This was backed up by the law and the prophets. Judgment was coming upon the Jewish nation for rejecting the plain, clear, child-like message of God (the Messiah) which had been in their own language and easily understood. Obviously then, there had to be an unbelieving Jew present for supernatural tongues (ethnic languages) to be of God. (See Matthew 23:34-39.)

Continuing with Paul's instructions:

8) Speaking in a foreign language could not be uncontrolled, for it always had to be planned, orderly and subject to the speaker, 14:32-34, 40.

9) At the most, there could only be three speakers, and then only one at a time could speak, vv. 2, 27.

10) Furthermore, there had to be a per-son present who could translate what was said into the common language of the assembly, v. 28. If there was no one who could translate (explain) what was said, then either the speaker had to do it (v. 5), or he had to keep quiet.

11) As already mentioned, there had to be an unbelieving Jew present because when the speaker spoke in the foreign language of that Jew's birth, that unbelieving Jew would understand and know from the law and the prophets about the judgment to come against his unbelief, v. 22. As the speaker spoke in the unbelieving Jew's language, for the rest of the church to understand, either an interpreter or the speaker himself must explain what was said.

12) Probably one of the more important restrictions placed by Paul on the use of tongues is found in vv. 34, 35: tongues were, without exception, absolutely forbidden to women in the churches. The purpose of tongues was to "preach" to the unbelieving (yet knowledgeable of Moses) Jew, and he would know that women were forbidden to take any speaking or leadership authority in the assembly of God's people; they were required to be under subjection to their own husbands in their homes. (Ephesians 5:22-24; 1 Timothy 2:11-12.) The situation at the city of Corinth makes this a very important point: Corinth was famous for its immorality with its temple prostitutes (one thousand were kept in the temple). One of the signs that these prostitutes (priestesses) were in close communion with their gods was their ecstatic utterances during the temple rituals of sexual orgies. And thus we have Paul's firm statement, for it is a shame for women to speak in church, v. 35, referring to either preaching or usurping authority over the men of the church (of course, preaching is the exercise of authority based upon God's word). The ability to speak in the foreign language of that unbelieving Jew's birth was a sign to him; however, to an unbelieving Jew, a woman was little better than a slave. (Only Christianity elevates women to the status of respect and honor, 1 Peter 3:7.) Under no circumstances would an unbelieving Jew in Paul's day have listened to a woman speak from any position in a Christian assembly—a woman speaking would completely destroy the purpose of tongues. (The Jewish man thanked God for three things every day: that he wasn't a publican, that he wasn't a Gentile and that he wasn't a woman.)

13) Tongues were not to be forbidden, 14:39. In Paul's day, before the judgment against Jerusalem of which tongues spoke, tongues were needed, and to forbid them would be to forbid the Spirit of God from expressing his warning message of judgment through his chosen vessel. Judgment was at the door; Jerusalem was on the very threshold of being completely overturned, heaped up in a pile, burned and, as Josephus says, her foundations plowed with a yoke of oxen. The Israelite/Jewish race, as known in the Old Testament, was on the verge of extinction, so God continued to send warnings to that race right up to the day Jerusalem was sealed by Rome with millions inside.

Pray

In addition, notice these two points about v. 14: first, pray in this verse does not mean "addressed to God" as in Matthew 21:22, &c. Rather, it means "to offer prayers, to pray, (everywhere of prayers to the gods, or to God)" as in Matthew 6:5, where the Pharisees depended on their loud, long public prayers to be heard by the Lord. (Cf. Mark 12:40.) The word pray (1 Corinthians 14:14) can refer to either empty words spoken into the air or meaningful words. It is used twice in Matthew 6:5, once for proper and once for improper prayer.7 Therefore, claiming that pray (ecstatic utterance) in v. 14 is words spoken to the Father stretches the context beyond Scriptural recognition. Scripture is clear: there is no direct approach to the Father through words or any other means. All who come to the Father must come through Christ. (John 14:6, 13, &c.) Therefore, the only prayer which the Father hears is through Christ. Second, my spirit, not the Holy Spirit—in other words, "My spirit can, by some circumstance, be moved to an utterance." (Many leaders know how to use emotions to produce their desired effects, e.g., ecstatic utterances and/or large "gifts." Note Paul's final remark on this subject, vv. 37, 38.)

The best thing is to testify of Christ, preach the gospel, apply his law-word to the whole of life and thought, and do not forbid tongues, as long as they meet the conditions established by Paul to prevent their misuse. (Chaps. 12-14.) Of course, those conditions can-not be met today, but if tongues were "active" today, they no doubt would be something like 14:18. Paul, as he traveled around into the many foreign lands, undoubtedly did not know all of the lan-guages of those nations, so God gave him the ability to sound God's alarm for battle by preaching in languages he did not know.

Ecstatic utterances at Corinth were a carry-over from the pagan temple worship. Biblical tongues was the supernatural ability to speak an unknown foreign language: As God's warning message was delivered in the Christian assemblies in tongues, it spoke to the hearts of the unbelieving Jewish hearers. The result was to be their repentance of sin and turning to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul said, "You are proud of your spirituality, but let me show you what true spirituality really is." Then he moves into chapter 13: True spirituality is defined as humility and love for one another shown by actions, not by any "supernatural ability" one might think he has. (See all of 1 John.) Love is shown by rejoicing over someone's conversion, by encouraging others when the person takes a stand for Christ, by unity among the body of Christ, by a willingness to do for one another, by Biblical rebuke and correction when required, and by a genuine family spirit among the body of believers. (1 Corinthians 12:12-31, 13:1-13.)

The pagan's definition of close, spiritual contact with their gods (ecstatic utterances) had crept into the Corinthian church, and the people claimed spirituality and love for God because they could imitate the pagans. Paul points out that what they had was not true spirituality, chapter 13.

Genuine Tongues in America

1. American Christianity, as a whole, is as pagainized as was Corinth's and Israel's of old. America's religious leaders, as Israel's of old, have ignored God's warnings, united with pagans and have mocked and are mocking God's law-word and God's men. Not only the religious leaders, but also a vast majority of God's people resist hearing or have denied the validity of God's law-word.

Some time ago, a grandfather told me of his 18 year old grandson (who likes to ride bulls in rodeos) who had been attending church with his girlfriend. At that church one evening with his girlfriend, a sodomite made a pass at him. When they sat down in the youth meeting, the sodomite sat next to him. During the meeting, the sodomite started running his hand up the inside of the boy's leg. The boy hit the sodomite hard, knocking him back through a couple rows of folding chairs. The people of the church and the pastor sided with the sodomite. The pastor called, asking the boy if they could work out the problem between the boy and the sodomite. The young man said he would not return to a church that condoned such behavior as that church was doing with the sodomite.

As we know, under sodomite pressure, San Francisco voted to do business only with companies recognizing sodomite "domestic partners," as one would recognize legitimate marriages. Even the Roman Catholic Church caved in when San Francisco threatened to cut off 5 million in aid to it if it did not comply.

According to pollster George Barna, born-again Christians in modern America actually have a higher rate of divorce (27%) than nonbelievers (23%); those who describe themselves as fundamentalists have the highest percentage of all (33%) (Servant, back in fall of 1997. No doubt it is worse today).8

2. Generally, America's "Christians" have refused to hear the Christian God's warnings concerning His wrath against sin as found in his word. So God is now speaking to America from every corner of the nation: restaurants, vacation spots, fast-food places, grocery stores, work places, even through uncounted foreign troops on American soil. God is calling to his people in America to repent of their fornication, adultery, murder, sodomy, wickedness and general indifference to the social chaos around them. He is speaking to his people in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German, etc. Will they listen? Probably no more than did Israel of old to whom Isaiah spoke.

3. Other tongues on America's streets and in the work place are, according to God's law and his prophets, the result of rejecting God's rule over us. The other tongues now being spoken in every corner of America can clearly be traced to the same problem dealt with by Isaiah and by Paul: The vast majority of those who profess to be God's people refuse to make their Christian profession relevant to their society. They remain unconcerned about the surrounding evil, thereby forcing God to send in his troops, armies of foreign soldiers and workers.

End Notes

1 Encyclopaedia, III.371a; The Pulpit Commentary, XIX.397; The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible, by Spiros Zodhiates, 1436, 1438.
2 Keil, 1.442.
3 OnLine Bible.
4 Josephus, Wars, Book VI, Ch IX.1. There is a seventh or eighth century Anglo-Saxon legend, translated from the Latin in 1851, that says Titus was converted, and then sent his armies to punish the Jews for putting Christ to death. The text is from a MS in the Cambridge Library, which was presented to the Cathedral of Exeter by Bishop Leoric in the beginning of the eleventh century. Ante-Nicene Fathers, viii.472ff.
5 Josephus, Wars, Book VI, Chap IX.2, 3.
6 The Romans, as they moved in judgment against the rebellious Jewish nation, camped at the place that was called, "The Camp of Assyrians." Furthermore, neither the Jews nor the Romans could understand each other; therefore, both needed an interpreter to understand the other. Josephus acted as an interpreter. Ibid, Book V, chp. VII.2; chp. ix.2.
7 See The New Thayer's Greek_English Lexicon, 545.
8 Bob Jones University, What in the World, 22.10.

DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA

I realize that articles along the following line cause people to believe I am anti-everything. But these things come to my attention, and though I cannot do much, I can pass on my concerns. Hopefully, those who read these collections of facts will act on them, or at least pass them on.

God does give his grace to a few to see the need to extract themselves from the heresies in which we have been so well trained.

Home Education has a chance of rescuing a generation out of the bondage, yes, slavery, to the Federal Government's education system's training in heresies, both Biblical and Constitutional. The Federal Government is only against slavery that does not serve its purpose. Knowing the truth, we still have allowed the truth to be exchanged for lies by the government education system. The result is that God has given up our nation to vile affections. Romans 1:19-26.

Sadly, the Radicals, both Republicans and Democrats, have prepared the way for the destruction of the "rule of Constitutional law" so that it does not apply to the ones in power. They have done this by instructing a generation in constitutional heresies with the government school system. The Radicals, Bush, Cheney, &c., have become a law unto themselves, as they claim that they now establish law – the "rule of law" is for everyone except those in power. The Constitution and laws against torture, warrant-less spying, &c., do not apply to them. Where will it stop? When will Christians understand what is taking place?

See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021602155_pf.html.

Letters

My stand against Radicals, whether Republicans or Democrats (in this case, Bush), receives complaints:

Michael from Michigan wrote:

You will please remove me from your mailing list: ...

I read your article "Christians Willingly Deceived?" and was amased [sic] and appalled at the level of ignorance and sheer stupidity of its contents. It was quite obvious from the tone and misinformation and unfounded attacks, I dare say outright lies, that you and your group are stooges of the Democratic Party. Bush planned the 911 attack?!!!!! You have to be one of the most gullible and easily deceived people on the planet! If you want to see a truely [sic] intrusive, Big Brother, evil form of government, you need look no farther than the Democrats, ie. the latest Democrat appointed Supreme Court decision allowing Immenent [sic] Domain confiscation of personal property. The hate Crime push that tries to be your thought police - try to preach the Gospel in Canada with all their Hate Crime laws and you will be arrested - the Democrats would have the U.S.the same as Canada.

If the Patriot Act has you scared, I suggest that you must have something to hide. If you think that the 911 attack was known for sometime, then again, you can blame the Democrats for not doing anything - they were the ones in power - you IDIOT. I have no need for any more of your ridiculous blitherings to be showing up at my door. Take my name off your mailing list and get down on your knees and pray for true discernment before you print any more lies, half truths and Democratic Party propaganda. His wrath is what you should be more concerned with in my opinion. [End]

Sadly, Michael's response is all too typical, as he feels that I have unduly criticized his god. Few issues where I have criticized King Bush do not result in requests to be dropped. The Radicals have done their job of educating Christians well, for many Christians feel the Republicans, Bush &Co., can do no wrong. Bush has become their god. How wrong they are as they allow the Radicals to completely destroy the country in which we were reared.

The Truth – Bush's Patriot Act in practice.

Pay off your credit cards, get labeled a terrorist suspect?

Pay too much and you could raise the alarm, by BOB KERR


The Providence (RI) Journal reported in a column a few days ago titled, ‘Pay too much and you could raise the alarm,' shows just how far Congress as a whole has gone in furthering a police state. Retired school teacher, Walter Soehnge and his wife relocated from Texas. When Walter and his wife determined their JC Penny Platinum Master Card balance was too high, they decided to make a hefty payment to bring it down. They wrote a check in the amount of $6,522.00 and sent it off to the bank. Guess what? The payment was red flagged and their account was not credited. Soehnge discovered after working his way through endless phone calls, that because their monthly payment was larger than normal, "Homeland Security" had to be notified! Eventually, after an endless hassle that he should never have had to waste his time pursuing, Soehnge's money was released and his account credited. (The Providence Journal, 28-FEB-06)

Another letter:

Mr. Williamson points out:

... The good news is, I did receive your package with the latest Biblical Examiner so at least the post office did not goof that up. I think it is appropriate for you to continue the criticism of Bush, among other subjects, because this is a subject that is too hot for other Christians to touch, because our all churches have been turned into Republican clubs dedicated to the principle that Bush is always right and it is our duty to support him like zombies. I see that there is a rising tide of criticism of Bush among political conservatives and Republicans, but among us in the Christian Right it is a sin for us to question the President in any way, but of course if a Democratic President is sworn into office on January 20, 2009, then all of the sudden it will no longer be a mortal sin for fundies to criticize the Purressident but by then it will be too late to save our conservative social agenda, which even the Republicans do not seem to care all that much about anyway. ...

I don't remember if that was mentioned already in the Biblical Examiner, maybe you already mentioned it - I am just saying that I wish the news media in general would say more about it. Don't know where the guy in Michigan got the idea you were a Democrat stooge - I thought you were with the Constitutionalist Party! - T.W.

Things like the above reveal that the Radicals controlling "our" federal government are determined to give away the store. Their control of the school system in the US has been effective, as they have educated in Constitutional heresies, so the general population will accept whatever is fed to them. (Lord willing, we will deal with education in Constitutional heresies in the next Examiner.)

Another letter

Dear Sir,

I have just received my first copy of The Biblical Examiner January 2006. It is great. It is very informative. It has information that you do not see in other religious publications. I am looking forward to receiving the next Biblical Examiner. Keep up the good work.

Ray D.

Another:

Brother Need

So good to hear from you by way of the Biblical Examiner. We look forward to each edition and stand with you on so much of what you see as unbiblical in our "upside-down" world.

Please accept our gift for your faithfulness to His word, and your diligence in addressing these issues in the examiner. Your stance on home education is most encouraging to our family as it helps to "sharpen" each of us line iron on iron.

Could you also send the book on Christian Modesty by Jeff Pollard.

Thank you and may the Lord keep you in good health and continue to bless your wonderful family.

In Christ, Michael, Barbara, Paige and Blake. – Erie PA

Dubai Debacle

*Some in Congress Object to Arab Port Operator*

Company Based in United Arab Emirates Set to Manage 6 East Coast Facilities After Takeover

By Paul Blustein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, February 17, 2006; A11

The management of major U.S. ports taken over by an Arab-owned company? What was the Bush administration thinking when it allowed such a thing?

That is the question being asked by members of Congress from both parties. Their indignation is aimed at the $6.8 billion purchase by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned company in the United Arab Emirates, of a firm that handles most operations at ports in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. ...
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/16/AR2006021602304.html?referrer=email>

Debacle Continued

Unsurprisingly, the government secretly sanctioned the deal. "The Dubai purchase was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States;" the Times reported, "which does not usually disclose information about its deliberations." And just to ice the deal for the high and mighty elites, "in mid-January, President Bush nominated a senior executive of Dubai Ports World, David Sanborn, to run the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration. Mr. Sanborn had been running the company's operations in Europe and Latin America:"

One marvels that Bush appointed an executive of DPW to a marquee position in his administration, yet knew nothing of the deal that the executive's employer was consummating to establish financial control of major American ports. Also, Bush's Treasury Secretary, John W. Snow, was formerly the chief executive officer of CSX, which sold its container handling division to DPW in 2004.

But GOP connections to DPW aren't the only reason the ports deal is suspect. Clan Bush is tightly plugged in to the UAE through several outlets, not least of which is the Carlyle Group, the planetary investment company long known for its relationship to both presidents Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker. Both presidents have worked for the group. and it recently hauled in a cash infusion of 5100 million from the state-owned Dubai Investment Corporation.

And if that isn't enough. presidential brother Neil Bush, the Gull News reported, has earned plenty of frequent flyer miles jetting to Dubai. On October 14, 2001, just after the attacks of 9/11, Bush landed in Dubai to meet with several high UAE officials, not least of whom was Sheik Mohammed ibn Rashid al Maktum, whose importance will he clarified in due course. In January 2002, Neil Bush resurfaced in Dubai to broker the products of his educational software company, Ignite!.

Again, despite these personal and political links to the UAE, Bush knew nothing of the ports deal. (New American, 3/20/06. P 12)

... The UAE is a major destination for women sex slaves, the Bush State Department reported in June 2005, as well as imported child slaves, stolen or purchased from other countries, who serve as camel jockeys. ...

[Not only has Bush supported illegal immigration, even offering them permits to establish legal residency] he also supports handing Social Security benefits to these criminal aliens. ... Frighteningly, columnist Joe Farah recently reported, Bush has sealed a deal with Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz to bring 10,000 Saudi "students" into the United States. It will also permit 25,000 such scholars to enter the United States legally, at the Saudi government's expense, over the next five years [with the same kind of visas carried by some of the 9/11 hijackers]. (Ibid., p 16)

Bush's answer to the terrorists threat is to open the US up to more illegal foreign invasion, yet establish the unconstitutional "homeland security" with the authority to trace the activities of legal citizens.

The government now wants to scrutinize the private lives of all Americans: their financial transactions, their e-mail, their phone calls, their political activities. (Ibid., p 17)

See Also: Is Carlyle Group at heart of DPW deal? Posted: March 3, 2006. By Jerome R. Corsi WorldNetDaily.com

What does Dubai Ports World have in common with CSX, Treasury Secretary John Snow, and the Bush Family? The Carlyle Group is the answer currently gaining ground on the Internet. ...

