Still Alive

I have no problem with other people drinking. I drank until last year, and I might find myself having a half oz of bourbon every now and then. But I look at it this way. We sin when we "break God's rules". And if one notices, all of God's rules are there to help/benefit us, just as a parent tells you to look both ways before crossing the street. You can violate your parent's rules or God's rules. It doesn't mean you are written out of the will, but It may harm you if you do. I don't drink now because I had open heart surgery in March, and am still on a blood thinner and blood pressure medication. It's best if I "mostly" avoid alcohol. Getting "drunk" is not really healthy for a bunch of reasons. I understand that it is sometimes just getting a "buzz". Heck, I've not gotten really "drunk" for decades. I've forgotten what a hangover even feels like. Final note: When we moved from Seattle to rural Kentucky 12 years ago, we went to a few churches before finally settling on one. The others were baptist, and downright Muslim in their hatred of alcohol. They were also quite dogmatic in all their beliefs. There was really no room for disagreement. I did not want to "sew division" in those churches so I left. I finally ended up at a "Christian" church where folks would respect my different opinions on some subjects (e.g. I'm quite against the teaching of ECT). A pastor at a large Louisville church (near a Christian college with a lot of teachers and professors from that college in his congregation) that had experience with a lot of the very small rural churches in Kentucky made an interesting comment to me one day: The more people know about the bible and its origins, the less "sure" they are about their "lower level" doctrine beliefs. And that's where I am with alcohol. You are not doing yourself any favors getting drunk, but I don't personally consider consuming alcohol to be a "sin", generally speaking. It depends on the individual. Remember, "sin" just means doing a "bad thing". And if you are an alcoholic that has gone dry, drinking is a sin for you. I live by this motto: In heaven, all the intersections have yield signs.😉

Have you ever heard the Rebecca st james version? She's singing it pretty straight, but the band is doing something completely different from what we're used to.

I participate in the worship team in my church. Music is a very contentious element of modern churches. There are some (though as time passes, more and more of them are "going home") that really think the old hymns are really all we should do. There are many of them I really love, but I also think some of the new stuff is just as good and many times better. But there is a "background noise" for many of us that the old stuff is the best. After all, how do you beat Amazing Grace or It is Well? But what people don't realize is that there are thousands of those old songs in hymnals all over the country. And most of them, IMO, are terrible. But what we focus on is the 20 or so that are great and really timeless, leading to the false impression that all the old stuff is the best. It isn't. And, frankly, the same argument can be made about secular music and "classic rock".

I get that. I think where we disagree is that I don't believe "he" needs to be revealed before the delusion is sent by God. I could be wrong, or not, but I don't consider it a doctrinal belief. I do fall back on "God chooses us, we don't choose him.". i.e. if He chose me, I'll be fine. 😉 But it's not really about me...

The scripture above does not talk about the source of the delusion. I was referencing that.

2024, on all fronts, is gonna be a very "historic" year. Kinda like 1939, only a lot more fronts.

The "big" sign for me is this: 2 thes 2:8-14. Specifically, verse 11: "For this reason God will send them a powerful delusion so that they believe the lie..." The craziness regarding the incredible rise of socialism, fascism transgenderism, etc. is a thing to behold. I used to thing the world was going crazy in the 90's. Well, it did.

I've said for decades that all topics are binary - black and white. The problem is when we are not focused on the key issue that they become gray. So I believe that if something is "gray", it means I need to break it down further into its black and white components. Just like the gray areas in old black and white photos in newspapers. They are really made up of black and white once you zoom in. And to add to that, often we have a hard time with the sayings of Jesus as well as many other authors within that library of books called "the Bible" because we filter them through our own biases that may or may not be accurate. Further, we often don't look at them from the original text/language and how someone alive at the time would have interpreted them. So, at the end of the day, it's not that his words are difficult. Rather, it is how we interpret them that makes it hard. e.g. I don't think he was saying we needed to literally eat him as we would a hot dog. And I think he clarified nicely before he was sacrificed.