UAE TO TAKE CONTROL OF 9 US MILITARY FACILITIES

NewsWithViews, 3/10/06. By Pastor Chuck Baldwin

Not only does President George W. Bush intend to grant the United Arab Emirates control of U.S. sea ports, he also intends to grant the UAE control of several U.S. military facilities. ...

People need to realize that the Dubai companies are owned and operated by the government of the United Arab Emirates. These are not private corporations. Does everyone understand what is happening? President Bush wants to give port security and the control of at least nine U.S. military facilities to a FOREIGN GOVERNMENT. ...

However, rather than pressure against the administration's illegal activities, the pressure is against those who reveal illegal activities.

White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks

Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted

By Dan Eggen. Washington Post Staff Writer. Sunday, March 5, 2006; A01

The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws. ...

... Rockefeller points to the case of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer whose identity was leaked to the media. A grand jury investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald resulted last year in the jailing of Judith Miller, then a reporter at the New York Times, for refusing to testify, and in criminal charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who resigned as Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. In court papers, Libby has said that his "superiors" [would be Bush/Cheney] authorized him to disclose a classified government report. ...

Even more distressing is the following:

GLOBALISM GOVERNANCE—A United Nations that seeks to impose its presumed authority on the American people, without their consent, begs for confrontation. A UN that serves the purpose for which it was designed, would not respect U.S. authority, since the UN was designed to be the framework for a future world government (2/28/02 New Amer). David Rockefeller recently said: "We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order." (Calvary Contender, Nov.-Dec. 2005. http://home.hiwaay.net/~contendr/11-12-2005.html)

CHINA IN CHARGE OF US SECURITY

CHICOMS TO CONTROL NUCLEAR DETECTION 65 MILES FROM U.S.

"One of Americans' favorite beach destinations, the Bahamas, is getting a new U.S. arrival – sophisticated equipment to detect radioactive materials in shipping cargo."

"But U.S. customs agents won't be on site to supervise the machine's use as a nuclear safeguard for the American shoreline that is just 65 miles away from Freeport. Under an unusual arrangement, a Hong Kong company will help operate the detector."

A NO-BID DEAL WITHOUT U.S. CUSTOMS INSPECTION

"The Bush administration says it is finalizing a no-bid contract with Hutchison Whampoa Ltd. It acknowledged the deal is the first time a foreign company will be involved in running a radiation detector at an overseas port without American customs agents present. …"

CAN WE TRUST BEIJING TO DEFEND AMERICA?

"While President Bush recently reassured Congress that foreigners would not manage security at U.S. ports, the Hutchison deal in the Bahamas illustrates how the administration is relying on foreign companies at overseas ports to safeguard cargo headed to the United States.

"Hutchison Whampoa is the world's largest ports operator.… its billionaire chairman, Li Ka-Shing, also has substantial business ties to China's government that have raised U.S. concerns over the years.

" ‘Li Ka-Shing is pretty close to a lot of senior leaders of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party,' said Larry M. Wortzel, head of a U.S. government commission that studies China security and economic issues. …

" ‘One can conceive legitimate security concerns and would hope either the Homeland Security Department or the intelligence services of the United States work very hard to satisfy those concerns,' Wortzel said.

"Three years ago, the Bush administration effectively blocked a Hutchison subsidiary from buying part of a bankrupt U.S. telecommunications company, Global Crossing Ltd., on national security grounds.

"And a U.S. military intelligence report, once marked ‘secret,' cited Hutchison in 1999 as a potential risk for smuggling arms and other prohibited materials into the United States from the Bahamas.

ALLY OF PRC'S PEOPLE'S LIBERATION ARMY WINS THE NO-BID CONTRACT FROM GWB

"Hutchison's port operations in the Bahamas and Panama ‘could provide a conduit for illegal shipments of technology or prohibited items from the West to the PRC (People's Republic of China), or facilitate the movement of arms and other prohibited items into the Americas,' the now-declassified assessment said. …

"A lawmaker who opposed the DP World deal expressed concern about the Bahamas deal, [as] did some security experts. They questioned whether the U.S. should pay a foreign company with ties to China to keep radioactive material out of the United States.

" ‘Giving a no-bid contract to a foreign company to carry out the most sensitive security screening for radioactive materials at ports abroad raises many questions,' said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. …"

FOREIGN WORKERS WILL HAVE ACCESS TO U.S. SECRETS

" ‘Money buys a lot of things,' Robert Sheridan said. ‘The fact that foreign workers would have access to how the United States screens various containers for nuclear material and how this technology scrutinizes the containers – all those things allow someone with a nefarious intention to thwart the screening.' ...

(Associated Press, FoxNews.com, 3/24/06. Howard Phillips Issues and Strategy Bulletin #786, March 31)

Shunned in America

AUSTRALIAN NAT. TELEVISION AIRS 9-11 DOCUMENTARY

David M. Bresnahan. (February 5, 2006 @ NewsWithViews.com)

VERSAILLES, MO. — Perhaps the most controversial documentary produced about the 9-11 attacks was recently aired on Australia's "TEN" television network and placed second in the ratings.

Despite efforts to suppress the information and questions raised in "911 - In Plane Site," an increasing number of military experts and commercial airline pilots are coming forward to support and validate the information contained in the documentary. Many are now calling for a re-opening of the investigation into the September 11 attacks.

The 90-minute program was aired nation-wide in Australia and resulted in a much higher than usual response from viewers.

"Normally, we receive 12 to 24 calls after airing a TV show. After airing ‘911 - In Plane Site' we received 548 calls. Only 8 were negative," said Monica Forlano of the "TEN" program scheduling department. Callers requested that the show be aired a second time.

E-mails poured into the producers of "911 - In Plane Site" expressing support and appreciation for the production, as well as sadness, fear and anger because of the apparent cover-up of facts about the tragedy, according to the report in the documentary.

Dave vonKleist, producer of the documentary, said he is hopeful that the attention the video has received in Australia will prompt U.S. networks to give serious consideration to airing the program.

"The compelling evidence presented so authoritatively in the documentary needs to be shown to the people of the world. The story we have been told and the evidence just do not match. The American people have a right to see this," said vonKleist.

"Every country has been dramatically affected by 9-11, and the evidence indicates that we all have been lied to by government officials. The public and the media have been deceived. Journalists have a responsibility to be the eyes and ears of the public, and to hold public officials accountable. Now that this evidence is available journalists should be anxious to bring it to light for public examination," he added.

Information about the documentary can be found on a web site maintained by vonKleist at www.911inplanesite.com. He and his wife Joyce Riley are co-hosts of "The Power Hour," an independently syndicated radio program with a web site at www.ThePowerHour.com.

David M. Bresnahan has over 30 years of experience as an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, radio station owner, talk show host, and business owner. David has been a prominent writer for many Internet newspapers. For radio interviews or comments: David@Bresnahan.com [Sign Up For Free E-Mail Alerts.]

The DVD can be ordered for $20 from http://www.911inplanesite.com/. It is not copyrighted, nor copy protected. The video pictures the hole in the Pentagon that was only 16 feet wide before the wall collapsed. It also shows that the aircraft striking struck the second tower was a military aircraft with some kind of abnormality attached to its underside (the abnormality was typical of a particular military aircraft). Those who saw the aircraft strike the second tower and were fleeing the area were saying the aircraft was NOT a commercial aircraft, for it was grey with no windows. It shows that before either aircraft hit their tower, there was a flash directly in front of the aircrafts. They show firemen who were on the scene saying that all indications were that the towers were brought down by controlled demolition. There were several explosions heard before and after the towers were hit by the aircrafts. The ONLY conclusion one can make from the interviews and video evidence is that it was a military operation. Did Bush know? Whether he knew or not, he certainly got his "second Pearl Harbor," and is using it to its fullest advantage, to establish stronger centralized control in order to remove what few liberties are left in America. The new movie, "United 93" will further the lie. Why was there no search for the other three "Black Boxes" and where are the cockpit recordings?

"Where the whole tendency of education is to create obedience," Brownson said, "all teachers must be pliant tools of government. Such a system of education is not inconsistent with the theory of Prussian society but the thing is wholly inadmissible here." He further argued that "according to our theory the people are wiser than the government, Here the people do not look to the government for light, for instruction, but the government looks to the people. The people give law to the government." He concluded that "to entrust government with the power of determining education which our children shall receive is entrusting our servant with the power of the master. The fundamental difference between the United States and Prussia has been overlooked by the board of education and its supporters." (Qv.)

The government designed to be the servant of the people has now become the master, and the people are now the fearful, docile slaves.

Channel Surfing, March 11, 2006

The Unit

We have a TV, with which we like to watch old B&W and older color movies. We have cable, but only for our bradband internet service. However, we can pick up the local stations. About the only thing we watch is the local network news, though we know that it contains nothing that might disturb the public, particularly Christians, and open eyes as to what is going on in the world. They don't cover things like the slave trade in South Africa, nor the Muslim war against Christians there, nor the fact that Mexico is exporting their criminals to the US. We may also watch things like Night Line, and 60 Minutes.