Yep. the challenge I have with all of our "informed speculation", though, is that I believe it is dangerous to come up with highly specific future scenarios from scripture that comes from a dream that is mostly symbolic. My ultimate search is to understand and "know" God so to help me better interpret this sort of prophesy. i.e. when someone comes up with an explanation that does not fit the personality of the God I know, I can ignore it, just as I'd ignore an explanation of something my wife did that does not fit her personality. Ultimately my goal is not to "know" the future, but to understand God's purpose for man enough, and the prophesies enough, to know the "end times stuff" when I see it. For example, the world seems to have gone absolutely mad lately with the trans gender stuff, global warming, etc. And it not only makes sense, but implies we are in a certain time when one reads ths in context: Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 2 thes 2:11 As far as I'm concerned, we're there. Right now. This has never happened at such a grand scale in any time in history.

I think we are mostly in agreement on this issue. I'll throw out one clarification, though: I see those that came out of the great tribulation as those who were alive at the time when the great tribulation hit (I think we may already be there or close to it), and they are removed at the end of the tribulation (3.5 years) and before what follows, the wrath of God. But one of the most important scriptures for me, regarding the "saved" is 1 Cor 3:12-15 "According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire." Bottom line to me is that "saved" is a starting point, not an ending point.

My wife and I lost all four of our parents over the last five years. They were all over 90. Then we lost our oldest son in a car accident two years ago. I find that we sometimes individually will "talk to" our son, and I sometimes talk to my dad. But it's "sort of" talking to them. I know it's sort of a mental vestigial organ, but it happens. I don't consider it idolatry because I see them simply as elohim. That is, occupants of the unseen realm. Even the demons could be called elohim, in the same way that sharks are called fish - occupants of water (though there are animals that live in water that are not fish. I suppose the analogy has its limit). They are not deity. https://www.logos.com/grow/who-are-elohim/

When I became a Christian in 1981, I started out pre-trib. then, after studying the issue, I became "mid-trib", also known as "post tribulation, pre-wrath of God". I am now "pan-trib". i.e. it all pans out in the end. I'm more focused on the core teachings of Jesus now - My relationship with my creator and my relationship with my fellow man. The rest is just so much noise that either enhances or distracts from those two. It really got amplified when I spent 11 hours on an operating table 5 months ago undergoing open heart surgery. I'm a couple of months away from 70. Fortunately it was brought on by a birth defect and not lifestyle/diet. IOW, I'm healthy as an ox now, but my world view has changed in some areas and strengthened in all of them. I'm a pretty strong follower of the late Dr. Michael Heiser and one of the things I gleaned from him is that we had better be careful basing "non-critical" doctrine on our flawed English translations of the bible. Don't stand strongly behind positions supported by questionable scripture. I'm not even convinced there really is a "rapture" any more, though I hope that if there is, it is "pre-trib". Who wouldn't want to avoid all the mayhem. But then, what Characters in all of our bible stories avoided all the mayhem? How did the apostles die? Then again, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and I consider all hardship to be a teaching moment. I basically see this life as a "boot camp". Like a life simulation video game, I know I'm not getting out of it alive, so I'm playing the "game" the Lord put me here to play. My focus now is enhancing my relationship with my Creator and His Son. And the more I rely on him and trust him, the more joy and UNDERSTANDING I receive. I think that when we die we're all gonna have a great conversation over a cup of coffee in Heaven's cafeteria about all the stuff we were so dead wrong about. But one thing I hope we got right is the personality of our Creator and the hope he offers through his son's death and resurrection. BTW, start with Psalm 82:1, in the original language. BTW number two: Two weeks after the surgery on discharge day:

I did a "haha" response, but I believe you are absolutely correct. I don't bring this up much, but the context I now give the entire bible is shared below. It is not what I necessarily believe. Rather, it is completely possible, and I've found no scripture that controdicts it. Just as we know far more about His creation and much of what we now hold dear regarding our savior would sound crazy to those that lived 3,000 years ago, we must understand that we all apply a flawed context to how we translate, transliterate, and interpret the old, as well as new, testaments. 1. The OT is written TO a subset of human beings on the planet at the time it was written. Specifically, Israel. It was also written "for" us that come later. 2. Israel was His chosen people and were His. And he is above all things in the physical world and above all things in the spiritual world. He's the "head elohim". But other peoples had other elohim responsible for them. Hence Psalm 82. 3. Eden and the ultimate end on Earth described in our bibles - through the end of Revelation - is where God shares direct relationship with those of us on this planet. 4. This includes Jesus sacrifice, which expanded the "covenant" to include all of mankind on the planet. But only mankind on this planet, since that is who he lives among, speaks to, and teaches of God and His perfect love. 5. There are probably an infinite number of planets, all of which have their own equivalent of "Eden", where the God of all creation communes with the inhabitants of each planet. And we don't know anything about them, nor do we need to. That's outside the scope of what the bible is communicating. I'll just add this: The bible has a starting point and an ending point regarding the passage of time. But it's like a fictional story about a person or family in a struggle. That is, in the lives of those people, much precedes the beginning, and much of life follows the end. The bible only covers a few thousand years. Millions may have gone by before it, and billions may go by after. But it is the story of the placement of man on Earth, the interactions and relationships with its human inhabitants with God, and the final outcome of His plan, which is when everything REALLY begins, yet the bible is silent on it.

I'm in my recent reading I'm about halfway through my fourth book on the OT. In fact, one was called "Old Testament Theology for Christians". I'm currently halfway through "The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest". The first one was "Unseen Realm". That one was true to its word: My bible is a completely different book than it used to be. And not to put too fine a point on it, it's not that these books are, out of whole cloth, changing the way I think about the bible. Rather, they are answering and re-enforcing questions I was already having. And suddenly so much of it makes far more sense than it did when I was eternally stuck in "the bible 101", which IS where most churches keep everyone - even their leadership.

Yep. I'm of the mind that the "hell experience", that many ECT advocates are thinking about when they use the word is what people are experiencing IN THIS CURRENT WORLD AND LIFE. And it is often due to their bad decisions and perceptions of events. My wife lost her first husband 35 years ago, leaving her with no life insurance, a mortgage, and three children under the age of 8. But she did not suffer "hell on earth". Her faith was STRENGTHENED. And she got through her worldly "boot camp" days to become a spiritual stalwart. But without the Lord, it would have been very different.

Though I completely agree, I'll just add a caveat: He taught his lessons in a way that even a child - that lived in that culture and time - could understand. Modern adults often even have a hard time with it now. A simple example: He mentioned Gehenna at the time. Everyone then knew what he was talking about. It was a real place where sacrificed babies were burned in the past and was a garbage dump, burning, rotting, etc. It was also "outside" Jerusalem. So he said the lost were basically being thrown away, except they would not continue to smolder and rot. They would be burned up and utterly consumed by fire and "worms". But many today turn that into "Eternal, Conscious Torment" ECT. It's how I interpreted it until I bothered to actually study the context of the places often translated "hell" in my bible. It was so simple, a child in that place and time could understand it.

It's possible. I've been out of touch with him for three decades.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but: I became a Christian in 1980. I attended a fairly large local church and was connected with the "new believers" class. The teacher was what I saw as a "super Christian". He came from "the gutter" (literally. He was a former alcoholic) and he even was the leader of Discipleship Dynamics (and eventually became a leader in that organization) I could call him and he would come over to my house and discuss serious problems I had in my life and how to resolve them from a Christian perspective. But the most important advice he ever gave me was when I complimented him on being such a strong and wise Christian. He told me to not ever - EVER - put my eyes on him, or any other man, but only on Jesus, because he WOULD let me down, as would all men. Several years later he was back in the gutter. Thanks to his advice, I applied a line I apply when ANY "super" Christian falls: He is proving why we ALL need Christ. I've carried that lesson with me ever since, and it has served me well. And to be clear, he's not the only person I personally know that has "fallen". Heck, in 1998 my wife divorced me. But I know I'm flawed and depend on Jesus for my salvation from "myself". And He has served me well. I only leave a church if I'm just not getting plugged in, or we have pretty strong disagreements about some basic stuff. I had to leave one church because they were downright Mormon in their attitude toward alcohol. I started to argue, but realized I was becoming an argumentative spirit and decided it was best to leave. I've been at my current church for about 5 years and like it very much, even though it is not perfect. I see all churches as "man made religion" and Christianity as a completely separate thing. Churches are just one of man's flawed ways of coming to Christ and attempting to do God's will. i.e. I cut them a lot of slack.