We were watching a section of Night Line, Saturday evening, March 11, 2006. During the commercials, like everyone else, we were "flipping" through the channels looking for something else. Well, we found something one channel up from what we were watching. It was a pilot program for a new series, so it was pretty much commercial free.

The name of the new series is "The Unit." It is about a secret Army unit that is involved in civilian law enforcement. Though all the civilian authorities told this "Unit" that their actions were unlawful, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, The Unit proceeded as though they did not hear the warning.

The Act prohibits the use of the US armed forces in civilian law enforcement. It reads:

Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
-Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1385 (http://www.homelandsecurity.org/journal/Articles/brinkerhoffpossecomitatus.htm)

Bush has been calling for a "review" of this act, with the hope of changing it to allow the military to be involved in civilian activities, as they already are when he thinks they should be involved. (Notice that Bush is refusing to use the military to protect our boarders. The military can legitimately be used to protect this nation from a foreign invasion. Bush had the LA national guard in Iraq and instead of bringing them home to help the hurricane victims, he sent in the US military.)

"The Unit" presented civilian law enforcement as helpless against some "terrorists" hijackers. "The Unit" came in over all objections, and saved the day. Hearing Bush's call to address the Posse Comitatus Act, and then this, it seems obvious to me that the purpose of this series is to change American opinion of the Posse Comitatus Act. The purpose is to get the public to say, "Yes, the unending war on terror shows us the need of military law." The National Guard can be, and traditionally has been, used, for it is under civilian control. Tell a lie often enough, and it becomes truth.

What lies ahead?

After seeing the video "911, in Plane Sight" and hearing all the rhetoric, here is my opinion.

The war on terror, which we have already been told will be a never ending war requiring untold debt to finance, and untold shed blood, will be an excuse to address the Posse Comitatus Act. After it is weakened, the military will start with high profile things like helping in national disasters. Their visibility will increase by overriding local civilian law enforcement in heavy situations, as will be acted out in "The Unit."

Then they will become more like the foreign military. In "developing" countries we see the role of the military. In Brazil especially (where we spent some time), the military is used for law enforcement. It has road blocks every so far. At those road blocks, civilians are stopped, and they must show their identification papers. If they have none with them, then they are in deep trouble.

The excuse in the US will probably be, "We are concerned about illegals, so these road blocks are to check ID papers to make sure you are legal." However, we have seen in the past that illegals have much more freedom than do US citizens.

Will the above come to pass? If Bush gets his way and the Posse Comitatus Act is weakened, and the war on terror is played up enough, we can count on this nation coming under military rule, controlled by the commander in chief. (However, the president is not constitutionally the commander in chief unless congress declares war, which it has not.) And Christians will say, "My, what a wonderful president we have, protecting us from all the bad guys."

Will it happen? Yes, unless Christians get their heads out of the sand and observe what is going on, and then do something – write letters, call congressmen and stop supporting those whose actions (despite their words) clearly show their unamerican and antichristian attitude.

Note that during all the hubbub over the Port deal, Bush quietly signed the Patriot Act that he wanted so badly, though whole communities have outlawed the Act. A sad day for America indeed.

Jeremiah 30:7. Time of

JACOB'S TROUBLE

FUTURE OR FULFILLED?

"Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble, but he shall be saved out of it."

There has never been a consensus or unanimity of opinion as to the meaning of this prophecy of Jeremiah. Therefore, we must be cautious not to be dogmatic about its meaning, or to build an entire theology on this one verse.

Some modern commentators have assumed that Jeremiah is writing about the future Great Tribulation period, to take place at least 2600 years after Jeremiah's time. It is believed that the Tribulation will be specifically used by God as a time of judgment, testing and persecution for the Jews, in order to force those who survive to accept Christ as their Messiah. It is further assumed that since the main purpose of the Tribulation is to clobber the Jews, there is no need for Christians to be around, and therefore they will be "raptured out" before the Tribulation begins.

However, not all commentators agree that Jeremiah is talking about a far distant future tribulation to take place at the remote end of the Church Age. Many expositors have believed that Jeremiah refers either to the Babylonian Captivity of the Jews (586 to 538 BC) which began shortly after this prophecy was delivered, or else to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD.

Matthew Henry assigns this prophecy to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. He connects Jeremiah's statement that "none is like" this day of trouble, with Christ's statement in Matthew 24:21, (which he sees as referring to the destruction of Jerusalem) that "then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be."

Adam Clarke sees the "time of Jacob's trouble" as a reference to the conquest of Babylon, where the Jews were held captive, by the Persians in 538 BC, and then he also applies it to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. "When the Medes and Persians, with all their forces, shall come on the Chaldeans, it will be ‘the day of Jacob's trouble,' trial, dismay, and uncertainty: but he shall be delivered out of it, - the Chaldean empire shall fall, but the Jews shall be delivered by Cyrus. Jerusalem shall be destroyed by the Romans, but the Israel of God shall be delivered from its ruin. Not one that had embraced Christianity perished in the sackage of that city."

Matthew Poole casts his vote in favor of the Babylonian Captivity as the "time of Jacob's trouble:" [It] is not agreed, nor yet whether this text refers to the times of the Messiah, when the nations should tremble, or the time when Darius invaded Babylon, or the times of Gog and Magog (of which read Ezekiel 38), or the time when the Chaldeans invaded Judah: this last seemeth most probable, and that God by this intended only to rouse the Jews out of their security, and put them off from expecting peace according to the flatteries of the false prophets, assuring them that the times that were coming next were not times of peace, but such as should make them tremble." Poole sees the "breaking of the yoke" from the necks of the Jews, in Jeremiah 30:8, as a reference to the fall of the King of Babylon at the time of his defeat by Darius.

F. Cawley, in "The New Bible Commentary," says, "The time of Jacob's trouble could be applied to the immediate situation [imminent captivity in Babylon], though it has a much longer period in view - the whole period of the captivity."

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown agree that Jeremiah 30:5-7 refers to the Babylonian Captivity, with emphasis on the Persian conquest of Babylon at the end of that captivity, which results in the Jews being delivered. The "trembling" of Jeremiah 30:5 refers to "the misery of the Jews in the Babylonian Captivity down to their ‘trembling' and ‘fear' arising from the approach of the Medo-Persian army of Cyrus against Babylon" while verse 7 deals with "the partial deliverance of Babylon's downfall," which in their view "prefigures the final, complete deliverance of Israel, literal and spiritual, at the downfall of the mystical Babylon (Revelation 18, 19)." This view may give some comfort to the adherents of a future "time of Jacob's trouble" but even here the primary interpretation is with regard to the Babylonian Captivity, already fulfilled, an event which prefigures a future deliverance of literal and spiritual Israel.

Only in recent years has it become popular to use Jeremiah 30:7 as a proof-text for a "primarily Jewish" nature of the future Great Tribulation, even though there is nothing in the context of Jeremiah's prophecy that hints of such an event, or of such a remote fulfillment of a prophecy that seems to fit so well into the context of the urgent Babylonian threat against Judah at the time that Jeremiah spoke.

It is certainly convenient and comforting to think of the Great Tribulation as "primarily Jewish," which by implication lets all Christians off the hook for such a time of trouble (even though the Bible teaches that Christians should expect tribulation, Acts 14:22, John 16:33, Romans 5:3, 1 Peter 4:12, Revelation 1:9, etc.)

The description of the phantasmagoria of horrors that are soon to be experienced by the Jews in Palestine has become a staple of modern prophetic preaching. Jerry Falwell has said, "There will be one last skirmish and then God will dispose of this Cosmos . . . Millions of Jews will be slaughtered at this time but a remnant will escape."

Tim LaHaye says, "Prior to Israel's conversion, Zechariah predicts that two-thirds (‘two parts') of the Jewish people in the land will perish during the tribulation period. Only one-third of the Jewish population will survive until Christ comes to establish His kingdom on earth." In reality, Zechariah does not predict that two-thirds of the Jews will soon die in Israel. The context of Zechariah 13:8 is that of events in the First Century AD, meaning that the prophecy with regard to the deaths of two-thirds of the Jews was fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. (One wonders, why is it that those who really believe that two-thirds of Jews living today in Israel will soon be killed are not doing everything they can to warn those Jews and urge them to leave Israel before it is too late? Don't they care about the Jews? Hmmm, and Huhhh?)

Entire books have been written about how the Jews will suffer in the future Tribulation. Jack Van Impe and Roger Campbell, in their book "Israel's Final Holocaust," have a chapter entitled "The Time of Jacob's Trouble," in which Jeremiah 30:7 is used as the proof-text for the predominantly Jewish character of the Tribulation. They say, "It must be remembered that the Tribulation is especially related to Israel." That is a polite way of saying that God is really going to stick it to the Jews. Somehow some of us have gotten the idea that the Jews will be deserving of worse punishment than the Gentiles when Christ returns, but is this not a subtle form of anti-Semitism? Why the poor Jews should be singled out for God's wrath, over and above all the billions of nasty, brutish, unregenerate Gentiles, is not really explained, other than the ritual reference to Jeremiah 30:7, a verse which has been wrenched out of its context of events among the ancient Jews of the 6th Century BC.

Meanwhile, it must be considered very questionable whether any of the Old Testament prophecies of judgment against the Jews can be applied to the time period after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Christ said in Matthew 23:35-36 that the Jews living in His generation (from 30 to 70 AD) would suffer and pay the price for all the sins of their forebears: "That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation." (Zacharias was not chronologically the last Old Testament martyr, but he was the last martyr in the Jewish Old Testament in which the book of 2 Chronicles is placed last).

The unsaved Jews who called for Christ's crucifixion in Matthew 27:25 were more accurate than they knew, when they said, "His blood be on us, and on our children." The punishment for their rejection of the Messiah literally fell upon them and their children, that is to say, the generation that was living when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD. There is no need for any Jews living today or in the future to suffer that punishment, nor is such a judgment on the Jews predicted in the Word of God. Jewish people living today are in no way to blame for Christ's crucifixion, any more so than Gentiles living today.

Christ said with regard to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, "For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled," Luke 21:22. Virtually all commentators, including Scofield, agree that in this passage Christ was talking about the AD 70 judgment upon Israel, not some future Tribulation period. So the question is, when Christ said that ALL THINGS WHICH ARE WRITTEN would be fulfilled against the Jews, during the "days of vengeance" from 67 to 70 AD, did He really mean ALL THINGS, or did He mean that some things written against the Jews, such as Jeremiah's prophecy of the "time of Jacob's trouble," would remain unfulfilled until 2000 years later?

If we give Christ's words some serious thought, then it will become apparent that the concept of a "primarily Jewish" nature of a future Tribulation is unscriptural. ALL THINGS with regard to God's vengeance against the Jews, including Jeremiah's "time of Jacob's trouble" and the Zechariah 13:8 slaughter of two-thirds of all the Jews, must have been fulfilled by the time of Rome's invasion and destruction of Israel in 70 AD. Many terrible things have happened to the Jews since then (Spanish inquisition, Russian pogroms, Hitler's holocaust) but none of these things were specifically predicted in the Bible and none of them had to happen in order to fulfill any definite prophecies with regard to God's "vengeance" against the Jews. The prophecy teachers who say that two-thirds of all the Jews have to die in order for Christ to return are mistaken. Not a single Jew has to die in order for Christ to return.

My personal conviction with regard to the meaning of Jeremiah 30:7 is that the time of Jacob's trouble, and of his being saved out of it, were totally fulfilled when Judah was taken into captivity by Babylon in 586 BC and then liberated by the Persians in 538 BC.

The entire context of Jeremiah's passage is with regard to these events in ancient times. In Jeremiah 29:1-4 the prophet says he is writing to the first group of captives who are already in Babylon. He assures them that God will take care of them and cause them to prosper (29:5-7). He says they will not be coming back to Judah immediately as promised by the false prophets, but that they will be restored from captivity after 70 years (29:8-14). In 29:15-32 he rebukes various false prophets, some of whom will shortly be executed by the King of Babylon. His prophecies in chapter 30 are simply a continuation of chapter 29 - in 30:3 he promises again, as he did in 29:8-14, that the Jews will be returning to their homeland in Palestine. 30:18 speaks of the return of the captives and the rebuilding of Jerusalem which the Babylonians had left in a ruined state. There is absolutely no reason to believe that in 30:7, with the mention of the "time of Jacob's trouble," the prophet has suddenly jumped out of the context of events in the 6th Century BC, to refer to some mysterious, unknown crisis that is to come upon the Jews 2600 years later.

The Scofield Reference Bible attempts to create a discontinuity between Jeremiah 29 and Jeremiah 30 by putting a large break in the page, in the middle of those 2 chapters, with the words "Prophecies Not Chronological," hinting that at this point the prophet has suddenly jumped into prophecies of the remote, distant future. There is no justification for breaking up the text at this point. Even the chapter division between 29 and 30 is not inspired - the chapter divisions were not added until the 13th Century AD.

In light of these considerations, it is time for us to reconsider and rethink the entire school of speculative prophecy that postulates that a future Great Tribulation will be primarily for the purpose of judging and punishing the Jews. There is plenty of sin and wickedness to go around among all of us in these last days, and there is no reason for the Jews to take the brunt of the punishment, over and above the Gentiles, for mankind's end-times rebellion.

There is no hint of this emphasis on gloom-and-doom for Jews in the end-times in Paul's prophecy of Romans 11, in which he says, "blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob." Romans 11:25-26.

Thomas Williamson, Th.M., Ph.D.

3131 S. Archer Avenue, Chicago, IL. 60608

PERSONAL

As over most of the rest of the country, this past winter was very unusual, with a record warm January. There were several days warm enough to ride a motorcycle. And then February came, and brought with it some snow. We got some of the snow, but most of it went north of us. We had 6-9 inches, depending on where you measured it. The snow came in Saturday and Saturday night, 2/11. The State Road at the end of our drive was kept open, but was not at all conducive for driving. The worst thing was that our power was out from about midnight Sunday morning to Monday morning. However, Bettie had put a small China Diesel gen-set on the house several years ago, with a 500 gal. tank of diesel. I attached the gen-set to the tank a couple of years ago, so power outages are no problem for us. The gen-set with L-P stove and hot-water, passive solar and wood heat leaves us with little concern over weather problems.

The cold only lasted a few days, and by 2/15, it was back up in the high 50s again. Good riding weather. (I acquired my first "bike" in 1975. It was a Honda 250cc street legal trail bike.)

 

 

March was very dry, and here we are into April. It does not seem possible, but Bettie and I have now been married for 5 years as of April 29th. Time is going much too fast.

Busy, busy, busy.

We have put our property on the market. David Ethell, Bettie's son, has asked us to move onto some property he has on the West side of the Massanutten Mountain. We are now on the East Side, at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountain. The South Fork of the Shenandoah River is about a mile West of us. On the other side, the North Fork of the Shenandoah River will be a few hundred yards East of us. We will have river access. The Shenandoah River runs down both sides of the Massanutten, and the two forks come together just North of Front Royal. The river joins the Potomac at Harpers Ferry WV, about an hour north. We will be another mountain range further West of DC, but only few minutes further. (I would not mind being on the other side of the Mississippi from DC, or at least a few more states away.)

(May 9, 2006, update. David decided to move to another location in PA, about 2 hours north of us. Thus, we took our house of the market, and will remain here for the foreseeable future.)

BTW, check our web site, ww2color.com. We now have over 4500 WWII images, mostly aircraft, posted, and the data base is searchable. Also check christiancourtship.us & practicallyprettydesign.com, which is Bettie's and Christina's custom sewing site.

Peru Problems

As most of you know, and with your help, we made a "mission trip" to Peru last summer. Lord willing, and if he supplies the needed funds, we would like to go back this winter (their summer). We would like to deal with some practical Biblical issues, such as the family. We touched on Biblical family issues of husbands/wives/children, and discovered that, even with the missionaries who have been there, they had never been instructed in that area. We would like to go back and deal with what we now know they need.

As we mentioned, the people where we were live in poverty, but not the poverty we hear of in Africa. They have roofs over their head, and food. The pastor of the church lives very sparsely in a room over the church. You can see pictures on our web site, http://www.biblicalexaminer.org. He has two daughters who live with them. The youngest is under 3. Christina keeps e-mail contact with the oldest, who is about 14.

Here is an e-mail she received from Pastor Francisco's oldest daughter. All the letters were translated by Sandy Groves, a local, fine Christian lady Bettie has known for years. Her mother is Puerto Rican, she was raised in Puerto Rico, and her parents still live there. The letters and pictures are on the web site.

Hello, Christina:

Thanks for praying for my little sister Dorquitas. The accident happened on Friday the 24th at 7:30 pm, right before church. We were about to take a big pot of boiling water outside, one that my mom had momentarily put on the floor, when the phone rang. My mom went to answer it and then called my dad because the call was for him. I started playing with Dorquitas by putting our hands over our eyes while we closed them. When I opened my eyes I saw that she was walking backwards right into the pot. She fell in it. I started screaming that she was drowning, my mom and dad ran into the kitchen and we all took her out. Mom & Dad took her clothes off and my older sister and I started to pour water on her body. As we did that we could see how the skin was peeling off her body. It was such a desperate time for us as we saw her and heard her scream and cry.

Quickly we took her to the closest clinic, from where she was transferred to the Children's Hospital. There they took care of her at 3 am. There is a doctor's strike going on right now and everything is slow. My dad says they are not taking care of her there and she needs to be transferred to another hospital where she can be helped and surgeries performed. The problem is that to be able to transfer her to that hospital my father has to have a bank account with 5 ‘soles' (peruvian monetary unit) in addition to 3 thousand for the surgery. [Actually, the medical bill came closer to $10,000 US, or about $30,000 Soles. That would be more than the pastor makes there in probably 10 years.]

The church here is trying to help, but it is not enough. My parents are heartbroken. This is why I would like to ask you for a love offering, if it is possible, and for continued prayers. Please send me your phone number and area code so I can call you with an update.

Yessenia Teti

See http://www.biblicalexaminer.org/Peru%20trouble.html for information and pictures)

We corresponded with the folks there, and then sent out an e-mail to the Examiner e-mail list requesting aid. We had a good response from the request, and with the help of Pastor Lloyd Sprinkle and the Providence Baptist Church, we were able to get the funds to them for the needed medical care.