Michael Heiser was asked how, with what he now knows/believes regarding the OT, how can he attend any church. His answer was actually similar to mine, and different. First, your faith should be in God, not men. Men will let you down EVERY SINGLE TIME. All they do, constantly, is prove that Jesus died for ALL OF US, not just the "especially bad" ones. I don't need to go to church to learn about God. I don't need to go to church to help the poor. Heck, I don't even need to go to church to take communion. I go to church for two, and only two reasons: 1. Be blessed by others 2. Bless others It's about community, within the body of Christ. And to be frank, those two things actually cover a very broad range of things, just as I ignore the torah and the ten commandments and focus on the two most critical commandments* of Jesus, which actually encapsulate all of his 40+ commandments. And this is my "rubber meets" the road paraphrase of it: There are only two things in this life that actually matter - your relationship with god; a subset of that: your relationship with your fellow man. Everything else can be categorized as follows: It is a thing that either adds to or detracts from those two things. *Luke 10:27 - ...“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

One could argue that this describes the native Americans before we "invaded". But the problem is that they were not really a "peaceful" people. Then again, who is nowadays? Certainly the US isn't. And look at western culture. Look at our movies, our video games, our forms of physical entertainment. Where on the planet is there a "peaceful" people right now? I guess my point is that I don't think we'll know who it is talking about until AFTER it happens, which seems to be God's MO regarding exposing the future. That's why I see a prepared Christian as the equivalent of a Shortstop. We are trained and ready. We don't know if we'll get a line drive, a pop-up or a grounder. But we've assumed the stance and are ready. And we know how many outs there are and who's on base, so we know what to do with the ball when it comes to us. So, be ready...

I'm reading a book about Canan right now. It's somewhat altering my perspective on war in general. Well, that and reading recently about the battle between, not good and evil, but order and chaos, which seem to be synonymous with "good and evil". Our creator is working us toward order, and expunging "evil/chaos/hell" from our world - a job which will be completed as outlined in Revelation, Daniel, etc.

Based on what I've been reading, Russia's plan was to do this the "easy, relatively non-destructive" way and hope for a settlement. Barring that it was to enter the "no holds barred" phase, which it is now in. I suspect Russia, now in the "we're there to win" mode, will end this fairly quickly and brutally. But it doesn't mean they will actually "win" anything, other than a buffer between them and NATO. They certainly won't win any goodwill with the rest of the world - or a good portion of their own population.

I just see it this way: evil = bad thing happens. When We dropped the nukes on Japan, that was "evil" from the Japanese perspective because it was a bad thing happening to them. And we saved probably ten million of them. When Israel was told to wipe out entire nations, from the other nation's perspective, that was "evil" from their perspective. But it was israel doing something that they interpreted as a bad thing happening to them. And when you have a difficult professor who gives you an F because your work was poor, that is "evil/bad". But it's not the professor's fault. And when I slaughter one of my chickens, that is "evil/bad" from the chicken's perspective.

Yeah, the quote function on this site's software is kinda unusual. Looks like to quote parts of a post, but keep them all in the same post, you have to cut them all out and add with the quote button.

It depends on what you think the use is. Cloth masks do not to a great job at protecting the wearer from COVID. Cloth masks do a pretty good job of reducing the emission of respiratory droplets from infected individuals. KN95 work better for both scenarios, but cloth masks do decrease transmission, just not so great at reducing acquisition. She is sharing her personal story. Anecdotes are not a substitute for data. I certainly cannot tell you what to believe and what not to. I will suggest that physicians and public health officials have more training, experience, and first-hand knowledge than you regarding whether or not COVID was a primary cause of death. The Italian story is essentially a reproduction of the CDC story here in the US. A small percentage of the tens of thousands of dead Italians had no other officially recorded cause of death. Since a deadly viral infection can only get that way through physiological effects, it makes a great deal of sense to acknowledge that other physiological conditions SHOULD be present on a death certificate. The presence of other physiological factors is not surprising in the least. Additionally, it is well known that COVID is much deadlier for for people with certain factors like high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, compromised immune systems, Down Syndrome, and many others. That is NOT a claim that the virus infection is not the primary cause of death. Edit: I misspelled "quote" when quoting and, unfortunately, I can't reformat by correctly spelling. Once the site sees text as a quote, there's no going back...so I just bolded your comment I was quoting...