We know from past experience that the hospital bill is just the start. There will be untold expenses involved as the needed medication and visits to the clinic take place. We have been impressed with the honesty of the people we have tried to help. They have sent detailed accounting for the funds they have spent, and have told us that the medical needs have been met. It appears that there has been an overabundance of funds sent to meet their needs, and they have asked for permission to use the excess funds to fix the church building. The pastor and his family live in poverty on the second floor, which does not have a roof, though his one room is covered. Bro Sprinkle & I agreed that they could use the excess funds to help with the building, keeping in mind the continued medical expenses.

In our visit last year, all of us were distressed at the lack of good literature available in Peru, especially to this group of believers. The Pentecostals pretty well control the book stores in Lima, and they do not permit any sound doctrinal material. They only have fluff n' stuff, such as the Left Behind series and Rick Warren. Our desire has been to get good material to them, but we could not find any good sound Spanish books. However, at a Baptist meeting last year, Bro Sprinkle met a man who translates and publishes doctrinally sound material in Spanish, Wayne Anderson. He is a Reformed Baptist pastor planting churches in Mexico City. <http://www.farodegracia.org> His church planting site is <http://www.lagraciayverdad.org>

We asked the folks in Peru to check the web site, and let us know what they could use. They are getting a book list together, and will forward it to us. We will do what we can.

As we mentioned in the July 05 Examiner, the door is wide open to the gospel in that area, and the Christians we have contact with are doing all they can to preach Christ. The pictures, including the burned girl, and letters are on the web site.

The medical needs seem to have been met. But if you would like to share in the blessing of helping other Christians who are trying to do a work in their own land, you can help improve their pastor's living conditions and/or provide sound theological material. You can send funds to:

Providence Baptist Church
PO Box 1008
Harrisonburg VA 22803

Or you can send it to us here at the Biblical Examiner, and we will see that it gets wired to Peru.

9017 Stonewall Jackson Hwy, Front Royal VA 22630

Thanks

By His Sovereign Grace Alone

Bro Need

TERRORISM

[Any one should have been able to foresee this coming. The "Patriot Act" will be used to stop any kind of opposition to those in power. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Remember, the Radicals won Lincoln's war, but they did not stop with subduing the South. Am I scared of the "Patriot Act"? My flesh says, Yes, but my spirit says No, for my hope is in the Lord, and my allegiance is to the Kingdom of God.]

 

 

Virginia Training Manual Lists Property Rights Activists As Terrorists

Says video cameras, binoculars, sketch pads are terrorist tools

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com <http://www.prisonplanet.com/index.html> March 28 2006

A Virginia training manual used to help state employees recognize terrorists lists anti-government and property rights activists as terrorists and includes binoculars, video cameras, pads and notebooks in a compendium of terrorist tools.

The manual, discovered by the Virginia News Source, is keen to emphasize that terrorists are not only Middle Eastern in scope and the main focus is afforded to domestic terrorism.

Included with Hamas, Al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad, the following groups are identified as terrorist organizations.

Domestic:

Anti-government and militia movements
Property Rights Activists
Racist, separatist and hate groups
Environmental and animal rights activist
Religious extremist
Street gangs

"What are Terrorists After Now?

Create an atmosphere of anxiety amongst the public
Undermine confidence in the government
Influence government or social policy."

We are also told that potential terrorists targets include, among many other things, Abortion Clinics. [P. 4.]

Accordingly, the Examiner is thus a Terrorists' Publication because we publish in Virginia. Preachers who speak against "Public Policy" or say anything to undermine confidence in a wicked civil government are now Terrorists. What will happen when God's men must speak out against wickedness in high places? (Ephesians 6:12.) Not only will men say that all is well because the Republicans are in control, but as dumb dogs, they will not raise any alarm for fear of being shipped to Gitmo. (Isaiah 56:10.) Republicans are the ones who sold us down the river with the diabolical "Patriot Act."

Presumably, tourists, journalists, hikers, bird-watchers, scuba divers, artists, painters, and anyone who takes a photograph is also now a terrorists according to the official list of terrorist paraphernalia provided.

"Terrorist Tools

Still or video camera
Binoculars
Hand held tape recorder
Maps or Charts
SCUBA equipment
Disguises" [P. 5.]

Reading further into the manual, associations between domestic terrorists and those who supported the American Revolution are subtly made. In Alex Jones' 2001 documentary 9/11: The Road To Tyranny, <http://www.store.yahoo.com/infowars_shop/911roadtotyr.html> FEMA officials give a seminar in which they identify George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers as terrorists.

The manual encourages people to report any suspicious activity to an authority figure. Presumably, if property rights activism is deemed suspicious then anyone protesting or communicating about the recent eminent domain issue will be reported and investigated on grounds of terrorism.

The manual concludes by encouraging state employees to seek more information from FEMA and Homeland Security.

Shortly after 9/11 a Phoenix FBI manual <http://www.infowars.com/constitutional_terrorists.htm> that was disseminated amongst federal employees at the end of the Clinton term caused waves on the Internet after it was revealed that potential terrorists included, "defenders of the US Constitution against federal government and the UN," and individuals who "make numerous references to the US Constitution." Lawyers everywhere cowered in fear at being shipped off to Gitmo.

This manual is another surreal and frightening reminder that government officials are being trained to embrace a Gestapo like mentality whereby any political activism or even individualistic outdoor leisure activity is deemed to be suspicious and a possible indication of terrorism. And the public is being programed to accept totalitarianism.

The manual is the Terrorism & Security Awareness Orientation for State Employees, by Governor Mark Warner. Though no longer governor, he is considered as the "One and the only Democrat who could take on Hillary." <http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article353879.ece> See also "Meet Mark Warner, the Next U.S. President" <http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=14412_0_24_0_C>

Check here to read the Virginia manual in full. <http://www.virginianewssource.com/images/VATerrorismManual.pdf> Note: Though only 10 pgs long, it is a PDF document of 4.34 meg, requiring IE to download it. I will send a copy upon request.

Tell a lie often enough, and it becomes truth.

FIERY WORDS, CARTOON WARS

 

 

Washington Post, 2/12/06, B4

(The Post published some comments from around the world concerning the "Cartoon Wars". Here is the best of the group.)

Christians in the West are forced to put up with incredible insults every day: Christ depicted as a homosexual, Mary as a prostitute, etc. And if they show the slightest indignation, they are subjected to a hailstorm of criticism from those who invoke the sacrosanct principle of free speech... .

All it takes is for a Danish newspaper to publish a few mediocre cartoons of Muhammad and you have half the intellectuals in the Western world discovering the religious sensitivity of Islam, doing penance, excusing the acts of violence by Muslims and reminding us how important it is to try to understand them, they who are taking a direct hit from the West's arrogance...

The hatred that certain Western intellectuals harbor toward their own culture is one of the most fascinating phenomena of the contemporary world. If a civilization is no longer even capable of arousing the instincts necessary for its own survival, perhaps it no longer deserves to live.

— Luciano Amaral in Portuguese daily Diario de Noticias

 

 

(Muhammedism is the third fasting growing religion in the US. Christians, we have failed and are failing miserably. Where is the personal evangelism: that is, reaching out to our neighbors through opening our homes in hospitality?)

Senior Exercise

This is suggested for us seniors, to build muscle strength in the arms and shoulders. It seems so easy, so I thought I'd pass it on to some of my elderly friends. The article suggested doing it three days a week.

Begin by standing on a comfortable surface, where you have plenty of room at each side.

With a 5-lb. potato sack in each hand, extend your arms straight out from your sides, and hold them there as long as you can. Try to reach a full minute, then relax.

Each day, you'll find that you can hold this position for just a bit longer.

After a couple of weeks, move up to 10-lb. potato sacks.

Then 50-lb. potato sacks, and eventually try to get to where you can lift a 100-lb. potato sack in each hand and hold your arms straight for more than a full minute.

After you feel confident at that level, put a potato in each of the sacks; but be careful. (Copied)

First Boot

In a message dated 1/26/06 1:16:02 AM !!!First Boot!!!, LilgardT writes:

I was having trouble with my computer. So I called Harold the computer guy, to come over. You know the type; thick glasses, unshaven, pocket protector full of pens, pencils and Sharpie markers.

Harold clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem. He gave me a bill for a minimum service call.

As he was walking away, I called after him, "So, what was wrong?" He replied, "It was an ID ten T error."

I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, "An, ID ten T error? What's that..... in case I need to fix it again?"

The computer guy grinned.... Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error before?" No," I replied.

Write it down," he said, "and I think you'll figure it out."

So I wrote out ..... I D 1 0 T

I used to like Harold.

So you think the state schools are about the "three Rs"

SCHOOLS OF REEDUCATION?

Frederick M. Hess. Washington Post, 2/5/06; B07

For those who have been troubled by the tendency of universities to adopt campus speech codes, a worrisome new fad is rearing its head in the nation's schools of education. Stirred by professional opinion and accreditation pressures, teachers colleges have begun to regulate the dispositions and beliefs of those who would teach in our nation's classrooms.

At the University of Alabama, the College of Education explains that it is "committed to preparing individuals to promote social justice, to be change agents, and to recognize individual and institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism." To promote its agenda, part of the program's self-proclaimed mission is to train teachers to "develop anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-sexist . . . alliances."

The University of Alaska at Fairbanks School of Education declares on its Web site: "Teachers often profess ‘colorblindness' . . . which is at worst patronizing and at best naïve, because race and culture profoundly affect what is known and how it is known."

Consequently, the program emphasizes "the interrelatedness of race, identity, and the curriculum, especially the role of white privilege."

Professors at Washington State University's College of Education evaluate candidates to ensure they exhibit "an understanding of the complexities of race, power, gender, class, sexual orientation, and privilege in American society." The relevance of these skills to teaching algebra or the second grade is, at a minimum, debatable.

Brooklyn College's School of Education announces: "We educate teacher candidates and other school personnel about issues of social injustice such as institutionalized racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism; and invite them to develop strategies and practices that challenge [such] biases."

One can sympathize with the sentiments at work. Moreover, in theory, academics can argue that merely addressing these issues implies no ideological bias. But in practice, education courses addressing "white privilege" and the "language of oppression" typically endorse particular views on issues such as affirmative action and student discipline. These codes have real consequences.

Ed Swan is pursuing a degree in teacher education at Washington State. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that he flunked an evaluation of dispositions last year. The teacher who failed him explained that Swan, a conservative Christian and father of four Mexican American children, had "revealed opinions that have caused me great concern in the areas of race, gender, sexual orientation and privilege." Washington State insisted that Swan agree to attend sensitivity training before being allowed to do his student teaching - where observers could observe his classroom performance.

In 2005 Scott McConnell was informed by LeMoyne College's Graduate Program in Education that he was not welcome to return and complete his degree. His offense? He wrote a paper advocating the use of corporal punishment that was given a grade of A-minus. The department chairwoman's letter to McConnell cited the "mismatch between [his] personal beliefs . . . and the LeMoyne College program goals."

The conviction that teachers should hold certain views regarding sexuality or social class is rooted in a commendable impulse to ensure that they teach all students. But even if scientific evidence established that certain beliefs or dispositions improved teacher effectiveness, colleges should hesitate to engage in this kind of exercise. The truth, of course, is that no such body of rigorous, empirical evidence does exist.

In any event, there's good reason to be skeptical of claims that to be effective, teachers must have certain views or attitudes. Given that both kindhearted and callous doctors may be effective professionals, it's not clear why we should expect good teachers to be uniform in disposition. In fact, with the array of students that schools serve, it may be useful to hire teachers with diverse views and values. Ultimately, screening on "dispositions" serves primarily to cloak academia's biases in the garb of professional necessity.

Schools of education are not merely private entities. Rather, in each state, they are deputized by licensure systems to serve as gatekeepers into the teaching profession. Even the vast majority of "alternative" training programs are sponsored by a school of education.

The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education—which established requirements that would-be teachers embrace "multicultural and global perspectives" and develop "dispositions that respect and value differences"—has tried to backpedal recently by protesting that it didn't "expect or require institutions to attend to any particular political or social ideologies." Much more is needed. The cultivation of right-thinking cadres has no place in America's colleges and universities.

The writer is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of "Tough Love for Schools."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp_dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020302603_pf.html

[We know some who are getting their accredited college degrees over the web, from home. There can be no change until there is a change in the education of our children. Train them in the way of the heathens, and they will remain true to that training. And then we will wonder why this nation remains steeped in heathenism.]

MOTHERS

Protect your sons from sex-hungry teachers. Get them out of the state school system. Example:11/21/05, Deanna Bobo, a 37-year-old teacher was the 3,496th teacher to be arrested in 05 on charges she had sex with an underage student. See http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0404062teacher1.html

MEXICO'S WAR ON AMERICA

By Frosty Wooldridge, 3/20/06

In 1836, legends Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis, along with 180 fearless men, fought Santa Anna's two thousand Mexican troops at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. No contest! Santa Anna killed every last one of those brave men. Six weeks later, with a cry of "Remember the Alamo", Texans beat back the Mexican army and established Texas as part of the United States of America.

Today, Mexico's declaration of war on America moves with quickening speed. Their modern day general known as President Vicente Fox is not content with retaking Texas. He invades all American states.

As a premier, many of you watch the History Channel with WWII footage showing Germans and their tanks charging into Poland. You watched their tanks crush the French.

Did any of you watch the 100,000 illegal Mexicans and others storm Chicago, Illinois March 10, 2006? How many Mexican insurgents stand on American soil? At last count, in excess of 9,000,000 illegal Mexicans! It's the largest invasion force without firing a shot EVER on American soil.

This invasion is encouraged, abetted and organized by the Mexican state and supported by all citizens in Mexican society. Fox provides his ‘troops' with maps, water, provisions and aid to invade America's border.

What are the desires of Mexico? Lawrence Auster, in his "The Second Mexican War" February 17, 2006, wrote, "In orchestrating this war on America, the Mexican state represents the desires of the Mexican people as a whole:

Political revanchism—to regain control of the territories lost to the U.S. in 1848, thus avenging themselves for the humiliation they feel they suffered at our hands for the last century and a half; In effect, Mexico is colonizing the United States. Cultural imperialism—to expand the Mexican culture and Spanish language into North America. They destroy English as America's language. Economic parasitism—to maintain and increase the flow of $20 billion dollars that Mexicans in the U.S. send back to their relatives at home every year, a major factor keeping the chronically troubled Mexican economy afloat and the corrupt Mexican system cocooned in its status quo." They use us against ourselves to benefit themselves.

Americans watch a peaceful invasion and the most profound colonization in modern history. Carlos de Mola for Mexico's Excelsior Newspaper said, "You cannot give me a similar example of such a large migratory wave of an ant-like multitude, stubborn, unarmed and carried on in the face of the most powerful and best-armed nation on earth…it is slowly returning the southwestern U.S. to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot nor requiring the least diplomatic action, by means of a steady, spontaneous and uninterrupted occupation."

What you're watching—and most Americans only keep watching without a whimper—the takeover of America by a foreign country by colonization.

One of Fox's cabinet officers, Juan Hernandez said, "The Mexican population is 100 million and 23 million who live in the United States."

Heather MacDonald, in the City Journal, Fall 2005, wrote, "Mexico's five-year development plan in 1995 announced that the ‘Mexican nation extends its border into the United States. The government would strengthen solidarity programs with the Mexican communities abroad by emphasizing their Mexican roots, and supporting literacy programs in Spanish and teaching of the history, values and traditions of Mexico to those Mexicans living in the United States. We are betting the Mexican population in the U.S. will think Mexico first.'"

Not only are they invading America in numbers and language, they financially bleed Americans of jobs, depress wages and send money to Mexico. In time, they will be able to deny authority of American law because they will vote against American laws and/or change them to fit their purposes.

A simple look at what happened in Chicago a few weeks ago portends violent confrontations in the future. We allow the complete surrender of U.S. sovereignty over our immigration policy. Fox loves it as his ‘insurgents' grow by three million annually on U.S. soil. (source: Time Magazine, September 20, 2004, America's Broken Borders)

Auster wrote, "Hitler pursed ‘Anschluss', the joining together of the Germans in Austria with the Germans in Germany leading the official annexation of Austria to Germany. Mexico's equivalent is ‘acercamiento' which means ‘warmer relations' to act as a unified block to advance Mexico's interests inside the U.S. and…weakening of U.S. immigration law. Thus, the Mexican government is using the Mexican U.S. population as a fifth column."

As you can see, we allow 56 Mexican consulates in major cities throughout America to foster this invasion with help and guidance inside the belly of America. Those consulates distribute ‘Guia del Migrante Mexicano' which is a guide for illegals to further imbed themselves into America without getting caught.

Auster wrote, "It has been proposed that Mexicans in the U.S. vote in Mexican elections. California Mexicans would have seats in the Mexican Congress, specifically representing Mexicans residing in that state. One of Mexico's three major parties, the PRD, urges the designation of the entire United States as the sixth Mexican electoral district."

Winston Churchill wrote in his "Follies of the Victors," that the Germans were given a ‘motive' for revenge; later, an opportunity to strike back. By the same stroke of history, the U.S. gave Mexico a ‘motive' in 1848, and today, an ‘opportunity' by allowing mass migration.

In other words, we gave Fox this opportunity; he took it and now General Fox dictates terms to us. Who are his generals? Specifically—U.S. Congressman Joe Baca in California works for ‘Reconquista de Aztlan' along with Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, U.S. Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah and dozens of others on U.S. soil. Not only that, he can count on an American foot soldier George Bush and most of the U.S. Congress. Fox counts on the silence of U.S. governors in all 50 states. Who are his foot soldiers? Nine million Mexicans spread across 49 states and growing!

Please, if you do nothing else this week, join www.numbersusa.com and become a weekly faxer. Send this column to your friends and have them join Numbersusa.com and send those prewritten letters. If that guest worker program passes this month, you're looking at adding 60 million Mexicans to American within 10 years. Over 18 million will be Spanish speaking children flooding our schools. Yes, if even half those 12 million illegal Mexicans bring in six million wives under Specter's or Kennedy's guest worker programs, those wives bring at least three children each. Thus, you're looking at 18 million more kids within a heartbeat in time—hitting our schools. If even half the single Mexicans have one child each in ten years, you're talking six million more kids. This is war and colonization by any other names.

Americans, what are you going to do about it? All I can say is, "Remember the Alamo!"

NewsWithViews.com

MERGING THE U.S., CANADA & MEXICO

Well, the Bush regime's efforts to merge the US, Canada, and Mexico into one regional government are almost complete. These actions are not missteps, as some conservatives would like to believe, but deliberate and purposeful efforts for a regional government. A few reminders:

Merging the US, Canada, & Mexico <http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2005/july05/05_07_13.html>

Bush Decries Border Project <http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050324_122200_6209r.htm>

Alberto Gonzalez and La Raza <http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/3/10/175518.shtml>

1 Million Aliens Released into General Population <http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050414_115247_2595r.htm>

We have to face it. We have to admit it out loud, each of us, not only to ourselves, but to each other. Bush is a radical liberal, a global communist — always has been, always will be. He is a bona fide traitor to America, as his actions throughout his administration have clearly shown. Can anyone trust this traitor and his Straussian neo-cons about ANYTHING? Health care? Immigration? War on drugs? Education? 9-11? Homeland Security? National ID cards? Of course not. ...

Rusty Mason. 3/30/06. NewsWithViews.com <http://www.newswithviews.com/Mason/rusty2.htm>

The Looming Immanency of a Nuclear War!

On February 11th, 2006, the Daily Telegraph in London reported that strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran. [The Daily Telegraph, Feb. 11, 2006, by Philip Sherwell, London, England, U.K.] A case for war with Iran is continually being built up, and all that is lacking is a major incident such as the attack that hit the World Trade Center on 9-11-01. That horrible incident caused people to fall in to lock-step deception as Iraq was falsely implicated and blamed for the attack. How can people be so deceived? One world leader answered that question very well as follows: "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." These words of Julius Caesar with his policies of foreign wars ring true to this day. So do the words: "Beware the ides of March!"

Why is the United States determined to control Iran? In order to answer that question we must understand just a little about economics. In 1932, President Franklin Roosevelt decoupled the dollar from gold, but gold was still being paid to other countries as they redeemed U.S. dollars. During 1970-1971, the United States was no longer able to pay other governments with gold, and the nations of the world were stuck with continually inflating U.S. dollars. In order to maintain global demand for the U.S. dollar, the U.S. Government made a 1972-73 arrangement with Saudi Arabia to support the House of Saud if they, Saudi Arabia and all of the OPEC, the oil producing nations, would accept only U.S. dollars for payment of oil. Now all of the oil-hungry nations of the world were forced to clamor for the ever-inflating U.S. dollar since it was the only means by which they could purchase that commodity. This established the strength of the dollar as it was now backed in a defacto sense by oil. In the year 2000, one man dared to reject the U.S. dollar for payment for oil and chose to accept the Euro instead. This threatened the dollar severely. That man was Saddam Hussein! He suddenly became the greatest villain in the world and became dreadfully evil. Here let it be noted that he was just as evil when we armed him, supported him, and embraced him years earlier. We overlooked his infamy then, but this rejection of the dollar vilified him above measure. When President Bush announced his policy of shock and awe and pounded Iraq, he quickly re-established the dollar as the only oil money. That is what the Iraqi war is all about.

Here let it be noted that Iran has announced that as of March 21st, 2006, which is the witches' sabat of Ostera, that it will no longer accept U.S. dollars for oil, and that it has persuaded all of the OPEC nations to accept the Euro and other currencies as well. [The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse, 2/13/06, by Professor Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.] None of the nations will have to buy and hold dollars to buy oil, and this will reduce the U.S. dollar to nearly junk status on the world market. That is why it has been determined that Iran must be punished! If oil cannot be retained as backing for the U.S. dollar, the collapse of the dollar is imminent.

If you have been wondering why President Bush is selling six major American seaports to the Arabs, the United Arab Emirates, for 6.8 billion dollars, you have your answer. [The World Tribune.com, Feb. 13, 2006, Washington, DC.] The erstwhile great nation of the United States of America is sinking fast in the quicksand of its own sin. Even the individual states are selling their toll roads to foreign companies. A Spanish and Australian company is buying the Indiana Toll Road for 3.85 billion dollars. Texas and New Jersey are planning to sell their toll roads to foreigners as well. [Bloomberg News Service, Jan. 25, 2006, Bloomberg News.com] The handwriting is on the wall, because this once-beautiful nation has donned the attire of an harlot and refuses to repent. You, as an individual, however, can repent and yield your entire life to the gracious and merciful Saviour. Do it now, before it is too late! Eternity is just ahead, and for you it could be heaven or it could be hell. May God help us all! ... (From the Last Trumpet Newsletter. http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org/2006/March2006.html)

(Do a web search, and you will find more information on the above mentioned Saudi oil deal than you can read.)

Follow the implications: The Arabs are now backing the US dollar with their oil, so we do not have to back it with anything. Therefore every president, Bush at present, must do all they can to support Arab Muslims, or the "Petrodollars" will be "Petroeuros", and the U.S. will go bottom up. The oil producing nations must dump their dollars somewhere, so they buy up US property. Is it the environmentalists who have kept ANWAR and the Gulf of Mexico away from producing oil? If the US would become oil independent and not have to purchase from the Arabs, then the Arabs might switch to Euros. The result would be devastating. And no president or congressman wants to be left holding the bag, and take the rap. (Abortion has robed America of a work force, so we must allow unlimited illegal immigration, or the economy will also go bottom up.)

HIGH GAS PRICES !!

Think again. It's cheap.

Gas is actually cheaper today than it was in 1964. Silver was removed from our monetary system in 1964, replaced with the worthless slugs and paper we have today. At that time, gas was selling for about 3-4 gallons per 4 silver quarters, silver dollar or a $1 silver certificate. That same one dollar in silver will today purchase 4 gallons of gas at F$3.00 per gallon. (5/1/06. F$14.03 paper dollars per oz. of silver. Pre 65 coins are 90%. Thus, $1 face in silver is worth F$12.62) What happened to the F$11.62 per dollar? The federal government robbed it from us by spending above and beyond its income, more commonly known as inflation. The people found they could vote themselves funds from the federal treasury, and they have raided it big time ("Pork Barrel Politics"). Of course, it cost far above the income to fight wars, and we have been involved in many that were none of our business. We are paying for those expensive endeavors with inflation, e.g., gas prices. Of course, wages have not keep up with inflation, which is how the feds made their money.

Where will it stop??

Bro Need

ODDS & ENDS

Dens of Iniquity

Parents angry and upset after second-grade teacher reads ‘modern fairy tale' to class on homosexual romance and marriage. No notice was given.

Teacher tells parents that theme of day was "weddings" and that gay marriage is legal – "I want to present all points of view."

Principal tells parents they cannot opt out and "I will not guarantee that something like this will not happen again" and that there will be no notification, despite state law.

LEXINGTON, MA – APRIL 19. Lexington public school officials have told Rob and Robin Wirthlin that since "gay marriage is legal" they may describe homosexual relationships to their son in second grade, without notice, and that parents may not opt their child out of such discussions. The Wirthlins are livid....

On March 24, their second-grade son came home from the Estabrook Elementary School and repeated to his mother the story read to him earlier that day about men getting married to each other. His teacher had read the book "King and King" to the class, in which a prince doesn't want to marry any princesses, but instead falls in love with a princess's brother and marries him in a big palace wedding. ...

Posted, 4/20/06 http://www.alainsnewsletter.com/article.php?id=403

AOL Censors Email Tax Opponents

Blocked Delivery Emails Mentioning www.DearAOL.com

San Francisco - This week, AOL blocked delivery to AOL customers of all emails that include a link to www.DearAOL.com. Over 100 people who signed a petition to AOL tried sending messages to their AOL-using friends, and received a bounce-back message informing them that their email "failed permanently." ...

Microwave

See Death by using microwaved water: http://www.execonn.com/sf/

 

Facts about judgment:

Judgment: Will be according to the law of the covenant, and against the whole world, Exodus 24; causes man to know that He is Lord, Jeremiah 16:21; results in salvation, Isaiah 51:6, Zephaniah 3:8, 9; causes the world to learn righteousness, 1 Corinthians 3:17ff, with Isaiah 26:9; compared to rain – as judgment comes down, righteousness is exalted–it makes the earth bring forth fruit as does the rain, Psalms 72, Isaiah 55:10, Psalms 96, Isaiah 11:4. If God will judge his people, he surely will the whole earth. Jeremiah 25:29. Exalts God, Isaiah 5:16.

Matthew 20:18. The coming of the Son of Man in the judgment of Matthew 24 speaks of three judgments: 1) primarily against the Hebrew/Jewish nation; 2) a continual coming against sin in general; 3) the final judgment by the son of man. See Daniel 7. Any nation will be blessed that will serve the Lord. God's blessings or judgments are upon any nation according to that nations attitude and works toward God and his law. Note that Christ did not tell us not to judge, but how to judge, righteous judgment. John 7:24. Prayer for God's judgment against those who do evil deeds separates us from them. Justice is corrupted by those in power, so we have no appeal against their injustices. Therefore, pray for God's judgment against the corruptors in high places.

Bro. Need

 

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